You'd know if you could read his diary, which you can because it was published in an FoI last year. That's Boris's Mayoral diary, for the avoidance of doubt, all eight years of it rudely pasted into a 348 page pdf.
Over 1000 entries have been redacted for private, personal or political reasons, allowing conspiracy theories aplenty to take flight. But the vast majority of the daily appointments are merely meetings, visits and travel, revealing a treadmill of civic duties, conference room hangouts and showboating.
As a sample, here's just one entry from each year.
7 May 2008: Booze Ban Visit with Peter Hendy (High St Kensington Tube Station) 9 Nov 2009: Arrive at Bank Tube Station, lock up bike & meet Dan. DLR to Custom House (Change at Shadwell) 12 June 2010: Trooping the Colour, Queen Birthday Parade (Must arrive by 10am) - Smart dress 14 Mar 2011: Launch of the 500 Day Olympic Day clock - NO SPEECH 25 June 2012: Lunch with the Borough Leaders - WORDS OF WELCOME (NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL) 26 Apr 2013: Innotech Summit (Level 39, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf) 3 June 2014: Garden Bridge meeting with Lord Davies 27 July 2015: Portrait Sitting - Barbara Hamilton (The Mayor's Office) 16 April 2016: Vote Leave Tour - Newcastle & Leeds
They're all in there - the first ride on an Air Conditioned Train, an early site visit to the Dangleway, the day he got stuck on a zipwire in Victoria Park and the Olympic Opening Ceremony, not to mention Christmas lunches, Guido Fawkes' 10th birthday party and 'Test drive of a Porsche'.
But my cherrypicking may not give a proper flavour of the job, so instead let's see what Boris was doing on 9th October throughout his Mayoralty. Where 9th October fell at the weekend, I've picked the adjacent weekday instead.
Thursday 9th October 2008 Depart from home by car provided by the Today Programme
Today Programme (Millbank, Westminster) Depart for the FCO
Breakfast Meeting with David Milliband FCO Return to City Hall
Meet with Kulveer
Keep clear for planning over run Depart for Kensington
UBS Annual dinner for Leading Women (20 Min SPEECH) Saatchi Gallery
Friday 9th October 2009
Speech Prep Depart by bike for Leicester Square
Nick Ferrari show - (Global studios)
Meeting with Chris Humphries
Meeting with Ian Livingstone & Richard Sharp Depart by bike for London Zoo
Tranquil Spaces Conference (15 MIN SPEECH) Return to City Hall
World Skills Reception (5 MINUTE SPEECH) [redacted]
Friday 8th October 2010
Lunch
Photo with Stuart Smith Outside City Hall
Record Talking Heads Video for Low Carbon Project
Smithfield Market Meeting [redacted]
Signing
Monday 10th October 2011
Radio Interviews (ISDN line from home)
Meeting with Bill Bratton
Signing
Team London/Small Grants Announcement Depart for Mitcham Train from London Bridge to Croydon, tram to Belgrave Walk Sita Site Visit (Benedict Wharf, Benedict Road, Mitcham)
Local Press Conference - Team London Grants Visit (NO SPEECH) Party Political
Tuesday 9th October 2012 [redacted]
Speech prep Travel Main Conference Speech (Birmingham) Party Political
Poss: Media
Lunch with Sarah Sands & Joe Murphy Return to London
Wednesday 9th October 2013 Assembly Plenary - Chair of TfL Q&A
Regular Planning Decisions Meeting + REMA MD
Bureau of Leaders
Mayor's Fund for London Drinks
Lunch & signing
Phone call with the Guggenheim
Speech prep
Thursday 9th October 2014 Depart for Kings Cross New Tube for London
Mayor's Advisory Group - London Ambulance Strike
Lunch
Outstanding Media - 2 video messages
Meeting with Mark Rowley
Chat with Daniel Moylan
Meeting with Gatwick [redacted]
Speech prep Depart for the Royal Courts of Justice
Press Ball
Friday 9th October 2015 Depart for the Museum of London Visit to the Crime Museum (Museum of London)
Tel call to Sir John Ritblat Return home Depart for Uxbridge Visit to Uxbridge College
Surgery [redacted]
The day usually includes a trip out. Lunch is often 'working'. Mayors have to be willing to give a speech, but are warned in advance how long it needs to be. Not much of what they do is directly press-worthy. Only occasionally are they required to chair a public meeting. Decision-making must occur somewhere, but is rarely diaried. Some days don't look especially stressful.
By the time of that final list in 2015 Boris was also moonlighting as an MP, his diary regularly listing trips to the House of Commons for a three line-whipped vote. And by 9th October 2016 Sadiq was at City Hall instead, and Boris was merely Foreign Secretary, which shows how swiftly things move on.
