Somewhere historic: Firepower Another day, another museum beginning with F. This one's at Woolwich Arsenal, which I blogged about so comprehensively earlier in the year that I wasn't sure there was anything left to see. But there was still this repository of death and killing, so I went there. It's a favourite venue for young children, obviously, one of whom I ended up queueing behind for a ticket. "He's four", said Dad, nodding towards the admissions charge list to the side of the till. "Yes I'm definitely not five, I'm really only four, it's not my birthday for ages," added the small boy, protesting rather too much. But he got in scot-free anyway.
The museum's in two parts, on opposite sides of Number 1 Street, with the main collection housed in a large two-storey hangar. Downstairs are a heck of a lot of guns and wheeled weapons, but don't start there, start upstairs. The entire history of British artillery is laid out before you, including a few missable panels about battles and who beat who. I was more interested to discover how Britain led the world in ballistics, targeting its firepower with increasing accuracy to gain the advantage in campaigns from Napoleon to WW2. And less interested in the minutiae of gunners' uniforms over the ages (was it strictly necessary to provide labels announcing "size 8 trainers" and "women's warm weather slacks", eh?). Quickly, back to the big guns instead, made all the more atmospheric by the sound of rocket fire and shelling thundering away in the background.
A lot of young men in uniform, mostly camos, were wandering around the museum. I think they had an office somewhere, and I guess they were volunteers from the nearby barracks helping out with stewarding and running activities and drinking coffee in the café. The museum seemed very keen to promote their in-house catering facility, which is open to folk off the street as well as to paying visitors and soldiers. But, not being much of a café-frequenter myself, I left the museum thinking I hadn't seen much. Partly my fault for being on a whistlestop schedule. If I'd hung around an extra half hour I could have looked inside the medals gallery upstairs, and if I'd hung around an extra hour I could have watched the 'introductory' film and the special audio-visual smoke-and fire presentation. But I'd have had to wait several months to explore the second half of the museum - the Cold War Gallery across the street, because it's currently closed for storage purposes. So I'd recommend that you save your money and come back in 2010... unless you can persuade the nice lady on the front desk that you're only four. by DLR, train: Woolwich Arsenal
To get from Woolwich (above) to Thamesmead (below), you could take the bus. But I walked. It only took an hour, and meant that I got to walk a blissfully obscure section of the riverside Thames Path [map]. Blimey, do people actually choose to live on the eastern banks of Gallions Reach? Maybe it's more attractive when the sun's out. Onward past an expanse of bleak undeveloped wasteground where some future Mayor of London might one day build the Thames Gateway Bridge. To the remote extremity of Tripcock Ness, where a navigational light-tower keeps guard over a sharp kink in the Thames (highlight of the walk, in a flat grey way). And on east towards Thamesmead Clock Tower, which was much harder to reach than it first appeared. On the riverbank I discovered an extraordinarily over-optimistic example of urban planning - a raised concrete viewpoint (with a view of, erm, Barking Reach flood barrier, some incinerators and big piles of rusty containers) plus thirty-or-so landscaped benches (some with a view of the aforementioned Dagenham shoreline, others staring straight into a brick wall). And all for a usership of nil, because nobody ever got round to building flats on the strip of wasteland behind. Obviously I loved it. And I'll be back to do this walk properly, in its entirety, in sunshine, one day.
Somewhere retail: Thamesmead Town Centre When you live on a reclaimed munitions testing site in the shadow of a sewage works, a trip to the shops could really brighten your day. But for the fifty thousand residents of Thamesmead, the local town centre leaves much to be desired. Forty years ago things seemed very different. A bold futuristic 'floodproof' town had been constructed on the Erith marshes to rehouse London residents displaced after slum clearance. It must have seemed ideal to locate the shopping centre non-centrally on a lakeside near the Thames, even though this meant that most residents would have to drive or catch a bus to get there. And it must have seemed ideal to build shops on either side of an artificial canal beneath a giant Clock Tower, all to add a bit of character. Alas, the place doesn't feel quite so ideal now.
