I SPY LONDON the definitive DG guide to London's sights-worth-seeing Part 23:Eltham Palace
Location: Court Yard, Eltham SE9 5QE [map] Open: 10am - 5pm (11-4 in winter) (closed Thur, Fri, Sat) (closed January) Admission: £8-ish 5-word summary: classy medieval/Art Deco hybrid Website:www.elthampalace.org.uk Time to set aside: half a day
Wow. If you like your sightseeing to be a surprise, then don't read past this first paragraph. But wow. The family home of Stephen and Ginny Courtauld took me aback with almost every room I walked into. Especially the first room. And the big old hall. And the cage. I bet King Henry VIII loved the place. What a shame that its most famous 20th century owners barely had time to enjoy the fruits of their Art Deco makeover.
You wouldn't expect to find a redeveloped palace in the middle of London's southeast commuter belt. But here it is, up a tree-lined sidestreet across a very old stonebridge. The oldest still-operational bridge in London, apparently, and with a rather picturesque willowedmoat beneath. There's not much other evidence of Eltham's medieval past, not yet, just one long wing of a more modern-looking stately home. Admittance is via the servants' entrance, and then into a long pea green back corridor which looks like it belongs in a pre-NHS hospital. Round the next corner there's a bloke dishing out protective blue plastic slippers to slip over your footwear. It's not a glamorous look, and completely at odds with the stylish decor coming up next, but it'll help to protect the flooring ahead from unintentional damage. Ok, first room...
Wow. Is this the portholed lounge of some 1930s ocean liner? No, it's the house's main triangular entrance hall, complete with blackbean veneer walls and a unique glass domed roof. The central rug's rather special, all geometric brown and beige and fawn, so please don't step on it. There are extra-large cloakrooms behind the marquetry panels, as befitted the home of a wealthy socialite, and there's also a walk-in telephone cupboard. They were very big on new-fangled telephones, the Courtaulds. Look down at the skirting board and you might even spot the special sockets where servants plugged their vacuum cleaners into an automated suction system. Elsewhere on the ground floor there's an art-packed drawing room, a smart panelled library for him and a sumptuous boudoir for her. With, up on the wall, a large leather map of the Eltham area. I know, a leather map, whoever heard of such a thing?
And then, through a Chinese screened doorway, suddenly it's the Middle Ages again. Ginny and Stephen built their family home in the grounds of a ruined royal palace, and deftly incorporated the GreatHall as their main entertaining space. At 100ft long and 55ft high, there was plenty of room to serve cocktails. The hall is a magnificent 15th century relic, designed by Edward IV's chief mason and still with its oak hammerbeam roof intact. Here the English Tudor court came to celebrate Christmas, and here the young Henry VIII spent much of his childhood. Try not to think about the underfloor central heating the Courtaulds installed - they had different planning regulations in those days.
Retrace your steps into the Art Deco Thirties, and upstairs to the bedrooms on the first floor. Yes, these are as modish and dapper as you might expect. Stephen's bedroom has block-printed wallpaper and a blue bathroom, while Ginny's en-suite features a most ostentatious bath beneath a shining gold mosaic. In another room you can watch the two textile millionaires at play in a selection of their home movies, and outside on the landing is the centrally heated cage in which Ginny kept her pet ring-tailed lemur. He was called Mah Jongg and he had the run of the house down a special bamboo ladder. It's how the other half lived, don't you know.
And finally back down to the dining room, complete with inlaid black marble and a recessed spotlit aluminium ceiling. A dinner party here, seated on rose-pink upholstered chairs whilst servants scuttled around with silver platters, must have been quite magnificent. Alas the Courtaulds didn't have very long to enjoy this cultured decadence. The house and landscaped gardens weren't completed until 1936, leaving only a handful of perfect summers before war broke out. Stephen and Ginny hung on here until 1944, assisting the WRVS and stamping out fires, before escaping first to Scotland and later to Rhodesia. Their loss is our gain. And wow. by train: Elthamby bus: 126, 161
Good morning, HappyEaster, and welcome to the earliest Easter Sunday that you will ever experience. And here, very simply, is why it's so early. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This year, 2008, everything in this list has happened really really fast...
Equinox: Friday 21st March Full Moon: Saturday 22nd March Easter Sunday: Sunday 23rd March
Bang, bang, bang. You can't beat that.
Golden
Number
Day of
Month
Sunday
Letter
March 21
C
XIV
March 22
D
III
March 23
E
March 24
F
XI
March 25
G
March 26
A
XIX
March 27
B
VIII
March 28
C
March 29
D
XVI
March 30
E
V
March 31
F
April 1
G
XIII
April 2
A
II
April 3
B
April 4
C
X
April 5
D
April 6
E
XVIII
April 7
F
VII
April 8
G
April 9
A
XV
April 10
B
IV
April 11
C
April 12
D
XII
April 13
E
I
April 14
F
April 15
G
IX
April 16
A
XVII
April 17
B
VI
April 18
C
April 19
D
April 20
E
April 21
F
April 22
G
April 23
A
April 24
B
April 25
C
As I mentioned on Friday, we have a full moon on 22nd March once every 19 years. It's a common event. The reason that 2008 is so special is that 22nd March is a Saturday, allowing 23rd March to be a Sunday. There are seven possible days of the week on which the 23rd can fall, and only when it's a Sunday does the ultimate Easter occur. A one in 19 chance, multiplied by a 1 in 7 chance, that's an event of 1 in 133 year rarity.
OK, so once you know the date of the first spring full moon in any year, how do you find the date of the next Sunday? Ah, well, that's where the Sunday Letter comes in. Know the Sunday Letter and you can work out which of the next seven days is a Sunday. Every year is assigned its own Sunday Letter (one of the letters from A to G), roughly corresponding to the seven different days of the week on which January 1st can fall. This Easter the Sunday Letter is E. Next year it's D, then C, then B, and then for 2012 (a leap year) it skips A and flips back round to G. There's a ready-made list of Sunday Letters for the 20th and 21st centuries here.
You can then use today's big long table, reproduced from the Book of Common Prayer, to work out the date of Easter. For any particular year you need to know only two things - the Golden Number (see Friday's post) and the Sunday Letter. Start in the first column with the Golden Number. Then move down the table until you find the next row with the correct Sunday Letter. That's the date of Easter Sunday. Simple?
• For example, in 2008 the Golden Number is 14 (XIV), so start on the March 22nd row. The Sunday letter is E so move down to the next E, which is March 23rd. And so Easter is March 23rd.
• For example, last year the Golden Number was 13 (XIII), so start on the April 2nd row. The Sunday letter was G so move down to the next G, which is April 8th. And so Easter was April 8th.
• Oh, and if the full moon is on a Sunday, then Easter jumps to the following Sunday. That's to make sure it's never celebrated on the same day as the Jewish Passover.
