Not Upper Norwood, West Norwood or South Norwood, indeed nothing to do with the leftovers of the Great North Wood in south London. Instead Norwood Green is a hamlet-cum-suburb on the Ealing/Hounslow borders, not far from Heston Services, sandwiched between the Grand Union Canal and the M4. Officially it's part of Southall but has been a separate entity for centuries, thus has a few impressively oldbits and also retains an impressively rural fringe. How had I never stopped off before?
The heart of Norwood Green is its village green, a 10-acre tree-lined triangle with houses facing all sides. It used to have a pond in one corner but that's now a playground which probably excites the local six year-olds more than a few ducks. Even at the start of the 19th century there were 40 "respectable villas" here, an ideal country bolthole for an upcoming merchant or distinguished gentleman. A particularly fine pair are The Grange and Friars Lawn on the northern edge, proper four-storey Georgian townhouses which truly stand out after you've schlepped here through more ordinary suburbia on the 120 bus. Friars Lawn was once owned by retail magnate Gordon Selfridge and later by actress Hayley Mills, and because it's on the market at the moment you can go for an impressive walkthrough with the agent, confirming that £1,695,000 goes a heck of a lot further in Norwood Green than Notting Hill.
Norwood Hall, which was designed by Sir John Soane, is larger and a tad older but also harder to spot behind the entrance to a large Sikh primary school. About a quarter of the population of Norwood Green are Sikh, not quite as high as in Southall proper but that's where the school's associated mega-temple is. I'd think twice about sending a child to the CofE primary opposite because their after-school activity is called the Kid's Club, so either only one child turns up or the staff don't understand how apostrophes work. I thought the pebbledash semis on the western side might be a little lowlier, but one had two white Rolls Royces outside with registration numbers R100LLS and R300LLS, strongly hinting at the existence of a third.
Turn up in mid-July and you'll often find a funfair on the Green, indeed at present it's half covered with whizzy rides, caravans and trailers. On the excitement front the spinny Vortex looked much scarier than the low-rise Runaway Train, with the Frankenstein-fronted Hell's Gate somewhere inbetween. The organisers are Bob Wilson's, not the Arsenal goalie but a Birmingham-based crew who do all the big events (Nottingham, Hull, Winter Wonderland) and also seem to have a regular penchant for Ealing. They've been so good at flyposting across the area that I suspect everyone in Southall knows they're here... free admission, no wristbands necessary, closing Sunday.
The oldest part of Norwood Green is a small village nucleus along Tentelow Lane. St Mary's is a flinty number with a squat tower, a 12th century arch and a few urn-topped graves overlooking the entrance. 'Do come in' said the chalkboard outside but I didn't because Revd Bookless was in the middle of celebrating her Sunday Service. Across the street is Southall's oldest pub, The Plough, a four-bay timber-framed building dating back to the early 17th century. For some reason a black door out front has been numbered '10' and a streetsign placed above saying 'Drowning Street', but then some pubs are deliberately quirkier than others. The other very old building hereabouts looks like the last in a run of small cottages but was originally the village Free School. A plaque confirms it was erected by Elisha Biscoe in 1767, before even the canal carved its way through.
Behind the pub's beer garden is Norwood Terrace, a row of 17 Victorian working-class cottages built for labourers at a nearby brickworks but now much more likely to be occupied by Ocado shoppers. Follow the footpath and you walk out into, wow, a huge wheatfield that like everything here feels a bit wrong for modern London zone 4. The National Exhibition Centre was nearly built here in the 1960s but thankfully went to Birmingham instead, preserving the rustic scene. As Heathrow-bound planes descended beyond the golden stalks I gambolled to the far side and climbed up to Osterley Lane, another delightful rural throwback. Turn right and this could be Betjeman's Middlesex, bar the skidmarks, but turn left and the lane curves abruptly across a six-lane motorway before halting at the (private) back entrance to Osterley House.
The engineers who built the M4 in the 1960s managed to find an almost-entirely undeveloped path when they drew their line from Brentford to Berkshire, bar half a street on the boundary of Heston and Norwood Green. Just south of the village all they severed was an old public right of way across a field but, being Britain, they were obliged to build a whopping great footbridge so future ramblers could continue to make the connection. To experience this benevolence I turned off the lane at an unsigned gate and followed an almost-overgrown path hemmed between two paddocks, two minutes longer than felt entirely comfortable. At the far end a long ramp climbed beside the hard shoulder, forewarned by what looked like an original sign warning locals not to cross on horseback. I stood for a few minutes above the roaring traffic on this bridge to almost-nowhere, not even well-enough aligned for a good dog-circuit, and reflected that outer London retains an almost infinite ability to surprise.
