At a special planning meeting on Wednesday night, the future of one of Spitalfields' better looking buildings was decided. That'll be the Fruit and Wool Exchange, a 1920s auction house overlooking the more famous market. Admire the splendid frontage on Brushfield Street, designed sympathetically to blend in with Hawksmoor's magnificent Christ Church at the end of the road. The Exchange used to bustle with traders selling boxes of Jaffas, bags of onions and crates of melons, sourced from countries all around the world. Hundreds of staff were employed for stacking, selling and conveyancing purposes, with fourteen loading bays round the back to ensure that produce reached its destination in pristine condition. To read more about the Fruit and Wool Exchange's heyday head over to the marvellous Spitalfields Life website where you can dribble over the contents of a brochure from 1937. You'll also want to take a look inside the building, courtesy of the same gentle author, to see what its grand staircases and atria look like today. And then perhaps you'll understand why quite so many campaignersare quite so angry.
The greengrocery types moved out in 1991 when the main market over the road emptied. In their place the Exchange became home to smaller businesses, a sort of office block by default, on a really rather low key level. We're in Tower Hamlets rather than the City, despite the big "Corporation of London" sign across the frontage, if only by a hundred metres or so. But the City proper is keen to move in, courtesy of financial brokerage dealers Icap. They're currently based at Broadgate Circus but are keen to expand when their lease expires, so have been searching around for somewhere bigger but cheaper. Their eyes alighted on the Fruit and Wool Exchange site - ideally situated, but alas the building wasn't quite what they wanted. Icap require large unpartitioned floors for dealing, which is not at all what the F&WE offers, so their plans involve knocking the building down and starting again. Tower Hamlets council said no, repeatedly no, that definitely wouldn't be appropriate. But on Wednesday the Mayor said yes, and the Mayor wins, so the Fruit and Wool Exchange loses.
Icap's plans are for a mixed use city block, as is the custom these days, combining 36000 square metres of office space with a mini business hub and small retail units. That's very much the model around Spitalfields, whose main market building was transformed a few years back into an over-shiny tourist magnet. Now there are patisseries and boutiques around the traders' stalls, as well as whopping great glass office blocks down one end where elegant but rundown buildings once stood. The entire Fruit and Wool Exchange block will be demolished, with the sole exception of the Brushfield Street façade which will linger on solely as a thin screen, a heritage veneer to cover up the modern walls behind. Expect a new public open space, by which the developers mean a thin courtyard surrounded by shops, and some sort of covered arcade through the middle of the site watched over by security. It could all be complete by 2015, if all goes to plan. A very informative public overview of the scheme was available here until late last night, but mysteriously the developers appear to have removed it (and diverted the link) since then.
You're probably very cross by now at the wanton destruction of an old building, but you might not be quite so cross if you'd walked past it recently, as I did last night in heavy rain. The main entrance may be lovely, with tall thin doors, then windows, stacked high to the semi-circular pediment. And the lettering's proper, very much of its era. But the rest of the frontage, to either side, that's a bit more ordinary. It's nice, definitely nicer than the faux-Georgian shop units on the opposite side of the road, and this is all staying, remember. But it's not the sort of thing you'd expect campaigners to get very excited about. Indeed the eastern side of the Exchange building facing Christ Church probably wouldn't earn a second glance from the majority of passers-by. Walk all the way round the block to White's Row and the view gets worse. Here stands one of the Corporation of London's multi-storeycar parks, a large and unsatisfying beast, and not necessarily somewhere you'd like to be after dark. All of this is going, completely and utterly, which'll be a loss only to any Icap brokers who were planning on driving their bonus-bought motor to work.
The pub on the northwestern corner is also doomed. The Gun is a Truman Hanbury & Buxton pub, taking its name from the Artillery barracks established very nearby by Henry VIII. But that last sentence imbues the place with more historical gravitas than it deserves, because the existing building dates back no earlier than 1929. The developers have plans to rebuild something similar-looking in the new development, a pub no smaller than now, and the landlord appears to be very much on side. When bankers come along and offer you revamped premises, it's often hard to resist. But the outlook's perhaps not so rosy for the hundreds currently employed in small businesses within the main building. Leaseholders have just been served notice to quit on 1st December, which doesn't leave long to pack up and get out. They'll be given preferential rates in the new building - the first year rent-free and the second half-price - but it's not clear how many could afford a full whack third year in an upwardly aspirational neighbourhood.
One further thing the new development will destroy is one of the most notorious streets in London. That's Dorset Street - in Victorian times a 'rookery' packed with prostitutes, short-term lodgers and criminals. Jack the Ripper's final victim met her end precisely here, mutilated in her room overnight, her screams overlooked amongst the usual hue and cry. But Mary Kelly's abode has long disappeared beneath the Fruit and Wool Exchange, while the White's Row car park wiped out the opposite flank four decades later. Ripper tours can't visit the site today, only peer past barriers down a reconfigured service road where the former loading bays stand shuttered. Redevelopment will see this thoroughfare wiped from the map, as the Spitalfields area continues to coagulate into larger and larger blocks. Tower Hamlets have insisted on some memorial remaining, for what it's worth, but the murder site now looks destined to be engulfed within this anodyne office complex.
