The latest Superloop route has been announced and is up for consultation. The SL15 will run between Clapham Junction and Eltham - a proper orbital for once - with the intention that buses start operating next year. [consultation][map]
The key rationale is that the route follows the South Circular almost all the way, just as the SL1, SL2 and new SL13 essentially track the North Circular. But whereas the North Circular is a broad dual carriageway, the South Circular is a hamstrung collection of ordinary roads bolted together, suggesting the SL15 won't be terribly speedy. It will however fill a significant gap, because if you want to follow the same route at the moment it takes at least ten different buses. So that's what I attempted. See if you can guess how long it took.
The SL15 will kick off round the back of Clapham Junction where there isn't currently room. TfL are keen its drivers have easy access to a toilet (as "it may take up to 72 minutes to get from Eltham Station to Clapham Junction") so intend to kick out the C3 to make space. The fallout from this involves turning an existing bus stop into a bus stand, evicting seven other routes, and this is expected to inconvenience about 7000 passengers per day. Not everything about introducing the Superloop is a positive.
The first stop on the SL15 will be by the railway bridge, so that's where I went to start my shadowing journey. And I was immediately thwarted because it's closed, this while the council prettify and de-pigeon the glum space under the bridge. Damn, I really wanted a 35.
Instead I wandered down to the main shopping street and waited there. I now had the option of another route, the G1 which links directly to the next target of Clapham South station. However it goes the long way and it's only every 20 minutes and it wasn't showing up on the board, so I caught the 35 as planned instead. Start the clock.
[0h00]35: Clapham Junction to Clapham Common Length of journey: 2 stops, 3 minutes
You could take this bus east to Brixton but the Superloop aims further south so I wasn't going to be on it for long. A special award to the driver who managed to close the doors onto a pensioner standing in the doorway trying to find his card.
No buses operate along the western edge of Clapham Common so I had to alight and walk, passing a heck of a lot of exercising dogs along the way. This entirely unassuming parkside road is somehow the A205, the official designation of the South Circular. After half a mile the G1 emerges from a side road, and the next bus wasn't far away so I could always wait and catch it.
[0h23]G1: Clapham Common to Clapham South Length of journey: 1 stop, 4 minutes
The G1 may be London's most frustrating bus, enduring numerous contorted wiggles before doubling back to serve other unserved roads. In this case it passes Clapham South station but entirely fails to stop outside, overshooting up a side road and stopping nowhere near where I needed to be. So in fact I decided not to catch it and walked all the way to the tube station instead, easily beating the bus.
[0h27]355: Clapham South to Clapham Park Length of journey: 4 stops, 4 minutes
This was just a single decker and it wasn't coping. By stop three we had a wheelchair aboard and standing room only, then ten more passengers tried to board plus an infirm lady with a stroller. This is the intended Superloop stop, not the better connected next stop at Clapham Park where the 57 and 59 begin. I squeezed off there.
[0h46]57: Clapham Park to Streatham Hill Length of journey: 2 stops, 3 minutes
Grrr, the 57 runs "every 12-14 minutes" and I had to wait for 13. And grrr, like all the other buses along here it only runs for a few stops before turning off. If you want to head east it's ridiculously bitty and inefficient, which'll be why the SL15 is such an excellent proposal. A special award to the driver who drove one-handed for a minute while finishing off his Lavazza coffee.
This interchange is currently rubbish because neither the 57 nor the 201 stop near the crossroads so it's a five minute walk plus a nasty set of traffic lights. Even after all that I had a maximum wait.
[1h09]201: Streatham Hill to Tulse Hill Length of journey: 5 stops, 6 minutes
The 201 doesn't go direct to Tulse Hill, it keeps passengers happy by diverting off to serve an estate. This leaves three quarters of a mile of the South Circular unbussed. If I were relying on a Hopper I'd already be onto my second fare.
Round the corner from Tulse Hill station is a low bridge, so low that the SL15 will be forced to have single-decker buses. Only the 201 and P13 use the road at present and they're single deckers too.
