Not only am I the sort of bloke who still buys the Radio Times, I keep back copies too. Not all of them, because that would be obsessive, but I like to retain a handful for nostalgic reasons. The edition with the triffids on the front, EastEnders' first appearance, every double Christmas magazine, Paul McGann's Doctor Who Movie, London 2012, that sort of thing. I stash no more than half a dozen a year, rather than all fifty-one, but that still adds up to a tidy total when you've been accumulating since the 1970s.
And now the BBC has put the whole lot online. Not just the copies I've collected, but every single Radio Times from 1923 to 2009. All the TV and Radio listings are there, for every BBC channel, from Organ Recitals on 2LO London to Jools Holland's Annual Hootenanny on BBC2. The project's called Genome, and has involved scanning 4469 issues of the Radio Times to grab the printed listings for each day. This means there are occasional spelling mistakes and inaccuracies, especially when events dictated that the scheduled programme was never broadcast. But what an absolutely brilliant resource, for historical research or simply digging idly through.
For example you can discover that television returned after World War 2 on 7th June 1946 with a broadcast including Mickey Mouse, Mantovani and Master of Ceremonies Leslie Mitchell. I can check that there really was a children's TV quiz in 1974 called Brainchild, hosted by John Craven, which featured a 'computer' called BERYL, I haven't been imagining it all these years. And we can confirm that Ghostwatch really was broadcast only once, on Hallowe'en 1992, with Teletext subtitles on page 888.
I suspect a lot of people will want to dig back into the archive to dates that were personal to them. I can pinpoint the only BBC TV programme I've ever appeared on, recorded in West Watford in 1973. The following year I can track down the Radio London show on which the presenter read out joint birthday greetings to my Mum and me (ah, bugger, no, they haven't scanned that one). And of course, like all the rest of you, I can see what was on TV the day I was born.
My 1965 birthday's a bit of a jackpot. Children's programmes that day included Andy Pandy, The Woodentops and Animal Magic. Schools programmes featured the art of thatching and trade union history, while in the afternoon Peter O'Sullevan introduced Racing from Cheltenham. Well known black and white faces on screen that day included Ray Alan, Ted Moult, Jonathan Miller and Richard Baker, while over on BBC2 was a programme on child development aimed especially at new fathers. I suspect my Dad was otherwise engaged. Marty Feldman and Barry Took wrote the evening's comedy drama, The Walrus and the Carpenter, while the genre of proto-soap was represented by an episode of Compact. Peaktime viewers were treated to a documentary on canals and a lecture on the future of transport, which might have interested me had I developed the use of language and been allowed to stay up late. And the evening rounded off with the Variety Club Awards ("An edited recording of today's Luncheon at the Savoy Hotel, London"), in which Morecambe and Wise, Rita Tushingham, Eric Sykes, Sir Laurence Olivier and Jimmy Tarbuck got the nod.
Your eyes will surely have glazed over during that paragraph because it has no innate relevance to your life. Or more likely you'll already have surfed off to dig through the 4,423,653 programme records in the Genome archive yourself. Go on, can you beat this?
BBC1 9th March 1965
17.30 ANIMAL MAGIC (a fortnightly series introduced by JOHNNY MORRIS)
17.55 THE NEWS
18.05 TOWN AND AROUND (News and views from London and the South-East, introduced by Richard Baker)
18.30 FIRST IMPRESSIONS (The panel tries to identify well-known personalities in a game of question, answer, and deduction)
18.55 TONIGHT (Introduced by Cliff Michelmore with the Tonight team)
19.30 COMPACT (A serial by HAZEL ADAIR and PETER LING - Blow Hot, Blow Cold)
20.00 THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER (starring HUGH GRIFFITH and FELIX AYLMER)
20.25 THE DANNY KAYE SHOW (in which DANNY KAYE and his special guests PETER FALK, MICHELLE LEE, PETE FOUNTAIN entertain to the music of Paul Weston and his Orchestra with the Tony Charmoli Dancers and the Johnny Mann Singers)
21.15 THE NEWS
21.25 VOYAGE INTO ENGLAND (with Macdonald Hastings, CANALS AND INLAND WATERWAYS)
22.15 MONITOR (with Jonathan Miller - Matters of Time)
23.00 VARIETY CLUB OF GREAT BRITAIN (Awards for 1964)
23.25 NEWS SUMMARY and THE WEATHER
23.30 THE SCIENCE OF MAN (Series 4: Heredity and Evolution)
0.00 CLOSEDOWN
But am I throwing away my paper copies of the Radio Times? Hell no, over my dead body.
