Overheard at a museum near you, in the Borisfuture...
NATIONAL LONDON MUSEUM Admission £10 (recommended voluntary donation)
"Good morning sir, and welcome to the National London Museum. Would you like to step over here to the cash desk and buy a ticket?"
"No that's right sir, when you visited last month we were free. And now, thanks to the mayor's brave arts vision, we're asking visitors to pay."
"Oh absolutely sir, it's still very much your choice whether you pay or not. But we'll try to make you feel uncomfortable if you don't."
"Now there's no need to be abusive sir. We always used to ask for a suggested donation before, it's just that everybody ignored the collecting boxes. So now we're being a bit more forceful. Will you pay up sir, or are you a cheapskate freeloader?"
"It's perfectly simple sir. We have some of London's finest treasures behind these doors, and we think you'll value them more if you've paid to come in. Times are tough, and they're going to be tough for a while yet."
"What's that sir? You were only planning to pop inside for twenty minutes, because you've been before and you only want to see the new exhibits? That's still ten pounds, sir."
"I'm sorry sir, but we can't accept an income tax form as proof of payment. You may think you've already paid for museum entrance through indirect taxation, but I'm afraid our funding body doesn't view it like that."
"Yes sir, we do have a special temporary exhibition in our upper gallery. That's £8 to get in, and it's a compulsory charge - as before. Oh yes, that's on top of the voluntary ten quid sir. And a bargain at the price."
"No you're right sir, it is a lot quieter inside the museum this month. There aren't as many families, or pensioners, or tourists... indeed, far fewer people overall. So why not pay to enjoy the wonderfully crowd-free galleries?"
"Yes that's right sir, I used to be one of those chuggers blocking the pavement outside, attempting to get passers by to sign up to charitable direct debits. But this is a much better way to put my powers of persuasion to good use. And it's much warmer in here, and the pay's better."
"Please sir, I beg you. You'll enjoy it more if you pay. You'll value the experience more if you pay. And you won't feel horribly shamefully criminally guilty if you pay."
"Look sir, times are tough, and it's only ten pounds. Sorry, I meant times are tough for the museum. The fact that times are also tough for you is quite frankly irrelevant."
"It's the new taxation paradigm sir. Public services need to be cut, because that's what the will of the public demands. What people want these days is more money in their pockets, and less government spending on mere cultural fripperies. And then people can choose to spend that extra money on whatever they like, be it a plasma TV, a nice meal in a restaurant, private health insurance or a ticket to a museum. Because people prefer choice. And that's why our admission charge is still optional."
"I have to print you a ticket sir. We can't let you in any more without a ticket. See here? Your ticket reads £0.00. How does that make you feel sir? Make you feel good does it?"
"Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a man over here who isn't paying. Do shoot him a withering look if you see him on the way round. If we all stare together, maybe he'll pay on the way out."
I squeezed in one more Open House visit, rather closer to home, at a completed multi-million pound Olympic construction project. Not the Stadium, nor indeed anywhere that'll host a single 2012 sporting activity, but a big concrete barrier on the Bow Back Rivers. This is Three Mills Lock (at Three Mills), which used to be called Prescott Lock (on the Prescott Channel). It's supposed to be a key part of our commitment to a sustainable Games, enabling building materials to be shipped into the heart of the Olympic Park by water instead of by road. Open House provided one of the first opportunities for the public to get up close to discover how £20m has been spent, and to be shown around behind the perimeter fence by a very knowledgeable lockkeeper.
It's a bloody massive lock. After my walk along the Lea last month I'm used to much smaller structures with wooden gates and twee waterside cottages, but this is nothing of the sort. It's three channels wide, with each gate wide enough to take a 350 tonne barge. The gates rotate up, not across, a bit like the Thames Barrier. There's a fish ladder along one side to ensure that scaly finny creatures can still pass up and downstream. And operations are overseen from a squat narrow control tower mid-river, complete with home comforts like a shower for the personnel working within. It's the sort of lock you might expect to find on the Manchester Ship Canal, not on an insignificant East End backwater.
The key to the lock's existence is its location. Downstream the Lea is tidal, with water levels dropping to unnavigable levels for long periods each day. Upstream, now that Three Mills Lock has been built, water levels along the eastern side of the Olympic Park will in future remain constant. That sounds like great news for enabling the import of building materials and removal of waste by river, but unfortunately reality's not quite so simple. Tides in Bow Creek still prevent barges from reaching the lock for 16 hours each day, which cuts back the potential time this route can be operational. As an additional setback the Prescott Channel and Bow Back Rivers haven't been used for major freight traffic for several decades and so have long since silted up. Dredging the channels has taken considerably longer than expected, and so the number of Park-bound barges using the new lock has been, to say the least, disappointing. Just six barges since the lock openedin June, we were told, just six.
