It's 40 years today since Britain went decimal. Ah yes, I remember it well (or as well as you can when you're only five and haven't started getting pocket money yet).
The country went to bed on Sunday night with 240 pennies to the pound, and woke up on Monday morning with 100. Silver coins continued in circulation (with the shilling and florin worth 5p and 10p respectively), including the heptagonal 50p which had been around for a few years in place of the ten shilling note. But it was only on February 15th 1971 that we got our hands on the new coppers. These had no direct pre-decimal equivalent, so lots of people went shopping with helpful cardboard ready reckoners to aid conversion.
As a numerate infant I coped pretty well, having barely had to engage with the previous system. My year at school was the first to use special decimal workcards in maths lessons (as pictured here in a glass case in Luton Museum). Those older than me had had to learn complex base 12 and base 20 arithmetic to carry out even the simplest of money calculations, but base 10 was far easier. I guess my class never realised at the time how lucky an escape we'd had.
Conversion was tougher for adults, so the government launched a public information campaign to ease them in. The Central Office of Information released this short film to get the basics across, plus this rather patronising short to try to persuade housewives to think decimal. I particularly remember a 26 minute film called Granny Gets The Point, in which the Collins family tried to persuade grandma to cast her half crowns and thruppeny bits aside, with supposedly hilarious results. No promotional tool was too crass, including sending two girls called Penny into Harrods on the arm of the Chairman of the Decimal Currency Board.
And then there was Max Bygraves. He recorded a song of terrifying jollity, entitled Decimalisation, in which he attempted to get Radio 2's core audience singing along with the New Money basics. I was shocked to discover that the lyrics to this 1971 classic aren't online, so I've transcribed them diligently below. Notice how the words are aimed at Sun reader level, with the exception of one highly technical term slipped into the middle because it rhymes.
Decimalisation was an act of fundamental economic change, especially in an era when most things cost less than a pound, but the British public switched surprisingly successfully. I would refer you to an excellent Radio 4 documentary on the subject, except they last broadcast it 8 days ago so it's fallen off iPlayer just in time for today's anniversary (sigh). Instead let me point out that the old system had some arithmetical benefits over the new, in that 240 divides exactly by more numbers than does 100.
friends share a £7 bill at the Lyons Corner House. How much does each pay?
friends share a £7 bill at the Golden Egg Restaurant. How much does each pay?
Most of those first decimal coins have already bitten the dust. The titchy halfpenny was withdrawn in 1984, while the five, ten and fifty were resized in the 1990s. Our pockets are no longer full of shillings and florins - a tangible link to Kings and Queens past. But at least there are no plans on any immediate horizon to swap pence for cents. Decimalisation may have been an upheaval, but I bet Euro Switchday would be far more traumatic.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh is one of Britain's best-loved designers. More specifically he's one of Scotland's best-loved designers, which means examples of his work south of the border are fairly sparse. He undertook only one domestic commission outside his home country and that was in 1916, in Northampton. Local entrepreneur W J Bassett-Lowke hadn't able to build the marital house of his dreams because there was a war on, so invited Mackintosh to redesign a narrow terraced house on the edge of town. This Charles did, with warm geometric precision, and the newlywed couple moved in the following year.
Bassett-Lowke ran a model trainbusiness with a rosy future (and a toyshop in High Holborn that's now a McDonalds). 78 Derngate was his home for nearly ten years, after which he commissioned and moved into a ground-breaking modernisthouse on the Wellingborough Road. That's now in private hands, whereas number 78 ended up under the control of Northampton High School who used it as offices and for lessons. Hence much of Mackintosh's handiwork survived, ready to be rescued when a group of volunteers took the place over. That was a mammoth job, although more of a re-creation than a restoration because so much of the original design existed only in photographs. They've done a marvellousjob, including taking over the two houses nextdoor to build a visitors centre and restaurant. If nothing else makes you consider Northampton as a tourist destination, this place should.
No, you don't enter through the front door. It's rather a stunningfrontdoor, jet black with triangular motifs, and in sharp contrast to the rest of the street. You enter via number 82, which has been gutted to create a modern glass atrium, and where they'll take £6.20 off your hands. Time your visit right and you can join a 1¼hr guided tour. Don't time it wrong, because the volunteers are excellent and a self-guided tour just wouldn't be the same. [virtual tour]
The most impressive room in Bassett-Lowke's house is the hall/lounge, located on the other side of the front door. It's ever-so black, partly because they have to keep the curtains closed, but mostly because that's the colour it was painted. Black walls, with yellow stencilled triangles intended to resemble treetops. Black ceiling, with an unusual chequerboard panel holding up a faux-medieval candelabrum. Black fittings, like the hinged box in the fireplace designed to hide tobacco from view. And a black lattice screen across the stairs, inlaid with further yellow triangles in leaded glass. Mrs Bassett-Lowke lived with the gloom for five years before having the whole room repainted in much lighter tones, but the conservationists have gone back to the original design to great effect.
The rear of the house has a more pleasant aspect, and here are the dining room and bedrooms. Renovation work has concentrated more on Mackintosh's design than Bassett-Lowke's furniture, so some of the rooms look a little empty. Concentrate instead on the walls and fixtures, and the ahead-of-their time fitted carpets. Those are Mackintosh lanterns above the dining room fireplace, and the hinged coal scuttle hidden alongside also bears his mark. But it's the guest bedroom that's the most striking, with miniature chairs and a bold ultramarine and white colour scheme. Wake here in the morning, as George Bernard Shaw once did, and your eyes would have faced the optical illusion of a precisely-striped ceiling. The Bassett-Lowkes had an eye on making a splash in interior design magazines such as Ideal Home, and rooms such as this ensured they succeeded.
I'll not give away any of the other secrets in the house (those mosaic tiles in the bathroom are what?) because Mackintosh designed it to surprise. But I will recommend, ladies, that you wear flat-soled shoes because you're going to be asked to don blue plastic slippers before setting foot inside. Make sure you hang around to read all the background information in the stairwell display area, and check out the gallery space alongside. Maybe stay fora meal if you want to make a day of it - any restaurant that serves twice-cooked chunky chips can't be bad. And before you go, return to the backgarden to remind yourself how compact number 78 actually is. It doesn't take a lot of space to create a home of beauty, just a dash of Scots genius.
Between 19th February and 6th March, London Midland are offering return rail tickets anywhere on their network for £10. Euston to Liverpool, Shrewsbury or Hereford, or vice versa, or any point inbetween. Download a voucher and check conditions here. And go on, how about Northampton?
Day Out:Northampton It's one of the largest towns in Britain that isn't a city. Its a county town on the edge of the East Midlands. It made its fortune from the shoe industry. It boasted one of the country's most important castles (now buried beneath the railway station). It's only an hour from London by train. And it's absolutely not somewhere you might think to go for a February day out. So I did.