The other side of Norwood Green, by contrast, is built-up all the way to the canal. A separate village nucleus exists on the main road, once called Frogmore Green, and still self-evident when you spot the old village pump and and water trough amid a triangle of grass. There's even a Victorian terracotta police station, the signs outside misleading because it closed over a decade ago and is now flats. The shops here are proper tatty whereas the old pub is about to reopen as an even gaudier banqueting venue than it was before. Prior to going full Indian it used to be called The Wolf and gave its name to the road out front (Wolf Lane), the park round the back (Wolf Fields) and even the bridge over the Grand Union (Wolf Bridge). Amusingly the sole competing pub was The Lamb, this not yet fully devoured although it's had to evolve into a hybrid that's half traditional tavern, half spice restaurant.
Wolf Lane is now Norwood Road and offers a slightly elevated view of Southall's gold-topped gurdwara as it humps over the canal. This waterside zone is where the village once kept its industry, specifically Norwood Mill (now an industrial estate) and Norwood Vitriol Works (now a dead-end estate). It also once housed the local RSPCA cattery but that's recently been acquired by a luxury developer, no doubt with an eye on building canalside flats.
Precisely how far west Norwood Green stretches is moot - electorally almost as far as central Southall and educationally across the borough boundary, Norwood Green Primary being several streets into Hounslow. Victorian maps described a large area here very differently, a name which excitingly starts with an N so I can also bring you...
N is for North Hyde
The dull end of North Hyde is what used to be North Hyde Farm, a market garden whose orchards served the postwar population better as suburban avenues. Of far more interest is the former Ordnance Depot established canalside during the Napoleonic Wars, the hope being that gunpowder would be safer here than on the coast. The depot occupied a half-mile stripe at the northern end of Hounslow Heath, the entire complex surrounded by a rectangular perimeter of canal they called the Hanwell Loop. After decommissioning the site was purchased by Belgian Catholics who opened an orphanage, later replaced by a nunnery, then in the 1960s all this amazing backhistory was replaced by a linear wedge of drab council housing. They called it Convent Way, for hopefully obvious reasons, and it is very much looking its age.
Picture a lengthy strip of lowrise flats, since renamed after Olympic heroes, with a single tower block in the middle. A central shopping parade offers barely the basics, and one misguided local insists on putting out bowls of food so the surrounds are infested with pigeons. Unsurprisingly residents have voted in favour of fullregeneration, the council's intention to double the number of flats by building taller blocks, but sequentially so nobody is forced to move away. Planning permission was granted in 2022 but as yet absolutely nothing has happened, the phase 1 car park still a cracked concrete pigeonfest, so if you want to see what challenging housing conditions look like then catch the H32 through North Hyde.
For those who celebrate, St Tube Map's day is here again!
It used to happen more than once a year but is now an annual changeover.
Here's the Great Switcheroo Ceremony at Liverpool Street yesterday.
The old map comes out and the new map goes in.
Sometimes a new tube map brings great changes like the addition of blobs, the appearance of trams or the naming of Overground lines. This time the tweaks are minor, especially on the map itself, but there have been presentational changes and some fool's decided to make the key even more complicated.
Change 1:new cover art
It's farewell to Map Projections by Agnes Denes and hello to Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish by Ellen Gallagher. Ellen is an American artist with biracial heritage who fished commercially before taking a fine arts degree in Boston and now exhibits internationally. What's unusual here is that TfL haven't commissioned this cover from scratch, the work's already appeared in a show at the Gagosian Gallery in Paris. It's one of three oil paintings on a maritime theme that Ellen exhibited in March, in real life measuring 116⅝ × 79½ inches, so you really are getting a work of art in your pocket.
The title comes from chapter 89 of Moby Dick which is also called Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish. Here Captain Ishmael explains the fundamental rules of the whaling industry, namely "A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it." In other words marked property is yours, unmarked property is anyone's, and the whole thing turns out to be an allegory for the slave trade. Nobody picking up the pretty red map is going to guess that. As yet Art on The Underground haven't published their usual word salad on the underlying meaning but the Gagosian described the work using the following top quality artbolx.
Built upon canvas-mounted sheets of ruled, gridded paper that are stained in a vibrant pink hue, then layered with brilliantly colored, thickly impastoed pigment and incised palladium leaf, each of the Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish paintings employs a material abundance from which Gallagher’s playful meditations emerge. She takes a sculptural approach to her process, often working paintings from multiple positions. Exploding their compositional grids into groupings of vibrant lines and biomorphic shapes, she melds Post-Minimalist abstraction with imagined ocean-floor topographies and phantasmal worlds.
Change 2:a new way to display the map
Time was when leaflet racks in stations held a variety of printed information. These days they only ever hold tube maps so someone's had the very sensible idea of making this extremely obvious.