[1h36]P13: Tulse Hill to Wood Vale Length of journey: 7 stops, 19 minutes
Finally a bus ride that lasted more than six minutes. Unfortunately much of that was because of roadworks, which are always going to be a problem on a duff arterial like the South Circular. We whizzed to West Dulwich station (where there'll be a Superloop stop) and Dulwich College (where there won't), but got caught up in a 10 minute jam alongside Dulwich Park.
Annoyingly for anyone heading east the P13 doesn't stop in the same place as the 185. That's the third time this has happened, and another reason why the SL15 will be an utter boon.
[2h12]185: Wood Vale to Catford Length of journey: 11 stops, 18 minutes
Unbelievably I'd already been travelling for over two hours and wasn't yet halfway. Thankfully the 185 was a zippy bus that'd take me the equivalent of three Superloop stops - one by Forest Hill station, one at the foot of Brockley Rise and one outside Catford and Catford Bridge stations.
[2h31]202: Catford to Lee Length of journey: 6 stops, 12 minutes
Finally a perfect swap from one bus to the next. I was overdue one of those after several painful waits. Trundling east along plain streets I kept thinking 'Can this really be the South Circular' and of course it was. At Lee you could switch to the SL4, another Superloop route which parallels the 202, but I had to alight for the Sidcup-bound 160.
[2h46]160: Lee to Eltham Green Length of journey: 4 stops, 6 minutes
Finally the South Circular looked arterial and we sped along. The big question was then did I stay on the 160 for its diversion round a big council estate or did I stick to the official SL15 route? I plumped for the latter, aware I had a choice of three routes, but had to run to catch the B16 to make it all worthwhile.
[2h55]B16: Eltham Green to Eltham Length of journey: 3 stops, 5 minutes
In good news I did beat the 160 to Eltham High Street. In bad news nobody's put a bus stop near the crossroads so the choice was undershoot or overshoot. Currently not a single bus route turns left here, not like the SL15 will. However the Superloop is not going to be convenient for the shops, sorry.
[3h05]233: Eltham to Eltham Station Length of journey: 2 stops, 2 minutes
You could walk this last bit but so many routes go to the station that it's always quicker to ride. The driver of the 233 wasn't expecting anyone to be so lazy at the very end of his route and nearly didn't stop.
To answer my earlier question, it took 3 hours and 7 minutes to ride from Clapham Junction to Eltham. That's 1 hour 25 minutes of actually travelling and 1 hour 43 minutes of faffing between stops and waiting around. All of the latter would have been wiped out had I been riding a single Superloop bus rather than ten individual buses. Also an express bus would only have stopped sixteen times, speeding up the journey faster than the almost-1½ hours I took.
The big downside for the SL15 is going to be traffic snarl-ups, of which the South Circular gets plenty, also the roads are almost all single carriageway so overtaking isn't going to be easy. But as I hope I've shown, making the same east-west journey at present is an utterly fragmented nightmare so the introduction of the SL15 should be a gamechanger for all along its route.
Five years from now, Britain's new government introduces the Trafalgar Day public holiday.
Monday, 21 October, 2030
Today we come together for the first time to celebrate Trafalgar Day, a commemoration of the greatest victory in the maritime history of our brave nation. For too long Admiral Lord Nelson and his valiant fleet have been forgotten by communities, colleges and politicians alike, but today we right the wrongs of historic bias and focus once again on a great hero who did so much to ensure pride and insularity.
Our forgotten coastal towns will be the focus of our national celebrations, reflecting the importance of the sea in defending the island of England from marauding foreigners. Embattled communities will look to the waves and invoke the names of our greatest maritime heroes including Grace Darling, Sir Walter Raleigh and Nigel Farage. In Dover a wall of mobility scooters will flash their headlamps out to sea in an attempt to lure migrant dinghies onto the rocks. Hurling pebbles at asylum seekers will be optional.