Visiting...Northampton Museum and Art Gallery Some county town museums are a bit pants. This one's mostly shoes, and all the better for it. The entire downstairs is given over to displays of footwear, and also to the art of cobbling for which the town is duly famous. Somebody's been very very busy collecting shoes of all shapes and types, from medieval leather wraps to 1970s disco wedges. Some are small and dainty, others large and clompy (there's even a massive pair of Doc Martens as originally worn by Elton John, circa Pinball Wizard). There are more ladies' than men's, just as the shoe rack might be in your house, but also a special red-lined cupboard of fetish boots for the gentleman who can't quite make up his mind. A gallery at the back reminds visitors that shoemaking required considerable human skill across a wide range of hard-to-mechanise processes. Much of the labour intensive work has long since drifted abroad, but Church's still handmake Oxfords and brogues in their factory up St James Road. For those with more contemporary tastes, the museum's currently hosting a special exhibition devoted to the history of training shoes. The story kicks off with green Dunlops and those black plimsolls we all wore in 70s gym lessons, but focuses mainly on the top international manufacturers and their rubber-soled creations. Sneakerobsessives will have read all the facts before, but will no doubt lust after all the retro trainers boxed up from the first time around. Adidas Superstars, Air Jordans, New Balance 600-and-somethings... your Heritage Lottery money helped to assemble this lot, and it's attracting a younger audience than normal. Upstairs, yes, a history of Northampton and a lot of old porcelain. But it's the shoes you'll remember. (Sport to Street - 15 January to 3 July 2011, admission free)
Visiting...Greyfriars Bus Station Whoever designed this cavernous 1970s bus station must have hated Northampton. It regularly tops lists of the most hatedbuildings in Britain, and it's very easy to see why. A Brutalist hybrid of bus station, office block and carpark, it sits astride the ringroad like two conjoined aircraft hangars [photo]. The waiting area's sandwiched between two very long undercover bus lanes, so to get inside you'll have to enter from underneath along a dystopiansubway[photo]. Long, off-white and featureless, you can imagine it might have featured in A Clockwork Orange if only the film hadn't been shot quite so early. Once in the heart of the beast you first enter a concrete vault of dismal proportions, where there's one of the least enticing cafeterias you'll ever set eyes upon. A few small tables spaced out beneath striplights, a red-tiled kitchen area which'll do you a £3 breakfast until 1pm, and a ragbag of customers who look ready to give up on life. Head up the escalators into the bus station proper and things don't really improve. The building's so long that no daylight seeps inside, just the occasional bus headlamp flashing past. Rows of wooden benches stretch off into the far distance, where a population of lost souls sits and waits until their chosen service comes to spirit them away. If the economy improves, there are plans to demolish the whole of Greyfriars bus station and build a shopping mall in its place. Normally I'd baulk at the idea but here, sorry Northampton, bring it on.
Visiting...The National Lift Tower Well, you've got to test a lift somewhere, haven't you? And they used to be tested here, in this 127m-high tower on a Northampton trading estate [photo][photo]. To give you some idea of scale, that's about five metres taller than the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, which is what's made the tower a truelandmark for many miles around. It belonged to the Express Lift Company, who knocked it up over a few weeks in the summer of 1980 and then brought the Queen round to open it. There are six shafts inside, none of them from the very top to the very bottom, but enabling a wide range of elevator mechanisms to be duly assessed. All went well until the company was taken over by Otis Elevators, who swiftly closed down all operations in 1997. A hasty Grade-II listing prevented the tower from being demolished, and the surrounding land's since been redeveloped as a fairly ordinary housing estate [photo]. That's good if you want to get up close because there's now public access to the base, or at least to the modern roundabout surrounding it [photo]. It must be odd living in the shadow of such a tall and slender tower, but the folk I saw out mending their cars and lugging the shopping home seemed barely to notice it. Good news - the building's operational again. It's been snapped up by a private company who now operate it as a research, development and lift testing facility. If all goes to plan they'd also like to install a scenic elevator on the outside of the tower and turn it into a tourist attraction, although I'd say the business case for that sounds somewhat shaky. In the meantime there's an abseil planned for the May bank holiday weekend, should you have an impeccable head for heights and a desire to see all of Northampton laid out beneath you.
And also... • Northampton Guildhall - an ostentatious Gothic pile built on the site of the old Town Hall [photo] • Market Square - a historic shopping area that's not as fine and dandy as it once was • CarlsbergBrewery - a photogenic (but smelly) collection of pipes and silos on the banks of the Nene [photo] • That other place you absolutely have to visit in Northampton (of which more tomorrow)
Of all the cuts to tube station ticket office hours, I don't think any station's been hit worse than Bromley-by-Bow. Three stations at the other end of the District line come close (Chiswick Park, Stamford Brook and Ravenscourt Park), but my local station's had the biggest slash of all.
Previously Bromley-by-Bow ticket office was open for eleven hours each Sunday. Now it's not even open for eleven hours each week. That's drastic, that is.
Last week, Bromley-by-Bow ticket office opening hours looked like this.
Monday to Friday
Saturday
Sunday
0630-1930
0830-1630
0900-2000
And now they look like this.
Formerly the ticket office was open for 13 hours each weekday. Now it's one and a half, in the morning peak only. Formerly the ticket office was open for eight hours on a Saturday. Now it's a single non-peak hour, late-morning. As for Sundays, the cut is ridiculous. From 11 hours down to a pathetic 30 minutes over lunch, which is the shortest non-zero opening time of any tube station in London. A grand total of 84 hours last week, cut to nine now. I know Oyster card usage is supposed to have reduced the need for staff to sit behind a window, but surely not far enough to justify this 89% chop.
It wouldn't be so bad if staff had been freed up to wander the station and help passengers, but I don't see them. There's no obvious customer service at all, at least not when I've been around. Bromley-by-Bow's ticket hall isn't exactly an enticing place to stand all day, I guess, neither is there one of those glass boxes by the gateline for staff to lurk in. Even for passengers having trouble with the ticket machine the only human nearby is the bloke in the newspaper kiosk... except he has a big angry notice saying "no change given", so don't ask.
TfL claim that all their tube stations are staffed at all times, but I find that hard to believe at Bromley-by-Bow. I regularly pass through this station after nine in the evening, and I don't think I've seen a member of staff for the last year. Instead the ticket hall is empty, the gates are wide open, and there's a message scrawled on the wall urging passengers to swipe their Oyster card as they pass or pay the penalty. No friendly soul in blue uniform protects the late-night travellers of E3 from misbehaviour, crime or worse. If Bromley-by-Bow station is indeed staffed all the time, then that member of staff must be bloody well hidden.
It seems that Bromley-by-Bow's gradually being turned into a clone of the DLR station down the road. No obvious member of staff on duty, no functioning gateline, and as for a ticket office don't make me laugh. Most passengers can cope just fine in a staff-free station, of course, and tens of thousands of pounds in wages can be saved. But when your local tube station's the next to follow down this route, don't say you weren't warned.
A very special hello to everyone in Stratford, Hackney Wick and Bow. We're your new local football club. We're Westfield Ham.
You may remember us. We used to have a world-class team with such top names as Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst, and even won the FA Cup several times. We've not been quite so successful in recent years, but we're still terribly proud to be the newest member of Lidl League Division 1.
We used to be called West Ham in the old days, but we've rebranded. We've renamed ourselves after the big shopping mall down the road, the one with all the boutiques you locals can't afford to shop in. The Westfield Shopping Centre perfectly embodies all of our club's brand values, plus it gives our supporters' wives somewhere to go for two hours while each match is on.
We'd love to see you here at Upton Olympic Park. We're a bit worried that the majority of our 60,000 seats will be empty, to be honest, so we need as many local bums on seats as possible. Most of our old fans won't be following us up to Stratford because there are no pubs or burger vans anywhere near the stadium, and because the new place is at least three stations away from the old. We never thought they were real fans anyway.
So here's the timetable of events at our new home for the first few months. Do come visit. Westfield Ham for the win!
Saturday 9th August 2014: For the opening match of the season, we've been drawn away at Leyton Orient. That fixture-scheduling computer has a sense of humour, doesn't it?
Wednesday 13th August: Chas and Dave are the big draw at our last big stadium rock show of the summer. Lucky that Madonna pulled out at the last minute, we reckon. Tickets £75.