There are greater architectural battles to be fought in London than the Fruit and Wool Exchange and its adjacent multi-storey. But it's clear that heritage now counts for very little when the alternative is jobs and shopping, because the economy is the Mayor's clear overriding priority. Indeed every time Boris has been called on to judge some new building project turned down by councillors, every time he's ruled in favour of the redevelopers. I'm particularly sad in this case, because Icap could have gone elsewhere but chose not to, thereby destroying an illustrious interior for the sake of partition-free trading floors. A predatory purchase has been allowed to succeed, stripping away a not insignificant slice of Spitalfields' historic character. I'm sure that tourists will lap up the new building, and that the brokers can't wait to move in. But the end result looks set to be a vapid architectural pastiche, vainly attempting to mimic the 1920s building in modern style, with the 21st century found wanting.
I'm quite good at starting emails. If it's a personal email I invariably start with Hi, even if it's the first time we've spoken. With a work email my default intro remains Dear, just to be polite, because it's best to be on the safe side. But that's only until I see evidence my recipient uses Hi instead of Dear, in which case I switch and it's Hi, Hi, Hi all the way.
It's the end of emails I struggle with. The valediction to write at the end, to sign the whole thing off, just above my name. What to use, what to say, without looking like a complete plonker?
At school I was taught to use Yours faithfully and Yours sincerely. They formed the basis of many a grammar exercise, so it's been drummed into me which should be used in each specific opening context. But they're not for emails, not unless it's something terribly formal upon which my job depends. Email endings are different.
Kind regards. I can't type this without feeling vaguely uncomfortable. It's a bit too nice, a bit sickly, and nothing I'd ever say to you in real life. Indeed if you use 'kind regards' at the bottom of your email to me, I probably wriggle a little uncomfortably and wish you hadn't.
Best regards. This is more common, isn't it? It's almost the new Yours sincerely, to the extent where I can almost imagine it being taught at school. And I do use it sometimes, but I never enjoy typing it. It's bland, I always think, and a combination of two words that's essentially meaningless.
Regards. This is the ultra-brief option, with all adjectives removed. A quick sign-off, a mere placeholder, something to get the email finished as quickly as possible. As a side issue I never know whether you're supposed to add a full stop at the end - it looks wrong with, it looks wrong without.
Best wishes. This sign-off predates email, which gives it a certain authenticity. But still no gravitas, which is why I avoid this one like the plague. It's the sort of thing an auntie would write in a birthday card, not a final phrase I'd want you to remember me by.
All the best. I like this one. I shouldn't, because it's woefully hollow, with a word seemingly missing somewhere along the way. All the best what? - it's never clear. But I think this has an optimistic ambiguity that fits well in most situations.
Take care. Whereas this one's not so good. It may be only eight letters long, but there's an unspoken hint within that something terrible is about to take place. You might as well end your email with "Watch out!" instead. It's much too negative for me, and I'd hope for you too.
Cheers. A very chummy sign-off, and almost certainly over-familiar for professional use. I suspect it appears most frequently in terse emails dashed off fast, and in replies to replies to replies. I'm guilty of this one sometimes, but only if I'm sure I know you well.
Many thanks. This one's my favourite. It's chirpy and upbeat, whilst simultaneously respectful and deferential. I'll only use it if I haven't overdone use of the word "thankyou" earlier in the email. But I like to acknowledge my appreciation of the other person's efforts, and that's always a good note to end on.
Perhaps you're an old school writer who sticks to the more formal means of sign-off. Perhaps you have a stock phrase you use all the time to conclude an email, typed out as a reflex action without thought. Or perhaps like me you change your valediction according to audience, situation or mood. I'm probably thinking too hard here, morphing my email signature solely to reflect what I think you want to hear. I might even be better off missing out the last line altogether, rather than shoehorning in some limp phrase purely for the sake of it.
Things were so much easier in the offline days of Yours sincerely and Yours faithfully. But hurrah for the freedom to end our emails how we please, even if we sometimes sound forced, cheesy or false for doing so. All the best sign off with due regard, so take care.
It's always exciting to hear that the Visit London website has updated. It's especially exciting when that's a major, fundamental upgrade, one that's "cleaner, more inspirational and engaging". And it's almost too good to be true when that means "search and data have been reorganised to make it straightforward to find what you want." Improved search on the Visit London website? My dreams have been answered.
I have one question I regularly want to ask the Visit London website, and that's "What's on this weekend?" I'm interested in special, one-off things - like festivals, openings and events - which otherwise it's easy to overlook. It's quite an important question too, because every weekend there are scores of special one-off things happening all over the capital which rely on people noticing them in order to thrive. But it's a question that the Visit London website has always been really rubbish at answering, preferring to point out that Billy Elliot's on at the theatre, or that the Boat Race is happening next April.