Whichever date is associated with the Golden Number, Easter can fall on any of the seven dates below it. So not every year with a Golden Number of 14 has a really early Easter. In 2027, for example, Easter will fall on March 28th (Sunday Letter C) and in 1970 Easter was as late as March 29th (Sunday Letter D). Easter 2008 is only fabulously early because the Golden Number is 14 and the Sunday Letter is E.
Meanwhile down at the bottom of the table, Easter can sometimes run very late. This tends to happen when the Golden Number is 6 (as in 2000), 9 (as in 2003) or 17 (as in 2011). The latest Easter of all (April 25th) can only happen in a year with Golden Number 6 and Sunday Letter C - years such as 1943 and 2038. But we've got a close contender coming up very soon. In 2011 everything in the Easter calculation list is going to run really really slowly...
Equinox: Monday 21st March Full Moon: Sunday 17th April Easter Sunday: Sunday 24th April
So, calendar freaks, do come back in three years time. In 2011 we've got an extremely late Easter on our hands. And you just wouldn't believe how rare it is to have an extreme late Easter so close to an extreme early Easter...
• The cycle of Easter dates repeats every 5,700,000years. During this period, Easter falls on March 23rd only 54,150 times (less than 1% of the total).
• Today, March 22nd, is the least likely date for Easter to fall - this happens in less than ½% of years. April 19th is the most likely, at nearly 4%.
• Easter falls on March 28th in both 2027 and 2032, a gap of five years. No shorter interval is possible.
• Almost exactly half of our Easters occur on the same date 11 years later (but never more than four in a row). For example, Easter falls on March 31st in 1991, 2002, 2013 and 2024, but not in 2035.
• Consecutive Easters are always separated by 350, 357, 378, or 385 days (that's 50, 51, 54, or 55 weeks). For example, Easter 2008 is 350 days after Easter 2007, but 385 days before Easter 2009. So we've just had the shortest possible gap between Easters, and we're about to enter the longest.
• In 1926 the League of Nations proposed that Easter Sunday be observed on the first Sunday after the second Saturday of April (i.e. the Sunday nearest April 12th). However world religions failed to agree on this simplification, and so the movable lunar feast continues.
• The last time Easter fell before the clocks went forward was in 1959 (back when the clocks changed to British Summer Time in mid-April, not March).
• The coldest recent UK Easter was in 1964. Over the weekend 27-29 March temperatures barely reached 6°C in southern and central parts of the country, and were accompanied by a raw easterly wind.
• The snowiest recent UK Easter was in 1983. Over the weekend 1-3 April there was up to 10cm of snowfall in Scotland, the Midlands and Kent. The following Easters were all snowy: 1958, 1965, 1970, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1994 and 1998.
Here's a table showing the date of Easter from 1900-2099
If there's a digit in the table then Easter is in March, and that's the last digit of the date (22nd-31st).
If there's a letter in the table then Easter is in April, and the letter follows the code a=1, b=2, c=3 etc.
» For example, the symbol in the table for 2008 is a digit, so Easter is in March. That digit is a 3, so Easter is on March 23rd. » For example, the symbol in the table for 2009 is a letter, so Easter is in April. That letter is L, which is the 12th letter of the alphabet, so Easter is on April 12th.
Here's a list of really earlyEasters, so you can see how rare they really are:
• Easter on 22nd March: last happened 1818, next happens 2285
• Easter on 23rd March: last happened 1913, next happens 2160
• Easter on 24th March: last happened 1940, next happens 2391
• Easter on 25th March: last happened 1951, next happens 2035
• Easter on 26th March: last happened 1989, next happens 2062
• Easter on 27th March: last happened 2005, next happens 2016 (but then not again until 2157)
Extreme
Early
Easter (full moon 18:50 GMT, 21/03/07)
The Easter story, according to the Bible, is intrinsically linked to the Jewish festival of Passover. And Passover is a lunar festival, linked to the date of the full moon. So Easter has to be linked to the date of the full moon too. Here's how the date of Easter is determined...
Easter Day is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
To get an early Easter you need an early full moon. Like we have this year. This year the spring equinox was yesterday, the next full moon is today, and so Easter is on Sunday. It's not very often that there's a full moon almost immediately after the equinox and then a Sunday very soon afterwards. And that's why Easter is bloody early this year. Happy with that? Good, please stop reading now.
OK, now for the real, rather more complicated explanation. You knew it wouldn't be that simple, didn't you? One reason for this is because the church's method of determining Easter doesn't use the real spring equinox, it always uses March 21st. You can thank the Council of Nicæa in 325AD for that one. And Easter calculations don't use the date of the real full moon either, they use something called the Paschal Full Moon instead. These form an artificial list of full moon dates, applicable globally, almost but not quite linked to the real ones. So the actual rule for determining the date of Easter is this...
Easter Day is the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon on or after March 21st.
Let's take a more detailed look at these mysterious Paschal Full Moons. The ancient church didn't want to have to mess around with actual astronomical data, because that was quite difficult to predict accurately in those days, and leap years kept getting in the way. So they took advantage of a convenient lunar coincidence called the Metonic Cycle and used this to help. The phases of the Moon may not repeat on the same day every year, but they do repeat (give or take 2 hours) on the same day every 19 years. So if you know the dates of the spring full moons over a 19 year period, you can repeat that list every 19 years afterwards. Simple?
Table to find the date of
the Easter Full Moon
Golden
Number
Years
Full Moon
I
1976 1995 2014
April 14
II
1977 1996 2015
April 3
III
1978 1997 2016
March 23
IV
1979 1998 2017
April 11
V
1980 1999 2018
March 31
VI
1981 2000 2019
April 18
VII
1982 2001 2020
April 8
VIII
1983 2002 2021
March 28
IX
1984 2003 2022
April 16
X
1985 2004 2023
April 5
XI
1986 2005 2024
March 25
XII
1987 2006 2025
April 13
XIII
1988 2007 2026
April 2
XIV
1989 2008 2027
March 22
XV
1990 2009 2028
April 10
XVI
1991 2010 2029
March 30
XVII
1992 2011 2030
April 17
XVIII
1993 2012 2031
April 7
XIX
1994 2013 2032
March 27
Here's a table showing the 19 possible Paschal Full Moons. I've listed all the years from 1976 to 2032, but you can trawl back as far as 1900 and forward as far as 2199 should you want to. Remember, these are all artificial full moons for calculation purposes only.
Every year on the same line has the same full moon date. For example, the Paschal Full Moon in 1995 fell on April 14th, the same as 19 years earlier in 1976 and 19 years later in 2014. These years are described as having a Golden Number of 1 (which is the remainder when dividing the year by 19, plus 1). Don't worry about that. All you need to know is that every year with the same Golden Number has the same Paschal Full Moon. Every year with a Golden Number of 1 (including 1900 and 2185, for what it's worth) has its post-equinox full moon on April 14th.