Sunday 17th August: Our first home match at the new stadium! And it's a stormer of a match against Hartlepool United. We've moved it to Sunday because we're convinced Sky Sports 7 HD will want to show it live.
Tuesday 19th August: Carlsberg Cup, first round, and it's Spurs! Which means Tottenham do get to play at the old Olympic Stadium after all, but on our terms. If any of their fans bother to turn up, we expect them to come armed with inflatable binoculars.
Thursday 21st - Monday 25th August: It's the Third Test, it's England against Bangladesh. We know that cricket matches always fill stadiums to the rafters, so best book early.
Saturday 30th August: If you fancy a bird's eye view of the home match against Torquay, why not book a table in our hospitality box at the top of the ArcelorMittal Orbit Tower (closed to the public matchdays).
Wednesday 3rd September: Practice night for the Carpenter's Estate Under-9s football squad.
Saturday 6th September: The GB Athletics Championships come to Stratford, honouring the pledge Seb Coe made to the IOC almost ten years ago. Tickets are £5 each. Please come. I mean, you all said you thought a track legacy was important. Now bloody well prove it by turning up and watching.
Thursday 11th September: Vice-Chairman Karren Brady brings the Apprentice hopefuls to Upton Olympic Park. Their challenge this week is to sell as many tickets as possible for Saturday's match against Macclesfield. Former Spurs' chairman Lord Sugar promises to stand on the touchline and smirk.
Saturday 13th September: Special Offer - buy any packet of crisps at Westfield and get five free seats for today's mid-table clash.
Sunday 21st September: Newham Community Open Day. Come on East London. You never got a chance to look inside the stadium during 2012 because the tickets were so expensive. Surely we can tempt you inside today for a free coffee and some volunteers handing out leaflets about debt management.
Wednesday 11th February 2015: It's damned bleak here in the middle of winter in the middle of a concrete park nobody visits. Darlington at home, 7.45pm, anyone? Anyone?
Yours welcomingly, Westfield Ham Hoping to be somebody's local team from 2014
There are plans afoot for three London boroughs to do a bit of sharing. What with cuts looming and everything, they want to share backroom services across the three boroughs to benefit from some economies of scale. Sure, hundreds of existing employees in triplicated jobs will end up redundant. But councillors argue that's a small price to pay if care homes and school provision and other frontline services don't get slashed.
The three boroughs are Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham. Don't worry, they're not going to merge, because that would be ghastly. They'd have to call themselves The Royal City of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham, or W&K&C&H&F for short, which'd be a real mouthful. Instead they're going to stay independent but make joint decisions on cross-borough resourcing. There'll be one Head of Street Cleaning, one Head of Trading Standards, one Head of Libraries, and so on. It's yet to be decided whether those Heads will have any staff reporting to them, or whether existing employees will be hived off into private companies who'll be contracted to do everything at reduced price. All the proposals are in a 100-page Tri-Borough report which you can read here, and either nod vigorously or shake your head and weep.
Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham aren't the only London boroughs thinking of sharing backroom services. Three groups of Labour councils have also eyed up partnership packages, although not quite deeply as W&K&C&H&F. One's Camden and Islington, who plan to pool road repairs, refuse collection and more. Another's Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham, who cover fairly similar neighbourhoods south of the Thames. And the third is Haringey and Waltham Forest, with plans for shared payroll and school meals provision.
These potential super-boroughs would punch above their separate weights. Camdislington would have a population greater than Bristol. Royal Westkenchelfulsmith would have a higher population than the whole of Buckinghamshire. Walthamgey would be more populous than Manchester. And Lamwarksham would match the combined population of Devon and Cornwall, crammed into a space no bigger than the city of Plymouth. There are plenty of economies of scale here, should Londoners choose to grasp them.
But there's a major potential problem here, which is that these groupings only work while the councils are run by the same political party. Southwark's only been Labour controlled since last spring, whereas Hammersmith and Fulham never used to be Conservative before 2006. What happens after the next election if these super-boroughs end up ruled by different parties. Where's the accountability then? A newly-elected Labour administration in H&F might want to withdraw from the service-slashing tri-borough agreement, but would find it incredibly difficult to do so. They'd have no Environmental Health department of their own, nor any parking wardens, nor a dedicated H&F library service. Everything would have to be bought back, or transferred across, or else left permanently in sold-off hands. Sharing services may be an excellent way of cutting costs, but it's a one-way transformation.
Looking deeper, why does London have 33 different recycling teams when fewer would be much more efficient? What if larger councils were indeed the best way to go? So I've had a go at dividing up the capital into super-boroughs to see how a new map of municipal London might look. It's just a bit of fun, as Peter Snow might say, and not based on any existing plans at all. Yes, I know you hate the borough nextdoor that I've paired you up with - there'd be a lot of opposition to this consolidation. But that's precisely how the last reorganisation of London's councils was carried out - three former boroughs combined to created one much larger one. These new tri-boroughs are simply the next natural step, so long as value for money's more important to you than local accountability.
Or we could go the whole hog and create a Greater London Council. That'd be more efficient still, surely, with services coordinated across the capital to give best value for all. If all goes well, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham might wonder what they've started.
That's the fabric cloak around the edge of the Olympic Stadium, a key part of the architect's originaldesign, which was scrapped last year as part of the Government's Spending Review.
No really, you've moaned about the Olympics twice in the last week. Enough already.
The wrap would have cost £7m, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things, at least when building a 500-acre legacy site for £9bn. But it was sacrificed on the altar of "We Simply Can't Afford It", because it appeared to be an unnecessary optional extra and was therefore easily cancelled. Budgetary savings = quick PR win.
I think you'll find that £7m could keep most of London's threatened libraries open for some considerable time. A saving of £7m's not peanuts. But you choose to ignore that fact, don't you Mr Geezer, to pander to your own blinkered prejudices.
Now suddenly, three months later, the wrap's back. We've always needed a windbreak, apparently, and something had to screen the miles of electrical cables which would otherwise have been on full global view. What's changed Seb's mind? Private money.
For goodness sake, there's nothing wrong with private money per se. The world would collapse without the good intentions of dynamic capitalism.
Apparently there's been "significant interest" from the corporate sector, so a formal tender process has just been launched for wraparound sponsorship. I wonder which lucky company will get to imprint themselves on 900m of peak global advertising space. Imagine for example the Golden Arches projected around the stadium perimeter, disfiguring every aerial shot of the Olympic Park come 2012.
Never fear, because strict IOC rules forbid any branding whatsoever in venues at Games time. The wrap won't be littered with slogans, symbols or trademarks - it can't happen. But the successful sponsor's logo will be on display at the start and end of each day, while no events are taking place. Would that really be so terrible?
The big change here is that something which was going to be provided by the public sector will now be funded by the private sector instead. Previously it was taxpayers whose pockets were being emptied, but now the money's flowing the other way. And I'm not completely comfortable with that.
What, are you mad? There are companies lining up to throw their money at this wrap, and you'd prefer to take cash out of hard-earned government budgets instead? It's idiots like you who dragged this country's finances into a hole in the first place.
I happened to approve of the original plan, whereby the stadium wrap would be decorated with a purely sporting design. Instead we'll get something twisted by ulterior commercial motives, heavy with unspoken branding, which somehow cheapens the entire Olympic fortnight. In my eyes anyway.
You're on a real vendetta against PR, marketing and the private sector, aren't you? Live in the real world, sonny. The days of unquestioning state support are over.