Most shoppers arrive by car. There's a huge car park (hemmed in between the Argos Extra warehouse and the Post Office) where flocks of unflappable starlings fight to peck the meat off discarded chicken wings. Grocery-seekers have a choice of Aldi, Iceland or a rather large Morrisons, while other more highbrow high street names are notable by their absence. Hell, there's not even a Greggs pastry outlet in the neighbouring arcade, which struck me as something of a wasted opportunity. No Starbucks either, but the atmosphere-free Diana Coffee and Sandwich Bar seemed to keep the local caffeine-slurpers happy.
Joyce Dawson Way is the canalside parade bit, boasting two betting shops, a fried chicken and fish bar, a tanning lounge, a florist and a large runaround space for dropping your kids off in. Somewhere out the back is an enclosed area once home to Thamesmead Market, now stall-free, open to the skies and desolate. There's also a pub called the CuttySark, which scared the life out of me even from outside, but which I noted is fully accessible to alcoholics in mobility scooters. Down by the water's edge a young girl called Kelly was running amok frightening the swans with a whistle, which was almost as loud as her screeching Mum yelling down from the overbridge that it was time for her and her sisters to leave and go home. When overhead bongs from the top of the clock tower added to the cacophony, I decided it was time to follow suit. by train: afraid not by bus: 177, 229, 244, 401, 472, B11
And if you're wondering where the "Clockwork Orange" report is, the eastern half of Thamesmead (with the concrete-edged lake) is in the London borough of Bexley, so rest assured I'll be back to explore Southmere some other jamjar day.
Somewhere random: The Fan Museum London boasts many weird and eclectic museums, but few more unlikely than a museum devoted exclusively to fans. That's right, the small semicircular pleated flappy objects that ladies used to wave before the days of aircon. A whole houseful of the things, open three days a week at the foot of Crooms Hill SE10 (opposite the Greenwich Theatre). I'd been meaning to visit for ages, but thought I'd better hang on until my Greenwich jamjar day arrived. Which it just did. Stuff the meridian, I had a date with my fans.
The museum is based in a restored Georgian terraced house, which ought to have been hint enough to its diminuitive size. I walked into the first small room to pay my £4 to the girl behind the (rather elegant) desk, and accepted her offer of a guidebook consisting of photocopied sheets in a plastic wallet. It was only at this point I realised that the room in which I was standing formed half of the permanent exhibition. Eight or so exquisite fans hung from the walls, each beautifully painted or etched, although I'd have failed to appreciate them properly without the printed notes in front of me. Some were fans proper, while others were semicircular works of art not yet snipped, trimmed and folded. Once I'd grasped the concept that 18th century fans were merely handheld paintings for hot ladies, the rest of the collection made more sense.
A second lower room explained, in appropriate detail, how fans were constructed and about the materials from which they were constructed. That was a lace fan, surely... blimey no, it was intricately carved ivory. Other special fans were assembled from tortoiseshell or mother of pearl or even, in one unusual case, Welsh slate. All the display cases had been mirrored to permit peeking at the underside of each exhibit, which was especially useful when one fan turned out to have an entire emergency sewing kit hidden away inside. All kinds of fans were on show in this minimal yet complete collection, even in the final cabinet a wall-mounted Vent-axia extractor. Explains why you so rarely see ladies fluttering fans today.
Upstairs the museum puts on a thrice-yearly special exhibition, the theme of which (at the moment) is War & Peace. 18th century courtiers loved nothing better than to flap some noble battle scene in front of their face, especially if it featured pert soldiers in uniform or buff heroes from Greek myth. Commemorations of great victories were also de rigueur, even into the early 20th century, sometimes across broad pleated folds and sometimes in elaborate miniature. This was an impressive show of more than 200 fans, allegedly just the tip of the museums' in-storage iceberg, covering a broad perspective of eras and cultures. For greatest enjoyment it was crucial to read each accompanying label carefully, because somebody's gone to a heck of a lot of effort to write them.