I know that the Visit London website's not really aimed at Londoners. There's a clue in the name, in that nobody needs to visit London if they already live there. But with a database of thousands of upcoming events at hand, you'd think that someone would make a better job of presenting that information in as widely useful a way as possible. Not yet they haven't. Maybe this revamped website will make all the difference.
So, "what's on this weekend?" Best look in the category called 'Special Events', I think, rather than all the longer term stuff in Film and Theatre and Art. Aha, so it's Chocolate Week this week, apparently, which is exactly the sort of thing I'd hope to find listed here. But Special Event number two is the Lord Mayor's Show, which isn't on for another month, number three is Walking With Dinosaurs, which starts on Boxing Day, and number four is Bonfire Night, which is you know when. Only one headline event is in the immediate future, and that's not so useful, not unless you're planning seriously ahead.
Scroll down and there are further feature categories, like the London Events Calendar. This runs from this month's Restaurant Festival to next year's Notting Hill Carnival, but is disappointingly high-level/low-res throughout. Then there's More London Events, which is almost all expensive things that tourists like, not fun stuff in Brixton. And, sorry, but when the "Top 10 Special Events" includes Changing The Guard, Easter and Open House 2013, you know this is a rubbish generic list designed for minimal updating.
Looks like we're stuck with Visit London's search engine, then. "Browse all 3,996 Special Events", the link says, so let's. Ah, it's a list of 3,996 special events, unsullied by human hand, spread across 199 separate pages. You can click through page by page, or you can choose from one of four pre-selected orders. There's "Popularity" order, which starts with Christmas in London, then rates the Relentless Energy Drink Freeze Festival above Chinese New Year. There's "Our Favourites" order, which suggests that Visit London really hates Sunbury's Riverside Arts Centre. There's "Price" order, which seems to strip out anything costing more than 50p, and begins with an event taking place in 50 weeks time. And there's "Name" order, which must be some IT geek's idea of an A-Z listing, but good luck finding the page where the Ms start.
Which leaves the "Show Search Options" button as our last chance. By narrowing down these 3,996 events, surely we'll finally be able to discover what's on this weekend. Except no, this is the reverse of a search engine, because it only allows you to select incredibly broad categories. Search for "Things To Do" and "What's On" and those 3,996 events suddenly broaden to 22,057, and quite frankly you needn't have bothered.
Most amazingly of all, in the grand trumpeted website relaunch, the ability to search the website by date has been withdrawn. You used to be able to select a day, a week, a time period of your choice, and now you can't! All that's left is a useless automated sinkhole into which thousands of pre-formatted events have been entered, and retrieving anything appropriate is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It may be cheaper to get robots to power your website, but only a human can truly recommend the cream of what's worth seeing.
There is a well-hidden Visit London blog, updated regularly, where you will still find details of more upmarket upcoming events. But, like I said, the Visit London website isn't aimed at Londoners. It's a honeytrap for those from elsewhere, especially abroad, to discover that London is so bursting with fantastic and great things to do that they'll want to book a trip here. The site has plenty of seasonal treats and general highlights, but try focusing on the week you're in town and the search engine falls apart. The new website design no doubt looks much better on an iPad, but alas it's even more rubbish at answering the question "What's on this weekend?" than ever before. Shame.
It's now a month since the end of the London 2012 Games. It seems much longer, but it's truly only thirty days since that shirtsleeves evening at the Paralympic Closing Ceremony. It's got so much cooler and darker since then, alas, and that elusive national hallelujah feeling has all but slipped away.
Time enough to begin the removal of the temporary infrastructure to the south of the Olympic Park. Like the big footbridge on the Greenway spanning Stratford High Street, a six-lane pedestrian overpass installed to cope with the anticipated flood of spectators to and from West Ham station. A smart wooden bridge was built, blessed with the persistent whiff of timber, complete with two internal walls for late-night lighting. Despite LOCOG's regular pleadings the route from West Ham was never packed, but the bridge served a vital purpose all the same. And now it's going. After several weeks of being open but going nowhere, suddenly metal barriers have gone up and deconstruction time awaits. I hope they'll recycle it well.
Meanwhile, underneath the footbridge, a useless pedestrian crossing. There never used to be one here, so those using the Greenway had to divert a few minutes up the road to wait there instead. A direct crossing was essential during the Games for those with wheelchairs or other mobility problems, joined by spectators who couldn't be bothered to walk across the bridge and preferred the level option. But the crossing was always supervised, to prevent delays to Games Lane vehicles, and for the last month it's been barriered off as if the general public can't be trusted to use it. It is located rather close to a major road junction, the southern entrance to Westfield, and excess button pressing might impede traffic to this important retail centre. The good news is that the pedestrian crossing will be permanent, just not quite in its current form. The Olympic crossing stopped all traffic on both sides of the dual carriageway, whereas the revamped crossing will be staggered with a brief dogleg in the middle. For this the central reservation needs to be widened, apparently, which'll require the removal of one eastbound lane of traffic. Better for walkers and cross-flow cyclists, worse for cars and buses. But no sign of that happening yet, presumably they want the bridge out of the way first, so for now the Greenway crossing remains an ungrasped legacy.
