And then, unannounced, TfL developed some lovely new online bus maps. None of your static pdfs here, these are Google map mashups, and they're remarkably flexible. Type a route number into the search box and that bus appears as a coloured line on the map. Search for a place or postcode and a list of nearby buses appears, from which you can select any one of your choice. You can zoom out to see the entire route in one go, or zoom in to see each individual bus stop. At bus stops you can find out which other routes stop there, and also read their timetables so that you know what time the next one's due. It's not realtime or anything, and some of the colours are quite hard to see, but it's damned impressive. It reminds me (and reminds Paul) of the onabus.com website which launched in 2008. That still has the advantage of depicting more than one bus route at a time, whereas TfL's single-route offering has greater oomph and more precise maps. Worth a play, I think. And great for day-to-day journey planning, so long as you know which bus you want. If you don't know which bus you want, then TfL's spider diagrams are probably far more useful. Or those paper maps, which remain the least dumbed-down option, I still swear by those.
Winter Olympic Quiz To celebrate the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, here are cryptic clues to 10 different Winter Olympic sports. How many can you guess?
[Yes, I've recycled this from 2006] [Try to remember the answers for 2014]
Sorry, I wasn't going to write about Bank station again today. But I've been prompted to do so by a comment I received yesterday from someone called Audrey.
It's possible that Audrey is a genuine reader, taking me to task for a snobbish high-and-mighty online rant. Or it's conceivable that 'Audrey' works for TfL, and has logged in undercover to give me a piece of her mind. I have no way of knowing which it might be. But I know that Audrey's angry, and that she knows rather a lot about hoardings and high street vouchers. And that she's missed the point of yesterday's post, which was that TfL's information campaign is rubbish, not that TfL staff are generally incompetent.
Twenty minutes later Audrey's comment was followed by one from Craig. Taken at face value, Craig appears to be supporting me rather than Audrey. But something in his tone of voice suggests that he's talking with tongue firmly planted in cheek. So I've added an irony flag at the end of his comment, because I suspect he also thinks I'm an arrogant know-it-all blogging bastard.
That irony flag is fully justified, I think. Thanks "Craig", and thanks "Audrey", for your exasperated comments. But I'm afraid I'm sticking to my central premise, which is that TfL are guilty of a campaign of misinformation regarding the partial closure of Bank/Monument station. I can't be sure whether this misinformation is deliberate, to scare away as many people as possible and keep the passageways emptier than they might have been, or whether it's because their publicity people don't think before they write.
What is clear is that almost everything TfL tell us about using Bank/Monument is too simplistic. On one level it needs to be, because tourists need to understand what's going on and so do folk with English as a second language. Also, it's important for Health & Safety reasons to minimise the possibility of a mega-nasty crush-related incident deep under the Square Mile. But some of us have literacy skills and IQs above 90. We don't need to be spoonfed unhelpful over-generalised statements which state point blank that the whole of Bank is a permanent no-go zone. Statements like...
"Avoid changing trains at Bank" • Central ←→ DLR (yes, probably avoid) • Northern ←→ DLR (should be fine) (unless they're adding some nightmare one-way system on the stairs) • Central ←→ Waterloo & City (no disruption) • Northern ←→ District (no disruption) • Central ←→ Circle (never much fun at the best of times) etc
"Avoid changing trains at Bank" • 8:30am Monday (yes, avoid) • 2:30pm Tuesday (probably not too bad) • 5:30pm Wednesday (might be worth avoiding, in places) • 10:30pm Thursday (almost certainly no hassle at all) • 4:30pm Sunday (almost certainly no hassle at all) etc
"Use alternative stations nearby wherever possible" • on a Central line train at Bond Street, wanting to get to Bank, 8am Friday (no, don't get out at St Paul's, the up escalators at Bank are fine) • standing in the street outside Bank station, wanting to use the Northern line, 12 noon Thursday (no, use Bank station, for heaven's sake) • standing in King William Street, wanting to use the DLR to get to Canary Wharf, 4pm Tuesday (yes, enter via Monument and down to the DLR that way) • at Liverpool Street, trying to get to Waterloo, 10am Saturday (no, take the Central line to Bank, then change to the Waterloo & City) etc
It's OK, you don't have to actually read any of that lot. Just believe me when I say that the Bank situation isn't as cut and dried as TfL would have you believe.
I think the ludicrousness of it all is best summed up by this map, still to be found in every Waterloo & City line carriage. Here's a line with just two stations, and passengers are being advised on a sticker that it's impossible to interchange at one of them. How ridiculous is that?
Sorry, you didn't want to hear me going on and on about all this for a second day. Sorry, the disruption at Bank continues until at least the end of next year, so you're probably going to have to sit through me saying it all again at some point. But, however hard TfL's staff are working to ensure that Bank is upgraded in a safe and timely way, their public information campaign remains a condescending pack of absurd generalisations targeted at gullible sheep.
Sorry Audrey, you probably think I'm even more of a twat now than you did yesterday. And sorry to everybody else, because today I was originally planning to write a sweet post about a tea lady instead. Some other time.
For a couple of years now, TfL have been very keen to persuade you not to visit Bank/Monument station. Anyone would think there was a radioactive leak down there, or a top secret government bunker, the amount of effort they've gone to in order to keep passengers well away. Not so - the disruption relates to the ongoing upgrade of the station's umpteen escalators, and the need to close off various subterranean routes while renovation work proceeds. But, as for suggestions that travellers should avoid Bank/Monument altogether, TfL's publicity overdrive continues to massively overstate the case. Yes folks, it's time to tear apart yet another devious and misleading press release.
The news item's barely started and we already have two conflicting messages. The headline, which is what most people will read, warns against changing at Bank full stop. The opening line clarifies things, and narrows things down to warn users away from the DLR, Northern and Central lines. Even this, as it turns out, is a vast over-simplification and unnecessary scaremongering.
Pity the poor DLR passengers at Bank. Their station was closed over Christmas and throughout January for track improvement work, and now, just one month later, access is going to be horribly restricted again. Entrance and exit via Monument would be damned inconvenient for many, especially those trying to get to the Central line via a lengthy detour along the street above. As for anyone changing between the DLR and Northern lines, there are two direct fixed staircases linking those two platforms, so to even think of interchanging via Monument would be sheer lunacy. And anyway, only one of the pair of escalators in this part of the station is being worked on, so it will (presumably) still be possible to ride either up or down throughout the 'closure' period. Not every passenger needs to be warned away from here, not at all.
It's February, but we're already being warned off in readiness for something that doesn't kick off until May. And let's get this chunk of engineering work in perspective. There'll always be two out of three of the escalators operational between the Central line and the ticket hall, which'll usually be one up and one down. No problem. It's only during the morning rush hour that down-riding will be impossible, and even then there'll be an alternative entrance via the Northern line ticket hall. This is no dead end closure, merely the occasional inconvenience.
And back again to the ultra-scary message. Stay away from Bank, oh ye citizens of London - here be dragons. But Nigel's advice is woefully over-simplified, and risks diverting thousands of commuters when really there's nothing to worry about. Changing between certain lines at Bank should be wholly unaffected, for example between Central and Northern (no escalators, all stairs), and to/from the Waterloo & City. As for the idea of using alternative stations, this 'solution' certainly won't make everyone's journey easier. For most District line travellers, Nigel, surely Monument is a far better option than Cannon Street or Mansion House? And do you think Mr Holness has any idea quite how far it is to walk from Bank to London Bridge?
Er, no. I think you'll find that those three years just finished and that this upgrade is pretty much complete. Don't you read your own press releases?