But that's the lot. There's a shop, of course, selling unusual fan-related gifts that certain female relatives might love come Christmas, although that didn't detain me for long. There's also an Orangery out the back where tea and cakes are served on Sunday and Tuesday afternoons, but which looked rather lonely on a nippy autumn Saturday. For more information, check out Londonist who are highlighting the Fan Museum as their museum of the month. And if you're ever in Greenwich accompanied by someone debonair and classy (not me, then), do consider taking them here rather than the usual tourist hotspots. by DLR: Cutty Sark, Greenwich
Somewhere pretty: Well Hall Pleasaunce Down to Eltham, not to the Palace (been there, blogged that) but to visit E Nesbit's house. She's the prolific turn-of-the-century author who wrote The Railway Children, amongst many other things, and wrote it here in an old house on Well Hall Road. Edith's home no longer stands, having been demolished after a fire in 1926, after which the council set about transforming the surrounding land into an attractive set of gardens. And didn't they do well? An astonishing number of garden types and habitats have been crammed into thirteen urban acres. Part is wooded and part parklike, but other areas include sloping rockeries, ornamental flowerbeds and a bowling green. There are also two formal gardens, one sunken Italian, the other rather larger and laid out around a central fountain. Three holes in the western wall once housed Tudor bee skeps, unique in London, and the rosebushes must look a spectacular sight in the summer.
But not in mid-October. The entire Pleasaunce was extremely quiet at the weekend (apart from the roar of passing Dover-bound traffic), attracting few visitors despite the allure of its assorted autumn colours. One woman pushing a well-wrapped toddler, two girls gossipping on a bench, one youth engaged in an important phone call, and me. Plus lots of squirrels, who know a good nut source when they see one. Rather busier was the moat-side Tudor Barn, a two-storey gabled outbuilding originally owned by Sir Thomas More's daughter. It's been many things in its time, notably a pub, but has relaunched this month as a cafe/brasserie/eventspace. I popped in to try it out (yes, welcoming, cosmopolitan, full) but didn't really have time to sit down for a bite. "Do you do take away?" I asked. That threw her. "Er, we can do," she replied, no doubt wondering why I'd want to take my hot chocolate outside with the squirrels when I could have stayed in with proper crockery. My drink was tepidly so-so, although another customer at the counter assured me that the late-opening Sunday roasts are great. The Tudor Barn's website is as yet unhelpfully information-light, but both Brockley Central and the Greenwich Phantom have eaten here recently and posted reviews. Me, I'd stick with the outdoor garden-wandering experience, which is absolutely more than pleasaunt. by train: Eltham by bus: 132, 161, 286
Ten to one against, but out of my jamjar came the London borough of Greenwich. Sorry. I know you've just suffered a week of suburban ramblings down the Greenwich meridian, but my latest random safari has taken me straight back again. But don't worry. Greenwich is a large and diverse borough, most of it well to the east of the town of Greenwich, so there was plenty of opportunity to go absolutely nowhere near the meridian at all. I headed instead along the banks of the Thames, and deep into the southeast London hinterland, to explore the lovelier and less lovely parts of this historic borough. It's not all about time.
Somewhere famous: The Greenwich Meridian Greenwich's fame spread around the world 125 years ago this week when a line of longitude through the Royal Observatory was selected as the starting point of space and... Stop it, stop right there. Obviously I had to pick the meridian and the Observatory as the most famous things in the borough, but I think I've covered both of those in sufficient depth recently. So, if you don't mind, we'll take that as read, thanks.
Somewhere infamous: The Millennium Dome It was never meant to be this way. Ten years ago a nation held its breath as Peter Mandelson struggled to build a big tent on the North Greenwich Peninsula before Big Ben struck 2000. The MillenniumDome wasn't quite the spectacle he'd hoped, and once 2001 came round the site faded away into mothballed desolation. Government didn't have a clue, but big business eventually spotted a major opportunity (knockdown price, tube station alongside, kerching) and transformed the DustbinLid into an entertainment supernode. Two years on and the rebranded Oxygenmolecule is a huge commercial success, luring in a succession of musical megastars to perform in a huge arena surrounded by tapas bars. In 2012, the Olympic gymnastics and wheelchair basketball competitions will be played out beneath the MobileNetwork's glass fibre ceiling. And this weekend they've been having a practice.