For 24 miles between Tower Bridge (T) and the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge (Q), no bridges cross the Thames.
T
River Thames
Q
The QE2 Bridge lies just beyond the capital's borders, linking Thurrock to Dartford, so technically East London has no bridge crossings at all. But road vehicles aren't completely blocked by the river, of course. There are three other Thames crossings - the Rotherhithe Tunnel (R), the Blackwall Tunnel (B) and the Woolwich Ferry (W).
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None of these is ideal. The Rotherhithe Tunnel is old and narrow with awkward bends and a 20mph speed limit. The Blackwall Tunnel is even older, and just as bendy northbound, but with an additional southbound bore dug in the 1960s to double the flow. And the Woolwich Ferry is a ferry, for heaven's sake, taking ages to cross the river and with very limited capacity. Still, at least all three are free, for the time being.
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The Blackwall Tunnel has been described as the most critical road link in the capital. It's particularly susceptible to closure, for example when the driver of a high-sided vehicle ignores the warning signs at the entrance and gets stuck within, creating tailbacks that ripple out for miles. And when that happens, northeast and southeast London might as well be two different cities.
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So TfL have a plan, which is to build a brand new tunnel beneath the Thames, almost precisely underneath the cablecar. The Silvertown Tunnel(S) will be straighter and wider than its Blackwall cousin, allowing clear passage for lorries and double decker buses. Not only will this greatly increase capacity it'll provide additional resilience, meaning drivers can pretty much guarantee being able to cross the river rather than joining a queue.
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On the northbound side of the river a new landing point will be served. While the Blackwall Tunnel surfaces in Tower Hamlets, the Silvertown Tunnel will rise in Newham on the opposite banks of the Lea. This will split the increased volume of vehicles, with more through traffic following the original route to the A12 and more local traffic taking the new tunnel. But things aren't quite so well balanced on the southern side.
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The Silvertown Tunnel is essentially a third bore of the Blackwall Tunnel and will dive underground from exactly the same location. A new road junction will be created on the southern approach road, and all traffic attempting to cross to the north will have to pass through this point. North Greenwich's roads won't get relief, they'll merely suck in additional vehicles hoping to use the new crossing under the Thames. So TfL have a plan to stop that.
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They plan to charge vehicles to drive through the new Silvertown Tunnel. What's more they plan to start charging vehicles to drive through the existing Blackwall Tunnel too, because you can't toll one and not the other, it just wouldn't work. Put simply, TfL want to double the capacity to improve connectivity, but then slap on a Congestion Charge because connectivity's been improved too much. Tolls will likely be higher than on the Dartford Crossing during peak periods, closer in price for the rest of the day and with free passage at night. Existing users of the Blackwall Tunnel may not be best pleased.
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Moving downstream, there are also plans in the pipeline to improve the Woolwich Ferry. The boats are old and nearing retirement, so an additional upgrade would be necessary to keep things running. And yes, if this happens TfL would bring in tolls on the Woolwich Ferry too. Suddenly the free-to-use Rotherhithe Tunnel is looking more appealing.
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But upgrading a ferry is a pathetic 19th century solution, given that what's really needed is another fixed crossing. So TfL have longer-term plans, if the money's forthcoming, to build a 21st century bridge further downstream. This would be the Gallions Crossing(G), running above the Thames from Beckton to Thamesmead, along an alignment long protected from development. It would need to be properly lofty to allow ships to continue to pass underneath, but once built TfL could shut the Woolwich Ferry for good.