Er, no. This is only the case if you happen to be passing through Bond Street or Stratford anyway. If you're at Bank, then diverting via either of those two detours will take you half an hour. The DLR direct from Bank is only ten minutes, which has got to be quicker even if you have to walk down via Monument to get there.
Er, no. Changing to the DLR at West Ham is currently impossible, and will continue to be so until the new Stratford International extension opens later this year. Don't get ahead of yourselves.
Sorry, I'd rather not have wasted another day on the blog tediously ripping apart yet another public information missive. But, honestly, how much longer are TfL going to scaremonger in unnecessarily broadbrush terms about this beleaguered network interchange. Sure, there'll be certain times that certain passengers on certain routes might want to think twice about venturing down into the Bank labyrinth. But most of the time, for most people, this station will continue to be eminently doable. Whatever Nigel says.
Standing on BestMate's front doorstep last night, I spotted something I haven't seen for ages. It's a rarity in London, something I ought to seek out more often but never do. It only appears after dark, and even then only if you know where to look. An endangered species, you could say, and definitely something that was more common during my childhood. I paused briefly and stared, before it slipped out of sight as I continued my journey home.
Standing beneath the soaring streetlights on the Bow Flyover, my view was very different. Traffic streamed relentlessly by, blinding me in its successive headlamps. A pair of billboards at flyover-height beamed down advertising slogans for unwanted products and services. From the neighbouring tower block, uncurtained windows revealed the silhouettes of highrise residents flitting around inside their elevated empires. The golden arches of a well-known burger chain shone forth across the roundabout, luring customers inside illuminated portals. And, high above it all, the sodium glare of a blurred featureless sky, open to the universe yet completely concealed.
Standing on BestMate's front doorstep last night, I saw stars. Not a single pinpoint of light but several, twinkling in the night sky above backwater E13. Globes of fire radiating out across the universe from umpteen light years distant. Entire constellations - that's Orion, there's Taurus - hanging like a glittering net across the firmament. The glories of the cosmos just as I remembered them, and just as awe-inspiring as they'd been when I was eight. Except not quite. There were nowhere near as many stars as there ought to have been, only the major players. Only those of the highest magnitude had the strength to shine through these suburban skies, even at the end of a dimly-lit cul-de-sac away from major lamppost clusters. Even London's darkest skies aren't dark enough.
Standing on my Dad's gravel drive, the view is considerably better. Rural Norfolk's not over-blessed by artificial overnight illumination, which leaves the night sky free to shine forth in celestial splendour. So long as I don't accidentally set off the dazzling security light, I can stand and stare up at the heavens almost as nature intended. A hierarchy of brilliance, from sharp pinpricks down to indistinguishable speckles, twinkling out across a background of sweeping starlight. Far more than three constellations appear, and there are usually planets to pick out as they wheel imperceptibly across the heavens night by night and year by year. It's everything the amateur astronomer could desire, utterly telescope-worthy, and ultimately relentlessly awe-inspiring.
Back standing outside my own place in Bow, it's as if none of the rest of the universe exists. The sky's not somewhere to stare, it's somewhere to ignore. The only star I ever see from home is the Sun, and when that sets any hope of urban astronomy fades. Betelgeuse never intrudes, Ursa Major hides from view, and the Milky Way might as well not exist. I live in perpetual light, surrounded by safely-illuminated streets, in a leaky photon-rich bubble. My city-bound neighbourhood has no window on outer space, no sense of ultimate scale, no sense of cosmic insignificance. I may only notice when I'm standing on somebody else's doorstep, but what my life lacks is star quality.
Talking of the Olympics, the last pre-2012 Games kick off in Vancouver this weekend. So, how is London celebrating?
Mayor gears up for Vancouver in the Square Trafalgar Square is to host London's own sporting extravaganza to mark the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver.
Excellent. It's good to see that the next Olympic Host City is taking Canada's magnificent global spectacle seriously. I wonder what's been organised.
Excellent. London loves a big screen in Trafalgar Square. Be it the World Cup or Beijing 2008, there's nothing quite like watching sporting heroes in action, giant sized. For a really big crowd, however, it helps if there are Great Britons at the heart of the action. Not much chance of that this time. And it also helps if the live action's taking place during daylight hours. Alas no. The Opening Ceremony's taking place between 2am and 5am GMT on Saturday morning, so we're only getting lunchtime highlights. And the main sporting action over the following fortnight kicks off no earlier than 6pm every evening, which isn't exactly crowd-conducive. Still, a big screen is a good start. OK, what else?
Excellent. A festival of winter sports is precisely the sort of physical extravaganza that the capital's impressionable young citizens deserve. London's Sport Ambassador must be very pleased at yet another inspirational Mayoral anti-obesity success. Except, hang on, did someone say 'virtual'?
Ah. So this isn't a celebration of dynamic youth after all, this is a couch-potato-fest sponsored by a bunch of corporate button-twiddlers. It'll attract London's youth, for sure, but it won't inspire them to leap or sprint or exercise for real. There are no Olympic sporting ideals here, only electrogizmo-worship and a thinly-disguised branding-reinforcement opportunity. The big screen's a Panasonic, by the way - the press release goes to special effort to point this out.
Thank goodness the eyes of the world will be on Vancouver this weekend and not London, because our sole contribution to celebrating the Winter Games will be a pool of Wii in Trafalgar Square. If this muted squib is anything to go by, then I fear London's not going to be throwing much of a civic party come 2012. Maybe Boris is busy saving our council tax money to spend on more important projects at a later date. But it's clear he has no interest whatsoever in organising major communal events, and is increasingly reliant on any multinational that's willing to step in and do it for him. Swifter, higher, stronger.
With only 900 (count 'em) days to go, building work on Stratford's Olympic site continues apace. The stadium's up, and umpteen rows of terracing are now viewable through gaps in the outer wall of the arena. The swimming pool roof's up, and its undulating form dominates the trackside west of Stratford station. Elsewhere there are velodromes, pumpingstations and athletes' accommodation blocks springing up all over, plus several more minor yet equally-event-critical structures all about. Short of an unexpected meteor strike, there's surely no risk of the infrastructure for the 2012 Games being delivered late.
But now there's a new construction project in the area, immediately alongside, and what's more it's on a similar ginormous scale. It's Crossrail, more specifically the northeastern arm of Crossrail heading towards Shenfield, and it'll be burrowing up out of the London Clay just to the south of the Olympic Park [plans - pdf]. If you thought the Olympics were taking a long time to build (2007→2012), then Crossrail's schedule (2009→2017) is almost glacial by comparison.
You've quite possibly stood on the site of the portal where Crossrail trains will dive into the earth on their way from Stratford to Whitechapel and beyond. The precise spot is called "Pudding Mill DLR station", as plans require this quiet light rail outpost to be rebuilt (slightly to the south), then the original demolished to make way for giant tunnels. A big cut and cover trench will be excavated between here and the River Lea, about a quarter of a mile to the west, in readiness for the emergence of two tunnel-boring machines (which are due to be despatched from Stepney in 2013). It's a technically demanding project, not least because the tunnel's angle of ascent will be fractionally greater the usual legal maximum. This steep climb will allow Crossrail's tunnels to nip over the underground Hackney Wick Sewer (which is great news because it means those pipes won't have to be diverted and rebuilt within metres of my house as originally planned). They'll then ascend under the River Lea, out of the ground on the far side and over the elevated Greenway (East London's most important sewage outfall). An engineering nightmare, but absolutely essential if the project is to be completed to cost and on schedule. [more info, & map]
Which leaves a lot of building work to do, and a Crossrail construction site is currently being cleared to the north of Stratford High Street. All those businesses on the Heron Industrial Estate who thought they'd been given a reprieve when Olympic bosses decided to relocate the 2012 Media Centre in Hackney Wick, they're all closed or closing. Grieve not for the tradingsheds and smelly wastemongers, but pity the wholesalers and manufacturers whose lifeblood is now but a rotting shell, or indeed completely flattened.