Scanning down the table you'll see that the first post-equinox full moon in the year 2000 was on April 18th, and that's the latest date possible. It's years with a Golden Number of 6 that have the very latest Easters. And the Paschal full moon this year is on March 22nd, which is the earliest date possible. It's years with a Golden Number of 14 that have the very earliest Easters. Well, near enough, but I'll come back to the extra complications on Sunday.
And one more thing. During the 20th, 21st and 22nd centuries the Paschal Full Moon never falls on March 21st itself, which means that Easter Day can never fall as early as March 22nd. But in other centuries the table of Paschal Full Moons is different. Throughout the 19th century, for example, March 21st was linked to a Golden Number of 14 (that's because 1900 wasn't a leap year, so the pattern skipped a day). And hey presto, in 1818 there actually was an Easter Day on March 22nd. Similarly there'll be another March 22nd Easter in the 23rd century, in 2285. But between 1900 and 2199, March 23rd is the earliest Easter we can possibly get. It really is an utterly extreme Easter this year. Sorry, is anybody still reading? I did warn you to stop earlier, didn't I?
Extreme
Early
Easter (vernal equinox 05:48 GMT, 20/03/07)
It can't have escaped your notice that there's an early Easter this year. Like, very very early. March 23rd is a ridiculously early date for Easter to fall, but that's the way the calendar works out this year. Oh yes, this is most definitely an Extreme Early Easter.
This year's Easter isn't quite record-breakingly early, but it nearly is. There's not been an Easter this early since 1913, which is nearly a century ago and you won't remember that. There won't be an Easter this early again until 2160, which is more than a century and half away and you definitely won't be around for that. And there won't be an earlier Easter than this until 2285, which is so far into the future that we'll probably have drowned the planet by then. Oh yes, this is most definitely an Extreme Early Easter.
Thanks to to some verycomplicatedecclesiasticalrules involving equinoxes and full moons (which I'll go into tomorrow), Easter Day can fall on any Sunday between March 22nd and April 25th. The period between March 28th and April 20th is the most common, and any Easters outside that range are rather less frequent. This year we're right up at the start of the possible range, on March 23rd, because a couple of unlikely events have combined to create a freak rarity. An Extreme Early Easter.
As a movable feast, Easter feels very wrong when it moves too early. It may be nearly three months since we last had a bank holiday, but somehow mid-March is too early to be having a double bank holiday break. School holidays are also all over the place this year because of the early Easter. Some schools are breaking up today and having the next couple of weeks off, whereas others are waiting until mid-April, when Easter "normally" is, and having their break then. Hell, we've not even put the clocks forward yet. And look at the weather, it's more like winter than spring out there. Actually, maybe there's a reason for that. An Extreme Early Equinox.
Today is the first day of spring* - the vernal equinox. The overhead Sun crossed the equator at 05:48 this morning, and we're now entering into the warm half of the year. Yes really, March 20th, not March 21st, is the first day of spring. Spring used to start on March 21st, certainly a century ago it did, but the shifting equinox means that it'll now always be on March 20th. Well, every year from 2008 until 2044 anyway. I explained all this last year, were you not paying attention?
* yes yes yes, I know, northern hemisphere only
It takes the Earth approximately 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes to orbit the Sun, so every year the spring equinox shifts almost 6 hours later than the year before. That's approximately 24 hours later every 4 years, which is then cancelled out by the presence of a February 29th a few weeks before the next spring equinox occurs. But this still leaves the calendar 11 minutes short of reality every year, and this tiny difference shifts the spring equinox approximately three-quarters of an hour earlier every 4 years.
So it's not just Easter that's early this year, it's spring too. An equinox before sunrise on March 20th - it's unheard of. In fact the spring equinox hasn't taken place before 6am on March 20th since 1896. Spring hasn't begun this early since the 19th century! But don't get too excited. The phrase "spring hasn't begun this early since the 19th century" has been true every leap year since 1900, and will continue to be true every leap year until 2024. So our premature spring isn't the reason why Easter is early this year. Our early Easter is a result of something that's happening tomorrow. Come back then and I'll tell you more.
Who would have thought that London'sMayoralelection might hinge around the humble Routemaster bus? This much-loved workhorse has come to symbolise the supposed chasm that exists between moderniser Ken and fresh-thinking Boris. Mayor Ken killed off the redoubtable Routemaster a few years ago, and now Boris wants to bring them back. Doesn't he? And all at the expense of the nasty evil fare-dodgingcycle-crushing bendy bus. Who could have a good word to say about London's fleet of 337 bendy buses... except perhaps passengers with wheelchairs, or mums with prams, or travellers with suitcases, or freeloaders who fancy a trip across town for nothing. It'll be fab to rid of these articulated roadhogs. Won't it? Well, actually, maybe not.
Boris Johnson has managed to plant an incredibly alluring idea in the minds of London's electorate. "Vote for me and I'll scrap all the bendy buses and bring back Routemasters." As campaign ideas go, it's brilliant. Alas that's not what he's promised at all, it's just what people think is on offer. What Boris has actually pledged is the following...
So here's problem number 1. Boris can't bring back old Routemasters because accessibility legislation bans the use of non-inclusive 1950s technology. There aren't enough of the old vehicles left anyway, because most of those withdrawn from service a few years ago are now either in private hands or rusting. So all that Boris can promise is a competition to design a "new Routemaster". Something like this Johnson-approved blueprint here (although the design can't be anywhere near perfect otherwise he wouldn't be relying on a contest). Expect the timelag from competition launch to first on-road replacement to be several years. Long term good, but medium term nil.
Then there's problem number 2. The new design won't really be a Routemaster at all, just a rear-platform people-mover with an evocative name. Call it a Routemaster if you like, Boris, but it won't be the classic bumpy spluttering vehicle we know and love. It'll be some new shiny thing with intrusive on-board announcements and electronic destination panels. But before the election, of course, all that matters is a convincing sounding rebranding exercise.
Then there's problem number 3. However much Londoners might wish them gone, Boris can't wipe bendy buses from the streets of the capital on the morning after he's elected. Remove them and there'd be hundreds of thousands of passengers on twelve bendy bus routes stranded at their stops. So the unloved bendies stay, for several years, until somebody's invented and built their replacements. But will the electorate notice this subtle difference in time - it's replace and then scrap, not scrap and then replace.
Then there's problem number 4. Planning to replace only bendy buses won't reinstate Routemasters on their traditional routes. There are 12 bendy bus routes, but there were as many as 20 recent Routemaster routes, and the overlap is surprisingly small. In fact only four RM routes would be reinstated under Boris's plans, a mere 20% of the total. He'd rescue the iconic 12, 38 and 73, and restore part of the old 36. But he'd also upgrade eight routes that either haven't been RM since the 80s (18, 25, 29, 149, 207, 453) or have never been (507, 521). And he'd completely ignore 16 rightful Routemaster routes (6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19, 22, 23, 94, 98, 137, 159, 390). This isn't true replacement, not at all.