There are, I'd say, three approximate groups of British citizen: 1) Those who think few things (if any) are best done by the state 2) Those who think several things are best done by the state 3) Those who don't really care either way
We're in a Number 1 phase at the moment. The government's busy changing the landscape to ensure that Number 1 is the default option in as many different areas of society as possible. The reborn Olympic wrap is simply another reflection of the way this country's going. It couldn't have been branded a year ago, whereas it couldn't avoid being branded today.
In exactly five weeks time, tickets for the London 2012 Olympics will go on sale. Planning on buying any? You may be in for a shock.
What do we know so far? We know the range of prices for each event, which'll start at £20 and peak at £2012. We know the draftevent schedule, which is due to be confirmed next Tuesday. We know that a Visa card will be required to buy tickets online. We know that 6.6 million tickets will be available, for a total of 671different sessions. We know there'll be a public ballot for any sessions that are over-subscribed. And we know that everyone will have an equal chance in that ballot, whether they apply on 15 March or 26 April. This we know.
But this (recently added to London 2012's ticketing FAQ) you probably didn't know.
How many tickets am I likely to be allocated depending on how many I apply for? We urge you to consider your budget very carefully when applying for tickets. Once your application is processed you cannot cancel, change or return the tickets you are allocated. When you apply, the maximum amount you could be charged will be made clear to you and you'll need to have sufficient funds available to cover this.
In other words, when you enter the Olympic ticket ballot you're agreeing to pay for every ticket you're offered. Apply for one, get none, and you'll pay nothing. Apply for twenty, get three, and you'll pay for three. But apply for twenty, get twenty, and you'll pay for twenty. This is a ballot with an expensive sting in its tail. If you can't afford to pay for your backup choices, don't risk entering.
When applying for tickets can I rank my preferences? We encourage you to take your time in selecting a range of sports, sessions and price categories to apply for as there won’t be an opportunity to rank your preferences within your choices. Tickets start at £20 across all sports. All price categories will provide a great Games experience.
Suppose you want to see the diving. That'll be popular, so how many sessions should you bid for? Apply for just one and it's quite possible you'll lose out, completely, and never see an Olympic dive in your life. To increase your chances you need to apply for more sessions - maybe a lot more, depending on how oversubscribed you think the diving's going to be. Get the balance right and you could be watching Tom Daley leap. But overdo it and you could find yourself lumbered with several tickets across several days, when you really only wanted one. Expensive mistake.
How can I go about applying for tickets for groups of family and friends? You will be notified if you are unsuccessful in any of the sessions you applied for - you will either receive the allocation you applied for, or you will be unsuccessful and receive none. So if a family of five applies for tickets for a Handball session (providing you're within the ticket limit for that session) and you are allocated tickets to that session you will receive either the total quantity of tickets you requested for that session or none at all.
Suppose you're a family of five who want to see some track cycling at the Velodrome. You don't mind when, because it's the school holidays, but how many sessions do you apply for? You'd like to spread the possibilities over a week, but that's too dangerous. What if you ended up with five tickets for Monday afternoon and five for Monday evening and five for Tuesday afternoon, etc etc, that'd break the bank. It'd be safer to apply for only one session, say Wednesday afternoon... but then you might miss out on the cycling altogether. Best to aim low and go to the preliminary round of the handball instead, I'm sure the kids won't be disappointed.
Suppose you have your heart set on attending the Beach Volleyball final. Tickets are available at £450, £295, £185, £125 and £95, and you can choose just one of these price categories or a wider range. The £95 tickets will obviously be more popular than the £450, so you can maximise your chances by including the higher value tickets in your range. Unfortunately that also maximises your chances of having to pay a lot rather than a little. Offer to pay £450 or £95, and you can bet that £450's the more likely total to be whipped from your bank balance.
When will ticket costs be charged to my account? No charge will be made until tickets are allocated, which will happen in May-June 2011. Full details of the process - including what happens and when - will be announced shortly.
Applications for tickets close at a minute to midnight on Tuesday 26th April. At this point you'll have offered some sort of pre-authorisation on your Visa card for every ticket you've applied for - your money's primed to go. It'll take London 2012 and their friends at Ticketmaster some time to allocate who gets what, and then they'll email to tell you precisely how successful you've been. Will you have the event you wanted or not? Will you be signed up for a balanced range of sports at optimal times, or will you be making do with second best spread awkwardly across a fortnight? Most importantly, can your bank balance take an instant hit on some as-yet unspecified date if you end up being more successful than you hoped? Plan carefully, or this might hurt.
How do refunds and resales work if I decide I don’t want my tickets? Customers will have the opportunity to resell their tickets at face value through the official London 2012 resale programme in 2012. This will be the only authorised way to buy tickets from people offering their tickets for resale. Further details will be announced in early 2012.
Just read those last two FAQs again. Your money will be taken in May/June 2011. But if you end up with tickets you don't want, for whatever reason, you won't be able to sell them until some time in 2012. Any unexpected hole in your cashflow will last at least six months, whereas Olympic bosses get all their ticket money more than a year before the first event takes place. Someone's thought about this very deliberately.
When the official publicity kicks off for Olympic ticketing, one message will be very clear. Don't apply for tickets you know you can't afford. Less well-off folk will be penalised, because they can only risk having a few tickets in the great Olympic raffle, and may end up seeing nothing. Meanwhile rich folk can bid for all the best tickets in as many sports as they like, because their finances can take the hit no matter what. Best plump up your cash reserves if you want to see anything decent. This we now know.
TfL cut Tube ticket office opening hours yesterday. Oyster sales continue to increase, so far fewer of us need to queue up for a bit of cardboard before we start our journey. Opening hours will now "better suit demand", which means fewer staff sitting around behind a window waiting for someone, anyone, to turn up. But it also increases the chances that when you do actually need to use a ticket office, it'll be shut. Swings, roundabouts.
For the new opening hours at your local station, click on tfL's handy interactive map. For the new opening hours at every station, check this 6-page summary pdf. The big list's very complex, with almost every station having a completely different set of opening hours. To try to make sense of the overall picture, and the true scale of the cuts, I've churned the numbers through a spreadsheet. I can't guarantee the numbers are 100% accurate, but below is my handy summary. You draw your own conclusions.