The background on the leaflet rack is now bold blue with big letters saying POCKET TUBE MAP, as if TfL are suddenly proud to be giving the maps away. There are clues elsewhere as to why, chiefly three mentions of the Art on the Underground programme... "Putting art in the hands of Londoners for over 25 years". Many would describe Harry Beck's tube map design as art but it's the cover design being plugged here, not the increasingly convoluted interior.
Look carefully and there's another change, the appearance of the sponsor's name at the top of the poster. That's Reed the recruitment company who are the 2026 sponsor of TfL's flagship art programme, indeed this is the third year they've thrown dosh at Art on the Underground. The real prize for Reed is that they've managed to get their name onto the tube map itself - on the back at the bottom of the index (where ART ON THE UNDERGROUND is also written is slightly larger font size than before).
Change 3:a map update
• Colindale now has a step-free blob (because its lifts opened last Christmas)
• The IFS Cable Car is now the London Cable Car (and its terminals have lost their sponsorship)
I think that's it (for once it's barely worth publishing a new map)
Change 4:a wordier key
Alas someone's looked at the key and thought "Do you think perhaps we could show some more information on here?" Someone's done this a lot over recent years, adding the trams, adding stations you can walk between, adding Thameslink, and on the online map adding snowflakes if the line is air-conditioned.
In 2019 someone decided to add a special symbol for river piers you could walk to, placing them in a circle joined by a dotted line. The key then had two boat symbols, one in a circle and one not, both described as 'River services interchange'. But in 2026 someone has asked "to be even more helpful do you think we should describe the two boat symbols separately?" and now suddenly there are 18 words where previously there were three.
The new dividing line is 'less than 10 minutes walk to River services interchange' versus 'more than 10 minutes walk to River services interchange'. You're more likely to want to walk to the former, or be able to, is the underlying rationale. I hesitate to think how many people actually use the tube map to make a river connection, or are inspired to, but I bet it's a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of 1%. To save you checking, here are the 19 stations with a boat symbol and which version they've got.
Less than 10 minutes walk: Imperial Wharf, Battersea Power Station, Vauxhall, Westminster, Waterloo, Embankment, Blackfriars, London Bridge, Tower Hill, Tower Gateway, Cutty Sark, North Greenwich, Woolwich Arsenal, Barking Riverside More than 10 minutes walk: Putney Bridge, Westferry, Canary Wharf, West Silvertown, Pontoon Dock
Only five stations are more than a 10 minute walk from a river pier, and they're the sole reason this wordy change has been introduced. So how far away are they really? I used TfL's Journey Planner to check, and here's what it said...
Putney Bridge: 7 minute walk to Putney Pier
Westferry: 7 minute walk to Canary Wharf Pier
Canary Wharf: 10 minute walk to Canary Wharf Pier
West Silvertown: 8 minute walk to Royal Wharf Pier
Pontoon Dock: 12 minute walk to Royal Wharf Pier
Ridiculously only one of these stations is actually more than 10 minutes away via TfL's own metric, and that's easily solved by alighting at West Silvertown instead of Pontoon Dock. The genuine edge case is Canary Wharf where the Journey Planner is incapable of distinguishing between DLR, Jubilee and Elizabeth line stations, so not fully accurate. My estimate is that Elizabeth line to river pier might in fact be 14 minutes, hence the use of an uncircled boat is genuine.
But do we really need a whole new symbol over-explained in the key on the off-chance that someone might alight a purple train at Canary Wharf and discover it's further than they thought to a boat? I'd argue not. What people really want to know is "what does the boat symbol mean?", not "how long might it take to walk there?"
Adding stuff to the tube map is always done with the intention of providing more information for the user, which seems laudable. But implementation invariably makes things more complicated or harder to follow, in the misguided belief that throwing everything onto the map somehow helps. This latest addition might help a few people a day at most. In the meantime it hinders everyone scanning down the key and trying to make sense of what the map shows... as do all the dotted lines linking stations to piers in the first place. Less is sometimes more, but on the tube map more is always more than necessary.
The only change that matters on the new tube map is that Colindale is now step-free, everything else is just extra noise.
Earlier this year, after mapping Wenzel's bakeries in North London, I wrote "I really should draw some Coughlans maps one day." Alas I'm too late, they ceased trading on Tuesday.
Coughlans were a family bakery chain based mostly in south London and Surrey. The founder was Jack Coughlan who opened a single shop in Thornton Heath way back in 1937, so they haven't quite reached their 90th anniversary. Here's the store in Wallington with its comfortingly brown frontage, but alas no queues for bread because the shelves are now empty.