The World Artistic Gymnastics Championships have come to North Greenwich. I could tell this because there were an awful lot of supple folk in tracksuits hanging around Peninsula Square, rather than the usual spotty youths and tourists in Michael Jackson t-shirts. Some of the gymnasts were pulling suitcases, some babbling away in foreign, others merely looking disturbingly fit. A telltale laminated badge dangled from their clothing, distinguishing them from the mere spectators, friends and family. The latter could be seen hanging around outside the Warm Up tent in London Plaza, or nipping off to one of the multitude of restaurants for a nibble while their proteges prepared.
Outside the arena there were only a few nods to the presence of the world's best pommel-horsers and ring-hangers. Adidas had a stand near the entrance selling stripy lycra merchandise, and souvenir t-shirts were also available from stalls located in front of the void where the luxury casino isn't. Further round, near the bored-looking Herta hotdog sellers, security staff guarded a rare additional back-of-house exit. Outside the building, just out of view, taxis and coaches waited to whisk athletes and press back to wherever in not-Greenwich they were staying. But most excitingly, the barriers beyond the British Music Experience were down, allowing curious visitors a rare opportunity to wander into the Dome's undeveloped southwestern quadrant. No cafes here, nor overpriced exhibitions, just a curved pathway in a gaping void beneath the original tented ceiling. This route was open for access to media accreditation facilities, not that there was anybody around other than a cleaner, so I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the space as it used to be before the pizzerias invaded.
Without a ticket (what? £45!), I wasn't getting inside the main arena to watch the tumbling, flexing and rolling. So I wandered back outside instead for one of my favourite walks, around the circumference of the Dome2000 along the curving banks of the Thames. A lot of demolition's been going on along the western side of the Greenwich Peninsula, with the industrial area around Delta Wharf being rapidly reduced to heaps of unlovely rubble. A variegated trio of new-build office blocks near the QE2 pier gives some hint as to the ugliness of what might be replacing them. Round the back of the Ohtwo, one end of the millennial wetland garden has recently been turfed over to provide a helipad for visiting performers with tight schedules. I much preferred the long grasses and bullrushes, but needs must. And nearby, beyond the locked-away Greenwich Pavilion, somebody has shifted a bench across the paved line that marks the Greenwich Meridian... Stop it, stop right there. by tube: North Greenwich
Somewhere sporty: The Valley Somewhat unexpectedly, Greenwich boasts a surprisingly high number of sporty locations. The Royal Blackheath Golf Club is the oldest golf club in the world (caveats and qualifications apply) and Blackheath Rugby Club is similarly the oldest public rugby team (ditto). Arsenal FC were founded in deepest Woolwich (been there, blogged that). And competition for the 2012 Olympics will take place not just in "North Greenwich Arena 1" but also, controversially, in GreenwichPark and at Woolwich Barracks. So much choice. But on a mid-season footballing Saturday there was only one place to go, and that was the home ground of CharltonAthletic.
It's called TheValley for a reason - the surrounding land really does slope down from surrounding heights, so the stadium's fairly well hidden if you don't know where to look. It stands on the site of a levelled chalk quarry, now engulfed by a sea of surrounding terraced and council housing. The pitch is surrounded by a red and grey construction with a web of metal poles perched on top, augmented by a giantclub badge slapped onto the front wall of the north stand. The team's not always been based here, in particular exiled for a lengthy spell to Selhurst Park two decades ago while The Valley fell to rack and ruin. But the place has perked up rather since, and yesterday it was the scene of a mighty top-of-the-table Division One clash.