» Stations which used to have a ticket office, but now don't = 0 » Stations still without a functioning ticket office = 9 (Cannon Street, Chigwell, Grange Hill, Heathrow Terminal 5, Regent's Park, Roding Valley, Theydon Bois, Upminster Bridge, Wood Lane)
» Stations not run by London Underground, and whose ticket office hours aren't changing = 17 (Barking, Ealing Broadway, Gunnersbury → Richmond, Queen's Park → Harrow and Wealdstone, Upminster, Wimbledon)
The following data is therefore for the remaining 244 stations only. n.b. Where stations have more than one ticket office, only the ticket office with the longest opening hours is included. » Stations which used to have more than one ticket office, and now have only one = 7 (Aldgate East, Canary Wharf, Charing Cross, South Woodford, Stratford (for now), Waterloo, Woodford)
Weekdays
» Ticket offices with longer opening hours = 1 (West Brompton) » Ticket offices with identical opening hours = 4 (Barkingside, Bounds Green, Dagenham Heathway, Fairlop) » Ticket offices with shorter opening hours = 239 (98%) » Ticket office with the largest daily cut = Bromley-by-Bow (-11½hrs)
» Ticket offices opening earlier in the morning = 5 (Hounslow East, Mansion House, North Ealing, Royal Oak, West Finchley) » Ticket offices opening later in the morning = 210 (86%)
» Ticket offices closing later in the evening = 5 (Arnos Grove, Cockfosters, North Greenwich, Oakwood, Paddington H&C) » Ticket offices closing earlier in the evening = 227 (93%)
» Ticket offices that used to stay open past 9pm, but no longer do = 36 (15%) » Ticket offices that used to stay open past 6pm, but no longer do = 48 (20%) » Ticket offices that used to stay open past 12 noon, but are now mornings only = 56 (23%)
Saturday
» Ticket offices with longer opening hours = 0 » Ticket offices with identical opening hours = 3 (Blackfriars, Knightsbridge, Wembley Park) » Ticket offices with shorter opening hours = 229 (94%) » Ticket offices still closed on a Saturday = 12 (Aldgate, Barkingside, Canons Park, Fairlop, Mansion House, Mill Hill East, North Ealing, Park Royal, Royal Oak, Temple, West Finchley, West Harrow) » Ticket offices now closing altogether on a Saturday = 2 (Chancery Lane, Monument)
» Ticket offices whose Saturday hours have been cut by 50% or more = 85 (35%) » Ticket offices whose Saturday hours have been cut to just one hour, which is of no genuine practical use = 33 (14%) » Ticket office with the largest cut = Hampstead (-12¾hrs)
Sunday
» Ticket offices with longer opening hours = 1 (Tower Hill) » Ticket offices with identical opening hours = 2 (London Bridge, Victoria) » Ticket offices with shorter opening hours = 217 (89%) » Ticket offices still closed on a Sunday = 24 (10%) » Ticket offices now closing altogether on a Sunday = 1 (Monument)
» Ticket offices whose Sunday hours have been cut by 50% or more = 83 (34%) » Ticket offices whose Sunday hours have been cut to just one hour, which'll make it far easier to shut them completely next time there's a round of closures = 32 (13%) » Ticket office with the largest cut = Sudbury Town (-11½hrs)
Meanwhile on the DLR...
» DLR stations that still don't have ticket offices, and everybody copes = 100%
What did you do for SaveOurLibraries Day? I went to five London libraries...
Bethnal Green Library Not all of Tower Hamlets' libraries have been turned into Idea Stores. Thank goodness for that, because the classical stylings of Bethnal Green Library (formerly Bethnal House Asylum) would look awful upgraded in plastic. The main book-lending space is a large Victorian room with segmented glass ceiling, complete with plaster medallions on the far wall commemorating heroes Darwin, Marx, Morris and Wagner. It's mighty imposing on a first visit, once you've slipped through the barrier past the central librarian's desk. They weren't rushed off their feet when I visited, probably no more than ten of us all told, but an almost perfect societal mix nonetheless. A decent selection of books to choose from, I thought, unlike the slightly threadbare selection the borough's mainstream Idea Stores sometimes boast. So decent that I felt moved to take out a couple, including one I've picked up in bookshops several times but never felt worth the cover price. I regretted having to carry their weight around for the rest of the day, but they're all mine for the next three weeks. Fab, I'll have to go back again. Event: Author Jonathan Kemp discusses his debut novel 'London Triptych' as part of LGBT History Month, 6.30pm tomorrow. Open: Mon Tue Thu Fri Sat
Chalk Farm Library A much smaller library this, tucked into two rooms at the heart of celeb-friendly Primrose Hill. I saw nobody famous here - they probably download their latest fiction purchases to an iPad or something - but plenty of less well-off local residents had popped in to swap books or to use the facilities. Two older folk were using the computers to check their Hotmail (not something everyone can do at home), while a younger bloke stood busy at the photocopier. There were several staff bustling around, rather more than I'd seen back in Bethnal Green, but who must have part-time roles given the building's limited opening hours. The children's library seemed to have the better selection of books, and more space, but as a solo-visiting male it wasn't really on the cards to look inside and check. At the central desk a nice selection of local greetings cards were for sale, plus a trolleyful of unwanted hardback stock at rock bottom prices. The whole place struck me as busy, friendly and well-used, which is how it should be.... for now. No decision on library cuts in Camden has yet been made, but expect Chalk Farm to be in the firing line. Event: Public meeting about library closures in Camden, chaired by John Tusa, Hampstead Old Town Hall, 7pm Tuesday. Open: Mon Fri Sat
Kensal Rise Library Brent Council are planning to shut half of their existing 12 libraries, and Kensal Rise is one of those scheduled for the chop. A sore point, closing a building opened by none other than author Mark Twain, but sentimentality counts for nothing in the tough world of council budgeting. Thankfully the library has a very loud set of supporters campaigning to get that decision overturned, and their handiwork was visible in several windows on my walk up from the station. I had to wait outside the door to allow a bloke in a wheelchair to emerge, then walked inside and immediately set off the library's electronic security gates. It seems that Tower Hamlets books aren't compatible with Brent scanners, which would have been embarrassing had any of the librarians blinked. I suspect they were too busy mopping up after that morning's Children's Read-In - a special protest event for Save Our Libraries day, and a couple of whose helium balloons were still bobbing against the ceiling. The building had been packed, apparently, with actress Tamsin Greig on the premises and even a special message of support from author Philip Pullman. Nothing so busy in the afternoon, however, just a few souls sat about reading or perusing the shelves, which I suspect is more the norm. The council hope that a group of community volunteers may be able to run things in the future. If not, the redbrick building would undoubtedly make lovely flats... but only for illiterate philistines. Event: Children's Read-In, 10am yesterday. Open: Mon Tue Thu Sat
Brixton Library And so to the largest library I visited yesterday, still housed inside Sir Henry Tate's philanthropic edifice (beside the Ritzy Cinema). Again I'd missed the major protest of the day - a bout of angry placard-waving and a read-in - but there were plenty of visible after-effects. Local children had chalked "Save Our Libraries" rather colourfully across Windrush Square, along with heartfelt slogans like "No Library, No Life". The main body of protesters had moved on, but a gaggle remained outside the main entrance with a petition to sign. At least I assumed they had one - although nobody moved to ask me to sign anything either on the way in or the way out. The building was packed, as it always is, with a logjam of book-taker-outers blocking the doorway beside the main information desk. Almost all the seats were taken, proving the innate popularity of a social hub with free wi-fi. Upstairs four students had even been forced to sit on the floor, leaning back against the geography section with their laptops poised for action. Somebody was wandering around with a video camera, taking backup shots of the black fiction section for use in some cuts-based news broadcast later. It'd be unthinkable for this library to close, but Lambeth are eyeing up several smaller outposts for culling. Watch this space, because they won't go quietly. Event: Save Our Services - Lobby and demonstration, Lambeth Town Hall, 6pm tomorrow. Open: Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
Blackheath Library Another borough, another doomed library. Lewisham have their eye on Blackheath as one of five to dispose of, and in future residents can jolly well travel further to exchange their books somewhere else. So I headed here, to Blackheath Library, to see what might be lost. It's not a lovely looking library from outside, resembling a mini-supermarket beneath two layers of flats. But head inside and it has easily the most pleasant atmosphere of any of the five libraries I visited. Bright, modern and spacious, with curving bookshelves and cosy seating areas. Audio-visual services lend well, the ICT suite is very popular, and the central desk is more of a meeting point than a barrier. Surely they couldn't close this place down? And no, because it turns out Blackheath has two libraries and I'd gone to the wrong one. This library (at the Royal Standard) is run by Greenwich, and less than a mile down the road (in Blackheath Village) is the doomed library run by Lewisham. I'd therefore missed the maindemonstrationof the day, in which Village residents (and four local authors) came together to read from their favourite books, because I was in the wrong borough. Geographically speaking, this doubling-up can't be the most efficient way to run London's library service. But irreversibly sacrificing dozens of the capital's libraries on the altar of efficiency surely can't be the way to go either. Event: Read-in, followed by overnight occupation, New Cross Library, still continuing. Open: Tue Thu Fri Sat
» It's been a most unusual February, so far. The month's only four days old but I've already spent three nights out being sociable (Count 5 = 3). Admittedly most of those were in a Yorkshire hotel bar, where 'going out' merely meant stumbling down a long corridor, but don't knock it. My alcoholic beverage tally is also well up on normal (Count 6 = 9). I've downed nine bottles of German lager already, which is three times what I drank during the whole of February last year. This sociable period won't last, obviously, but I'm making the most of it while it lasts.