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The Gallions Crossing would be another major boost to connectivity, landing close to the end of the North Circular, although TfL claim it'll be used mostly by local traffic. Again they're keen to keep vehicle numbers down so tolls would be introduced from day one. The money collected would also go towards the cost of building the bridge in the first place, because governments don't tend to go round dishing out generous infrastructure handouts these days. And this would create four consecutive tolled crossings on the lower Thames, where previously there was only one.
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There are some groups who think that a Gallions Tunnel would be a much better idea. A subterranean crossing would eat up a lot less land than an enormous bridge, increasing the available area for new houses and bringing greater benefits overall. But tunnels are also much more expensive than bridges, hence TfL aren't keen, and since when were they responsible for housing policy anyway?
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We're years off any of this lot being built. A Gallions Crossing won't be completed before 2025, if at all, and even the Silvertown Tunnel isn't pencilled in before 2021. The latter project is currently at the consultation stage, with TfL now seeking your opinions on the tunnel's design rather than whether it should be built in the first place. Many are not pleased, given the pollution and traffic noise the tunnel will bring, especially on shared approach roads south of the river. But the alternative is a disconnected and inefficient city, and a river it's remarkably difficult to cross.
WALK LONDON The London Loop[section 19]
Chingford to Chigwell (4½ miles)
Section 19 of the London Loop involves walking along the edges of only-just Essex, from Tebbitsville to Birds of a Feather, via all and none of the stereotypes you'd expect. There's forest, there's mud, there's the Roding Valley to cross, and there's some of the worst signage I've found anywhere on the Loop. So long as you can follow a map, it's got its moments. Best hurry, before TfL take it down. [map]
As you exit the platform at Chingford station there's a plaque on the wall exhorting you to follow section 19 of the London Loop. I'm not sure anyone ever pauses to study it carefully, it's rather too close to the ticket barrier for that, but if you take heed and cross the bus station on your way out you can be on the walking trail in a couple of minutes. Beware Cattle! I suspect the message is more for drivers than ramblers, but with several square miles of Epping Forest ahead it pays to be careful. This section of the Loop's only crossing a small part - section 18 does more - but this corner is possibly the busiest with daytrippers, dogwalkers, picknickers and general amblers. Almost immediately the signs disappear, but stick towards the main road round the back of the Brewer's Fayre and you'll not go far wrong.
And here you should break your walk, even though you've barely walked any distance at all, to enjoy two old visitor attractions and a very new one. Most obvious from the path is Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, a three storey viewing deck from which Tudor monarchs surveyed the royal hunt. It's a great whitewashed survivor, and free to enter for an insight into what King Henry VIII used to do when he came here, and maybe some juggling lessons too if you turn up at the right time. Nextdoor is a fresh, lively 'visitor interpretation centre', barely two years old, called The View. Alas the upstairs balcony is currently closed due to a broken glass panel, and looks like it's normally locked anyway, so the building doesn't really live up to its name. Nevertheless there's a rather good exhibition over two floors covering the history and natural wealth of the adjacent Forest, plus a tasteful gift shop in which small kids can run amok. Meanwhile newly restored on the other side of the Lodge is Butler's Retreat, one of Epping Forest's traditional refreshment blocks, converted from an old barn in the 1870s. Originally part of the Temperance movement, the new owners serve a bit of alcohol as well as bacon ciabattas and cake, and on Sunday afternoon the place was buzzing. Even if you don't fancy the whole walk, don't be afraid to consider Chingford Plain for an outdoor excursion of your own.
The Loop continues across the road, again unsigned, so you'd probably never think to take the path left through the edge of the car park. The small brook at the end of the wooded trail is The Ching, because what did you expect Chingford's river to be called. It also marks the dividing line from London into Essex, and what lies beyond is pure Home Counties. A broad grassy clearing rises steadily upwards, long and wide enough for an entire horse race, and not currently as muddy as it gets sometimes in midwinter. At the top of the ascent is the Warren Wood pub, and a main road, and a further climb to the edge of a cricket pitch. And this is Buckhurst Hill, a commuter suburb with a split personality.