Coughlans were a proper bakery pitched between the elite flakery of Gail's and the mass-produced churn of Greggs. They served up loaves and crusty rolls, also gingerbread men and eccles cakes. Yes you could walk out with a sourdough toastie and a Chocolate Lotus Biscoff Cupcake but alternatively a hot bacon roll and a slice of bread pudding, which was all bases covered. Coughlans were also proud of baking their own, indeed "At 2am this morning our bread was still flour" is not a sign you'll ever see in Pret. They always seemed well targeted for a shopping parade staple, serving both the comfortingly everyday and the sweetly forward-looking, but alas they couldn't hold back the march of economics.
News of closure came at the very end of June, announced by 3rd generation boss Sean Coughlan on social media. We've gone into immediate voluntary liquidation, he said, which isn't something he ever thought would happen. He explained that even up to the end of March all was well, indeed a recent burst of cash from new co-owner Romesh Ranganathan had provided a welcome boost. But on 1st April business rates went up, which when you have 31 stores dents profits, and all this on top of an increase in National Insurance contributions the previous year. He said various global conflicts had seen the fuel bill double, also the price of ingredients had gone "through the roof".
But what actually tipped the balance were our two recent heatwaves because when it gets too hot people don't come out for baked goods and takeaways. Sales during June's prolonged record-breaker were apparently 50% of normal, still with all the same overheads, so with daily turnover tumbling they decided to pull the plug. Sean said he was devastated and that he was hurting, but also that "business rates have absolutely smashed local retail". He didn't say out loud that the Chancellor had screwed his business but that was the subtext, a progressive measure imposed just as high streets were increasingly unable to cope.
There are indications that the closure was abrupt and not especially well-thought through. Staff were apparently informed of the closure via text message rather than any coordinated communication. The day after the closure the Wallington store still looked open apart from a sheet of paper in the window on which someone had used a faded black marker to write WE ARE CLOSING DOWN THANK YOU AND SORRY. The Addiscombe branch did at least have a proper "We are closing" notice but when I looked through the glass a tray of unsold pasties and sausage rolls was still uncovered on an otherwise stripped counter.
Nothing whatsoever has changed on the Coughlans website which still lists 31 open stores and urges you to consider buying vegan party platters. As for Instagram all is normal there too, the reel with which Sean announced the closure to the public having expired after 24 hours. Coughlans do come across as having been inept online, with just three Instagram posts in the last year and a single Meal Deal offer on their website which expired in September 2017. Facebook and Threads were updated more regularly but appear to have frozen a week before the closure, including several pleas to order iced lattes locally during the heatwave, which clearly didn't work.
Journalists at Inside Croydon have been doing some digging and wonder if something else has been going on. The latest annual accounts for Coughlans Bakeries show turnover increasing to £6.8 million and losses falling from £229,600 in 2024 to £98,800 in 2025, so the financial foundations appeared strong. There had also been a significant withdrawal of "tangible assets", down from £3,476,436 to £607,929, suggesting £2,868,507 had been transferred elsewhere. This change coincided with the directors setting up a new company called Smitham Lodge Estates Ltd which in its first year mysteriously acquired £5,617,500 of "investment property". The Coughlans have since claimed that "the separation of the property assets from the trading business was not something undertaken in anticipation of the current circumstances", but the fact remains that one of the two companies has been liquidated and the other hasn't.
Now it's too late, I have of course done the Coughlans map thing. (London's in white and all the administrative districts bordering Greater London are grey)
The 31 bakeries are very much a south London and Surrey thing, so if you've never been south of Wimbledon you'll never have seen one. 12 of the bakeries are in London, the vast majority in the borough of Croydon plus two in Wallington and two on the western edge of Bromley. All the rest are in Surrey bar three in West Sussex (Horsham, Horsham, Crawley) and one in Kent (Westerham). From their first store in Thornton Heath Coughlans have generally only spread southwards. All the stores which opened in the last five years were outside London.
Coughlans isn't the only regional bakery chain to have succumbed to outside forces. In 2020 east London icons Percy Ingle threw in the towel, thwarted almost overnight by the pandemic. Northwest London continues to be covered by Wenzel's, seemingly going strong, but even though they've expanded elsewhere they've avoided Percy Ingle or Coughlans territory. Meanwhile southwest London is long past its budget bakery chain phase, preferring fancy artisan outlets instead.
It's always sad when a longstanding business closes, especially one that brought affordable pleasure to thousands. But I worry that what we're seeing in the capital is the slow extinguishing of what I'd call 'proper' bakeries doing ordinary stuff, increasingly edged out by expensive alternatives selling overpriced fruity croissants and Scandi treats to pastry fetishists with the wherewithal to pay for it. Younger Londoners wouldn't even know what a Chelsea bun was, let alone hanker for one, so won't even notice as the tradbakery clientele ages and the last sandwichmongers close their shutters for good. If Andy Burnham could bring just one great thing down from the north and install it in the capital, some decent bun shops would be excellent.
It's the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence.