A stroll along Cooks Road - the first sidestreet to the northeast of the Bow Flyover - is now an eerie experience. I took the plunge on a work-free Sunday morning, and found the doomed ambience even more unsettling than when this was a semi-industrial backwater. I was initially bemused by the number of feral rat-faced hoodies stumbling dead-eyed down the street toward the local McDonalds drive-thru. But I soon discovered where they were coming from - a doorway leading round the back of the Continental Nursery Furniture warehouse, through which came the telltale sounds of heart-pounding beat-thumping techno. A few shadowy folk sat in their cars outside, I'm sure not all of whom were drug dealers, and they eyed me suspiciously as I wandered past towards a signposted dead end.
After the last few locked gates and plenty of "we've moved" signs, the blue wall began. Crossrail's demolition team have been hard at work in Barber's Road, and this curving barrier hid all trace of the businesses that used to trade here. No sign of Cromwell Tool Hire, Jardine Motors nor the BOC Group, all of whom moved into renovated premises at the "Stratford E15 hub" less than three years ago, but all of whom have now been forced to relocate elsewhere. Their workspaces and offices are scheduled to become a sloping track-filled trench, although I couldn't quite picture this echoing cul-de-sac as anything other than a desolate demolition site. Faced by an impenetrable barrier I had to retrace my steps, past the dodgy ravers, on a lengthy detour round to the DLR station and main Olympic site at the end of the road.
Next week, as Crossrail's incursion ramps up, the River Lea towpath between the Greenway and the Bow Flyover will be closed off until Christmas. This is to enable engineers to divert the 400KV cables which run immediately beneath the towpath, thereby allowing the tunnel-boring machines to emerge in safety a few yards beyond. Joggers and cyclists will have to endure diversions for 43 weeks, with no doubt an even lengthier barricade post-Games once the big drills start to surface. Pity we residents on the E15/E3 borderline, for we face not one but two enormous building projects over the next few years. Those Olympics are only the half of it (and, alas, the fast track to Heathrow isn't going to be anywhere near ready in time).
fiveLondonblogs » Visit London: A site aimed primarily at tourists, with an emphasis on how lovely London is (and it's official, so you'll not hear a bad word spoken). The VL blog offers mainstream tips about where you might like to go, and barely-disguised PR fluff about where you might want to spend your money, but (in its defence) tubthumps admirably for the capital. sample text: When I visited glamorous new restaurant Circus in Covent Garden, I found myself sitting near Princess Beatrice and her friends. » solar penguin: As grand transport-blogging projects go, even I wouldn't bring myself to visit every station and tramstop in the London area in strict alphabetical order. But that's what this blog is attempting, posting photos and comment from both inside and outside. 80 posts in, and the As and Bs are just about completed. It's a damned long way from Abbey Wood to Worcester Park. sample text: What's outside the station? What looks like a clockwork-powered house. However, this isn't really a cunning way to cut carbon footprints, but just a trompe-l'œil mural. » Georgian London: Enough of London today, what of London three centuries ago? Lucy's engaging and scholarly blog combines historical mini-essays with day-to-day trivia about life as it used to be lived. Is there a Georgian hole in your RSS subscriptions? sample text: The whaling ships pitched up as close to the City of London as they could, where the main warehouses, dealers and shops were between Three Cranes Wharf and Throgmorton Street. » The Great Wen: You may remember Time Out magazine having a very interesting section up front called The Big Smoke, full of eclectic London stuff. Then they ditched it in print, because it was taking up valuable pages which could instead be given over to shopping updates and Hollywood interviews, but retained it online. And then they scrapped the web version too (although it lingers mothballed on the Time Out site for the time being). Now Peter Watts - who used to edit The Big Smoke - is blogging in a personal capacity, writing London-ish material which you might enjoy. On a site that definitely isn't called The Big Smoke, oh no. sample text: London guidebooks did not begin with Time Out or even Baedeker. There are thousands out there going back centuries, some aimed at specialist readers, others for a more general audience. » Faded London: Ah, street furniture. Plaques and pillars and tilework and painted shop-signs, what's not to love? sample text: A few weeks ago I was a man on a mission - and that mission was to obtain a decent picture of a Nuttman Brothers ghost sign I'd seen in Sutton.
geezer goes out... - for a comedy experience Richard Herring - Hitler Moustache It's a tough life being an almost-top comedian. While your more popular (but less credible) counterparts are appearing on QI and packing in the crowds at arena gigs, you have to struggle on being almost-noticed by the mainstream and attempting to make a living. In Richard Herring's case, this means writing a show for the Edinburgh Fringe each year and then making a living by touring it around the country. In particular this year it's meant him growing a moustache which makes him look like a well-known 20th century dictator, and seeing how society reacts. Not well, you'd think. Once you've shaved down a full beard into a square inch of velcro beneath your nostrils, à la Charlie Chaplin, there's no hiding place. Passers-by look at you with bemused concern, casting agents fail to take you seriously, and your parents shudder at the thought of you turning up all Adolf-like at their golden wedding celebrations. There you go, the full 100-minute comedy set almost writes itself. But Richard digs rather deeper than this glib set-up might suggest, exploring the audience's subliminal prejudices and exposing the self-defeating arguments of racism. There are plenty of laughs in this, as well as plenty of food for thought every time Richard stops and dissects something risqué that everyone's just laughed at. The BNP get quite a bashing, as one would hope and expect, while Carol Thatcher (and her mum) get a look in too. Richard admitted on Friday night how relieved he was that, despite sporting an additional Hitlertache for several weeks, no sympathetic BNP voter had yet stopped him in the street and applauded him on his look. Alas, on his journey home a bald racist on Shepherd's Bush Green did precisely that, so I suspect Saturday's show may have had to be slightly tweaked. Nevertheless, I can heartily recommend Richard's brave mix of crude insults and psychological polemic. He's at the Leicester Square Theatre for one more week, then off on a tour in non-huge venues all around the country. And don't forget your toothbrush moustache (you can pick one up in a bucket on the way out, and maybe help reclaim Chaplin's facial fuzz for the common good). [review][review][review][review][review][review] [Richard's daily blog, 2002-2010][the Collings & Herrin weekly podcast]
OK, enough of Formspring.me. For the following reasons: a) The dripfeed of interesting questions has run dry. b) Less than half of your questions were worth answering anyway. c) Even though I asked you to stop writing "what's your favourite..." questions, you kept asking them. d) You kept asking questions I'm not willing to answer in public (try them via email next time). e) That really good question you wrote, sorry, I couldn't think of a good answer. f) I couldn't tell whether some of your questions were inane ("Don't you think you should give kittens a second chance?") or ironic ("Don't you think you should give kittens a second chance? "), because you posted them anonymously. g) Formspring's terms and conditions are a bit ropey, and assume copyright of everything written on the site. h) It's so over.
Is there really a jam jar? Absolutely. It's sitting here now, down on the carpet beside my printer, and it still has nine folded slips of paper inside. Or at least I hope it does, unless some mischievous visitor has sneaked in over the past five years and removed one.
Flat White or Soya Caramel ChoccaMoccachino? I presume those are coffees. I don't do coffee. I don't understand coffee. I don't understand people who do coffee. If we were out in town and you suggested dropping into Starbucks for a coffee, and a half hour sitdown, and maybe a muffin, I'd look at you with pity.