The Mayoralty may not be the hardest job in the world - indeed if Boris held it down for eight years it can't be - but it's not the most exciting either.
n.b. I'm looking for the tube station which has tube trains to the most other tube stations.
Have a guess.
n.b. One train only.
n.b. Changing trains is not allowed.
n.b. I'm considering the tube network only.
n.b. The tube network officially has 270 stations.
n.b. Normal timetable only, no rare special journeys.
What do you reckon?
For example, Holborn station connects to all the other 48 stations on the Central line, and all the other 52 stations on the Piccadilly line, making a total of 100. But we can beat that.
London's best-connected tube station, unsurprisingly, is the one with the most lines. And that's King's Cross St Pancras.
King's Cross St Pancras is on six lines - the Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria.
And a lot of lines means a lot of connected stations. Altogether I make it 164.
Here's how...
There are 36 stations on the Circle line, but we can't include King's Cross itself, so that makes 35.
There are 11 stations on the Hammersmith & City line that aren't on the Circle line, all east of Liverpool Street.
There are 25 stations on the Metropolitan line that aren't on the Circle line, all north of Baker Street.
So far that's 35+11+25=71 stations.
There are 49 other stations on the Northern line, but we can't reach the Charing Cross branch which leaves 41.
And we've already counted Moorgate, which leaves 40.
So far that's 71+40=111 stations.
There are 52 other stations on the Piccadilly line.
But we've already counted Rayners Lane to Uxbridge, which leaves 45.
And we've already counted Gloucester Road and South Kensington, which leaves 43.
So far that's 111+43=154 stations.
There are 15 other stations on the Victoria line.
But we've already counted Stockwell, Victoria, Green Park, Euston and Finsbury Park, which leaves 10.
So that's 154+10=164 stations altogether.
As you can see, this is all rather complicated.
It's so complicated that I'm sure I'll have made some mistakes today.
I'm sure you'll tell me if I'm wrong.
You can do that here. comments
King's Cross St Pancras links to 60% of all London's tube stations.
No other station comes close.
Although you may have guessed the most-connected tube station, the rest of the Top 5 is a lot less obvious.
Number 2 is Embankment, with 137 connected stations.
That's 35 other stations on the Circle line.
Plus 41 other stations on the District line (not including Olympia and stations round to Edgware Road).
Plus 41 other stations on the Northern line (not including the Bank branch).
Plus 20 other stations on the Bakerloo line (not including stations already counted).
Which is 35+41+41+20=137 stations altogether.
In joint 3rd place are Gloucester Road and South Kensington with 120 connected stations.
That's 35 other stations on the Circle line.
Plus 41 other stations on the District line (not including Olympia and stations round to Edgware Road).
Plus 44 other stations on the Piccadilly line (not including stations already counted).
Which is 35+41+44=120 stations altogether.
In joint 5th place are Liverpool Street...
That's 35 other stations on the Circle line.
Plus 11 other stations on the Hammersmith & City line.
Plus 25 other stations on the Metropolitan line.
Plus 46 other stations on the Central line (not including Mile End and Notting Hill Gate).
Which is 35+11+25+46=117 stations altogether.
...and Mile End with 117 connected stations.
That's 53 other stations on the District line (not including Olympia and stations round to Edgware Road).
Plus 47 other stations on the Central line (not including Ealing Broadway).
Plus 17 other stations on the Hammersmith & City line (not including Liverpool Street).
Which is 53+47+17=117 stations altogether.
I reckon the Top 10 Best Connected Tube Stations goes like this:
1st) King's Cross St Pancras 164 2nd) Embankment 137 3rd) Gloucester Road 120 3rd) South Kensington 120 5th) Liverpool Street 117 5th) Mile End 117 7th) Baker Street 114 8th) Moorgate 111 9th) Earl's Court 104 10th) Holborn 100 10th) Westminster 100
Note that eight of these are on the Circle line and six are on the District line. Only one is on the Victoria line (because the Victoria line's quite short and doesn't have many stations). Mile End is the best connected tube station outside zone 1. Holborn is the best-connected tube station on only two lines.
Slightly further down the list are Bank (top 20) and Monument (top 30). If you combined them to make one mega-station, it would connect to 163 other stations, which would would put Bank/Monument in second place. But Bank and Monument are officially two stations, according to TfL's official data, so this doesn't count.
Likewise there are officially two Hammersmith stations and two Paddington stations.
We discussed this in some depth back here.
If you include the DLR, then Bank leaps into the Top 10 along with West Ham.
If you include the Overground, then Liverpool Street jumps up into second place.