» Better late than never, I've been to see The Museum of Everything in Primrose Hill. Artist Sir Peter Blake is an avid collector of 'stuff', and roomfuls of his top-classephemera are now on display (for free) in an old building behind Chalk Farm Library. A corridor of photographed midgets, a grotto packed with seaside shell boxes, a complete set of Punch & Judy puppets, that sort of thing. There are plenty of circus freakshow references, like posters of bearded ladies and banners inviting punters to see the amazing two-headed cow (alive). Some sideshow art from Carter's Steam Fair fills an upper gallery, while another room showcases Ted Wilcox's erotic embroidery. As a finale we get to step inside the curious world of Walter Potter, creator of stuffed animal tableaux. Visitors to his Sussex museum enjoyed casefuls of card-playing squirrels, athletic toads and criminal sparrows, amongst others, at least until the collection was sold off. Hats off to Sir Peter for buying so many, and for sharing a lifetime's clutter with us all. Hurry, next weekend's your last chance.
» Don't some people get over-excited about rugby? They were showing the Six Nations in the pub last night, and blimey some people got all wound up over it. Most of them were roaring on England, in a sort-of transfixed way as if their lives depended on it, whereas any Welshmen in the crowd were keeping their emotions more to themselves. It always amazes me how some people treat these once-a-year pitch battles with almost religious reverence, as if the outcome somehow matters, but I guess they'd be equally amazed by my complete indifference.
» One of the specialist subjects on Mastermind last night was The History of the London Underground (I guess it had to come up one day). Why not see how many points you'd have scored? I got one more than trainee actuary Andrew, but then I was sitting at my laptop in my dressing gown eating a bowl of Shreddies, not facing John Humphries' icy glare under hot studio lights.
» Do you remember the days when government ministers used to announce stuff, and then the newspapers and TV news would report on it afterwards? Not any more. Every ministerial announcement these days seems to be forwarded to the media in advance, so that you can read precisely what they're going to say before they say it. "The prime minister will criticise.." "David Cameron will argue... " "...he will say." Is this because the government fears its message won't get out if people have to wait until tomorrow morning to read it? Are ministers worried that the media won't report a speech properly if they don't have the script in front of them? Or has making speeches become irrelevant in our modern world, where a press release is all you need to get your message across?
» Travellers at Whitechapel station will have noticed that two of the District line platforms have been boarded off, as a first stage of the station's Crossrail upgrade. Platforms 1 and 4 are no longer accepting trains, with all services running through 2 and 3 in the centre. What you may not be expecting is that it's platforms 2 and 3 which will be disappearing. They'll be combined across the existing central tracks to make one mega-wide District platform, and trains will ultimately stop where platforms 1 and 4 used to be. [No scheduled Hammersmith & City line train will ever terminate at Whitechapel again - they'll go at least as far as West Ham, where a new turnround siding has just been opened] The rebuilding of Whitechapel station will take several years, because there's tons to do. In particular, if you're local, steel yourself for having to use a temporary entrance to the station round the back in Durwood Street between 2014 and 2017.
Like me, you were probably very excited to hear that Heineken are to be the Official Lager Supplier to the London 2012 Olympics. I know you've never seen any Olympic athletes drinking any lager, but that doesn't matter. This isn't about sport, it's about what alcoholic beverages the customer service operatives at London 2012 can serve up to you, the cash-rich spectator. These will be the Games that other beers cannot reach, because you'll only be able to order Heineken. Plus other major Heineken UK brands such as Foster's, Strongbow, Bulmers, John Smith's and Kronenbourg 1664. And maybe even speciality Heineken UK brands such as Tiger, Amstel, Jacques, Newcastle Brown Ale, Deuchars IPA, Murphy's, Sagres, Zywiec, McEwan's, Birra Moretti, Woodpecker and Scrumpy Jack. When you were fourteen swigging illicit Woodpecker in the local bus shelter, I bet you never dreamed you might be drinking the official apple-based intoxicant of the 2012 Olympics.
Three further reasons to be excited. Firstly because this additional sponsorship means that the UK taxpayer will have to contribute a few million less towards the running of the Olympics. Secondly because London 2012 Commercial Director Chris Townsend says so, in blustering brandspeak... "We are especially pleased to be working with Heineken, as we have a shared goal of encouraging adult visitors to our venues where alcohol is served to celebrate responsibly". And thirdly because there won't be any bottles of Becks on sale, so I've decided I won't be drinking any alcohol at the 2012 Games in protest. The queues for the toilets will no doubt be atrociously long, but I won't need to go quite so often because my bladder won't be full of official gassy piss. So that's a win.
In order that we can best appreciate London 2012's top sponsors, I thought I'd test you with a 'spot the odd one out' competition. One of the sponsors in each section below is a fake - that's five fakes in all. And all the rest are genuine Official Providers. I'm sure any true Olympic supporter will be able to tell the difference.
Top Level Global Olympic Partners (plus one odd one out) • Official Non-alcoholic Beverages Partner - Coca Cola • Official Computing Technology Equipment Partner - Acer • Official Information Technology Partner - Atos Origin • Official Chemistry Company Partner - Dow Chemical Company • Official Select products and services from GE Energy, GE Healthcare, GE Transport, GE Infrastructure, GE Consumer & Industrial, GE Advanced Materials and GE Equipment Services Partner - GE • Official Retail Food Services Partner - McDonald's • Official Timing, Scoring and Venue Results Services Partner - Omega • Official Audio/TV/Video Equipment Partner - Panasonic • Official Personal Care and Household Products Partner - Procter & Gamble • Official Wireless Communications Equipment Partner - Samsung • Official Transportation Partner - Toyota • Official Consumer Payment Systems Partner - Visa
London 2012 Paralympic Partners (plus one odd one out) • Official Partner of the Paralympic Games - Sainsbury's • Official Prosthetic, Orthotic and Wheelchair Technical Services Provider - Otto Bock • Official Accessibility Entitlement Partner - RGK Life
London 2012 Olympic Tier One Partners (plus one odd one out) • Official Sportswear Partner - Adidas • Official Televisual Partner - BBC • Official Automotive Partner - BMW • Official Oil and Gas Partner - BP • Official Airline Partner - British Airways • Official Communications Services Partner - BT • Official Sustainability Partner - EDF • Official Banking Partner - Lloyds TSB
London 2012 Olympic Tier Two Supporters (plus one odd one out) • Official Recruitment Services Supplier - Adecco • Official Steel Supporter - ArcelorMittal • Official Confectionery and Ice Cream Supporter - Cadbury • Official Network Infrastructure Partner - Cisco • Official Professional Services Supporter - Deloitte • Official Water and Sewage Facilities Supporter - Thames Water • Official Provider of Short Breaks to the London 2012 Games - Thomas Cook • Official Logistics and Express Delivery Supporter - UPS
Greetings from Yorkshire. I'm spending the best part of a week up here, courtesy of work, which is a bit of a novelty because they've never paid for me to stay away before. Yorkshire eh? Fantastic. I've got a bed for the night in one of the most interesting counties in England - somewhere I rarely get to visit - so there ought to be ample opportunities to explore some good bits. Except no.