Initially the Loop threads through the slightly posh bit, on the top of the ridge. A two bedroom flat in gated Roebuck Heights will set you back £600,000, the neighbouring cottages around North End a little more. And now, sorry, it's time to get lost again. Green signs point you down an umpromising cul-de-sac, then fail to point you left into what looks like a house's private drive. That narrow track curving off round the fence is a proper public right of way, indeed in days of yore was a cattle drive for leading livestock through the Forest. The City of London still owns North Farm, to one side, retained as a buffer zone to stop housing spreading across the valley. In spring the bluebells in adjacent Linders Field are worth a diversion, but in autumn best continue beneath the tinted canopy and follow the carpet of leaves downhill.
We may be outside London but here's the Central line, specifically the section between Buckhurst Hill and Loughton. A metal footbridge links open fields to the housing estate beyond, a favoured teenage hangout I'd judge by the chocolate milk and Haribo packets littering the walkway. And here we're entering a very different part of the suburb, more Buckhurst Valley, and with the unmistakeable air of London overspill. The streets are pleasant enough, but that wife waving her cabbie hubbie off to work could be Sharon or Tracey, and the welcoming committee outside the parade of shops is most likely wearing a hoodie and smoking a fag.
Ahead are Roding Valley Meadows, the largest remaining water meadows in Essex. That's landscape code for "liable to flood", hence nobody lives right by the river. Instead the western banks of the Roding follow a sequence of sports grounds, here cricket, further up football and rugby, and a favoured spot for exercising dogs and children when no matches are scheduled. The Loop skirts round a big lake, ideal for bread-chucking, then crosses the river before doubling back (unsigned) on the opposite banks. Here I met a thin woman in a pink cardigan with two feisty hounds called Dapper and Boudicca, both thankfully distracted by the opportunity to play in the shallows by the weir. But five minutes later the pair bounded out of the woodland ahead of me and launched themselves at the ankle of a lady out walking a Highland Terrier. An actual Essex catfight ensued, with the injured party pleading for the offending hounds to be put on a lead and the owner screeching that her dogs weren't dangerous, when they quite clearly were.
If you're not obsessed by walking the Loop you should break from the proper route here and continue through the Roding Valley Nature Reserve to Debden station. The lush riverside route looks far more interesting than what I got to walk next, venturing to Chigwell instead. The access road to a David Lloyd tennis centre round the back of an unbuilt motorway service station is nobody's idea of a scenic stroll. From the bridge across the M11 there are distant views of City towers, plus the attractive residential ridge over which you've just walked. And the walk ends with a good half mile of Chigwell pavement, past the front of many an Englishman's castle, any of which could easily be Dalentrace. The personalised numberplate density is high, and the number of unpaved front gardens correspondingly low. And outside Chigwell station there's a plaque on the wall exhorting you to follow section 20 of the London Loop. That's a much better walk, but 19 had its moments.
That's right, TfL are taking down the Walk London website before its replacement is fully up and running. All the printable maps and directions for the Capital Ring, London Loop, Jubilee Greenway etc will disappear, and may take several months to reappear in a new format on the TfL website.
This sounds very much like the application of government cost-cutting protocols. But the remaining mystery is why TfL's replacement site won't initially be able to host Walk London's existing resources.
Last night, at a swanky adult education centre in Bishopsgate, one of London's finest websites celebrated its 10th birthday. Londonist has been firing out several posts a day since 2004, on a wildly diverse range of topics, so a slap-up alcohol-fuelled party was clearly called for. Not that yesterday was their actual 10th birthday, you understand. The first post in the Londonist archive - on drunkard-benches in Islington, since you ask - dates back to October 25th, not October 14th. But one should never let facts like this get in the way of a good room booking, hence invites were sent and the bubbly flowed.