As does the Greenway itself. It's still open south of Stratford High Street, but it's no longer green. Major works were carried out for a year or two before the Games to ensure that the formerly narrow footpath could cope with predicted footfall. A split-surface path was created, one side for bikes, the other for pedestrians, taking up just under half the width of the sewertop. The concrete mix used in the cycle half included Ground Granulated Blastfurnace Slag, honest, while the pedestrian half contained Pulverised Fly Ash, a by-product from power stations. Quite attractive, and extremely sustainable, but, alas, nowhere near wide enough. So the contractors tore up all the remaining grass and flowers and laid tarmac instead, right the way across. Purely temporary, designed for four weeks' use... but it's still there.
I went to a planning consultation event four years ago at which we were assured that the Greenway would be made beautiful for the Games. There'd be interesting cobbles, and wooden benches, and beds of wild flowers, and general eco-loveliness, so they said. The benches went in, and some nice flowers, but the latter didn't last. Instead we've got a solid superhighway, all the way from Stratford to West Ham, optimised for pedestrian numbers that'll never return. One hopes that legacy plans involve someone coming along to dig up all the extra tarmac and lay grass instead, but that would cost money, and as yet there's no sign. In the meantime this is not so much a Greenway as a Greyway, and a shadow of what it ought to be.
More bad news by Abbey Creek, where the footpath down to Three Mills has been sealed off, again. It had been closed for five years at British Waterways' whim, then silently reopened early in 2012 for what turned out to be not long. A temporary closure during the Games has become more permanent, alas, now blocked off by a sturdy fence. A sign announces that Thames Water are constructing a culvert for the neighbouring Abbey Mills Pumping Station, a fact confirmed by the general destruction of vegetation immediately beyond. This is work associated with the Lee Tunnel, a major project designed to ease river pollution hereabouts, and therefore essential. But it does mean the path will be closed "for a period of 27 months", which means diversions until at least (sigh) Christmas 2014.
At the Greenway's West Ham exit, the Olympic lift has been decommissioned. Someone'll surely be along soon to dismantle it, it's a complete waste of machinery otherwise. But the temporary staircase is still there, so maybe it's not temporary after all, which would be good because the alternative descent is a three minute ramped detour. Meanwhile at West Ham station, the footbridge at the far end of the District line platforms isn't long for this world. It was installed to move a million Stadium-bound spectators, but probably managed rather less than that. On Sunday a digger moved in to scrape away at its foundations, watched by at least a dozen chaps in hi-vis, presumably on overtime. That's one of the reasons the District line was closed last weekend, and will be again next.
So, to summarise, just because the Olympics have finished doesn't mean everything's hunky dory round here. Various bits of infrastructure are being removed, various post-Games improvements have yet to take place, various acts of beautification show no sign of happening, and various paths are going to be closed for years. A month on, only a month on, and still so much yet to be done.
It's usually Petticoat Lane, Brick Lane or Columbia Road that spring to mind when thinking about London's Sunday markets. But they're not especially representative of where the majority of outer Londoners go, especially on the east side of town where the capital rubs up against Essex. A much more likely spot is Dagenham Sunday Market, down by the industrial Thames, where ten thousand a week come to look, to browse, and to buy. You'll not see it mentioned in the style guides, nor most likely will you ever visit. But I was passing by, unlikely as it seems, so it seemed only right and proper to step inside.
There can be few grimmer corners of London than the road out of Creekmouth [video]. Creekmouth itself isn't uplifting - a long row of smelly light industry and trading estates along the lower reaches of the River Roding. The council doesn't bother to repair the pavement because nobody lives here, so the path breaks up into fractured lumps and mucky puddles. The Roding Flood Barrier looms over all, site of an unlikely nature reserve and well-hidden Thames-bend viewpoint. Most of the week the sole point of social focus is The Crooked Billet pub, now under new management and reborn as the "River Club" (bedecked with slightly dodgy silhouettes of gyrating women). But on Sunday that's dead, and all the gates hereabouts are locked, and the road's available for boy racers to rev unchallenged. And yet there are 4×4s with personalised numberplates passing by, and a row of less-loved cars parked alongside the transformer coils, because the weekly market is in full swing. [3 photos]
Most of the week these acres of tarmac are empty but on Sunday hundreds of stallholders move in, followed closely behind (at 9am sharp) by the punters. Parking's free, because you'd never get anyone out here otherwise. There's also an hourly bus from Barking station - that's very new, but very necessary when TfL only run 10 buses here a week. The organisers have been cunning and arranged the stalls around the edge of the car park in a C-shape. You'll not be milling willy nilly through a grid, you'll be guided to walk a single perimeter all the way round and back again, past absolutely everyone. Probably twice. What you may not spot is that the farthest flank runs alongside the edge of the Thames and the mudflats beyond. Google's aerial camera flew over on a Sunday, fortuitously, so you can see what I mean.