The semiquincentennial of the United States of America.
To reflect the current President, I'm going to make it all about me.
I've been to the USA 25 times.
Let me tell you about all of them.
🇺🇸 1) 17th-22nd July 1976(New York and Vermont)
I first went to America in the month of the bicentennial. I was 11 and had been given permission to miss my last week at primary school so the family could go on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. We spent most of it in Canada staying with my Mum's penfriend but one week was spent driving round Lake Ontario in their car and camper van, and it was amazing. We entered the USA via the Thousand Islands Border Crossing, where the dressing comes from, and spent the first night at the nearby KOA campsite. I still have the litterbag, as you can see.
For an interesting diversion we drove across the top of New York state to Vermont, finding a pitch in Burlington on the banks of Lake Champlain. We took the gondola to the top of Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in the state, and went to Stowe to see the ski lodge where the Von Trapp family lived. Unfortunately we were two years to early to buy an ice cream from the original Ben & Jerry's. The next day we headed into the Adirondacks and stopped at High Falls Gorge, where they tied a sign to our front bumper in the hope we'd drive around advertising them. I nabbed it and kept it instead. Five miles further on was Lake Placid, home to the 1932 Winter Olympics and pencilled in for 1980, where I looked through a window and saw the ice rink where Robin Cousins would win gold.
The long drive through the mountains continued, now heading southwest across New York state. I had my very first McDonald's meal and was excited by their special Olympic scratchcard offer where you won prizes if a US athlete won a medal at the Montreal Games (which had just begun across the border). Gold for a Big Mac, silver for fries and bronze for a Coke, not that we ever won. I also enjoyed playing pinball and pool at the five American campsites we stopped off at. Finally we headed west on Route 90 aiming for Niagara Falls where all the good stuff was on the Canadian side so we drove back across the border at the Whirlpool Bridge. Just before we crossed I got my fingers shut in a car door, yeeeeeeouch, and if I'd known any swear words I would have used them.
🇺🇸 2) 22nd July 1976(Niagara Falls)
After some absolutely incredible stuff I can't write about because it happened in Canada, it was time for dinner. "Why don't we go to Howard Johnson's?" said Mum's penfriend, but that was an American brand so we'd have to go back across the river. Brandishing passports we headed for the Rainbow Bridge near the American Falls and wow, that was an unforgettable view upriver. The border guards on the US side nodded us through when we mentioned our visit was food-related rather than giving us the third degree. I can't remember what I had for dinner but it was probably fried, fatty and excessive. And barely two hours later we were back on the Rainbow Bridge where I stopped at the white line painted across the sidewalk and had an idea...
🇺🇸 3) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
I jumped into Canada and then jumped back into the USA. And then I carried on.
🇺🇸 4) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 5) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 6) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 7) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 8) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 9) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
I was probably getting some funny looks by this point but I didn't care. I'd realised that by hopping back and forth across the border I could tot up a ridiculous number of visits to America that would create an excellent anecdote for years to come. I was probably thinking secondary school at the time but it's continued to serve me well... at university, in at least one interview, over several beers in several pubs, upon meeting umpteen Americans for the first time, and of course today. And so I carried on.
🇺🇸 10) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 11) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 12) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 13) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 14) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 15) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 16) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 17) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 18) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 19) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 20) 22nd July 1976(Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
Twenty seemed a reasonable place to stop, also my Mum hated standing on bridges and was probably getting the heebeegeebees from her son bouncing up and down 200 feet above a raging torrent. We spent the next fortnight doing excellent things in Canada instead, and my '20 visits to America' total was maintained until the millennium.
🇺🇸 21) 6th-13th August 2000(Orlando, Florida)
Now aged 35, it was time for a 'big kid' trip to Walt Disney World Resort. I'd been to the downsized European version but why not do the real thing and do it properly with an Unlimited Magic Pass? Arriving at Orlando airport first class in a 747 and departing in a red Chrysler Convertible was the cherry on the cake. Throughout the week we ticked off the Magic Kingdom (for It's A Small World and the Main Street Electrical Parade), Epcot (with its Lake of Nations), Animal Kingdom (for the Kilimanjaro Safari) and Disney-MGM Studios (for Catastrophe Canyon), then switched brands to do Universal Studios. You are never too old.
At the end of the week we drove to the Kennedy Space Center, observed Space Shuttle launchpads and brushed up close to a Saturn V rocket, because America's about bold as well as brash. I remember we ate dreadfully throughout the trip (i.e. normal for America), including seven consecutive breakfasts of pancakes and sausage, so the vegetables they served in economy on the flight home were very welcome. If you want full details I blogged the lot (with dubious photos) in 2020, so that's all I need tell you here.