Londonist, you may remember, evolved out of a less well known blog called The Big Smoker. The brainchild of Rob Hinchcliffe and Euan Mitchell, it lifted the Guardian's award for best designed British blog back in 2003. Euan then decided to get into bed with an American stable of websites ending in -ist, becoming their first overseas partner, hence the rebrand and the October 2004 relaunch. They even linked to my blog in their sidebar, back in the day when blogs did that sort of thing, in a rolling news and features kind of way. It's hard not to have a soft spot for a pioneering survivor. [Londonist history podcast]
The London skyline logo has been a constant throughout those ten years, apart from that fateful day in 2011 when the poor old BT Tower was ousted by a silhouetted Gherkin and Shard. The rest of the site's evolved rather more over the years. Time was when each story appeared sequentially down the page, like only the most stuck-in-the-mud old school bloggers do these days, and you could read the entire current output all in one go. Before long it was first paragraph only, then top level headlines and teaser text to encourage you to click through, and now we're in full-on mobile and tablet optimised territory.
The site's always covered a wide range of topics. It started out quite eclectic, more likely to comment than report, but carving out an informed niche of its very own. As Londonist has grown so its newsier side has been overtaken somewhat by an entertainment vibe, taking on Time Out at its own game (and, quite frankly, doing a better job). As a team-built website the diversity of its contributors is its strength, so that whether you're interested in cocktails, fringe theatre or videos of tube stations there'll be something for you soon enough. And OK, sometimes there's some full-on sponsored crap to pay the bills, but at least that's flagged up at the start of the article so you know you're being spun to and can move on.
You might well have got an invite to the 10th anniversary do at the Bishopsgate Institute - the Great Hall was packed. The mix include old-school contributors, occasional columnists and miscellaneous 'Friends of Londonist', of which there were several. They even invited me, never thinking I'd go, but when there's free food and booze on offer who'd say no? All descended on the inner East End, not so far from Londonist Towers, for an (early) evening outpouring of thanks.
And I was somewhat surprised, although I guess I shouldn't have been, that so many people I knew turned up. It was almost like the old days when Blogger Meetups were a thing, when people who normally only typed at one another came briefly face to face. Hello to Ian and Tom and Sarah and Andrew and that bloke from the local history website whose name I never remember, and to others too numerous to mention. If I missed you, apologies, I'm not a fan of hand-scrawled name badges, but rest assured that I was not the bloke who came dressed as a taxi.
Did I mention the free food and booze? Most of this came courtesy of clearly-named sponsors, but nobody was expecting the editorial team to have spent Monday night baking, so that was fine. A tiny chocolate cake on a stick was the most unusual freebie, topped off with an edible Londonist 10th birthday sticker, and carefully wrapped in plastic for health and safety reasons. Two grinning ladies from a pie company had turned up to hand out an equally tiny filled pastry, and another bloke had set up a pump of <insert name of supplier here> beer to wash it down. There was even champagne for raising a glass at the appropriate moment, or at least there was something sparkling for raising a cup, but no complaints.
Kris was doing live street art in the corner, this with chunky pens rather than aerosols, and elsewhere Geoff was doing interactive things with tube maps, because you can't go wrong at a London-based party with one of them. And then all the chat and action paused for the special comingtogethermoment, which featured a loved-up video you'll be able to see on the Londonist website later today. There were speeches too, from some of the proud parents who've shepherded this ten year old child towards early adolescence, and I suspect not all the words were as 'unplanned' as their orators made out.
The evening's general flood ofappreciation was an appropriate way to celebrate a site that's grown from one man's part-time output to a full-time team-built concern. If it happens in London it's more likely to get a mention on Londonist than on the BBC, and more likely to be of interest to ordinary people than the majority of stuff in the Evening Standard. Indeed just last weekend my Saturday revolved entirely around something I read on Londonist the night before and would never have known about had they not mentioned it. Ten years down, one expects more than ten to go.