I am shortly moving from London to the other side of the world. What things do you think I'll miss the most, and least, about London? According to this, what you'll miss most is dry land under your feet. Don't do it. (now that's my kind of website) (Spain's opposite New Zealand, eh? Blimey)
What do you have against kittens anyway? I was once persuaded to allow a kitten into the house. It wasn't for me, it was to shut somebody else up, and it was permitted on the sole condition that it wasn't me who had to empty the litter tray. The kitten looked cute, as kittens do, but spent an inordinate amount of time being where it shouldn't, like where I was trying to sleep, or on top of the dining table at meal times. One Saturday morning it disappeared, and I wasted the entire day being sent around the neighbourhood trying to find it, in vain. And then, as sunset approached, I found it curled up in the cupboard under the sink alongside the detergents with a beatific grin on its face. I've never been a fan of kittens.
fancy a pint? I try not to do pints. If I do pints I usually end the evening with a severe bout of hiccups. Hence my love of Becks, which comes in convenient non-threatening half pint bottles.
Where is your favourite place in Bow? (apart from your house of course) It's a bit nebulous, Bow, with woolly borders. So I could pick Victoria Park, or the hump of the Green Bridge over the Mile End Road, or the Georgian splendour of Tredegar Square. But I have to go for Tower Hamlets Cemetery - a patch of sheer tranquility in the midst of several non-aspirational estates.
Do you feel pressured that all your readers expect top quality dg reportage every day? No. But I do feel pressured that I expect top quality dg reportage every day.
Do you think you'll ever get tired of living in London? Oh I hope not. London's huge enough to be endlessly fascinating, from its amazing central sights to that bit of Barnet I've never been to yet. The one thing I miss in London is the sea, but I guess if I stay here long enough even that may make an appearance.
(and there's room for a few more answers from your questions) (but please, no more "what's your favourite?"s)
In the Good Old Days of Blogging™, back in the day, folk used to write regular posts about their lives and what they did and what they thought. Self-commentary, rather than relentlessly repeating what everyone else was saying and what was in the news and rebroadcasting marketing fluff. Writing about oneself was tough, long term, because often there was nothing more to say that hadn't been said umpteen times already. It's all so much easier today because tweets and Facebook updates require only 10 words or so, 20 at most, so even the laziest media socialite can appear zeitgeisty with minimal effort.
Back in the early 21st century, the "meme" came to our rescue. A simple idea, a snappy concept, which spread like wildfire across the net. List your five favourite sandwich fillings, what track's playing right now on your CD player, write a caption for a lolcat, that sort of thing. Pointless online space-fillers which nevertheless offered shallow insight into the lives of those who participated. Oh heady days on the digital frontier, before everything got too interconnected, too instant, too inbred.
So I've leapt with glee onto a new web 2.0 service called Formspring.me. Like all the very best memes it embodies a very simple concept - you ask me a question and I answer it. Any question you like, into the box on the website, and you don't even have to register or give your name. Then I look at the list of questions everybody's asked and I choose which ones to answer. I don't have to answer them all, especially if they're rude or dull or stupid or inappropriate, in which case nobody else ever sees the question let alone the answer. And then you can look at my published responses and discover a bit more about me, or despair that I'm batting away another probing request with some glib defensive attempt at humour.
I'll give Formspring a week before it implodes, because there's only so much unfocused questioning a community can endure before moving on to the new Next Best Thing. And my apologies if you're reading this blogpost in my archives from three years in the future, because the bubble probably burst yonks ago and you must be wondering why all the links are dead. But in the here and now - Early February 2010 - well, it's a bit of a giggle innit?
So, feel free to ask me a question, and maybe even sign up yourself and see if you can get someone, anyone to ask you one.
(And try to ask me something interesting. I've only answered about half of the queries that people have posed so far) (And don't expect an answer any time soon. I'm off to the office now, where I shall be doing something called "work" all day, which doesn't involve faffing around on social networking sites procrastinating the day away. You might get a response this evening, if you're lucky) (Which makes this a woefully non-interactive feature. You won't be able to read any of the submitted questions while they're in the queue, not even if there are hundreds of them, and you won't get any replies from me for hours and hours) (You might want to try asking a few otherFormspringers some questions while you wait, if they're still interested in replying) (Be patient, and I'll get back to some of you later) (See, I told you Formspring was a bit rubbish)
8pm update: OK, there are fifteen more answers now. Further questions welcomed, which I might get round to answering once I'm back from seeing Hitler's moustache.
Some of my favourite places in London are leftover forgotten backwaters, under threat of disappearance but not yet vanished. Places like the Bow Back Rivers before the Olympic Stadium landed, or the summit of the disused ski-slope at Beckton Alp. And places like the exterior of the Millennium Dome, now all sponsored and flashy inside but still part-abandoned and overlooked outside. Alas, not for much longer.
Here's how walking round the Dome used to be (and still pretty much is), according to a Time Out article I wrote three years ago...
Soon, through the buddleia, comes a first glimpse inside the grounds of the old Dome proper. Here, across a forlorn fenced-off piazza, the Greenwich Meridian slices through the farthest edge of the Millennium site. The zero degree line was marked in 2000 by a red laser emerging beneath a giant mirror set in a green "Living Wall". But the red light has long been turned off, the mirror reflects little but grime and the dead wall is slowly becoming a weatherbeaten pile of concrete slabs. No longer can visitors stand beside "Kodak Photo Point 18" to take cherished souvenir snapshots (nor, I suspect, did they ever bother). Four metal meridian lines remain, for the time being at least, edged by inspirational international poems etched in granite. Had the government awarded its super-casino licence to the Dome's new owners, the whole of this derelict area would have been wiped away by an ugly multi-storey hotel complex. For now, however, this ground level millennial folly survives.
The O2's casino still may be dead in the water, but it seems this semi-derelict corner of the Greenwich Peninsula is about to be redeveloped. Planning documents have recently been submitted to Greenwich Council [spotted by Greenwich.co.uk], and the long-feared hotel is coming. It's due to be erected to the west of the Dome, on the Thames foreshore facing Canary Wharf, out in the badlands where hundreds of thousands of arena-worshippers never venture. That's precisely where my photo above was taken. The development will comprise "a 452-key Hotel in a building of varying heights" and include "a 3,000m2 ballroom and a 427m2 health spa", while immediately alongside there'll be "100 units of serviced residential apartments in a 24-storey tower". Somewhere expensive to stay overnight after a late Bon Jovi gig, or somewhere expensive to live with excellent views of the Thames and Docklands. It'll undoubtedly be a huge commercial success, but I don't think I'll be moving in.
There are a heck of a lot of planning documents, which only the most diligent citizen would have the patience to unravel and digest. I had a look at a few, including what appears to be the main environmental proposal (big pdf) the site history & masterplan and precise maps of the existingand future sites. It appears that the 'Living Wall' will have to be demolished, as will the Greenwich Pavilion that's been used for mothballed storage for the last nine years. They'll also be building on top of a "redundant" reed bed, installed with much fanfare to recycle the Dome's greywater back in 2000 (so much for sustainability). But I'm (greatly) relieved to see that the hotel complex won't be encroaching right up to the river, which means that the Greenwich Meridian line will remain clear of any buildings - within a proposed public space.
However, it's the visual impact of this major development which most concerns me. You may not be a great fan of the Dome, but you can't deny that its upturned bowl and spiky yellow crown have great presence. The view is currently unimpeded from across the river, including from the top of Canary Wharf's greatest skyscrapers, but all this will change if/when the hotel and residential tower go in. Here, for example, are a couple of the proposed skyscraper-filled views (big pdf). Underneath each I've added the official visual impact of construction, as outlined in the Environmental Plan. Don't laugh.