I turned up mid-morning, well before the earliest spectators arrived, but the ground (and street outside) were already a hotbed of crucial pre-match action. Several stocky black-suited blokes were massing by the East Stand turnstiles, preparing to do whatever men in black suits do at football clubs. Security, or stewarding, or selling Courage Best - something like that. Other lesser folk stood around in fluorescent orange tabards, waiting to direct a crowd that wouldn't be arriving for several hours, and waving in the Huddersfield Town team coach through the stadium gates. Charlton's official doughnut van had been wheeled into position beneath the giant club badge, while a gaggle of burger trolleys stood idling off-road waiting to have their spitting grills fired up. A girl in a white trailer looked nearly ready to serve up her first hotdog of the day, but there were no queues as yet for her one-quid cups of steaming Bovril. Over at the Charlton Athletic Superstore, a fresh delivery of krbs-sponsored kit arrived in the back of a UPS van. But this early in the day, apart from myself, the only unpaid passer-by was a black cat darting through the pedestrian arches beneath the nearby railway. It brought good luck for Charlton who, by five in the afternoon, were celebrating being back on the top of Division One. Ah, for a return to the golden days when CAFC being in the First Division really meant something. by train: Charlton by bus: 380, 486
Two thirds complete, and only one third of my random exploration of the capital to go. A meandering western strip and an eastern chunk are all that remain, although they still form a hugely diverse set of boroughs. I've not picked anywhere in central London for ages, so maybe today I'll finally head back towards the tourist hotspots of Westminster or Camden. Or I could be fated again to tour the attraction-lite outskirts, be that Barnet, Bexley or Barking and Dagenham.
Once I've researched my randomly-chosen borough online I'll then head off and visit some of its most interesting places (assuming it has any). As usual I hope to visit somewhere famous, somewhere historic, somewhere pretty, somewhere retail, somewhere sporty and somewhere random. I might even take lots of photographs while I'm at it, if the borough's photogenic enough. Then after I've made my grand tour I'll come back tomorrow and tell you all about it. Let's see where I'm going this time... (and, after my meridian week, it had better not be Greenwich!)
Another day, another museum beginning with F. This one's at Woolwich Arsenal, which I blogged about so comprehensively earlier in the year that I wasn't sure there was anything left to see. But there was still this repository of death and killing, so I went there. It's a favourite venue for young children, obviously, one of whom I ended up queueing behind for a ticket. "He's four", said Dad, nodding towards the admissions charge list to the side of the till. "Yes I'm definitely not five, I'm really only four, it's not my birthday for ages," added the small boy, protesting rather too much. But he got in scot-free anyway.
A lot of young men in uniform, mostly camos, were wandering around the museum. I think they had an office somewhere, and I guess they were volunteers from the nearby barracks helping out with stewarding and running activities and drinking coffee in the café. The museum seemed very keen to promote their in-house catering facility, which is open to folk off the street as well as to paying visitors and soldiers. But, not being much of a café-frequenter myself, I left the museum thinking I hadn't seen much. Partly my fault for being on a whistlestop schedule. If I'd hung around an extra half hour I could have looked inside the medals gallery upstairs, and if I'd hung around an extra hour I could have watched the 'introductory' film and the special audio-visual smoke-and fire presentation. But I'd have had to wait several months to explore the second half of the museum - the Cold War Gallery across the street, because it's currently closed for storage purposes. So I'd recommend that you save your money and come back in 2010... unless you can persuade the nice lady on the front desk that you're only four.
To get from Woolwich (above) to Thamesmead (below), you could take the bus. But I walked. It only took an hour, and meant that I got to walk a blissfully obscure section of the riverside Thames Path [map]. Blimey, do people actually choose to live on the eastern banks of Gallions Reach? Maybe it's more attractive when the sun's out. Onward past an expanse of bleak undeveloped wasteground where some future Mayor of London might one day build the Thames Gateway Bridge. To the remote extremity of Tripcock Ness, where a navigational light-tower keeps guard over a sharp kink in the Thames (highlight of the walk, in a flat grey way). And on east towards Thamesmead Clock Tower, which was much harder to reach than it first appeared. On the riverbank I discovered an extraordinarily over-optimistic example of urban planning - a raised concrete viewpoint (with a view of, erm, Barking Reach flood barrier, some incinerators and big piles of rusty containers) plus thirty-or-so landscaped benches (some with a view of the aforementioned Dagenham shoreline, others staring straight into a brick wall). And all for a usership of nil, because nobody ever got round to building flats on the strip of wasteland behind. Obviously I loved it. And I'll be back to do this walk properly, in its entirety, in sunshine, one day.