If you include Crossrail, fully complete, then Moorgate hits 3rd.
And if you include the DLR, Overground and Crossrail, then the Top 10 should be...
1st) Liverpool Street 174 2nd) King's Cross St Pancras 164 3rd) Moorgate 149 4th) Stratford 145 5th) Embankment 137 6th) Whitechapel 134 7th) Tottenham Court Road 125 8th) Gloucester Road 120 8th) South Kensington 120 10th) Ealing Broadway 119
Six of those are Crossrail stations, showing just what a gamechanger the purple line will be.
But for now...
Yes, I know I've ignored Thameslink, and all the other trains out of Paddington, and all the National Rail stations you can reach from London, because that completely blew my mind. Now is not the time to add Carlisle, Holyhead and Leighton Buzzard to a list of the stations you can travel to from Euston. Best stick to a TfL-centric view, for now.
...the best-connected tube station is King's Cross St Pancras.
The best thing to do in Dunstable, I can confirm, is to go up on the Downs. Here are nine lesser attractions. [plus photos]
Dunstable is essentially a crossroads that got lucky. It lies at the intersection of two of the (few) important roads in medieval Britain - Watling Street and the Icknield Way - and sprang to national prominence when King Henry I took an interest. In 1107 he set up a trading post here, hoping to make long-distance travel safer, and followed this up in 1131 by establishing a Priory. The next four centuries were kind to Dunstable, which grew in importance until the priory was shut down and, eventually, Luton overtook it. Watling Street is now the A5183 in these parts, a deliberate downgrade since the A5 bypass opened, but the crossroads is still very much in place. Dunstafact: Henry I spent Christmas 1131 in Dunstable.
Twelve Eleanor crosses marked the points where the body of Edward I's dead wife rested overnight on her final journey from Nottinghamshire to London. Dunstable was stop number 8, between Woburn and St Albans, with the queen's bier placed first in the marketplace and then overnight in the priory. The commemorative cross, alas, was destroyed by Parliamentarians during the Civil War, so the town has to make do with a plaque on a wall of the Nat West facing the crossroads. In 1985 the council named a new shopping centre after Queen Eleanor and placed a sculpture of her at its heart, although this jumped-up alleyway of studios and salons now has pretty much zero footfall so Eleanor must be very cross indeed. Dunstafact: Only three original Eleanor Crosses survive, at Geddington, Hardingstone and Waltham Cross.
Dunstable Priory was so important that in May 1533 Henry VIII convened a court here to rule on the validity of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer sat in judgement in the Lady Chapel and dutifully annulled Catherine's marriage, a foregone conclusion which set in train Henry's schism with the Roman Catholic Church and decades of religious strife. The Lady Chapel also no longer stands, but groundwork in 2005 confirmed its location and it's been delineated on the grass by a white rectangle. I stood within the empty boundary, beneath a purple-leaved field maple, and reflected on the doctrinal earthquake that spread out from this anonymous Dunstable lawn. Dunstafact: Catherine's ghost is said to haunt the path alongside the croquet lawn.
Almost no priories survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but Dunstable's nearly did, being Henry VIII's top choice to be elevated to a cathedral. But he failed to get his own way, so the entirety of the priory was knocked down apart from a gatehouse arch and the church, which survives as the parish church of St Peter's. It's one of England's finest examples of Norman architecture, the four-arched facade being an Early English upgrade, although at present it's half-shrouded in ugly scaffolding while urgent repairs are carried out to the tower. The 14th century rood screen is an interior highlight, but I spent most of my time admiring the kneelers. Dunstafact: Bullet holes from the Civil War can still be seen in the church's West Door.
Across Priory Gardens is Priory House, Dunstable's oldest irreligious building. The undercroft is 12th century, the building above it part-Tudor, and the whole thing used to be council offices until a more inclusive use was found. Downstairs now features a tearoom, whose drinks can be consumed in the undercroft if it's un-roped, plus the town's Tourist Information Centre, which seems to exist mainly to persuade Dunstable residents to be tourists elsewhere. Upstairs is the room you can get married in, plus a museum that's mostly printed boards around the walls. I had to move a row of chairs out of the way to read the Dunstable Priory bit. Dunstafact: Britain's last proper mêlée tournament was held in Dunstable in 1342.
But full credit to Dunstable Town Council for taking their local heritage impressively seriously. Historic buildings around the town all have plaques as and where necessary. The location of the town stocks is clearly marked, for example, along with useful supplementary data about whipping. Numerous information panels appear in relevant locations, really a lot more than you'd expect, each with comprehensive text and illustrations. Also the Tourist Information Centre has four, repeat four, free leaflets depicting trails around the town centre. The Coaching Inns describes pubs that mostly still survive, The Hat Walk shows where a dozen millinery factories used to be, but the best (and thickest) is Odd & Unusual Dunstable, because the place truly is. Dunstafact: Dunstable is thought to have had England's first town byelaws, one of which banned shopkeepers from keeping a pig.