View 02B: View from the North at East India Dock Basin The proposed Hotel buildings to the right (west) would step up in height towards the O2 and would provide it with a formal counterpoint, their height and vertical punctuation acting as a point of conclusion at the tip of the Peninsula. The Hotel would articulate the skyline along the western shore of the Peninsula and would appear commensurate in scale with the consented development at Peninsula Quays further south. Significance of Potential Impact: Beneficial, having a moderate impact locally.
View 04A: View from Manchester Road Lift Bridge The proposed Hotel buildings would step up away from The O2 leaving its distinctive crown and distinctive curve mostly visible from here. The key components of the consented Peninsula Quays directly opposite, and the shoreline development adjacent would draw the eye southward from The O2. The height of the proposed Development would be appropriate to the width of the River and the expanse of water accentuated by the foreground inlet. The scale and articulation of the shoreline would add quality to the visual character of the Peninsula. Significance of Potential Impact: Beneficial, having a moderate impact locally.
Sorry, but there's no way that either of these are "beneficial" impacts on the view, not unless someone's been paid a backhander to write the assessment. There's additional drivel elsewhere, including "it would add visual interest to the new skyline and enhance its legibility" and the stupendous "the scale and massing of the overall composition and its impact on the skyline would be pleasing to the eye and appropriate to the scale of the Peninsula and River by day, and would contribute to the animation of the water reflections at dusk and night." Creative Writing graduates take heart - there is work out there in the shadowy world of commercial bureaucratic prostitution.
And yet, the planners have a point. The Dome's been pretty much alone on the Greenwich peninsula for most of the last ten years, and only recently have tall buildings started to encroach on its southern flank. That highrise forest is due to grow ever thicker over the next few years as most of the existing wasteland and car parking space is turned over to office and residential development. The view's already started to vanish, so this new hotel will only add to the skyline clutter (and heralds an ever greater eclipse to come). It's what happens when you build an underground station in the middle of a reclaimed gasworks - the new relentlessly edges out the old. Lovers of leftover forgotten backwaters should complain vigorously to Greenwich Council's planning department before the consultation deadline passes. Or (more sensibly) accept the inevitable and go take a walk around the back of the Dome while they still can, before all the millennial detritus is wiped clean away.
I love a good TfL press release. Here's a bad one from last Friday. Lots of good positive things, wrapped up in drivel.
Pedestrians come first in the West End as £2.4m improvements to new walking route completed A new West End walking route has benefited from £2.4m of public realm improvements funded by Transport for London (TfL) which were unveiled today.
Such promise. Lots of money being spent (tick). A new walking route (tick). And a grand unveiling (tick). Unfortunately, as it turns out, two of those ticks are crosses.
At the heart of the new walking route, which runs from Covent Garden to Holborn Circus, is a newly created public space at Great Queen Street. The existing space has been greatly improved by increasing footway space for visitors to shop, socialise and relax in. Traffic signals, guard rail and street clutter have all been removed from the area.
This new public space in Great Queen Street is the big tick. Lots of money has been spent remodelling a fairly minor road junction, with a set of unnecessary traffic lights ripped out and the roadway shifted in favour of a mini-piazza where pedestrians can mingle. Camden Council have added a few chunky indestructible concrete benches, and there's one of Boris's pet bike-rental stations under construction round the corner. It's rather splendid, in an understated transformational way, should you ever be in the area. But I don't believe it was officially opened last Friday, it's been looking complete for a fair few weeks now. Unveiling, sorry, no (cross).
The improvements are part of the Mayor's policy of 'Making Walking Count' and have been designed to encourage more local walking.
The fact that all this money has been spent on the doorstep of the United Grand Lodge of England is, I'm sure, a complete and utter coincidence. And especially fortunate given that the other three "Key Walking Route" improvements are considerably less impressive.
The key retail street of Long Acre has seen pavements widened and re-laid using high quality materials and new street lighting.
The word "key" is being bandied about here a lot, isn't it? In this case, lots of new pavement extensions mean that shoppers and foot-based folk in Long Acre won't have to walk in the road quite so often as they used to. Which is nice, but not quite key.
The historic square of Lincoln's Inn Fields has been restored through new footways, finished in characteristic materials and featuring accessibility improvements including drop kerbs and tactile paving.
I don't know whether you've been to Lincoln's Inn Fields, but it was already lovely and huge, with plenty of circulatory pavement space, before all of these supposed improvements took place. I had a wander round at the weekend, and quite frankly I couldn't see anything fresh and praiseworthy at all. Maybe wheelchair-enabled Londoners can now get into the central park with greater ease, but that doesn't really hang easily with the idea of a key "walking" route, does it?
...while High Holborn has been de-cluttered with improved crossing facilities for pedestrians and more cycle parking.
Let's be clear here, we're only talking about a short length of High Holborn, the bit below Chancery Lane. This used to be a broad thoroughfare with a hatched bit down the middle, and now it's a broad thoroughfare with a strip of paving and some cycle racks down the middle. Easier to cross, sure, but useless for walking along. There is no key walking route here (cross).
TfL has funded £2.4m of improvements between Long Acre and Holborn Circus. The TfL Key Walking Route programme links important local destinations such as stations, offices and shops through high quality walking environments.
And here's my big gripe. The Key Walking Route between Long Acre and Holborn Circus exists only in the mind of some TfL planner. There are no signs at Long Acre pointing towards Holborn Circus, nor any at the other end in the opposite direction. Any pedestrian who attempts to walk from one to the other without a map will get horribly lost, as no attempt whatsoever has been made to define this walking route on the ground. Neither is there any obvious attempt at even linking one place to the next. Lincoln's Inn Fields isn't freshly signposted from the pavement along High Holborn, and Great Queen Street isn't clearly waymarked from the environs of Lincoln's Inn Fields. This walking route isn't key, it's physically non-existent.
And yet the link through Great Queen Street and Long Acre ought to be a massively important walking route. TfL are desperate to get would-be Piccadilly line passengers to walk from Holborn to Covent Garden (via Great Queen Street and Long Acre), because the lifts at the latter station can't always cope with weekend and evening crowds. There's even a sign outside Holborn station telling you how easy it is to walk to Covent Garden, and sort of telling you how to do it. Set off, however, and you're on your own. You might spot a new Legible Londonminilith on Kingsway which hints at directions, but there's no explicit route-finding here. A few pedestrian symbols on lampposts might help, or even a discreet line painted on the ground, but instead walkers are left to work out every twist and turn for themselves. As flagrant public misdirection goes, this press release misleads nigh perfectly.
So it turns out that a "key walking route", despite its name, isn't anything specifically signposted for pedestrians to follow. It's merely an on-street zone of opportunity within which improvement work takes place - a nebulous linear cluster of widened pavements connected by nothing more than a budget line. What TfL have done here is to deliver some lovely street improvements, hurrah, but then allowed some faceless bureaucrat to rebrand them with a name that sounds important but is meaningless. Don't be taken in. And maybe stick to taking the tube to Covent Garden, because you're far less likely to go astray.
DLR Bank platforms reopen Docklands Light Railway (DLR) has confirmed its platforms at Bank station have reopened.
I can confirm this too. I went down into the sub-vault depths at Bank station yesterday and the platforms have definitely reopened.
The station has been closed to upgrade it for three-car operation, and to enhance and improve the platforms, lighting and signage.