🇺🇸 22) 27th April - 4th May 2002(New York)
Next came a week in the Big Apple with BestMate, barely six months after 9/11 so security had ramped up somewhat. We landed at JFK and took a yellow cab to our digs on Roosevelt Island, ending a very long day in a bar in the East Village. Over the forthcoming week we sat in Central Park, took the subway, crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and headed to the top of the Empire State Building. We also spiralled round the Guggenheim, dipped into the Whitney, stared at the Statue of Liberty from Pier 17 and stood on the Ground Zero Viewing Platform where the World Trade Center was being cleared away. We were really ticking all the boxes here.
Our last night was opening night for the new Spider-Man movie so we spent $10 to watch it at Loews on 42nd Street, returning to Roosevelt Island in the very cablecar Tobey Maguire had just bravely rescued. I made sure I bought lots of cinnamon TicTacs before the flight back, and BestMate grinned all the way home because he'd just met BestMate'sOtherHalf for the first time. I have no surviving photos from this trip which is a damned shame, but as trips to America go this was probably my most successful.
🇺🇸 23) 28th December 2002 - 4th January 2003(San Francisco)
28th December was BestMate's 30th birthday and he was spending it in America, so damn right I was getting on a plane and flying 6000 miles to the West Coast to spend the evening dining and bar-hopping. I'd started blogging by now but trying to wangle a trip to an internet cafe meant my reportage was very limited. What you missed me writing about was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, climbing Twin Peaks, shopping in Abercrombie & Fitch, riding the cablecars, driving down crooked Lombard Street, walking through the giant redwoods and taking a tour of Alcatraz.
BestMate'sOtherHalf was in hospitality and managed to wangle us a table at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, recently voted the Best Restaurant in America. Owner Alice Waters served up local produce to a different set menu every evening so I was worried what we'd get, but thankfully 30th December's offering started with beetroot salad and continued with duck and lemon eclairs so was an excellent experience. America is many places with many traditions and many cuisines, which is why visiting several parts of the country helps to avoid a narrow-minded view.
🇺🇸 24) 7th-16th April 2004(San Francisco)
By now BestMate was living in America so I needed another trip to San Francisco just to see him. In better news I stayed at his place where there was wi-fi so managed to blog this trip pretty much in real time. It's all there if you fancy, also 20 photos on Flickr, but let's just mention Golden Gate Park, the Legion of Honor, Coit Tower, Haight Ashbury, Napa Valley wineries, the Museum of Modern Art, an evening with Carol Channing, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Big Sur, the terrace at Nepenthe and pitchside seats at a Giants baseball game.
🇺🇸 25) 16th-24th April 2006(San Francisco)
BestMate was still in America so I flew out again, this time with a rather shorter list of sights to see. The main reason for going mid-April was to attend the 100th anniversary commemoration of the great San Francisco earthquake, which meant being up at 5:12am and standing in the middle of Market Street while the Mayor gave a speech. If Gavin Newsom ever gets the Democrat nod, I might have seen a future President speaking.
The other highlight was walking down to Point Reyes Lighthouse, as seen in John Carpenter's film The Fog, which is still the furthest west I've ever been. Again my week away was blogged in real time rather than being written up properly later, so my reportage is a bit sparse. And on 24th April I took the offer of a jeep ride to the airport, queued along my final freeway, took my shoes off for a scowling security guard and boarded a Boeing home from gate 91. I haven't been back to America in the 20 years since, partly because BestMate returned to the UK shortly afterwards and partly because the USA's no longer such an appealing destination.
But hey, 25 visits across the country's 250 years isn't half bad, even if most of them were jumping across a line on a bridge in 1976. For me the bicentennial beats the semiquincentennial, which is simply an egotistical parade of one man's achievements, and I suspect a lot of Americans will be feeling like that today.
Mon 1:Unblogged May got fewer than 20 comments, by far the smallest response yet, so either I wrote about dull things or perhaps this feature has run its course after eight years. Tue 2: The rain was so heavy that the Pearly King and Queen of Forest Gate had to shelter inside the entrance to Stratford station while lowering their umbrellas.
Wed 3: There's now a Bluesky account, @diamondgeezerblog.bsky.social, which announces every new blogpost I write (and nothing else). My thanks to the 228 people who've already followed it. (The Twitter version @diamondgzrblog has been up and running for ten years) Thu 4: On my weekly visits to BestMate's sofa we've started watching Widow's Bay, the creepy maritime folkhorror series, because everyone else was recommending it (and now I will too). Fri 5: Normally four pints of milk lasts me ten days, but my last couple of bottles have curdled after only a week and I worry Tesco have switched to using sour cows.