Trafalgar Day replaces May Day, always the wokest of the bank holidays, which has rightly been scrapped by The People's Government. Whilst it's true that 6th May was particularly sunny this year and the forecast for 21st October looks to be miserably wet, we cannot let the weather dictate our national celebrations. April and May have long been impractically overburdened with bank holidays, in some cases meaning civil servants were barely able to go to work, so an extra break in autumn will surely turbocharge our beleaguered tourism industry.
Please note that Trafalgar Day is not a public holiday in Scotland - they can jolly well go to work as normal.
Street parties will be encouraged, especially in roads named after maritime heroes or foreign battlefields. Shoppers at Morrisons will be able to purchase fish fingers and UK-caught herring at half price throughout the week before Trafalgar Day. Foreign muck will not be included in the campaign. Boeuf Bourguignon, vol-aux-vents and crème brûlée will cost double.
Celebrations will be livecast on GBBC, our new national broadcast channel. All your favourite political commentators will provide their unbiased opinions on events as they unfold, from the launch of the riot cannons to the concluding flag parade. A surefire highlight will be the Half Nelson, a commemorative wrestling tournament broadcast live from the chamber at Lincolnshire County Hall.
The Day Of National Celebration will begin in Trafalgar Square - where else? At 10am John Noakes' grandson will climb to the top of the column without any health and safety nonsense and the former Mayor of London will be whipped in the stocks. At 11am the Private Health Minister will unveil a statue of Sir Winston Churchill on the Fourth Plinth, delighting the crowd by setting alight the Everlasting Cigar.
The afternoon will proceed as follows:
12 noon: The Sea Scouts will pull a facsimile of HMS Victory through the streets of Runcorn, Skegness and Basildon, the three new cities approved by the Cabinet in the latest honours list. 1pm: As part of the England Expects initiative, all citizens will be expected to pledge allegiance by taking part in the Doorstep Salute. Residents are invited to snitch on neighbours who fail to appear within the allotted timeslot. 2pm: Life President Donald Trump sends a congratulatory video message from the Gold Penthouse Suite at the White House Ballroom. 3pm: Thomas Heatherwick's ship-shaped Nelson Birthplace Museum will be opened in Burnham Thorpe by the right-minded Mayor of Norfolk and Suffolk. 4pm: The King will give the memorial address from the deck of a gunboat facing Cape Trafalgar before returning provocatively to a banquet in Gibraltar. 5pm: The 225th anniversary of Nelson's death will be commemorated by the launch of the Bank of England's new cryptocurrency, livestreamed from the Admiral's tomb in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral. 6pm: Vegetarians will not be exempt from the National Fish Supper.
As dusk falls, UK-bound spectators are urged to head to Clacton for the carbon-positive finale as the Royal Navy fires on the Gunfleet Sands Offshore Wind Farm and destroys its woke windmills utterly. A magnificent firework display over the North Sea will be funded using the millions saved by scrapping next year's Census.
Please note that the Channel Tunnel will be closed all day, and rightly so.
All residents will be responsible for the lamppost outside their main residence. An appropriate flag from the approved list must be raised between dawn and dusk, even on holdout lampposts not yet patriotically adorned. If your St George's flag has been flapping for five years and is now looking threadbare, consider purchasing a replacement from leeanderson.com/myproudredcross.
Trafalgar Day will also mark the official launch of the three week Poppy Season. For too long the British Legion has launched our annual period of remembrance much too late, culminating in an official gathering on a random Sunday in November. Remembrance will now peak once again on 11th November, restoring Armistice Day to its rightful place in our national calendar, thereby allowing everyone to attend car boot sales on Sunday morning as God intended. Until then poppies must be worn at all times on public transport.
Children will be encouraged to participate through passive indoctrination as part of the New Approved History Curriculum. Secondary classes will study the Napoleonic Wars and the implicit financial benefits of transatlantic slavery. Primary classes will learn about victorious sea battles from the Armada to the Falklands. Reception classes will make eyepatches while wearing wellington boots.
It is hoped that Trafalgar Day will reinstate Admiral Lord Nelson as a national hero and restore Horatio as a popular boys' name. As the first sailor to successfully stop the boats he is a role model for us all, and represents who we aspire to be as a proud island nation.