When I say Yorkshire, I'm not talking about the interesting part. You may be thinking rolling moors or heritage industrial, but I'm staying nowhere near any of that. The tourist brochure in my hotel room lists all the supposedly nearby great things to do in God's Own County, but none of them are at all close. Number three on the 'local attractions' list is York Minster, which is so far away it'd be quicker to get there from King's Cross than from where I am. With a vehicle of my own it'd be different, but I arrived here by taxi so I'm a bit stuck.
When I say Yorkshire, what I mean is a trading estate beside a motorway. There are a lot of motorways in Yorkshire, hence a lot of motorway junctions, hence a lot of trading estates. Where better to set up your warehouse than a former field attached to the rest of the country via high-speed dual carriageway network? Where better to set up a nationwide business? And where better to set up a hotel with a very big car park? I'm stuck somewhere people come because it's terribly easy to get to, not somewhere that's worth visiting in its own right.
Please imagine that in this space there's a photograph of a lorry parked beside a warehouse.
When I say a trading estate beside a motorway, what I mean is a logistics hub. Warehouses, and warehouses, and more warehouses. A steady stream of lorries pouring in from the motorway, bringing stuff and things from all over the country. Documents, chemicals, perishables, whatever, all transported into one central location ready to be sent straight back out again. It's how modern society works, how that thing you want to buy tomorrow gets where you need it to be at a price you can afford. And it's rumbling down my nearest access road at all hours. Wish you were here?
Each morning I have to walk from the hotel on one side of the trading estate to my place of work on the other. It'd be a short stroll were it possible to walk direct but no, instead I have to take my chances negotiating the maze of turnoffs inbetween. The first bit of the walk is a fragment of tree-lined country lane that's somehow survived the arrival of motorway sprawl, presumably by being a dead end. But it doesn't last long. The light industrial units start soon after, plus a field full of caravans for sale and a depot where school buses hide during the day. Main road ahead.
Mail lorries, car transporters, articulated monsters - any of these could mow me down as I attempt to nip across the speeding traffic. I'm in extra danger every time I cross the entrance to another depot, because drivers aren't used to anyone passing by on foot. You can see where their wheels have churned up the grass verge by swinging in slightly too fast, then reversing with a beep into the 'Goods inwards' loading bay. There may be a pavement along the road, but nobody else is using it. All the local workers drive, it's expected, and park their cars in abundant space near the warehouse doors.
I pass a carton of screenwash discarded in the hedge and a billboard with the phone number for Steve's Mobile Towbars. Somewhere off to the right is Bevz Grill, ideal for hungry truckers, while nextdoor there's 40000 sqft of prime warehouse for rent. The bus stop gets one visit a day, been and gone before 8am, with one corresponding service in the opposite direction in the early evening. Low scrub, high fences and identikit metal sheds - all absolutely nothing like the sights on my normal commute.
I spend each day at the end of a spur road off a spur road, in office space that must cost a fraction of my usual London hideout. And then at the end of the day I walk back again to my hotel hideaway, complete with swimming pool, health club and spa. Several of my colleagues avail themselves of the facilities, sneaking in a quick twenty lengths or manicure before dinner. But not me. I prefer another exploratory walk around the trading estate before dark, because that's the kind of bloke I am. A logistics hub may not be York Minster, but there's always something interesting to see on your doorstep.
As a numerate infant I coped pretty well, having barely had to engage with the previous system. My year at school was the first to use special decimal workcards in maths lessons (as pictured here in a glass case in Luton Museum). Those older than me had had to learn complex base 12 and base 20 arithmetic to carry out even the simplest of money calculations, but base 10 was far easier. I guess my class never realised at the time how lucky an escape we'd had.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh is one of Britain's best-loved designers. More specifically he's one of Scotland's best-loved designers, which means examples of his work south of the border are fairly sparse. He undertook only one domestic commission outside his home country and that was in 1916, in Northampton. Local entrepreneur W J Bassett-Lowke hadn't able to build the marital house of his dreams because there was a war on, so invited Mackintosh to redesign a narrow terraced house on the edge of town. This Charles did, with warm geometric precision, and the newlywed couple moved in the following year.
No, you don't enter through the front door. It's rather a stunning front door, jet black with triangular motifs, and in sharp contrast to the rest of the street. You enter via number 82, which has been gutted to create a modern glass atrium, and where they'll take £6.20 off your hands. Time your visit right and you can join a 1¼hr guided tour. Don't time it wrong, because the volunteers are excellent and a self-guided tour just wouldn't be the same. [virtual tour]
The rear of the house has a more pleasant aspect, and here are the dining room and bedrooms. Renovation work has concentrated more on Mackintosh's design than Bassett-Lowke's furniture, so some of the rooms look a little empty. Concentrate instead on the walls and fixtures, and the ahead-of-their time fitted carpets. Those are Mackintosh lanterns above the dining room fireplace, and the hinged coal scuttle hidden alongside also bears his mark. But it's the guest bedroom that's the most striking, with miniature chairs and a bold ultramarine and white colour scheme. Wake here in the morning, as George Bernard Shaw once did, and your eyes would have faced the optical illusion of a precisely-striped ceiling. The Bassett-Lowkes had an eye on making a splash in interior design magazines such as Ideal Home, and rooms such as this ensured they succeeded.
Some county town museums are a bit pants. This one's mostly shoes, and all the better for it. The entire downstairs is given over to displays of footwear, and also to the art of cobbling for which the town is duly famous. Somebody's been very very busy collecting shoes of all shapes and types, from medieval leather wraps to 1970s disco wedges. Some are small and dainty, others large and clompy (there's even a massive pair of Doc Martens as originally worn by Elton John, circa Pinball Wizard). There are more ladies' than men's, just as the shoe rack might be in your house, but also a special red-lined cupboard of fetish boots for the gentleman who can't quite make up his mind. A gallery at the back reminds visitors that shoemaking required considerable human skill across a wide range of hard-to-mechanise processes. Much of the labour intensive work has long since drifted abroad, but Church's still handmake Oxfords and brogues in their factory up St James Road. For those with more contemporary tastes, the museum's currently hosting a special exhibition devoted to the history of training shoes. The story kicks off with green Dunlops and those black plimsolls we all wore in 70s gym lessons, but focuses mainly on the top international manufacturers and their rubber-soled creations. Sneaker obsessives will have read all the facts before, but will no doubt lust after all the retro trainers boxed up from the first time around. Adidas Superstars, Air Jordans, New Balance 600-and-somethings... your Heritage Lottery money helped to assemble this lot, and it's attracting a younger audience than normal. Upstairs, yes, a history of Northampton and a lot of old porcelain. But it's the shoes you'll remember.
Whoever designed this cavernous 1970s bus station must have hated Northampton. It regularly tops lists of the most hated buildings in Britain, and it's very easy to see why. A Brutalist hybrid of bus station, office block and carpark, it sits astride the ringroad like two conjoined aircraft hangars [photo]. The waiting area's sandwiched between two very long undercover bus lanes, so to get inside you'll have to enter from underneath along a dystopian subway [photo]. Long, off-white and featureless, you can imagine it might have featured in A Clockwork Orange if only the film hadn't been shot quite so early. Once in the heart of the beast you first enter a concrete vault of dismal proportions, where there's one of the least enticing cafeterias you'll ever set eyes upon. A few small tables spaced out beneath striplights, a red-tiled kitchen area which'll do you a £3 breakfast until 1pm, and a ragbag of customers who look ready to give up on life. Head up the escalators into the bus station proper and things don't really improve. The building's so long that no daylight seeps inside, just the occasional bus headlamp flashing past. Rows of wooden benches stretch off into the far distance, where a population of lost souls sits and waits until their chosen service comes to spirit them away. If the economy improves, there are plans to demolish the whole of Greyfriars bus station and build a shopping mall in its place. Normally I'd baulk at the idea but here, sorry Northampton, bring it on.