Don't think bric-a-brac, think household staples. And don't think haute couture, think jumpers, trackies and market shoes. Some of the shoes are way off catwalk level - more blinged-up plimsolls and garish stack heels. Others are much more sensible, say £20 Caterpillar-like safety boots for the working hubby in your life. As for the jumpers, and some of the handbags, the "in" logo this summer appears to be the diamond skull. That's for the adults, while Disney princesses and Ben 10 are still very much in demand for younger punters. For your garden, maybe a golden cherub. For your kitchen cupboard, a family-sized box of Persil. For your head, a knitted hat or flat cap. There's absolutely no knock-off, the market demands legal goods only, although I'm willing to bet that the "Calvin Klein" undies I saw on a couple of stalls are 101% counterfeit.
There is a definite Essex feel to the punters at the market, even though that county's still two boroughs away. No The Only Way Is Essex starlets, however, because the clientèle's much more Wickford than Chigwell. A lot of tattoos, a lot of pushchairs, and a lot of extended families traipsing contentedly around. Apparently Stacey Solomon buys her frocks here, and there are certainly a lot of potential X Factor contestants milling about in the aisles. As for the ethnic mix, that's as mostly-white as Barking and Dagenham used to be, but no longer is. I got the definite sense that for many this riverside bazaar is the great Sunday day out, especially those trying to make their weekly budget stretch that little bit further.
A surprisingly high number of stalls are devoted to catering. A small pie and mash cart lurks in one corner, near tables that offer "very very good" Indian food. Elsewhere the smell of fresh-fried donuts permeates, and thickset ladies wait to serve up sliced roast pork in a roll. But it's "something and chips" that's everywhere, for this is the great Dagenham Market Sunday lunch. Large areas are laid out with tables, beneath pink and white striped plastic awnings, providing a weatherproof cocoon where you can slump down with bacon butty, egg roll, hamburger or whatever and chips. At Julie's Fast Food Bar a Cadbury hot chocolate's only 60p, the menu peaks with Jumbo Cheese Dog, and a printed sign reassures "Smokers Welcome". I succumbed instead to a bag of white chocolate shapes from Gary's Confectionery, and a bag of sugar-free rhubarb and custard for afters.
I don't think Brick Lane has anything to worry about. This is very much a market with a provincial flavour, more like you might find on a Norfolk airfield than a bijou street. It's the sort of place that sells Sock's, and Jersey's, and Shoe's, and Chip's, and from which you're most likely to bring your purchases home in a blue plastic bag. Expect the retail circuit to be very busy if you arrive in the morning, but rather less rammed if you're still here in the afternoon. And be warned that the last free bus back to civilisation leaves at 3pm. If you miss that, as one unfortunate lady and her family managed yesterday, it's a bloody long trek back via dodgy pavements to reach anything resembling transport connectedness. Best bring your car, and the kids, maybe nan too, make a day of it.
» I wasn't planning to visit Trafalgar Square on Saturday, I didn't know anything was happening, but a row of telltale tents along the front of the National Gallery reveals otherwise. Which nationality or religion might be imprinting its image beneath Nelson's Column today? Ah, it's Japan, in the annual Matsuri festival, with lanterns and rising suns dotted all around the parapets. London's Japanese community are out in force, as well as hundreds of others enjoying the culture, the live music and the food. A lot of hot food is available, from miso soup to tempura, and several clusters of pleased-looking folk sat on the steps slurping noodles. Two of the major sponsors appear to be airlines, one dishing out blue balloons, while martial arts are on display up near the Fourth Plinth. Artistic visitors can get folding with the British Origami Society, or add their drawings to a (not entirely convincing) Manga Wall. Here's Fran's report of what you missed, and how wonderfully colourful it all was. But if you're thinking you might like to have visited, sorry, it's all over until 2013. The Visit London website had no mention, and there was bugger all about it in this week's giveaway Time Out. In a London where listings are so inadequately incomplete, alas, it's amazing such events get any audience at all.