It's been closed for five weeks, since just before Christmas, which is a very long time to close a station. Much longer than is actually required to improve a bit of platform and a few signs, in fact. But DLR-folk have also been busy upgrading a key junction further up the line, at the point where services to Bank and Tower Gateway diverge, so the 40-day hiatus has all been worthwhile honest. I can't say I noticed any difference when my train sped through Royal Mint Street Junction track yesterday, but I guess this shows how well all the remodelling and signalling works have gone.
Three-car operation will now be introduced gradually on the Bank-Lewisham route.
That's the over-arching reason for all of this mega-closure hassle. The DLR's a lot busier than it was ever designed to be, so by adding an extra carriage to each train a lot more people can be crammed in. Good job too, because the cattletruck ambience during every rush hour is no fun whatsoever. It's taken nearly three years to extend all the necessary platforms - some of which have been sitting around for ages with big signs saying "Trains do not stop beyond this point (but they will in 2010)", or words to that effect. Now 50%-longer services can (finally) be initiated. Got to be worth a cheer, I reckon.
Jonathan Fox, Director DLR, said: "These upgrades represent the final piece in the three-car jigsaw on the Bank-Lewisham route, so we look forward to seeing the first of our longer trains shortly enter service."
Now that might sound good, but there are two big catches here. Firstly, even though the platforms are now long enough, there are no three-car DLR trains yet. And there's no date for when the first one will appear, nor the second, nor the umpteenth. Could be a while yet. Secondly, these extended trains are only scheduled to be introduced on the Bank-Lewisham line. That's the busiest branch of the DLR's network, but there are currently no plans to introduce 3-car trains to Stratford, Beckton or Woolwich. Only when demand merits more carriages, we're told, which may be soon or may (in these credit crunch times) be never. Moan 1: Surely demand on the Stratford branch is already high enough during peak periods? It was rammed yesterday afternoon, with homebound commuters having to wait on the platforms because the train was too full. Sounds like that'll be continuing. Moan 2: We may not be having extended trains on the Stratford branch, but at some stations the automated signalling system thinks we already do. At All Saints some idiot has pre-programmed all southbound trains to stop at the far end of the extended platform, leaving a carriage-sized gap between the back of the train and the foot of the stairs. How much longer will unwitting passengers have to run up the platform when the too-short train pulls in? Could be years, alas.
"Meanwhile I'm confident our Bank passengers will really notice the difference at the new and improved platforms."
Nope, 'fraid not. I think I spotted a new sign out in the passageway that read "DLR" in a much bigger font, but that was all. I was expecting some architectural miracle to have occurred, or some pristine new design feature to have appeared, but there was nothing obvious. Maybe the big change is the orange strip of lighting across the full length of the tracks, or has that always been there, I can't remember. That's the trouble with "Spot The Difference" puzzles, they're especially hard when you can't see the before as well as the after.
"I would like to apologise for the disruption that the Bank closure has caused."
And please, while you're at it, an apology for all the other closures and disruptions that have taken place during the entire Three Carriage Capacity Enhancement Project. But the pain is now over, on the Bank-Lewisham branch at least, and there'll be a 50% bonus to enjoy henceforth and foreverafter. Northern line commuters take heart - your months of endless misery are yet to come, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and one day it'll all have been worthwhile.
I love a good TfL press release. But I might write about a bad one tomorrow.
On a day with a very special palindromic date (01/02/2010) it's time once again to celebrate the wonderful world of numbers. For seven consecutive Februaries on diamond geezer I've kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a stats-tastic 28-day feature called The Count. You may therefore be delighted to hear that I intend to do exactly the same again this year. Or you may not, if you're a less numerate kind of person, in which case sorry but that's how it is. This'll be the eighth February I've spent counting things, so I have lots of thrilling historical data to compare the latest figures with. You might even find it interesting. Here's my selected list of ten countables for February 2010.
Count 1: Number of visits to this blog (Feb 2009 total: 26048) Count 2: Number of comments on this blog (Feb 2009 total: 472) Count 3: Number of words I wrote on this blog (Feb 2009 total: 20602) Count 4: How many hours each day I work/rest/play (Feb 2009: work 23%, not-work 77%) Count 5: Number of nights I go out and am vaguely sociable (Feb 2009 total: 7) Count 6: Number of bottles of Becks I drink (Feb 2009 total: 4) Count 7: Number of cups of tea I drink (Feb 2009 total: 129) Count 8: Number of trains I travel on (Feb 2009 total: 103) Count 9: Number of escalators I walk up (Feb 2009 total: 28) Count 10: The Mystery Count(Feb 2009 total: 0)
Once again I'll be using an online website called Daytum to keep track of my counts. Daytum is a real-time graphic tracker which displays numbers in a pretty way. For the next 24 hours it'll be displaying last February's totals, but then I'll set everything back to zero and start reporting this year's counts from scratch. I intend to update my counts on Daytum at least once a day until the end of the month, and then I'll come back and tell you how my February went. Stalk away.
That's it, that's all twelve chunks of the lost River Westbourne's journey down to the Thames. You can read them in reverse below, or all in the correct order over here. There are 60 photos from along the route to flick through, and there's also an approximate map to follow. Plus, as an extra special treat, I've assembled the entire series into a pdf which you can print out and top-left-staple, then go for a walk along the Westbourne yourself. It's not proper-marketable standard, and you'll probably get hopelessly lost if you try using it, but I hope it's of interest. All I ask is that you don't republish it, profit from it or link to it without attribution. Go West!
THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON The River Westbourne 12) Chelsea
Nearly there. From Sloane Square the Westbourne's lower course followed the approximate line of Holbein Place before crossing Grosvenor Row (now Pimlico Road) and continuing via a giant dog-leg down to the Thames. Once the boundary of London's premier Pleasure Gardens (of which more later), this dog-leg is now lost forever beneath the site of the old Chelsea Barracks. Once occupied by a few hundred soldiers, the Government's 2005 decision to release the land for housing unwittingly kickstarted a rightroyalplanning battle. Too-modern plans to build a cluster of steel/glass towers were silently scuppered by Prince Charles, and so an obsequious masterplanning process is now underway to try to develop an acceptable replacement. Black-branded barriers shield the demolished site from view, but it's possible to peer in through the old security gate and catch sight of the Garrison Chapel (stillstanding, but threatened) and two extant tower blocks (ugly, empty, doomed). [photo]
Don't be distracted by the tidal inlet at Grosvenor Waterside, an ultra-modern development to the east of Chelsea Bridge [photo]. The central water feature is part of an artificial 19th century waterway, the Grosvenor Canal, and never part of any lost London river. Instead the Westbourne's final few hundred metres ran southwestwards, across what's now tree-lined Chelsea Bridge Road [photo], and into the grounds of the Ranelagh Gardens. For the second half of the 18th century this was the place for London's burgeoning high society to be entertained. Centrepiece of the ornamental gardens was the Rotunda - a rococo cylindrical concert hall to which audiences flocked and in which a prodigious young Mozart once played. But fashionable glory proved ultimately unsustainable, and in 1803 the Rotunda fell silent and the surrounding pleasure park closed down.
Ranelagh Gardens were ultimately remodelled, and exist today as part of the grounds of Chelsea's Royal Hospital [photo]. They may look fenced-off and private, but daily public access is generally permitted. Except during the annual Chelsea Flower Show, that is, when Britain's horticultural epicentre relocates here and echoes of the site's former glory days reverberate [photo]. The Westbourne flowed across the extreme southeastern corner of the present gardens, entering the Thames at a pleasingly oblique angle close to the Bull Ring Gate. That's just to the east of the coach-turning circle, if you're trying to locate it today, and several feet inland because the Chelsea Embankment hadn't been built in those days. But better to find ten spare minutes to trot across Chelsea Bridge to Battersea Park, from whose riverside terrace the Ranelagh Sewer outfall is clearly visible. A gloomy brick-arched portal, dribbling forth across exposed mudflats, marks the final splash of the Westbourne's seven-mile journey downstream from Hampstead. [photo][photo] Following the Westbourne: Holbein Place, Pimlico Road, Chelsea Barracks, Chelsea Bridge Road, Ranelagh Gardens, Royal Hospital Gardens, Chelsea Embankment.
THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON The River Westbourne 11) Sloane Square (revised)
Hang on, we'll be at that tube station any minute. First we have to follow the Westbourne out of Belgravia and across Cliveden Place. This was part of the main road down to Chelsea, and the old river flowed beneath at a lonely span nicknamed Bloody Bridge. The name may come from an incident in 1748 when four upstanding gentlemen were attacked and robbed by two highwaymen in the immediate vicinity, or that may just be an old husband's tale. An alternative name for this 12-foot-wide crossing was Blandel Bridge, and the Victorian office block which now inhabits the site is known as Blandel Bridge House. [photo]
OK, here we are at last at Sloane Square tube station, a District line halt with a secret. Look up while standing on either platform, approximately at the foot of the stairs down from the ticket hall, and you'll see a thick black pipe passing overhead [photo]. Looks innocuous enough, but this nine-foot diameter tube is actually a Victorian sewer which carries what's left of the River Westbourne. [photo][photo]
The stream's foul-smelling waters were finally confined to underground pipes - the Ranelagh sewer - in the mid 1850s. A decade later the District line was carved through Belgravia in cut and cover tunnel, only slightly deeper than the sewer, which lead to a spot of awkward engineering at Sloane Square. The original brickwork had to be replaced by a cast iron pipe, stretching seventy feet across the station chasm at an angle of 48°, and a complex series of trestles and girders ensured that West London's slurry continued to flow during construction. Not even a near direct hit by a German bomb in 1940 (destroying the ticket hall and killing 79 train passengers) caused any serious damage.
If you don't fancy forking out to pass through the ticket barriers, it's (just about) possible to view Sloane Square's legendary aqueduct from outside. Head round the back of the station into Bourne Street (named after you know what) and look for the gap in the terrace next to number 79. The view's not great because it's through two sets of railings, but the storm drain's metal weathershield can be readily discerned between the two platform canopies below [photo]. Alternatively head up the road to Skinner Place, a stumpy side alley which ends abruptly above the westbound tracks. You'll have to be tall to peer over the wall of the final front garden on the left, and take care not to arouse the suspicions of residents peering out of their windows, but that's most definitely the entombed Westbourne you can see down there piping across the tracks. Following the Westbourne: Cliveden Place, Sloane Square, Bourne Street, Skinner Place.
And then, unannounced, TfL developed some lovely new online bus maps. None of your static pdfs here, these are Google map mashups, and they're remarkably flexible. Type a route number into the search box and that bus appears as a coloured line on the map. Search for a place or postcode and a list of nearby buses appears, from which you can select any one of your choice. You can zoom out to see the entire route in one go, or zoom in to see each individual bus stop. At bus stops you can find out which other routes stop there, and also read their timetables so that you know what time the next one's due. It's not realtime or anything, and some of the colours are quite hard to see, but it's damned impressive. It reminds me (and reminds Paul) of the onabus.com website which launched in 2008. That still has the advantage of depicting more than one bus route at a time, whereas TfL's single-route offering has greater oomph and more precise maps. Worth a play, I think. And great for day-to-day journey planning, so long as you know which bus you want.
Winter Olympic Quiz
For a couple of years now, TfL have been very keen to persuade you not to visit Bank/Monument station. Anyone would think there was a radioactive leak down there, or a top secret government bunker, the amount of effort they've gone to in order to keep passengers well away. Not so - the disruption relates to the ongoing upgrade of the station's umpteen escalators, and the need to close off various subterranean routes while renovation work proceeds. But, as for suggestions that travellers should avoid Bank/Monument altogether, TfL's publicity overdrive continues to massively overstate the case. Yes folks, it's time to tear apart yet another devious and misleading press release.
Passengers advised to avoid changing trains at Bank station from MarchThe news item's barely started and we already have two conflicting messages. The headline, which is what most people will read, warns against changing at Bank full stop. The opening line clarifies things, and narrows things down to warn users away from the DLR, Northern and Central lines. Even this, as it turns out, is a vast over-simplification and unnecessary scaremongering.The Campaign for Dark Skies
Olympic update
But now there's a new construction project in the area, immediately alongside, and what's more it's on a similar ginormous scale. It's Crossrail, more specifically the northeastern arm of Crossrail heading towards Shenfield, and it'll be burrowing up out of the London Clay just to the south of the Olympic Park [plans - pdf]. If you thought the Olympics were taking a long time to build (2007→2012), then Crossrail's schedule (2009→2017) is almost glacial by comparison.
Which leaves a lot of building work to do, and a Crossrail construction site is currently being cleared to the north of Stratford High Street. All those businesses on the Heron Industrial Estate who thought they'd been given a reprieve when Olympic bosses decided to relocate the 2012 Media Centre in Hackney Wick, they're all closed or closing. Grieve not for the tradingsheds and smelly wastemongers, but pity the wholesalers and manufacturers whose lifeblood is now but a rotting shell, or indeed completely flattened.
After the last few locked gates and plenty of "we've moved" signs, the blue wall began. Crossrail's demolition team have been hard at work in Barber's Road, and this curving barrier hid all trace of the businesses that used to trade here. No sign of Cromwell Tool Hire, Jardine Motors nor the BOC Group, all of whom moved into renovated premises at the "Stratford E15 hub" less than three years ago, but all of whom have now been forced to relocate elsewhere. Their workspaces and offices are scheduled to become a sloping track-filled trench, although I couldn't quite picture this echoing cul-de-sac as anything other than a desolate demolition site. Faced by an impenetrable barrier I had to retrace my steps, past the dodgy ravers, on a lengthy detour round to the DLR station and main Olympic site at the end of the road.
geezer goes out... - for a comedy experience
"), because you posted them anonymously.
Soon, through the buddleia, comes a first glimpse inside the grounds of the old Dome proper. Here, across a forlorn fenced-off piazza, the Greenwich Meridian slices through the farthest edge of the Millennium site. The zero degree line was marked in 2000 by a red laser emerging beneath a giant mirror set in a green "Living Wall". But the red light has long been turned off, the mirror reflects little but grime and the dead wall is slowly becoming a weatherbeaten pile of concrete slabs. No longer can visitors stand beside "Kodak Photo Point 18" to take cherished souvenir snapshots (nor, I suspect, did they ever bother). Four metal meridian lines remain, for the time being at least, edged by inspirational international poems etched in granite. Had the government awarded its super-casino licence to the Dome's new owners, the whole of this derelict area would have been wiped away by an ugly multi-storey hotel complex. For now, however, this ground level millennial folly survives.
There are a heck of a lot of planning documents, which only the most diligent citizen would have the patience to unravel and digest. I had a look at a few, including what appears to be the main environmental proposal (big pdf) the site history & masterplan and precise maps of the existing and future sites. It appears that the 'Living Wall' will have to be demolished, as will the Greenwich Pavilion that's been used for mothballed storage for the last nine years. They'll also be building on top of a "redundant" reed bed, installed with much fanfare to recycle the Dome's greywater back in 2000 (so much for sustainability). But I'm (greatly) relieved to see that the hotel complex won't be encroaching right up to the river, which means that the Greenwich Meridian line will remain clear of any buildings - within a proposed public space.