Then there's problem number 5. Scrapping bendy buses, designing a Routemaster-y alternative, kitting them out with 21st century facilities and hiring conductors doesn't come cheap. Certainly nowhere near as cheap as the £8m Boris initially claimed, more like more than ten times that amount. All of which has to be paid for somehow. But I'll leave others to arguethatone.
So, in conclusion, Boris's idea is quite good, but it's nowhere near as good as most Londoners believe it to be. Basically, electorate, you've been had. Even if you vote in Boris now, you won't be seeing any "new Routemasters" (or fewer bendy buses) until around the time of the next Mayoral election in 2012. If you're lucky.
Which leaves Ken's transport plans - a rather uninspiring "more of the same". At least "more of the same" won't include more bendy buses - we had the last changeover in 2006 and Ken now promises he's not planning on introducing any more. But more of the same doesn't win votes, even when it's actually quite progressive. Oh London, I worry about you sometimes. And if you can't see through Boris's Routemaster ploy, then I fear you deserve everything you get.
Until last week I wouldn't have dreamed of having porridge for breakfast. I mean, porridge? It's not had a good press, has it? Goldilocks had trouble finding porridge at the right temperature. Oliver Twist could never get enough gruel to fill his echoing stomach. And those ReadyBrek kids from the 1970s used to glowred like they'd spent the night inside a nuclear reactor. Porridge certainly isn't the breakfast of choice for the modern generation. It's been outstripped by muesli, and croissants, and extra-sugar pre-diabetic chocoflakes with marshmallow floaty bits. Even a full fat fry-up has a higher media profile than porridge. But I'm not allowed a full fat fry-up any more, so porridge it is.
When adjusting one's diet to lower cholesterol, porridge is apparently the way to go. Its oaty structure acts like a "cholesterol hoover" in your veins, so I'm told, in much the same way that gobbling oily fish unclogs your tubes and makes you healthier. So, it's either herrings for breakfast or it's porridge. I've plumped for the latter. Except, oh dear, porridge isn't exactly tasty is it?
I bought a trial box of porridge oats on my first tentative post-diet supermarket excursion last week. What a depressing occasion that was. I was forced to bypass some of my favourite aisles (sorry no pies, sorry no biscuits, sorry no cake, sorry) in favour of new and unexpected haunts. Welcome to the low-fat healthy eating area. It was all so unfamiliar, and almost nauseatingly wholesome. Erm, right, so this is the porridge section is it? Oh dear, not a mouth watering prospect.
The following morning I poured out my first bowl of porridge for my inaugural breakfast experience. As I ripped open the packet I accidentally managed to cover half the kitchen with a thin layer of finely milled dust. Damn, wasn't expecting that. A few minutes with a cloth later and I was busy reading the packet, having suddenly realised that I had no idea what one actually does with porridge. Ah, OK, boiling milk. But whipping out a saucepan smacked rather too much of washing up. Was there an alternative option? Yup, good, microwave. I mixed in some appropriately skimmed milk and waited for the ping.
And what do you know, the resulting stodge tasted absolutely foul. Like some sort of papier maché or wallpaper paste (not that I know what either of those taste like, you understand, I'm just guessing). Ugh. I rushed back to the kitchen to throw in a handful of dried fruit - rather a large handful just to be on the safe side - and then shovelled the gloopy gruel down my gullet as fast as humanly possible. Never again.
On Day 2 I read the instructions on the packet again and realised that the ratio of oats to milk was probably crucial. So I risked another attempt, spooning the correct measure of wood shavings into my bowl and then stirring in a precise number of millilitres of cow juice. And that tasted a bit better. Still not in any way delicious or even appetising, but potentially bearable every single morning for the next 40 years. Sigh.
On Day 3 I got overconfident. I thought I knew what I was doing, guessed at the proportions and managed to mix myself another thick mound of steaming glue. The perfect porridge combination isn't yet second nature. Or maybe I should be using water instead of milk, I dunno. I'll get the hang of it eventually. And now this morning, as I post today's blog over breakfast, I'm staring not quite excitedly at yet another pool of oaty stodge. I'm sure it'd be lovely with a big dollop of chocolate sauce swirled into the middle. Sigh, chocolate. I remember chocolate.
Diet update: 1 week in Chocolate: nil; Chips: nil; Crisps: nil Cheese: two thin slices of tasteless low-fat plastic Weight lost: damn, nil Porridge: too much already
Blimey, that was quick. Just eight months ago an undamaged collection of factories and warehouses stood on the Olympic stadium site. And now they don't. The entire area has been cleared, erased, flattened and lowered to create an arena-sized bowl, and the transformation is amazing. I should know, I've been back to watch the changes month by month, and my last visit made me gasp. OK, I'm easily impressed, but it's already possible to visualise precisely where the 2012 centrepiece will take shape. And still the scuttly diggers swarm up and down what used to be Marshgate Lane, repeatedly rearranging the earth until Lea Valley reality is appropriately realigned. It won't be long now.
One of the best jobs in London is surely that of the Blue Badge Guide. These 500-or-so highly trained professionals spend their days taking tourists visitors around the capital, pointing out sights of interest and recounting fascinating historical tales. Sometimes they stand at the front of coaches and tell Japanese holidaymakers that it's not far to Windsor Castle, honest. Sometimes they walk round Westminster holding an umbrella in the air and wishing that their schoolkid charges would pay attention to their amusing anecdotes. Sometimes they stand beside busy road junctions yelling out hilarious stories that absolutely nobody can hear. They get paid less than £200 a day for their troubles, they work unsociable hours, and even if the weather's rubbish they still have to go out anyway. No really, it's a great job.
Once a year London's Blue Badge Guides organise a special day of free walks. Anybody can turn up and wander around town under their expert tutelage for a couple of hours, and hopefully learn lots of fascinating stuff in the process. 2008's special day was yesterday, as part of British Tourism Week, and I went along to sample a couple of the walks on offer. In the morning I joined Margaret at London Bridge station for a two hour stroll through the City via the medium of "nursery rhymes". She was rather pleasantly surprised when as many as 85 punters turned up, and then attempted to lead her tortuous crocodile (including two walking sticks and one pushchair) down steps, along riverbanks and through narrow alleyways. Our apologies to the miseryguts rambler who tried forcing his way through our rather wide group in a subway beneath Southwark Bridge while we were singing Oranges and Lemons.
And then in the afternoon a completely different walk, this time around the back streets of the East End. The title of the tour was 'Great British Villains', on which Ian our guide promised to take us to the notorious haunts of the Kraybrothers. This time just over 50 people turned up - still more than enough to be a handful. We started outside the Blind Beggar pubon the Whitechapel Road - where else? But Ian knew his Krays (as I suspect he knows pretty much everything else) and whisked us off to far less familiar spots. Up a grim sideroad beneath a stark brick railway viaduct he pointed out the pub where the Krays had been drinking immediately before (and immediately after) Ronnie shot George Cornell in the Beggar. This rather bleak-looking ex-boozer had been called The Lion, but was more widely known locally as "Widows" or "Madge's" after the 60s landlady who ran it. It's since been converted to rather seedy-looking flats, of course. And it's not somewhere I'd have noticed otherwise, nor wanted to linger given the staring eyes of the mechanics in the car-fiddling yard nextdoor.