» The Saatchi Gallery, on Chelsea's Kings Road, can be a bit hit or miss. Their idea of contemporary art is often a bit too contemporary for me, or talentless as those less positively inclined might say. But the current exhibition is three floors of photography, which makes a refreshing change, and not a pile of twisted spray-painted metal in sight. A great variety of styles is on show, from deep-coloured landscapes to sliced Hollywood portraits, plus a woman with an octopus for a face, which is even more arresting than it sounds. But my favourite gallery featured works by Jon Rafman, if you can call "cut and pasting images off Google Street View" work. Jon's been searching five years of camera-car images from around the world for the unlikely, the appalling and the absurd. A body lies covered in the street, a bedraggled child hides behind a bin, a fox squeezes through a gap in some railings, a tornado strikes ahead, a van catches fire, a policeman raises his arms in triumph, a stag walks across the road, that sort of thing. What's unusual is the way each shot has been captured automatically, without human intervention, resulting in a candid if often blurry reflection of real life. Look here. Or visit The Nine Eyes of Google Street View before 5th November.
» "Hello, I need my Gold Card discount added to my Oyster." The man in the ticket office is confused. He's not heard this one before, and proceeds to tell me that a Gold Card and an Oyster card are very different things. At least I think that's what he says, but one of us doesn't speak English as clearly as the other. I persist in my request, attempting to explain that I've just paid for another annual travelcard but I won't get off-peak tube discounts until this fact is manually added. Perhaps it's no surprise he's baffled, it does sound stupid - although the man behind the same counter last year knew what he was doing and actioned an immediate upgrade. Further semi-comprehensible conversation ensues, on both sides, at length. It's fortunate I've chosen to visit on a day when the station is closed, so there's nobody behind me in the queue to inconvenience. At this point the staff member disappears off to make a phone call, which I can almost overhear but don't understand. He returns to his terminal, waves my card around and returns it almost immediately with "NR Railcard" added. All credit to him, this update's never been completed that fast before, and my thanks are duly given. So, just a reminder to anyone with an annual travelcard, you won't get a third off off-peak tube travel unless you ask. And good luck asking.
» My three millionth visitor has got in touch, by email. He's originally from New Zealand, but now tweaks Formula 1 cars in the Midlands for a living. Hello and thanks.
» Now the Olympics are over, haven't the weekend tube engineering works returned with a vengeance?
» There's an autumn sale taking place at the London Transport Museum shop. Minor ranges only, but just in case you're interested.
» The main Britain & LondonTourist Information Centre at the foot of Regent Street has closed down. No replacement is evident.
» On Chelsea matchdays, Brompton Cemetery becomes a ratrun of blue shirted blokes streaming through trying to reach Stamford Bridge before kickoff.
» It's Wandsworth Artists Open House this weekend and next, if you fancy poking around the artier parts of the borough.
» Beware of cafes in Kew which don't reveal how much tea and cakes cost until after you've consumed them.
» The lights were on in the Aquatic Centre last night, and at the top of the Orbit, and around the pink pods encircling the Olympic Stadium.
In my youth, cupcakes were stodgy sponge roundels topped with a thick sugar disc. They were usually flavoured as 'lemon' or 'chocolate' or whatever, but this seemed based more on colour than taste. As a special treat some had sugar paper transfers of Magic Roundabout characters (or something similar) on top. We'd buy them in mass-produced packs, never from the local bakery. At home we made fairy cakes with a thin squirt of icing, plus perhaps hundreds and thousands or small silver balls as decoration. But we never had the artisan sponge creations known as cupcakes today, baked by budding Nigellas in bespoke ovens, finished off with ostentatious swirls of piped sugar.
Cupcakes have acquired a mystical value, at least in certain circles, as a much desired luxury commodity. Heaven knows why, they're only sponge cake and icing, but people seem willing to fork out vastly more than the cost of the ingredients for a few bites of surreptitious sweetness. Once or twice, every now and then, lovely. But it's hard to understand how an entire industry has grown up to flog posh confectionery to consenting adults with money to burn.
Leaping onto this bandwagon are London Cupcake Tours, a private outfit with a mission to show you London's finest sugar trifles. Nobody's thought to offer this before - a cupcake guide for those who don't know where to start, or a unique treat for those who do. Five bakeries have signed up for the tour, ranging from Primrose Hill to Covent Garden, which sounds like a pleasant trip across the capital in itself. You get to sample the wares in each, perhaps compare and contrast, and all for just £34.50.
Hang on, £34.50, that's quite a lot of cash. Let's see what LCT provide you with for that money. Five cupcake vouchers to exchange, one in every location. Some branded cardboard boxes to keep your cupcake purchases in, although they might rattle around a bit unless well wrapped. A cupcake guide, which looks like a folded piece of A4 card, although it's hard to be certain from the photo. An Oyster card holder with the pink logo of London Cupcake Tours stamped on it. A pink case, and a tote bag to slip it into. And that's your lot. The tour itself had better be good.
Except, oh, this isn't a proper tour. The organisers aren't going to turn up and lead you across London telling tales of baking success as they go. All they've done is provide a list of five bakeries and instructions on how to get there, in your own time, maybe not even on the same day. These are self-guided tours, with your travel costs extra, which isn't at all what's suggested by the company's name.