Well, you've got to test a lift somewhere, haven't you? And they used to be tested here, in this 127m-high tower on a Northampton trading estate [photo] [photo]. To give you some idea of scale, that's about five metres taller than the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, which is what's made the tower a true landmark for many miles around. It belonged to the Express Lift Company, who knocked it up over a few weeks in the summer of 1980 and then brought the Queen round to open it. There are six shafts inside, none of them from the very top to the very bottom, but enabling a wide range of elevator mechanisms to be duly assessed. All went well until the company was taken over by Otis Elevators, who swiftly closed down all operations in 1997. A hasty Grade-II listing prevented the tower from being demolished, and the surrounding land's since been redeveloped as a fairly ordinary housing estate [photo]. That's good if you want to get up close because there's now public access to the base, or at least to the modern roundabout surrounding it [photo]. It must be odd living in the shadow of such a tall and slender tower, but the folk I saw out mending their cars and lugging the shopping home seemed barely to notice it. Good news - the building's operational again. It's been snapped up by a private company who now operate it as a research, development and lift testing facility. If all goes to plan they'd also like to install a scenic elevator on the outside of the tower and turn it into a tourist attraction, although I'd say the business case for that sounds somewhat shaky. In the meantime there's an abseil planned for the May bank holiday weekend, should you have an impeccable head for heights and a desire to see all of Northampton laid out beneath you.
Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham aren't the only London boroughs thinking of sharing backroom services. Three groups of Labour councils have also eyed up partnership packages, although not quite deeply as W&K&C&H&F. One's Camden and Islington, who plan to pool road repairs, refuse collection and more. Another's Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham, who cover fairly similar neighbourhoods south of the Thames. And the third is Haringey and Waltham Forest, with plans for shared payroll and school meals provision.
Looking deeper, why does London have 33 different recycling teams when fewer would be much more efficient? What if larger councils were indeed the best way to go? So I've had a go at dividing up the capital into super-boroughs to see how a new map of municipal London might look. It's just a bit of fun, as Peter Snow might say, and not based on any existing plans at all. Yes, I know you hate the borough nextdoor that I've paired you up with - there'd be a lot of opposition to this consolidation. But that's precisely how the last reorganisation of London's councils was carried out - three former boroughs combined to created one much larger one. These new tri-boroughs are simply the next natural step, so long as value for money's more important to you than local accountability.
Olympic update
TfL cut Tube ticket office opening hours yesterday. Oyster sales continue to increase, so far fewer of us need to queue up for a bit of cardboard before we start our journey. Opening hours will now "better suit demand", which means fewer staff sitting around behind a window waiting for someone, anyone, to turn up. But it also increases the chances that when you do actually need to use a ticket office, it'll be shut. Swings, roundabouts.
Not all of Tower Hamlets' libraries have been turned into Idea Stores. Thank goodness for that, because the classical stylings of Bethnal Green Library (formerly Bethnal House Asylum) would look awful upgraded in plastic. The main book-lending space is a large Victorian room with segmented glass ceiling, complete with plaster medallions on the far wall commemorating heroes Darwin, Marx, Morris and Wagner. It's mighty imposing on a first visit, once you've slipped through the barrier past the central librarian's desk. They weren't rushed off their feet when I visited, probably no more than ten of us all told, but an almost perfect societal mix nonetheless. A decent selection of books to choose from, I thought, unlike the slightly threadbare selection the borough's mainstream Idea Stores sometimes boast. So decent that I felt moved to take out a couple, including one I've picked up in bookshops several times but never felt worth the cover price. I regretted having to carry their weight around for the rest of the day, but they're all mine for the next three weeks. Fab, I'll have to go back again.
Chalk Farm Library
Brent Council are planning to shut half of their existing 12 libraries, and Kensal Rise is one of those scheduled for the chop. A sore point, closing a building opened by none other than author Mark Twain, but sentimentality counts for nothing in the tough world of council budgeting. Thankfully the library has a very loud set of supporters campaigning to get that decision overturned, and their handiwork was visible in several windows on my walk up from the station. I had to wait outside the door to allow a bloke in a wheelchair to emerge, then walked inside and immediately set off the library's electronic security gates. It seems that Tower Hamlets books aren't compatible with Brent scanners, which would have been embarrassing had any of the librarians blinked. I suspect they were too busy mopping up after that morning's Children's Read-In - a special protest event for Save Our Libraries day, and a couple of whose helium balloons were still bobbing against the ceiling. The building had been packed, apparently, with actress Tamsin Greig on the premises and even a special message of support from author Philip Pullman. Nothing so busy in the afternoon, however, just a few souls sat about reading or perusing the shelves, which I suspect is more the norm. The council hope that a group of community volunteers may be able to run things in the future. If not, the redbrick building would undoubtedly make lovely flats... but only for illiterate philistines.
Brixton Library
Another borough, another doomed library. Lewisham have their eye on Blackheath as one of five to dispose of, and in future residents can jolly well travel further to exchange their books somewhere else. So I headed here, to Blackheath Library, to see what might be lost. It's not a lovely looking library from outside, resembling a mini-supermarket beneath two layers of flats. But head inside and it has easily the most pleasant atmosphere of any of the five libraries I visited. Bright, modern and spacious, with curving bookshelves and cosy seating areas. Audio-visual services lend well, the ICT suite is very popular, and the central desk is more of a meeting point than a barrier. Surely they couldn't close this place down? And no, because it turns out Blackheath has two libraries and I'd gone to the wrong one. This library (at the Royal Standard) is run by Greenwich, and less than a mile down the road (in Blackheath Village) is the doomed library run by Lewisham. I'd therefore missed the main demonstration of the day, in which Village residents (and four local authors) came together to read from their favourite books, because I was in the wrong borough. Geographically speaking, this doubling-up can't be the most efficient way to run London's library service. But irreversibly sacrificing dozens of the capital's libraries on the altar of efficiency surely can't be the way to go either.
» Better late than never, I've been to see The Museum of Everything in Primrose Hill. Artist Sir Peter Blake is an avid collector of 'stuff', and roomfuls of his top-class ephemera are now on display (for free) in an old building behind Chalk Farm Library. A corridor of photographed midgets, a grotto packed with seaside shell boxes, a complete set of Punch & Judy puppets, that sort of thing. There are plenty of circus freakshow references, like posters of bearded ladies and banners inviting punters to see the amazing two-headed cow (alive). Some sideshow art from Carter's Steam Fair fills an upper gallery, while another room showcases Ted Wilcox's erotic embroidery. As a finale we get to step inside the curious world of Walter Potter, creator of stuffed animal tableaux. Visitors to his Sussex museum enjoyed casefuls of card-playing squirrels, athletic toads and criminal sparrows, amongst others, at least until the collection was sold off. Hats off to Sir Peter for buying so many, and for sharing a lifetime's clutter with us all. Hurry, next weekend's your last chance.
In order that we can best appreciate London 2012's top sponsors, I thought I'd test you with a 'spot the odd one out' competition. One of the sponsors in each section below is a fake - that's five fakes in all. And all the rest are genuine Official Providers. I'm sure any true Olympic supporter will be able to tell the difference.