Elsewhere Ian showed us the church where Reggie got married in style (now more flats) and the church where all the family funerals were held (now a dog-walking ground for evil-looking Staffies). Yet another local pub, the Carpenters Arms, was owned by the nefarious twosome and used as the springboard for some right dodgy activities. If you were invited in here during the Sunday afternoon unlicensed intermission, you were almost certainly up to no good. On we walked, surely now a larger group than when we set out, past an unseen bullethole and the Kray's former boxing club.
And finally to the house at 178 Vallance Road where Ronnie and Reggie grew up, except that alas it no longer exists. A row of six smart 80s-built homes has replaced the previous terrace, so we can only imagine the cosy two-up two-down where the twins cosseted their mother and stashed their weapons. Ooh look, there's a special plaque outside number 178 unveiled by no less a personage than the Prince of Wales! It's nothing Kray-related though, just a housing cooperative coincidence. And then, after an appreciative flourish, Ian took his leave and wandered off.
It's not easy to become one of London'sBlue Badge guides (in much the same way that it's bloody difficult to become a London cabbie). You first need to pass a "pre-entry" test consisting of two hours of quick questions about Europe, London, art, architecture, geography, history and the like. If successful you then have to pass an interview - presumably to check that you have an outgoing personality - and then stump up nearly £4000 to study on a two year induction course. There are lectures every Tuesday and Thursday evening for six months, twice, plus a series of must-attend tours and visits most Saturdays. You weren't planning on having a social life, were you? The final exam is in six parts, including written papers and practical assessments, with extra tests if you want to qualify in more than one language. But the stringent admission policy must work because every single one of the Blue Badge guides I've heard, from the Palace of Westminster to the backstreets of Whitechapel, has been wonderfully informative and personable. Get your application in next January and maybe you could be stepping out onto the London streets at Easter 2011 with an appreciative audience of visitors hanging on your every word.
Yes, really, today.
March 15th.
Top of the morning to you, and get celebrating.
I bet you thought St Patrick's Day was March 17th. I mean, it's always March 17th isn't it? Any excuse for a celebration of all things Emerald. A chance to pin a shamrock to your breast, whip out your shillelagh and totter down to the pub for a pint of Guinness. But no, St Patrick's Day isn't on March 17th this year. Not officially.
Then maybe you thought St Patrick's Day might be March 16th. That's the day Ken Livingstone's picked for London's annual St Patrick's Day parade. Any excuse to march down Whitehall dressed as a leprechaun. A chance to spend the whole day drinking too much while staggering round the West End wearing one of those ridiculous tall green hats and urinating into doorways. But no, St Patrick's Day isn't ever on March 16th. Not officially. It's just that Ken likes to shift any ethnic celebration to the nearest Sunday because Sundays are quieter, and it's easier to tidy up Trafalgar Square afterwards.
This year St Patrick's Day is today, March 15th. So says the Catholic church in Ireland, and they ought to know. There's a problem with March 17th this year, and it's all down to the ridiculously early Easter we're having. This year March 17th falls at the start of Holy Week, and Vatican rules decree that the Monday of Holy Week is a far more important day (liturgically speaking) than a mere provincial saints day. Most Irish Catholics celebrate St Patrick's Day by going to Mass, and it just wouldn't be right to be cheering on the Apostle of Ireland when they should be remembering the passion of our Lord. So, sorry Pat, but your special day has been displaced.
This year St Patrick's Day ought to be on Tuesday April 1st. Displaced religious festivals are supposed to shift to the next available free day in the calendar, and in 2008 that's in a fortnight's time once all the hubbub of Easter is over. But that's a very time to wait, and Irish cardinals weren't willing to hang around that long. Imagine the confusion if scheduled civic events were held back until April, and thousands of tourists turned up in Dublin two weeks prematurely. So they asked the Vatican for special dispensation to shift the official religious celebration of Paddy's Day earlier rather than later, and the Pope said yes.
So St Patrick's Day 2008 is today, on Saturday March 15th. It's an extremely rare rescheduling, and the first time anything like this has happened for nearly 70 years. Back in 1940 Easter was also ridiculously early, on March 24th in this case, which meant that St Patrick's Day clashed with Palm Sunday and had to be shifted. And this temporal relocation won't happen again until 2160, which is the next time that Easter falls on March 23rd. I'll tell you a lot more about Early Easters next week. In the meantime slap on your shamrock, doff your floppy hat and get down the pub. With a bit of luck we non-Catholic souls can all celebrate St Patrick for three days in a row this year. Make the most of it (hic)
I SPY LONDON the definitive DG guide to London's sights-worth-seeing Part 22:The Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture
Location: Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet EN4 8HT [map] Open: 10am - 5pm (2pm - 5pm Sundays) (closed Mondays) Admission: free 5-word summary: the history of the home Website:www.moda.mdx.ac.uk Time to set aside: an hour and a bit
The far northern suburbs between Barnet and Enfield are an unlikely spot for a museum. Just down the road from Cockfosters station, off the Cat Hill roundabout, amidst undulating avenues of spacious semis. No really, that university campus behind the duckpond hides an unlikely secret repository. Honest, it's not just students allowed through the entrance, this place is wide open to the infrequent public. Go on, step inside and try to follow the signs up the service road. See that curved glass roof on the front of what looks like a humanities block. That's the entrance into a tiny treasure trove of 20th century domestic design. a proper little community resource. Yes, who'd have thought?
Don't turn left, that's the toilets. Head right, through the swing doors and across the shop (you can come back to this later), then make your way into the ground floor gallery. Look, lots of lovely old things! Old things which, if you're a certain age, will bring back evocative memories of rooms your older relatives used to live in. This is the Exploring Interiors permanent exhibition, blessed by period samples of classic home decoration. In one cabinet are Edwardian drapes and pre-war wallpaper, in another are catalogues depicting frilly lampshades and patterned linoleum. This is a temple to fixtures and fittings and fabrics and furniture - a last resting place for electric two-bar heaters and Coronation TV sets. The gallery's not huge, but it successfully conjures up a picture of how homes really used to be. Isn't that my grandmother's china service?
Various visitors have left their thoughts hanging up on fluorescent post-its:
"In the 1950s it was my job in the winter to light the fire in the dining room so I could do my homework. The room took ages to warm up! The bath was so cold in winter it gave you goose bumps to touch it." [Reg] "I like the pictures and the kichen because there very old and I like learning about history" [from Shabela]
If you've planned ahead the staff will allow you inside the Study Room to delve deeper into the museum's collection. Or you could search it from home via the special online search engine. I mean, who could resist exploring The Crown Wallpaper collection, consisting of 5000 wallpaper samples and pattern books from the 50s and 60s? Beats a room full of tedious Celtic rock fragments any day.