Over the last decade or so, the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern has been home to some pretty massive artworks. That blazing yellow sun, for example, or the big slides, or the stacked-up cardboard boxes. Last year the space took a year off, but as of yesterday the sequence continues with a giant wooden orange and red thing. [3 photos]
There have been bigger things. Occasionally artists use the entire length of the Turbine Hall to house their masterwork, whereas this latest one sits down the end - pretty massive, but stretching barely halfway.
It's called I Don't Know. The Weave of Textile Language for reasons half-guessed and half known only to the artist himself. He's Richard Tuttle, an American sculptor with half a century's work under his belt. Richard is the sort of guy who chops off three inches of rope and calls it art, so we're fortunate to have a more substantial undertaking suspended from the ceiling. Picture a twelve metre high wooden frame, longitudinally symmetrical, occasionally smothered in fabrics of three different hues. That's about it really.
Actually, look a bit closer and the structure's got form. The end nearest the mezzanine is distinctly aerodynamic, and those are two big wings, and the whole thing's representative of a plane or glider. And you'd never guess unless you'd been told but the creation deliberately resembles aeroplane parts in order to "raise the issue of genocide". Richard once qualified to be a pilot, then realised this would have mean dropping bombs on Vietnam, so chose a different career. I can't say I'd ever have spotted this underlying rationale unaided.
His sculpture creates "a huge volume of joyous colour and fluidity", apparently, whereas I thought it had an element of bus station about it. Segmented bays with a curved roof, creating shelter from the elements, and various bits of windswept fabric blown across the surface - that says suburban bus station to me. Obviously it's art so it's whatever you'd like to be, but you're probably on safer ground thinking aeroplane.
Yesterday being launch day all ground floor access to the sculpture was sealed off. This left viewing from the central mezzanine the only option, not ideal when attempting to view a linear artwork. But not to worry, the piece is striking enough hanging in the air... or so you'd think. Instead Richard's piece managed something I've rarely seen in the Turbine Hall before - it was mostly ignored.
Hordes of foreign schoolchildren sat nearby, but they were busy chatting rather than staring. I watched one fresh group approach convinced they were about to pause, but instead they trotted off down the stairs with barely a glance. Adults too generally gave the piece a miss. One rested on the adjacent balcony facing the wrong way, tapping into her phone, while others didn't even wander across that far. And OK, so I looked, and at least one other bloke did too, but the general level of artistic nonchalance surprised me.
One particularly unusual feature of this Turbine Hall presentation is that it's a companion piece to an exhibition taking place elsewhere. Richard Tuttle has a retrospective opening at the Whitechapel Gallery today, across two floors, including that three inch piece of rope and several much larger pieces. I think it's a clever idea, the one major gallery promoting the other, although how many of the Tate's millions of visitors will make it to the East End I have my doubts.
Anyway, the Whitechapel exhibition continues until 14th December, while the Turbine Hall's enormous wooden plane thing will be hanging up until Easter. Surely you'll be able to pop in at some point before then, if only to judgeforyourself the level of spectacle or underwhelm. Not as good as the crack in the floor, rather better than the bunk beds with books on - you'll not be able to decide for yourself without a taking a view.
Londonist, you may remember, evolved out of a less well known blog called The Big Smoker. The brainchild of Rob Hinchcliffe and Euan Mitchell, it lifted the Guardian's award for best designed British blog back in 2003. Euan then decided to get into bed with an American stable of websites ending in -ist, becoming their first overseas partner, hence the rebrand and the October 2004 relaunch. They even linked to my blog in their sidebar, back in the day when blogs did that sort of thing, in a rolling news and features kind of way. It's hard not to have a soft spot for a pioneering survivor. [Londonist history podcast]
And I was somewhat surprised, although I guess I shouldn't have been, that so many people I knew turned up. It was almost like the old days when Blogger Meetups were a thing, when people who normally only typed at one another came briefly face to face. Hello to Ian and Tom and Sarah and Andrew and that bloke from the local history website whose name I never remember, and to others too numerous to mention. If I missed you, apologies, I'm not a fan of hand-scrawled name badges, but rest assured that I was not the bloke who came dressed as a taxi.