And when you do arrive at the shop counter, your prize at each location is a single cupcake. You won't even end up with a half dozen by the end of it, you'll be one short. The average London cupcake costs £2.50, my research suggests, which means the shop value of your tour collection is only £12.50. While you're tramping the streets dangling your new pink bag, the organisers are sitting at home counting their profit.
OK, it's a business, and we all need to make a living in these turbulent and austere times. And wandering round the capital sampling the occasional midget sponge might indeed be your idea of a good time. But London Cupcake Tours appears to be exceptionally poor value for money - just a few bits of paper and some vouchers in a bag, and barely a tour at all. If you genuinely wanted to spend £34.50 on cupcakes it wouldn't be difficult to Google the name of some bakeries and go buy lots more than five. Indeed, if you're mug enough to send me £20 I'll email you the address of a Lola's, a Bea's or a Hummingbird, and you'll still have enough left over for more vanilla swirls than LCT are offering. And if you find any flat yellow cupcakes with Ermintrude, Zebedee or Dougal stamped on top, do please let me know.
At a special planning meeting on Wednesday night, the future of one of Spitalfields' better looking buildings was decided. That'll be the Fruit and Wool Exchange, a 1920s auction house overlooking the more famous market. Admire the splendid frontage on Brushfield Street, designed sympathetically to blend in with Hawksmoor's magnificent Christ Church at the end of the road. The Exchange used to bustle with traders selling boxes of Jaffas, bags of onions and crates of melons, sourced from countries all around the world. Hundreds of staff were employed for stacking, selling and conveyancing purposes, with fourteen loading bays round the back to ensure that produce reached its destination in pristine condition. To read more about the Fruit and Wool Exchange's heyday head over to the marvellous Spitalfields Life website where you can dribble over the contents of a brochure from 1937. You'll also want to take a look inside the building, courtesy of the same gentle author, to see what its grand staircases and atria look like today. And then perhaps you'll understand why quite so many campaigners are quite so angry.
You're probably very cross by now at the wanton destruction of an old building, but you might not be quite so cross if you'd walked past it recently, as I did last night in heavy rain. The main entrance may be lovely, with tall thin doors, then windows, stacked high to the semi-circular pediment. And the lettering's proper, very much of its era. But the rest of the frontage, to either side, that's a bit more ordinary. It's nice, definitely nicer than the faux-Georgian shop units on the opposite side of the road, and this is all staying, remember. But it's not the sort of thing you'd expect campaigners to get very excited about. Indeed the eastern side of the Exchange building facing Christ Church probably wouldn't earn a second glance from the majority of passers-by. Walk all the way round the block to White's Row and the view gets worse. Here stands one of the Corporation of London's multi-storey car parks, a large and unsatisfying beast, and not necessarily somewhere you'd like to be after dark. All of this is going, completely and utterly, which'll be a loss only to any Icap brokers who were planning on driving their bonus-bought motor to work.
One further thing the new development will destroy is one of the most notorious streets in London. That's Dorset Street - in Victorian times a 'rookery' packed with prostitutes, short-term lodgers and criminals. Jack the Ripper's final victim met her end precisely here, mutilated in her room overnight, her screams overlooked amongst the usual hue and cry. But Mary Kelly's abode has long disappeared beneath the Fruit and Wool Exchange, while the White's Row car park wiped out the opposite flank four decades later. Ripper tours can't visit the site today, only peer past barriers down a reconfigured service road where the former loading bays stand shuttered. Redevelopment will see this thoroughfare wiped from the map, as the Spitalfields area continues to coagulate into larger and larger blocks. Tower Hamlets have insisted on some memorial remaining, for what it's worth, but the murder site now looks destined to be engulfed within this anodyne office complex.
Meanwhile, underneath the footbridge, a useless pedestrian crossing. There never used to be one here, so those using the Greenway had to divert a few minutes up the road to wait there instead. A direct crossing was essential during the Games for those with wheelchairs or other mobility problems, joined by spectators who couldn't be bothered to walk across the bridge and preferred the level option. But the crossing was always supervised, to prevent delays to Games Lane vehicles, and for the last month it's been barriered off as if the general public can't be trusted to use it. It is located rather close to a major road junction, the southern entrance to Westfield, and excess button pressing might impede traffic to this important retail centre. The good news is that the pedestrian crossing will be permanent, just not quite in its current form. The Olympic crossing stopped all traffic on both sides of the dual carriageway, whereas the revamped crossing will be staggered with a brief dogleg in the middle. For this the central reservation needs to be widened, apparently, which'll require the removal of one eastbound lane of traffic. Better for walkers and cross-flow cyclists, worse for cars and buses. But no sign of that happening yet, presumably they want the bridge out of the way first, so for now the Greenway crossing remains an ungrasped legacy.