Upstairs there's one more gallery, fitted out to house special temporary exhibitions. And between now and November that exhibition is a bit of a winner. The Shell Guides: Surrealism, Modernism, Tourism is an eight-cabinet celebration of an extraordinary series of very ordinary travel books. The Shell Guides were founded in 1935 by Sir John Betjeman, then writing for the Architectural Review. He foresaw the need for newly-mobile middle class England to get behind the wheel of their newly purchased motor cars and to start exploring the country's cultural hinterland. The series kicked off with his adopted homeland, Cornwall, then spent the next 50 years slowly rambling around the UK from county to county. Each guide presented an off-beat collection of discourse and photography, concentrating on buildings, myth and landscape rather than historical fact. Within this framework a variety of guest editors were given free rein to interpret the guidebook brief as they saw fit, producing an eclectic set of volumes linked only by the sponsor's name.
"The Guides managed to appear conventional and mainstream while in fact preserving a subversive and challenging view of Britain. Only the words 'guidebook' and 'Shell' enabled the editors to hide this fact from the public"
For an exhibition which is essentially a room full of printed pages and book covers, it's really very interesting. There are tantalising glimpses of gazetteers and footnotes, as well as black and white illustrations and associated ephemera. Take a seat on the comfy sofa at the far end of the gallery and you can enjoy a series of related videos, including a 60s girl about town filling up her tank with pre-trip petrol, and Sir John's dainty observations on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Even the jaunty signature music manages to perfectly evoke the timeless optimism of these unique travelling companions. And by the time you reach the cabinet where all 36 guides are proudly displayed, you'll want to smash the glass and take the lot home. Keep watching eBay, they're bound to appear eventually. by tube: Cockfostersby bus: 298, 299, 307
It was just a routine blood test, so I was told. A smiling nurse rammed a needle into my arm, then packed off three vials of the red stuff to the local hospital for analysis. Lots and lots and lots of tests, from thyroid to glucose via potassium, were all whisked through the lab in record quick time. The next communication stage, however, took rather longer. Eventually I received my second class letter (four days to travel quarter of a mile, but that's E3 mail for you) inviting me along to the surgery to "discuss the results". Hmmm. And so I wandered along to meet my doctor on Monday, wondering what might not be quite so routine after all.
And everything was fine, absolutely fine, bar one small cluster of results which had tripped the computer's automatic trigger. Cholesterol - HI. Damn. My 5.5mmol/l may have been precisely the same as that of the average British male, but medical science considers anything above 5.0 to be too high. Damn. And especially for me, in conjunction with recent occasional outpatients visits, 5.5 is definitely above acceptable tolerance levels. Damn. "But look," I said, "at least one of my cholesterol tests came out really low." Alas, that was my 'good cholesterol' (which turns out be a real concept, and not a devious marketing strategy thought up by fish salesmen). So, all in all, not great.
My doctor looked at me with that kindly expression which means "I've just had to tell you something that'll change your life, and tonight I'm going home to burger and chips". And then he reached over to the top drawer of his filing cabinet and pulled out a photocopied sheet with a grid of foodstuffs on it. I recognised it immediately. My mum was given something remarkably similar 30 years ago. I remember she brought it home, stuck it up in the kitchen and then never quite ate the same food as the rest of the family forever afterwards. I then wished I hadn't remembered that.
I was disappointed to notice that the sheet I'd been given was sponsored by Flora margarine. "Ah, yes, sorry", said my doctor, "do try to ignore that." It turned out that he'd been good and photocopied the sheet so that the grid didn't have a giant advert for tubs of polyunsaturates on the reverse. But it still struck me as pretty poor that this crucial turning point in my life was being exploited by greedy Unilever marketeers. Can the NHS not afford its own unbiased information booklet on a condition which must affect millions of patients in this country? Seemingly not. Well yah booh sucks to you Mr Flora and your poxy margarine, because I never spread anything yellow and fatty on my bread anyway.
My doctor and I had a long and intelligent conversation about the causes and implications of my diagnosis, which was reassuring. We specifically discussed chocolate (not surprisingly, not recommended). I agreed that I'd have a go at adjusting (nay, transforming) my diet in an attempt to get my cholesterol down to well-below average levels. And he asked me to come back and have another blood test in a couple of months to see whether my restraint has had any effect. If not, mine might be another life thrown to the mercy of the 'miracle' statintablets. We shall see. In the meantime, I appear to have 18 leftover Creme Eggs sitting in my kitchen, all suddenly past their eat-by date. Anybody want to swap them for eight weeks' supply of oily fish?
I love Creme Eggs. I love their rarity, bestowed upon the world for a short season of calorific abundance. I love their bright shiny wrappers, gleaming purple and yellow and red. I love their big round chocolatiness, all firm and tempting to the touch. And I love their sweet interior, with swirling creamy fondant and gooey sugar yolk.
I love Creme Eggs. When New Year comes round I always nip down to the supermarket and buy myself a couple of dozen. One of the two multipacks gets ripped open straight away. I peel off a single wrapper, dive in and savour the new season taste. Then I wait a while, usually about a week, before daring to enjoy another. I always treat my stash with due luxurious reverence. The first box usually lasts me until Easter, and then I have 12 more eggs to ration through the long summer months. They're never quite the same after their sell-by-date, not even straight out of the fridge, but they still taste great eaten "rare" in out-of-season November.
I love Creme Eggs. I love the syrupy stickiness as I peel off the foil. Can I unfurl the chocolatey contents without ripping the wrapper, or will I be thwarted as the coating tears into tiny fragile fragments? If the paper's still in one piece then I try to fold it back around the base of the egg to give me something to hold onto, then bite softly into the brown fudgy top. Just the top half off the egg to start with, never everything all in one go. I relish the sickly taste of the carbohydrates on my tongue, then swoosh the liquefying contents around the inside of my mouth before gulping them down my welcoming throat. I always intend to eat my egg slowly but I have minimal restraint, and the second half usually follows pretty soon afterwards. Gobble, swallow, gone.
I love Creme Eggs. I love the sense of wicked satisfaction after I've devoured one. I love scrunching up the wrapper into a tiny ball of foil and seeing how small I can squash it before throwing it deftly into a bin. I love the sweet smell that lingers on my fingers for up to an hour afterwards - a perfumed reminder of guilty pleasures past. And yes, I know these chocolate confections are nothing more than an unholy cocktail of vegetable fats, sugar, emulsifiers, unskimmed milk, cocoa solids, glucose syrup and artificial flavourings, but I love Creme Eggs all the same.
My doctor told me yesterday that I probably shouldn't ever eat another one.
I've had better Mondays.
Bus 43: London Bridge - Friern Barnet Location: London north Length of journey: 9 miles, 70 minutes
Last year I rode the 42 to Dulwich. So this year, for my birthday, I thought I'd ride the 43 to Barnet. I wondered if, perhaps, its lengthy journey to the north London suburbs would provide a metaphor for life. And, you know what, maybe it does.