Now stop me if I'm wrong, but an average of one big barge per fortnight is a pretty unimpressive strike rate. The whole idea of funding the lock in the first place was to enable the transfer of waterborne cargo during the peak construction window, and that doesn't appear to be happening yet. To give you some idea of the scale of the problem, Three Mills Lock was originally planned to open last summer, four years before the Games themselves. But the body of the stadium's already up, absolutely none of which has arrived by river, and there's a very real risk that few of the building materials for the remaining stadia will arrive via this watery route. The Park's location slap bang beside Stratford station has allowed use of a far more convenient sustainable mode of transport, and that's rail. Who needs slow meandering river traffic when freight can arrive more easily by train (or, to keep costs down, even by road)?
It looks increasingly likely that Three Mills Lock will prove a construction-time white elephant, but a legacy-phase saviour. By stabilising water levels throughout the Olympic Park, the completion of a post-Games residential 'Water City' now becomes possible. Swish riverside apartments, swanky cosmopolitan cafes and bohemian aspirational culture - all suddenly enabled because the Lea no longer drains away every 12 hours to reveal discarded supermarket trolleys and mud. Three Mills Lock adds millions to the potential value of future properties to be erected further upstream, which can only help to pay back the investment our taxes have poured into Olympic funding. But the lock itself looks destined for an underused future, ridiculously large for the few pleasurecraft that might use it post-2012, and never quite the ecological showpiece it set out to be.
• Nobody seems quite sure when the footpaths around the lock will reopen, which is annoying for those of us who used to use it regularly. • Here's a collection of photos of Three Mills Lock, taken by Mat over the weekend • Bits of the Euston Arch were dumped in the Prescott Channel, you may remember. • Legacy plans for the Olympic Park are detailed here (and on this interactive map) • Local residents in Bromley-by-Bow may be interested in Tesco's plans to erect a replacement superstore at Three Mills, relocated slightly nearer the railway, forming the heart of a new district centre for Tower Hamlets. Plans will be on display at TudorLodge this Friday (noon-7) and Saturday (11-4).
I love the way they creep in above lengthening shadows.
I love the way they slowly develop, from a tinge of bright sky to a speckled radiant flash; their gradual evolution from ordinary azure to enchanted glow.
I love their unpredictable splendour, their brief panoramic spectacle, their scarlets and golds and purples and pinks that bloom and burn, then dim and fade, never to reappear.
I love every random cloudbase reflection, each unique dusky spectacle, bewitching the landscape, enhancing the mundane, and heralding night's curtain of darkness.
I love sunsets. I just wish I saw more of them.
That isn't my photo of a sunset, it's Ian's. He took it yesterday evening from his flat in Docklands, from which there appears to be an excellent view both outward and upward. When atmospheric phenomena fill the sky, be they clouds or sunshine or rainbow or storm, these appear as part of Ian's everyday backdrop. And there have been some breathtaking sunsets over the summer, so Ian's been able to act fast and capture manyofthem.
I'm far less fortunate. My flat is shielded by its immediate surroundings. I can see only a tiny patch of northern sky, framed above a deep brick canyon. From where I live, the sun is only visible from one corner of one room at the height of summer. My dawn is forever obscured, while at nightfall no more than a hint of pink ever floats into view (during June and July only). Of nature's aerial spectacles, when I'm at home I see nothing.
If the sunset is magnificent, the first I ever know of it is via Twitter. When the skies above London were lit up by a dramatic electrical storm earlier this year, I missed the lot. Should a UFO ever descend upon the capital and hover menacingly in the air, from indoors I'd never even notice.
Next time I move house, I need to live somewhere with sky. Because I love sunsets. And I miss them.
Olympic update
It's a bloody massive lock. After my walk along the Lea last month I'm used to much smaller structures with wooden gates and twee waterside cottages, but this is nothing of the sort. It's three channels wide, with each gate wide enough to take a 350 tonne barge. The gates rotate up, not across, a bit like the Thames Barrier. There's a fish ladder along one side to ensure that scaly finny creatures can still pass up and downstream. And operations are overseen from a squat narrow control tower mid-river, complete with home comforts like a shower for the personnel working within. It's the sort of lock you might expect to find on the Manchester Ship Canal, not on an insignificant East End backwater.
Now stop me if I'm wrong, but an average of one big barge per fortnight is a pretty unimpressive strike rate. The whole idea of funding the lock in the first place was to enable the transfer of waterborne cargo during the peak construction window, and that doesn't appear to be happening yet. To give you some idea of the scale of the problem, Three Mills Lock was originally planned to open last summer, four years before the Games themselves. But the body of the stadium's already up, absolutely none of which has arrived by river, and there's a very real risk that few of the building materials for the remaining stadia will arrive via this watery route. The Park's location slap bang beside Stratford station has allowed use of a far more convenient sustainable mode of transport, and that's rail. Who needs slow meandering river traffic when freight can arrive more easily by train (or, to keep costs down, even by road)?