As does the Greenway itself. It's still open south of Stratford High Street, but it's no longer green. Major works were carried out for a year or two before the Games to ensure that the formerly narrow footpath could cope with predicted footfall. A split-surface path was created, one side for bikes, the other for pedestrians, taking up just under half the width of the sewertop. The concrete mix used in the cycle half included Ground Granulated Blastfurnace Slag, honest, while the pedestrian half contained Pulverised Fly Ash, a by-product from power stations. Quite attractive, and extremely sustainable, but, alas, nowhere near wide enough. So the contractors tore up all the remaining grass and flowers and laid tarmac instead, right the way across. Purely temporary, designed for four weeks' use... but it's still there.
More bad news by Abbey Creek, where the footpath down to Three Mills has been sealed off, again. It had been closed for five years at British Waterways' whim, then silently reopened early in 2012 for what turned out to be not long. A temporary closure during the Games has become more permanent, alas, now blocked off by a sturdy fence. A sign announces that Thames Water are constructing a culvert for the neighbouring Abbey Mills Pumping Station, a fact confirmed by the general destruction of vegetation immediately beyond. This is work associated with the Lee Tunnel, a major project designed to ease river pollution hereabouts, and therefore essential. But it does mean the path will be closed "for a period of 27 months", which means diversions until at least (sigh) Christmas 2014.
It's usually Petticoat Lane, Brick Lane or Columbia Road that spring to mind when thinking about London's Sunday markets. But they're not especially representative of where the majority of outer Londoners go, especially on the east side of town where the capital rubs up against Essex. A much more likely spot is Dagenham Sunday Market, down by the industrial Thames, where ten thousand a week come to look, to browse, and to buy. You'll not see it mentioned in the style guides, nor most likely will you ever visit. But I was passing by, unlikely as it seems, so it seemed only right and proper to step inside.
Don't think bric-a-brac, think household staples. And don't think haute couture, think jumpers, trackies and market shoes. Some of the shoes are way off catwalk level - more blinged-up plimsolls and garish stack heels. Others are much more sensible, say £20 Caterpillar-like safety boots for the working hubby in your life. As for the jumpers, and some of the handbags, the "in" logo this summer appears to be the diamond skull. That's for the adults, while Disney princesses and Ben 10 are still very much in demand for younger punters. For your garden, maybe a golden cherub. For your kitchen cupboard, a family-sized box of Persil. For your head, a knitted hat or flat cap. There's absolutely no knock-off, the market demands legal goods only, although I'm willing to bet that the "Calvin Klein" undies I saw on a couple of stalls are 101% counterfeit.
A surprisingly high number of stalls are devoted to catering. A small pie and mash cart lurks in one corner, near tables that offer "very very good" Indian food. Elsewhere the smell of fresh-fried donuts permeates, and thickset ladies wait to serve up sliced roast pork in a roll. But it's "something and chips" that's everywhere, for this is the great Dagenham Market Sunday lunch. Large areas are laid out with tables, beneath pink and white striped plastic awnings, providing a weatherproof cocoon where you can slump down with bacon butty, egg roll, hamburger or whatever and chips. At Julie's Fast Food Bar a Cadbury hot chocolate's only 60p, the menu peaks with Jumbo Cheese Dog, and a printed sign reassures "Smokers Welcome". I succumbed instead to a bag of white chocolate shapes from Gary's Confectionery, and a bag of sugar-free rhubarb and custard for afters.
» The Saatchi Gallery, on Chelsea's Kings Road, can be a bit hit or miss. Their idea of contemporary art is often a bit too contemporary for me, or talentless as those less positively inclined might say. But the current exhibition is three floors of photography, which makes a refreshing change, and not a pile of twisted spray-painted metal in sight. A great variety of styles is on show, from deep-coloured landscapes to sliced Hollywood portraits, plus a woman with an octopus for a face, which is even more arresting than it sounds. But my favourite gallery featured works by Jon Rafman, if you can call "cut and pasting images off Google Street View" work. Jon's been searching five years of camera-car images from around the world for the unlikely, the appalling and the absurd. A body lies covered in the street, a bedraggled child hides behind a bin, a fox squeezes through a gap in some railings, a tornado strikes ahead, a van catches fire, a policeman raises his arms in triumph, a stag walks across the road, that sort of thing. What's unusual is the way each shot has been captured automatically, without human intervention, resulting in a candid if often blurry reflection of real life. Look here. Or visit The Nine Eyes of Google Street View before 5th November.
In my youth, cupcakes were stodgy sponge roundels topped with a thick sugar disc. They were usually flavoured as 'lemon' or 'chocolate' or whatever, but this seemed based more on colour than taste. As a special treat some had sugar paper transfers of Magic Roundabout characters (or something similar) on top. We'd buy them in mass-produced packs, never from the local bakery. At home we made fairy cakes with a thin squirt of icing, plus perhaps hundreds and thousands or small silver balls as decoration. But we never had the artisan sponge creations known as cupcakes today, baked by budding Nigellas in bespoke ovens, finished off with ostentatious swirls of piped sugar.