Cry God for England, Horatio and Cape Trafalgar! And enjoy your inaugural October day off.
This monument popped up in the middle of Barking recently. I thought it was very recently but it was actually unveiled in April 2022 and I'm just not very observant.
It says "In Memory of those who lost their lives because of exposure to asbestos".
And it's here because Barking has one of the highest rates of asbestos-related deaths in the country.
In 1913 the Cape Asbestos Company built a huge asbestos factory beside the River Roding in Barking. The company mined asbestos-bearing rock at several sites in South Africa, then shipped them in sacks to a private quay in Barking for processing. Hundreds of people were employed to mill the ore into usable fibres and then process these into lagging, packaging, pipes, resins, boards and all forms of insulation widely used in the building trade. They worked without masks or other protection, the dangers of asbestos either unknown or not thought worth bothering about. And hundreds of workers died, often many years later, of insidious chronic respiratory disease.
I found a 32-page booklet published by Cape Asbestos in the days before blue asbestos was recognised as dangerous and banned, which was as late as 1985. It shows workers with rolled-up sleeves and women leaning over unshielded machines, all potentially inhaling enough fibres to ultimately kill them. I read reports about the local school in Barking, barely 100 metres away, saying that the playground was often covered in fine dust which children rolled up and played with as if it were snow. I read that mesothelioma was so common in the area it was known as the ‘Barking Cough’. These were different times, but times that linger on.
Cape Asbestos's plant eventually closed in 1968 and in its place was built the Harts Lane council estate, which is still not the loveliest corner of Barking. It included two tall tower blocks called Colne House and Mersey House, both of which Barking & Dagenham council would now like to demolish. This is chiefly because they're old and covered in combustible cladding, but the additional complications of potentially disturbing polluted land puts any remediation out of financial reach. It's always the insulation you have to watch out for.
The memorial in Barking Town Square comprises a polished chunk of blue pearl granite and was unveiled on Workers' Memorial Day 2022 in a ceremony attended by several trade unionists and representatives of the London Asbestos Support Awareness Group. The emphasis is partly on remembrance and partly on the importance of standing up for workers' rights to make conditions better for all. As the inscription says, "Remember the Dead and Fight for the Living".
My grandfather worked for another Cape Asbestos plant on Tolpits Lane in Watford. Originally it had been run by Universal Asbestos Manufacturing but in 1967 the factory was acquired by Cape as part of a diversification into cement-based products. They made corrugated roofing, flat sheets, decorated sheets, slates, soil pipes, decking for flat roofs and reinforced troughing - that kind of thing - the asbestos moulded into a multiplicity of shapes for the benefit of the building trade.
To him Cape Universal was just a convenient place to work, a short walk across the moor for a day's shift and then home again for tea. He worked there for many years, from the 1930s to the 1960s, rising through the ranks from a labourer to a machine operator on the factory floor. On his death certificate his occupation was listed as 'Asbestos Moulder', and it was very much a premature death because this didn't end well.
I don't remember very much about my grandfather because he died when I was 8. I know he was there when I took my first steps in his back garden and I can remember sitting at his dining room table and hoping nobody would force me to eat the celery. My final memory is being led up to his bedroom, I suspect not long before his death, to see an ill old man laid out in bed and struggling to breathe. I don't know what was said, nor how short a time I stayed in his presence, indeed my strongest recollection is of the room itself with its austere cupboards and the curtains drawn. And then at the age of 67 he was gone.
My family fought for asbestosis to be recognised as his cause of death but were not successful. I've read recently of fellow workers working at the Tolpits Lane factory now getting six figure payouts in compensation, indeed it's hard to research this topic without ending up on legal websites with popups urging you to make a claim. Even four decades after the factory's closure there are still employees severely affected, and many more already passed, as the toxic legacy endures. The factory site is now a rather cleaner industrial estate and business park, indeed it's where the National Lottery's been based for the last 30 years because risk and loss are still in play.