At the heart of the new walking route, which runs from Covent Garden to Holborn Circus, is a newly created public space at Great Queen Street. The existing space has been greatly improved by increasing footway space for visitors to shop, socialise and relax in. Traffic signals, guard rail and street clutter have all been removed from the area.
The improvements are part of the Mayor's policy of 'Making Walking Count' and have been designed to encourage more local walking.The fact that all this money has been spent on the doorstep of the United Grand Lodge of England is, I'm sure, a complete and utter coincidence. And especially fortunate given that the other three "Key Walking Route" improvements are considerably less impressive.The word "key" is being bandied about here a lot, isn't it? In this case, lots of new pavement extensions mean that shoppers and foot-based folk in Long Acre won't have to walk in the road quite so often as they used to. Which is nice, but not quite key.The key retail street of Long Acre has seen pavements widened and re-laid using high quality materials and new street lighting.
The historic square of Lincoln's Inn Fields has been restored through new footways, finished in characteristic materials and featuring accessibility improvements including drop kerbs and tactile paving.I don't know whether you've been to Lincoln's Inn Fields, but it was already lovely and huge, with plenty of circulatory pavement space, before all of these supposed improvements took place. I had a wander round at the weekend, and quite frankly I couldn't see anything fresh and praiseworthy at all. Maybe wheelchair-enabled Londoners can now get into the central park with greater ease, but that doesn't really hang easily with the idea of a key "walking" route, does it?Let's be clear here, we're only talking about a short length of High Holborn, the bit below Chancery Lane. This used to be a broad thoroughfare with a hatched bit down the middle, and now it's a broad thoroughfare with a strip of paving and some cycle racks down the middle. Easier to cross, sure, but useless for walking along. There is no key walking route here (cross)....while High Holborn has been de-cluttered with improved crossing facilities for pedestrians and more cycle parking.
TfL has funded £2.4m of improvements between Long Acre and Holborn Circus. The TfL Key Walking Route programme links important local destinations such as stations, offices and shops through high quality walking environments.And here's my big gripe. The Key Walking Route between Long Acre and Holborn Circus exists only in the mind of some TfL planner. There are no signs at Long Acre pointing towards Holborn Circus, nor any at the other end in the opposite direction. Any pedestrian who attempts to walk from one to the other without a map will get horribly lost, as no attempt whatsoever has been made to define this walking route on the ground. Neither is there any obvious attempt at even linking one place to the next. Lincoln's Inn Fields isn't freshly signposted from the pavement along High Holborn, and Great Queen Street isn't clearly waymarked from the environs of Lincoln's Inn Fields. This walking route isn't key, it's physically non-existent.And yet the link through Great Queen Street and Long Acre ought to be a massively important walking route. TfL are desperate to get would-be Piccadilly line passengers to walk from Holborn to Covent Garden (via Great Queen Street and Long Acre), because the lifts at the latter station can't always cope with weekend and evening crowds. There's even a sign outside Holborn station telling you how easy it is to walk to Covent Garden, and sort of telling you how to do it. Set off, however, and you're on your own. You might spot a new Legible London minilith on Kingsway which hints at directions, but there's no explicit route-finding here. A few pedestrian symbols on lampposts might help, or even a discreet line painted on the ground, but instead walkers are left to work out every twist and turn for themselves. As flagrant public misdirection goes, this press release misleads nigh perfectly.
On a day with a very special palindromic date (01/02/2010) it's time once again to celebrate the wonderful world of numbers. For seven consecutive Februaries on diamond geezer I've kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a stats-tastic 28-day feature called The Count. You may therefore be delighted to hear that I intend to do exactly the same again this year. Or you may not, if you're a less numerate kind of person, in which case sorry but that's how it is. This'll be the eighth February I've spent counting things, so I have lots of thrilling historical data to compare the latest figures with. You might even find it interesting. Here's my selected list of ten countables for February 2010.
Once again I'll be using an online website called Daytum to keep track of my counts. Daytum is a real-time graphic tracker which displays numbers in a pretty way. For the next 24 hours it'll be displaying last February's totals, but then I'll set everything back to zero and start reporting this year's counts from scratch. I intend to update my counts on Daytum at least once a day until the end of the month, and then I'll come back and tell you how my February went. Stalk away.
THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Nearly there. From Sloane Square the Westbourne's lower course followed the approximate line of Holbein Place before crossing Grosvenor Row (now Pimlico Road) and continuing via a giant dog-leg down to the Thames. Once the boundary of London's premier Pleasure Gardens (of which more later), this dog-leg is now lost forever beneath the site of the old Chelsea Barracks. Once occupied by a few hundred soldiers, the Government's 2005 decision to release the land for housing unwittingly kickstarted a right royal planning battle. Too-modern plans to build a cluster of steel/glass towers were silently scuppered by Prince Charles, and so an obsequious masterplanning process is now underway to try to develop an acceptable replacement. Black-branded barriers shield the demolished site from view, but it's possible to peer in through the old security gate and catch sight of the Garrison Chapel (still standing, but threatened) and two extant tower blocks (ugly, empty, doomed). [photo]
Ranelagh Gardens were ultimately remodelled, and exist today as part of the grounds of Chelsea's Royal Hospital [photo]. They may look fenced-off and private, but daily public access is generally permitted. Except during the annual Chelsea Flower Show, that is, when Britain's horticultural epicentre relocates here and echoes of the site's former glory days reverberate [photo]. The Westbourne flowed across the extreme southeastern corner of the present gardens, entering the Thames at a pleasingly oblique angle close to the Bull Ring Gate. That's just to the east of the coach-turning circle, if you're trying to locate it today, and several feet inland because the Chelsea Embankment hadn't been built in those days. But better to find ten spare minutes to trot across Chelsea Bridge to Battersea Park, from whose riverside terrace the Ranelagh Sewer outfall is clearly visible. A gloomy brick-arched portal, dribbling forth across exposed mudflats, marks the final splash of the Westbourne's seven-mile journey downstream from Hampstead. [photo] [photo]
Hang on, we'll be at that tube station any minute. First we have to follow the Westbourne out of Belgravia and across Cliveden Place. This was part of the main road down to Chelsea, and the old river flowed beneath at a lonely span nicknamed Bloody Bridge. The name may come from an incident in 1748 when four upstanding gentlemen were attacked and robbed by two highwaymen in the immediate vicinity, or that may just be an old husband's tale. An alternative name for this 12-foot-wide crossing was Blandel Bridge, and the Victorian office block which now inhabits the site is known as Blandel Bridge House. [photo]
OK, here we are at last at Sloane Square tube station, a District line halt with a secret. Look up while standing on either platform, approximately at the foot of the stairs down from the ticket hall, and you'll see a thick black pipe passing overhead [photo]. Looks innocuous enough, but this nine-foot diameter tube is actually a Victorian sewer which carries what's left of the River Westbourne. [photo] [photo]
If you don't fancy forking out to pass through the ticket barriers, it's (just about) possible to view Sloane Square's legendary aqueduct from outside. Head round the back of the station into Bourne Street (named after you know what) and look for the gap in the terrace next to number 79. The view's not great because it's through two sets of railings, but the storm drain's metal weathershield can be readily discerned between the two platform canopies below [photo]. Alternatively head up the road to Skinner Place, a stumpy side alley which ends abruptly above the westbound tracks. You'll have to be tall to peer over the wall of the final front garden on the left, and take care not to arouse the suspicions of residents peering out of their windows, but that's most definitely the entombed Westbourne you can see down there piping across the tracks.