Dunstable council's offices are in a former pub, although it hasn't been a pub since 1773, after which it became a family mansion called Grove House. The gardens out back are the town centre's second parkland space, again liberally scattered with panels which only out-of-towners stop to read. On the far side is Dunstable's pride and joy, the Grove Theatre, although brief perusal of its programme suggests a constant string of tribute acts. BBC Three Counties Radio is based in four year-old studios alongside, because Dunstable is the closest town to the point where Herts, Beds and Bucks meet. But this is also where the Wetherspoons is, named after local film star Gary Cooper, so it's not quite the cultured side of town. Dunstafact: Other famous Dunstablians include Kevin McCloud, Badly Drawn Boy and Faye Tozer from Steps.
I'm showing you the Costa Coffee in the Quadrant shopping centre for a reason. Costa's head office is in Dunstable, on the Woodside Industrial Estate near Houghton Regis, because so is Whitbread plc and they used to own Costa before Coca-Cola bought them out. Their central mall hangout is certainly a lot busier than Coffee Republic a few doors up, as if the town instinctively gravitates to its own. The shopping centre remains a bit lowbrow, anchored by a Poundland and a Bonmarché, but boasts some quintessential 1960s concrete art on the wall above Boots (and at least it's not Luton, omigod that place has changed). Dunstafact: Vauxhall built trucks in Dunstable until 1987.
Dunstable (pop 36000) is one of the largest towns in southern England without a railway station, because the branch lines to Leighton Buzzard and Welwyn closed to passenger traffic in 1965. The stretch between Dunstable and Luton reopened as a guidedbusway in 2013, with five miles of whizzy concrete track that provides an impressively quick connection. What did baffle me was that three different operators run seven different lettered services, scantly labelled, and Arriva will only give you a map with theirs on. Thankfully I'd bought a Plusbus ticket so wasn't unnecessarily constrained. Grant Palmer's C, with an almost empty upper deck, provided the most exhilarating Busway experience. Dunstafact: I travelled from St Pancras to Dunstable in under an hour, so that was easy.
Where the ridge of the Chilterns fades into Bedfordshire, just beyond Ivinghoe Beacon, lie Dunstable Downs.
Picture a steep chalk escarpment rolling down to miles and miles of flat land, in this case the Vale of Aylesbury, with the possibility of glimpsing Milton Keynes or even the Cotswolds on the horizon. Conveniently for visitors the Whipsnade Road runs past the highest point, and to make things even easier the National Trust have provided a car park and visitor centre. I walked up ButtercupLane from Dunstable, dodging ill-aimed balls on the golf course inbetween, but I may have been alone in doing this.
The Chiltern Gateway Centre is a long glass-fronted building which recently replaced a lesser refreshment facility. Grab a pot of tea and sit out on the terrace, hide inside with venison bangers and mash, or potter round the shop with its impressively extensive selection of kites. Dunstable Downs is a renowned kite-flying spot, thanks to its accessibly exposed location, and is very much the place to bring a active youngster or an over-enthusiastic parent. Dozens of amateur string-tuggers were out in force yesterday, but also four lads in identical black outfits doing seriously synchronised aerobatics. The backs of their jackets announced them as Fracture, the team who wiped the floor at this year's UK Nationals, now warming up for the World Sport Kite Championships 2020. Their Sky Sharks whipped around the sky in choreographed harmony - looping, swooshing, soaring and only occasionally crashing to the ground because practice makes perfect. I was well impressed.
The other folk making the most of the wind were members of the London Gliding Club. This has been based at the foot of the downs since 1930, and is easily identifiable as the largefield with dozens of white gliders clustered in one corner. Every so often another glider was winched across the grass and rose slowly into the sky, its cable falling back to earth on a parachute, before soaring off on a thermal for a jaunt above the vale. The pilot's sole competition was a magnificent red kite, hovering with wings outstretched... and a stream of charter planes on final approach towards Luton Airport.
We earthbound mortals were left to hike along the ridgetop, following some chalky path (or accessible tarmac). I headed for Five Knolls, a lumpy protrusion offering a fine view back along the escarpment, and the site of seven excavated Neolithic barrows. Several of the trees in the fields below were on the turn, their leaves tinged with gold and yellow, although the majority have thus far refused to succumb to the season. The hubbub of Dunstable was but one steep footpath away, but I held off my return until I'd soaked in the full glories of the Downs.