When you live on a reclaimed munitions testing site in the shadow of a sewage works, a trip to the shops could really brighten your day. But for the fifty thousand residents of Thamesmead, the local town centre leaves much to be desired. Forty years ago things seemed very different. A bold futuristic 'floodproof' town had been constructed on the Erith marshes to rehouse London residents displaced after slum clearance. It must have seemed ideal to locate the shopping centre non-centrally on a lakeside near the Thames, even though this meant that most residents would have to drive or catch a bus to get there. And it must have seemed ideal to build shops on either side of an artificial canal beneath a giant Clock Tower, all to add a bit of character. Alas, the place doesn't feel quite so ideal now.
The museum is based in a restored Georgian terraced house, which ought to have been hint enough to its diminuitive size. I walked into the first small room to pay my £4 to the girl behind the (rather elegant) desk, and accepted her offer of a guidebook consisting of photocopied sheets in a plastic wallet. It was only at this point I realised that the room in which I was standing formed half of the permanent exhibition. Eight or so exquisite fans hung from the walls, each beautifully painted or etched, although I'd have failed to appreciate them properly without the printed notes in front of me. Some were fans proper, while others were semicircular works of art not yet snipped, trimmed and folded. Once I'd grasped the concept that 18th century fans were merely handheld paintings for hot ladies, the rest of the collection made more sense.
Upstairs the museum puts on a thrice-yearly special exhibition, the theme of which (at the moment) is War & Peace. 18th century courtiers loved nothing better than to flap some noble battle scene in front of their face, especially if it featured pert soldiers in uniform or buff heroes from Greek myth. Commemorations of great victories were also de rigueur, even into the early 20th century, sometimes across broad pleated folds and sometimes in elaborate miniature. This was an impressive show of more than 200 fans, allegedly just the tip of the museums' in-storage iceberg, covering a broad perspective of eras and cultures. For greatest enjoyment it was crucial to read each accompanying label carefully, because somebody's gone to a heck of a lot of effort to write them.
Down to Eltham, not to the Palace (been there, blogged that) but to visit E Nesbit's house. She's the prolific turn-of-the-century author who wrote The Railway Children, amongst many other things, and wrote it here in an old house on Well Hall Road. Edith's home no longer stands, having been demolished after a fire in 1926, after which the council set about transforming the surrounding land into an attractive set of gardens. And didn't they do well? An astonishing number of garden types and habitats have been crammed into thirteen urban acres. Part is wooded and part parklike, but other areas include sloping rockeries, ornamental flowerbeds and a bowling green. There are also two formal gardens, one sunken Italian, the other rather larger and laid out around a central fountain. Three holes in the western wall once housed Tudor bee skeps, unique in London, and the rosebushes must look a spectacular sight in the summer.
But not in mid-October. The entire Pleasaunce was extremely quiet at the weekend (apart from the roar of passing Dover-bound traffic), attracting few visitors despite the allure of its assorted autumn colours. One woman pushing a well-wrapped toddler, two girls gossipping on a bench, one youth engaged in an important phone call, and me. Plus lots of squirrels, who know a good nut source when they see one. Rather busier was the moat-side Tudor Barn, a two-storey gabled outbuilding originally owned by Sir Thomas More's daughter. It's been many things in its time, notably a pub, but has relaunched this month as a cafe/brasserie/eventspace. I popped in to try it out (yes, welcoming, cosmopolitan, full) but didn't really have time to sit down for a bite. "Do you do take away?" I asked. That threw her. "Er, we can do," she replied, no doubt wondering why I'd want to take my hot chocolate outside with the squirrels when I could have stayed in with proper crockery. My drink was tepidly so-so, although another customer at the counter assured me that the late-opening Sunday roasts are great. The Tudor Barn's website is as yet unhelpfully information-light, but both Brockley Central and the Greenwich Phantom have eaten here recently and posted reviews. Me, I'd stick with the outdoor garden-wandering experience, which is absolutely more than pleasaunt.
Greenwich's fame spread around the world 125 years ago this week when a line of longitude through the Royal Observatory was selected as the starting point of space and...