Life kicks off with a long wait: The 43 must have the scariest bus queue in London. Fifty metres of pavement adjacent to bus stop C have been marked out for a narrow doublebacked queue, with painted lanes arrowed up and down and back up again, as if this were some over-popular Disneyland attraction. Every weekday morning hundreds of Kentish commuters pour out of London Bridge station and wait here patiently, politely, for their cross-river transport to the City. But at the weekend getting aboard was rather easier. There were only four of us waiting, and we ignored the arrows on the ground altogether.
Life can get lonely: The City of London is an unnervingly quiet place on a Saturday afternoon. The financiers stay at home, the shops are firmly closed, and crews of workmen take the opportunity to lug giant cranes up medieval lanes to shift the skyline while nobody's looking. And so we sped through EC2 while absolutely nobody whatsoever boarded our bus, not until we passed Moorgate's rampant griffin and entered downtown Islington. And even then not one soul dared to climb the stairs to join me on the top deck. The girl with the guitar; the pair of mums with bag-filled pushchair; the lady jabbering in a foreign language consisting entirely of vowels; the screaming kid emitting "I'm being kidnapped" yelps - they all crammed in downstairs and left me sitting in peace above their heads. I expected my solitude to end in Upper Street, packed with trendy trinket shoppers, but almost everybody lined up at its chain of bus stops turned out to be waiting for other services to take them somewhere rather nicer instead.
Life begins at Highbury: Well, Highbury Corner at least. The long trek up the Holloway Road, past the off licences and chicken cottages, was where the 43's journey finally got busier. I listened in on the witterings of my fellow passengers. "If I wasn't going to the estate agent I'd definitely be going to your house to see the mannequins." I never did get to the bottom of that mystery. "I'm not five Daddy, I'm five and a half. How old are you, are you 43?" Honest, the flaxen-haired angel sat behind me really asked that, and Daddy really was. "Goodbye darling, hugs and kisses, and love to Jemima." Hmm, leafy Tufnell Park ahead.
Life is an uphill struggle: Virtually the whole of the 43's journey from the Thames to the suburbs was slowly, relentlessly, uphill. Onward we crawled, up the A1, through ringroad-scarred Archway, beneath Suicide Bridge, and ascending the organic slopes of Highgate. No burger'n'kebab joints were evident here - the residents appeared to dine out in cantinas and brunch daily on Eggs Benedict. The bus then queued behind a traffic jam of Ocado vans before turning right, past Peter Sellers' cottage and woodland daffodils, to the giddy heights of Muswell Hill. Here in this highbrow middle-class enclave, looking down across an ocean of lesser rooftops, our journey peaked. Very tasteful, very much like a Home Counties market town. Along the Broadway I spotted several proper independent shops, and the odd boutique, and even a pub discreetly tucked inside a huge Victorian church. Blue-rinsed ladies lined up to board the bus with their trolley of M&S comestibles to ride the few stops home.
Life gets you down: And finally back down into the valley, past the first bog standard suburban streets of the entire journey. On and on, across the streaming North Circular and out into unexplored ColneyHatch. The penultimate passenger alighted at the old Friern Barnet Town Hall, now converted into luxury apartmentettes. And only I stayed on until the occasionally-open library, where this bus terminates. At this lonely outpost the driver had only a man with a clipboard for company, and a tiny lockable portakabin for officially sanctioned bladder-emptying. It was a very different spot to go-ahead London Bridge, three score minutes and ten ago.
Life ends up in hospital: But blimey, what was that enormous building just up the road? I mean, like, truly enormous (in terms of length rather than height, that is). Look, a 500m-long residential block with central dome and various perpendicular wings, looking every inch a college or important administrative bastion. Except no, this grand Italianate building was once the largest mental hospital in London. Forget Bedlam, this was the pinnacle of Victorian lunatic provision, tucked away on the leafy outskirts of town where everybody could forget about it. ColneyHatchAsylum boasted the longest corridor in Britain, perfect for wheeling patients down, and up to 3500 inmates were crammed and strait-jacketed inside. As its infamy spread, so Londoners started using the words "Colney Hatch" as a term of abuse, and pretty soon the local station had to change its name to "New Southgate" to avoid any unwanted stigma. It's not a mental hospital any more, of course, it's been reborn as the rather exclusive Princess Park Manor development. There's only one vehicular entrance, guarded by fearsome security guards who check off every visitor against an approved list. The rest of the perimeter is securely fenced, no longer to lock the inmates inside but to keep undesirable elements out. Now jogging bankers exercise on the landscaped lawns, and a gated elite live out their days in rooms which were once anything but desirable. But I'm not convinced many of them ever commute aboard the 43 to the City - they'd have to be insane to sit on a bus for that long.
I SPY LONDON
You wouldn't expect to find a redeveloped palace in the middle of London's southeast commuter belt. But here it is, up a tree-lined sidestreet across a very old stone bridge. The oldest still-operational bridge in London, apparently, and with a rather picturesque willowed moat beneath. There's not much other evidence of Eltham's medieval past, not yet, just one long wing of a more modern-looking stately home. Admittance is via the servants' entrance, and then into a long pea green back corridor which looks like it belongs in a pre-NHS hospital. Round the next corner there's a bloke dishing out protective blue plastic slippers to slip over your footwear. It's not a glamorous look, and completely at odds with the stylish decor coming up next, but it'll help to protect the flooring ahead from unintentional damage. Ok, first room...
And then, through a Chinese screened doorway, suddenly it's the Middle Ages again. Ginny and Stephen built their family home in the grounds of a ruined royal palace, and deftly incorporated the Great Hall as their main entertaining space. At 100ft long and 55ft high, there was plenty of room to serve cocktails. The hall is a magnificent 15th century relic, designed by Edward IV's chief mason and still with its oak hammerbeam roof intact. Here the English Tudor court came to celebrate Christmas, and here the young Henry VIII spent much of his childhood. Try not to think about the underfloor central heating the Courtaulds installed - they had different planning regulations in those days.
Extreme
Who would have thought that London's Mayoral election might hinge around the humble Routemaster bus? This much-loved workhorse has come to symbolise the supposed chasm that exists between moderniser Ken and fresh-thinking Boris. Mayor Ken killed off the redoubtable Routemaster a few years ago, and now Boris wants to bring them back. Doesn't he? And all at the expense of the nasty evil fare-dodging cycle-crushing bendy bus. Who could have a good word to say about London's fleet of 337 bendy buses... except perhaps passengers with wheelchairs, or mums with prams, or travellers with suitcases, or freeloaders who fancy a trip across town for nothing. It'll be fab to rid of these articulated roadhogs. Won't it? Well, actually, maybe not.