Sat 6: I wonder if anyone knows where this Greggs Clock is. (of course someone does, but who'll be first?) Sun 7: The newest message on the DLR, aimed at preventing slips and falls, is "Always slow down and walk". I object to being asked to always slow down, because it suggests everyone's moving too fast all the time. If the lady in front of me on the steps at Shadwell had slowed down she'd never have left the station. Mon 8: As the World Cup approaches, maybe 10-20% of news articles appearing on the Evening Standard website are about bets, betting deals and betting companies. Tue 9: Walked the River Lea north to Ponders End, and just north of the North Circular a large snarly dog blocked the towpath. "He's only a puppy", said the narrowboat owner as two further hellhounds barked behind a broken fence. "Yeah right," I thought, and if BestMate hadn't been with me I would have turned round and gone back, sharpish.
Wed 10: It's been announced that Russell T Davies and Disney are walking away from Doctor Who and the 2026 Christmas special won't be happening. The BBC say they're committed to making more but need to put production out to tender, so I guess 2028/2029 at the earliest. Thu 11: On the tram approaching Morden Road, three young black-clad passengers started looking shifty. "Be ready to get off!" said the eldest. A team of Revenue Inspectors were waiting to board so they hopped off, grinning, only to discover that half the team hadn't boarded and were waiting on the platform. With only one exit there was no escape and they had to surrender to a check, their intended fare-dodging completely thwarted. So there are ways to catch these people. Fri 12: The wildflower meadow in front of Hampton Court is looking splendidly poppytastic at present.
Sat 13: There are days everything pivots and nothing is quite the same afterwards, and oh to be able to turn back time. Sun 14: I couldn't blog about my visit to xxxxx xxxxxxx because I signed a disclaimer, but blimey it was big and I never knew that was filmed here. Mon 15: If you get the right five trains, it turns out you can get from Ponders End to Coulsdon in one hour flat. (this is generally neither necessary nor useful) Tue 16: I was amazed how many passengers at Wimbledon, Richmond and Kingston stations were dressed in top hats and morning dress (or fascinators and couture dresses) because it's the first day of Royal Ascot. I never realised SW London takes the event so seriously (NE London totally doesn't).
Wed 17: I've been listening to the Radio 4 midnight news for over thirty years, it being the best news summary of the day. So I can't believe the BBC plans to axe it as part of a first tranche of cost savings, indeed I can't imagine how this'll save any significant money whatsoever. Snippety news is no replacement for curated excellence. Thu 18: I couldn't have told you where Makerfield was two months ago and suddenly it's pivotal to our national story. Thankfully one man does appear to be capable of keeping Reform at bay, but for how long? Fri 19: That minute would have haunted me forever if I didn't keep a diary, allowing me to confirm later that the bad thing had already happened. Sat 20: At least 30 each, if you're still counting.
Sun 21: There are now five digital advertising panels on the northbound platform at Leytonstone station, all the better to squeeze opportunistic revenue out of customers waiting to change trains. Mon 22: Social media is so denuded/inconsequential/non-chronological/trivialised these days that nothing alerted me to the appearance of Sir Keir's lectern in Downing Street until his resignation speech was almost over. I miss knowing what's going on right now. Tue 23: The last chunk of my final Christmas Toblerone has almost melted in the excess heat. Wed 24: On the hottest day of the year, the Dangleway did the hilarious thing again.
Thu 25: City AM's glossy magazine is issued quarterly and I've picked up two editions this month. Both had nine pages about luxury watches and five articles about luxury travel, meanwhile 15% of the magazine was about fine dining. It's unashamedly aimed at rich readers but is still massively more readable than the weekly Evening Standard which simply simpers to the posh. Fri 26: BBC4 started repeating editions of Top of the Pops chronologically in 2011, starting with 1976, and tonight they finally reached the year 2000. The standard of music has not improved (despite occasional flashes of millennial brilliance). Sat 27: I've been keeping a graph of "the temperature in my living room first thing in the morning" since November 2020. Today's 28°C is a new record, beating the 27°C recorded on 19th July 2022 and 1st July 2025.
Sun 28: If you heard the new Radio 4 quiz, Your Number's Up, that was me applauding. The audience does a lot better at providing "The Wisdom of the Crowd" in the second episode. Mon 29: Three of them were standing in, but this may be the first time five consecutive Radio 2 shows have been hosted by females (Tina Daheley/Clara Amfo/Alex Jones/Jo Whiley/Cerys Matthews). Tue 30: Focusing on the positive, the train was quiet, the radio hasn't reset, the pork belly was very good value, Will was exceptionally professional, distances are impressive, it is Tuesday, the car park was free, they finally saw the bikers, the downstairs loo has been transformed, the Falklands are an option and Waitrose do very good chocolate biscuits.
But where is Lingwood, how high is Strumpshaw Hill and where precisely is the record-breaking weather station? I was in the area yesterday so went to have a look.