It was never meant to be this way. Ten years ago a nation held its breath as Peter Mandelson struggled to build a big tent on the North Greenwich Peninsula before Big Ben struck 2000. The Millennium Dome wasn't quite the spectacle he'd hoped, and once 2001 came round the site faded away into mothballed desolation. Government didn't have a clue, but big business eventually spotted a major opportunity (knockdown price, tube station alongside, kerching) and transformed the DustbinLid into an entertainment supernode. Two years on and the rebranded Oxygenmolecule is a huge commercial success, luring in a succession of musical megastars to perform in a huge arena surrounded by tapas bars. In 2012, the Olympic gymnastics and wheelchair basketball competitions will be played out beneath the MobileNetwork's glass fibre ceiling. And this weekend they've been having a practice.
Outside the arena there were only a few nods to the presence of the world's best pommel-horsers and ring-hangers. Adidas had a stand near the entrance selling stripy lycra merchandise, and souvenir t-shirts were also available from stalls located in front of the void where the luxury casino isn't. Further round, near the bored-looking Herta hotdog sellers, security staff guarded a rare additional back-of-house exit. Outside the building, just out of view, taxis and coaches waited to whisk athletes and press back to wherever in not-Greenwich they were staying. But most excitingly, the barriers beyond the British Music Experience were down, allowing curious visitors a rare opportunity to wander into the Dome's undeveloped southwestern quadrant. No cafes here, nor overpriced exhibitions, just a curved pathway in a gaping void beneath the original tented ceiling. This route was open for access to media accreditation facilities, not that there was anybody around other than a cleaner, so I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the space as it used to be before the pizzerias invaded.
Somewhat unexpectedly, Greenwich boasts a surprisingly high number of sporty locations. The Royal Blackheath Golf Club is the oldest golf club in the world (caveats and qualifications apply) and Blackheath Rugby Club is similarly the oldest public rugby team (ditto). Arsenal FC were founded in deepest Woolwich (been there, blogged that). And competition for the 2012 Olympics will take place not just in "North Greenwich Arena 1" but also, controversially, in Greenwich Park and at Woolwich Barracks. So much choice. But on a mid-season footballing Saturday there was only one place to go, and that was the home ground of Charlton Athletic.
I turned up mid-morning, well before the earliest spectators arrived, but the ground (and street outside) were already a hotbed of crucial pre-match action. Several stocky black-suited blokes were massing by the East Stand turnstiles, preparing to do whatever men in black suits do at football clubs. Security, or stewarding, or selling Courage Best - something like that. Other lesser folk stood around in fluorescent orange tabards, waiting to direct a crowd that wouldn't be arriving for several hours, and waving in the Huddersfield Town team coach through the stadium gates. Charlton's official doughnut van had been wheeled into position beneath the giant club badge, while a gaggle of burger trolleys stood idling off-road waiting to have their spitting grills fired up. A girl in a white trailer looked nearly ready to serve up her first hotdog of the day, but there were no queues as yet for her one-quid cups of steaming Bovril. Over at the Charlton Athletic Superstore, a fresh delivery of krbs-sponsored kit arrived in the back of a UPS van. But this early in the day, apart from myself, the only unpaid passer-by was a black cat darting through the pedestrian arches beneath the nearby railway. It brought good luck for Charlton who, by five in the afternoon, were celebrating being back on the top of Division One. Ah, for a return to the golden days when CAFC being in the First Division really meant something.
Random borough (23): Time once more for me to take another random trip to one of London's 33 boroughs. As I write I have no idea which one of the 11 remaining borough names will be revealed when I unfold the slip of paper I'm about to pick from my legendary (but unseen) "special jamjar". I could pick any one of the other London boroughs - inner or outer, urban or suburban, small or large, fascinating or dull. I just know it won't be Merton, Islington, Enfield, Sutton, Lewisham, Southwark, Kensington & Chelsea, Hackney, Hillingdon, the City, Bromley, Lambeth, Tower Hamlets, Haringey, Hounslow, Brent, Redbridge, Ealing, Harrow, Croydon, Waltham Forest or Wandsworth, because they're the twenty-two (dark grey) boroughs I've picked out already.