In London's wet city,
Blimey, that was quick. Just eight months ago an undamaged collection of factories and warehouses stood on the Olympic stadium site. And now they don't. The entire area has been cleared, erased, flattened and lowered to create an arena-sized bowl, and the transformation is amazing. I should know, I've been back to watch the changes month by month, and my last visit made me gasp. OK, I'm easily impressed, but it's already possible to visualise precisely where the 2012 centrepiece will take shape. And still the scuttly diggers swarm up and down what used to be Marshgate Lane, repeatedly rearranging the earth until Lea Valley reality is appropriately realigned. It won't be long now.
One of the best jobs in London is surely that of the Blue Badge Guide. These 500-or-so highly trained professionals spend their days taking
And then in the afternoon a completely different walk, this time around the back streets of the East End. The title of the tour was 'Great British Villains', on which Ian our guide promised to take us to the notorious haunts of the Kray brothers. This time just over 50 people turned up - still more than enough to be a handful. We started outside the Blind Beggar pub on the Whitechapel Road - where else? But Ian knew his Krays (as I suspect he knows pretty much everything else) and whisked us off to far less familiar spots. Up a grim sideroad beneath a stark brick railway viaduct he pointed out the pub where the Krays had been drinking immediately before (and immediately after) Ronnie shot George Cornell in the Beggar. This rather bleak-looking ex-boozer had been called The Lion, but was more widely known locally as "Widows" or "Madge's" after the 60s landlady who ran it. It's since been converted to rather seedy-looking flats, of course. And it's not somewhere I'd have noticed otherwise, nor wanted to linger given the staring eyes of the mechanics in the car-fiddling yard nextdoor.
And finally to the house at 178 Vallance Road where Ronnie and Reggie grew up, except that alas it no longer exists. A row of six smart 80s-built homes has replaced the previous terrace, so we can only imagine the cosy two-up two-down where the twins cosseted their mother and stashed their weapons. Ooh look, there's a special plaque outside number 178 unveiled by no less a personage than the Prince of Wales! It's nothing Kray-related though, just a housing cooperative coincidence. And then, after an appreciative flourish, Ian took his leave and wandered off.
A very happy St Patrick's Day to all my readers.
The far northern suburbs between Barnet and Enfield are an unlikely spot for a museum. Just down the road from Cockfosters station, off the Cat Hill roundabout, amidst undulating avenues of spacious semis. No really, that university campus behind the duckpond hides an unlikely secret repository. Honest, it's not just students allowed through the entrance, this place is wide open to the infrequent public. Go on, step inside and try to follow the signs up the service road. See that curved glass roof on the front of what looks like a humanities block. That's the entrance into a tiny treasure trove of 20th century domestic design. a proper little community resource. Yes, who'd have thought?
Various visitors have left their thoughts hanging up on fluorescent post-its:
"In the 1950s it was my job in the winter to light the fire in the dining room so I could do my homework. The room took ages to warm up! The bath was so cold in winter it gave you goose bumps to touch it." [Reg]If you've planned ahead the staff will allow you inside the Study Room to delve deeper into the museum's collection. Or you could search it from home via the special online search engine. I mean, who could resist exploring The Crown Wallpaper collection, consisting of 5000 wallpaper samples and pattern books from the 50s and 60s? Beats a room full of tedious Celtic rock fragments any day.Upstairs there's one more gallery, fitted out to house special temporary exhibitions. And between now and November that exhibition is a bit of a winner. The Shell Guides: Surrealism, Modernism, Tourism is an eight-cabinet celebration of an extraordinary series of very ordinary travel books. The Shell Guides were founded in 1935 by Sir John Betjeman, then writing for the Architectural Review. He foresaw the need for newly-mobile middle class England to get behind the wheel of their newly purchased motor cars and to start exploring the country's cultural hinterland. The series kicked off with his adopted homeland, Cornwall, then spent the next 50 years slowly rambling around the UK from county to county. Each guide presented an off-beat collection of discourse and photography, concentrating on buildings, myth and landscape rather than historical fact. Within this framework a variety of guest editors were given free rein to interpret the guidebook brief as they saw fit, producing an eclectic set of volumes linked only by the sponsor's name.
"The Guides managed to appear conventional and mainstream while in fact preserving a subversive and challenging view of Britain. Only the words 'guidebook' and 'Shell' enabled the editors to hide this fact from the public"For an exhibition which is essentially a room full of printed pages and book covers, it's really very interesting. There are tantalising glimpses of gazetteers and footnotes, as well as black and white illustrations and associated ephemera. Take a seat on the comfy sofa at the far end of the gallery and you can enjoy a series of related videos, including a 60s girl about town filling up her tank with pre-trip petrol, and Sir John's dainty observations on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Even the jaunty signature music manages to perfectly evoke the timeless optimism of these unique travelling companions. And by the time you reach the cabinet where all 36 guides are proudly displayed, you'll want to smash the glass and take the lot home. Keep watching eBay, they're bound to appear eventually.I love Creme Eggs. I love the syrupy stickiness as I peel off the foil. Can I unfurl the chocolatey contents without ripping the wrapper, or will I be thwarted as the coating tears into tiny fragile fragments? If the paper's still in one piece then I try to fold it back around the base of the egg to give me something to hold onto, then bite softly into the brown fudgy top. Just the top half off the egg to start with, never everything all in one go. I relish the sickly taste of the carbohydrates on my tongue, then swoosh the liquefying contents around the inside of my mouth before gulping them down my welcoming throat. I always intend to eat my egg slowly but I have minimal restraint, and the second half usually follows pretty soon afterwards. Gobble, swallow, gone.
Bus 43: London Bridge - Friern Barnet
Life kicks off with a long wait: The 43 must have the scariest bus queue in London. Fifty metres of pavement adjacent to bus stop C have been marked out for a narrow doublebacked queue, with painted lanes arrowed up and down and back up again, as if this were some over-popular Disneyland attraction. Every weekday morning hundreds of Kentish commuters pour out of London Bridge station and wait here patiently, politely, for their cross-river transport to the City. But at the weekend getting aboard was rather easier. There were only four of us waiting, and we ignored the arrows on the ground altogether.
Life is an uphill struggle: Virtually the whole of the 43's journey from the Thames to the suburbs was slowly, relentlessly, uphill. Onward we crawled, up the A1, through ringroad-scarred Archway, beneath Suicide Bridge, and ascending the organic slopes of Highgate. No burger'n'kebab joints were evident here - the residents appeared to dine out in cantinas and brunch daily on Eggs Benedict. The bus then queued behind a traffic jam of Ocado vans before turning right, past Peter Sellers' cottage and woodland daffodils, to the giddy heights of Muswell Hill. Here in this highbrow middle-class enclave, looking down across an ocean of lesser rooftops, our journey peaked. Very tasteful, very much like a Home Counties market town. Along the Broadway I spotted several proper independent shops, and the odd boutique, and even a pub discreetly tucked inside a huge Victorian church. Blue-rinsed ladies lined up to board the bus with their trolley of M&S comestibles to ride the few stops home.
Birthday musings
I SPY LONDON
I love 