Lingwood is a small Norfolk village about halfway between Norwich and Great Yarmouth. It has an old nucleus, a quarter mile square of suburban roads and a lot of surrounding fields. My brother drove me down and we had to wait at the level crossing while a Greater Anglia train approached the station.
The village green is north of the railway, the village hall is south and the Post Office used to be north but shifted south to the Spar supermarket in 2018. This would have been a great place to hide from the heat last Friday because they have a Wall's ice cream chiller just inside the front door, also the shop's fully air-conditioned so none of the Dairy Milk bars melted. I doubt that the Lingwood Chippy across the road did a roaring trade that day.
The temperature record wasn't set in the village proper but on the southern edge of the parish, very nearly in neighbouring Strumpshaw. We parked there in the car park at The Shoulder of Mutton, sadly too early to enjoy the Ukulele & Pimms Evening at the village hall. From there we cut through the churchyard, where the tall medieval tower looks out of scale because the nave was lowered in a Victorian restoration, then on down Buckenham Road.
Strumpshaw Hill is barely a protuberance but high for Norfolk with a 45m peak. The penultimate telegraph tower in the chain from London to Great Yarmouth was once located at the summit, close to a ten sided windmill that was demolished in 1916. Later the southeastern flank of the hill was excavated for gravel and then used until 1988 as a council tip, the waste in some places up to 20 metres deep. They've de-gassed and rewilded it since.
It's an extremely gentle ascent but you can't see much from the very top due to a surfeit of trees. However step out onto the rewilded tip and the open slope is now covered with a glorious sheen of heathland and wild flowers. All the vents poking up out of the subsoil must be doing their job because you're now free to wander, maybe even sit on a bench where dustcarts once dumped smelly refuse. Best avoid the prickly southern path overlooking the recycling centre if you're wearing shorts, my brother advises.
I have never seen so many butterflies in one place as I saw here, almost all of them peacocks, fluttering up in great numbers from the grasses, brambles and weaving paths. I'm not sure if this is normal or related to the heat or because early July is when the majority of chrysalises emerge. Strumpshaw Fen is renowned as the sole home of the UK's largest butterfly, the swallowtail, but that's a mile to the south and I've only ever seen two of them there, not literally hundreds.
The crossroads at the far corner of the tip is the highest point in the Norfolk Broads. Specifically you want the field of maize in the southeast corner, this the closest the National Park boundary gets to the top of Strumpshaw Hill. It's only 40m above sea level but there is an excellent view across the Yare valley including a distant windmill, the Cantley sugar beet refinery and the twin masts at Stoke Holy Cross. Every other UK National Park is considerably higher, the Cairngorms over 30 times so.
A short distance down Wood Lane is the entrance to Buckenham Wood, a stripe of ancient woodland purchased from a private owner just three years ago. The paths weave up and down due to gravel extraction and apparently the bluebell display is excellent, but that's long past. Instead a kaleidoscope of butterflies rose up into the air, the multitude again seemingly all peacocks, while a few continued to sun themselves on a nearby bench.
The reason for coming to Buckenham Woods was that the Met Office's incredibly accurate list of weather station locations states that Lingwood is at 52.61045°N, 1.48483°E, fractionally north of the treeline. It was here on Friday that they reckon hot air blowing from the west was perfectly cancelled out by a sea breeze creating calm conditions that allowed the temperature to soar. But we stood on the edge of an arable field and looked but could see no measuring equipment anywhere, only ripening wheat and distant hedgerows.
The only likely spot was Sunny Cottage, an isolated homestead by the wood's northern exit. The driveway exits into Strumpshaw parish whereas the cottage and its garden are very marginally in Lingwood. I would show you a photo of the rustic frontage but the owner was in his front garden talking to two visitors so snapping a shot would have been gauche.
Instead we followed the public footpath up the side of the back garden, which was entirely concealed behind a tall hedge until a brief gap at the far end near the owner's shed. And there at the bottom of the garden was a white louvred box - the Stevenson screen - at the appropriate height beside a row of runner beans. It was here that the record-breaking temperature of 37.7°C was set, a maximum so high that until 2003 it would have been the UK's highest ever temperature, not just for June. Mission accomplished.
We had suspicions that the visitors to the cottage were journalists and later they proved to be a team from ITV interviewing stationkeeper Ernest Hoyos. He's been recording the weather here and sending off his data every morning for over half a century - he says without a single day's break. The Met Office sent someone to check his Vaisala equipment on Monday, confirming all was working as it should, and a little further scrutiny should see the provisional record ratified as a national June maximum. The resulting three minute report is wonderful, including a charming interview and drone shots so you can see what Ernest's garden and surrounding environment look like from the air.
BBC Radio Norfolk came too but without a camera. I can't match them for quality but I hope I've brought you a flavour of the wider area which, last Friday, outsweated every other June day ever.