Today my Dad reaches the grand old age of 87, a full 20 years more than his father lived. Science has moved on a long way since the 1970s, also educational opportunities and also workers' rights. Health and safety is sometimes much derided but it can genuinely save lives, even much extend them, rather than everyone continually moaning about additional costs and annoying procedures. If someone had shouted earlier and louder about the dangers of asbestos I might have known my grandfather better, my grandmother could have had many more years of married life and my father could have had a father for much longer.
My Dad lost his Dad at the age of 34, which is no age at all in the grand scheme of things. By contrast I still have my Dad at the age of 60, which has meant an extra quarter century of guidance, support, advice, love and always being there. How lucky am I? Every day we overlap with our parents is a blessing and I've had 22,000 of them, for all of which I'm truly grateful. We're off out later to celebrate with a slap-up dinner, or as slap-up as an 87-year-old stomach requires, which the wider family are greatly looking forward to. What Barking's memorial reminded me is that many families have not been so fortunate, and sometimes that loss can be very close to home.
It's Sunday morning, time for coffee and a nice pastry.
You could go anywhere today, the outside world is rammed with interesting places to go. There are parks and palaces, gardens and galleries, museums and markets, shops and stadiums, woods and wildernesses, all kinds of possible places to visit. You could go out for a jog, a bike ride or a ramble, maybe take the train somewhere interesting and mooch around a bit. But all you really need to do is stick a few clothes on, target a nearby cafe and settle down for coffee and a nice pastry.
Time was when Sundays would have meant a trip to church but nobody does that any more, certainly not those who prefer coffee and a nice pastry. These days the gathering point is the cafe on the corner down the street, or maybe the special patisserie you saw on TikTok somewhere halfway across town. It still means sitting for an hour in communion, but that's communing with family and friends instead of listening to some pastor drone on, plus you get a lot more to drink and something more substantial than a wafer.
There might be a queue but that just goes to show how popular coffee and a nice pastry has become. Nobody minds standing outside a cafe and watching everyone else enjoying their selection because it confirms how excellent the upcoming experience will be. Ideally it's a cafe with a scattering of outside tables so you can spy on which pastry they picked and whether you might want a different one, also watch each group with increasing frustration as they finish their last mouthful and then just sit around gabbing for ages when they could be clearing the way for you to grab the table instead.
You need never get bored when it comes to coffee and a nice pastry. There are more types of coffee than you can shake a stick at, plus a multiplicity of special milks and syrups to create a truly unique blend. As for pastries you could have a different one every weekend for a lifetime and still not repeat, that is so long as you vary your cafe regularly and don't simply return every week to the same limited selection. Is the flavour sweet or savoury, is the pastry laminated, choux or brioche, and would you like your fruit filling to be apple, apricot or mostly custard? No Sunday is ever the same when you plump for coffee and a nice pastry.
If done properly, a coffee and a nice pastry is just a really good excuse to leave the house. You can't stay in all day slobbing on the sofa watching Netflix, tackling some tedious DIY task or playing some multi-player shoot-em-up against unseen opponents. But you can do all these things if you go out first for coffee and a nice pastry because it won't take long and then the rest of the day is yours to waste away as you best see fit.
You could make coffee at home but a shop-frothed cup is always nicer, plus the barista with the quirky beard always makes a pretty swirl you could never do yourself. Likewise you could have bought pastries from a supermarket the day before and simply warm them up in your microwave, but selecting a fresh one from the counter always delivers a finer mouthful. Likely they didn't really bake it this morning, it originated from a shed on a trading estate somewhere in zone 4 and was delivered by van last night, but the illusion of curated provenance is all important when selecting coffee and a nice pastry.
It won't be cheap because these pastries cost a small fortune for the few sweet mouthfuls they ultimately deliver. You could enjoy an entire box of Mr Kipling at home for half the price, or even heaven forfend learn how to bake your own. But inevitably it's all about convenience, relying on someone else to do the hard work so you can slump with friends and debate the football, Strictly, what nextdoor's cat has been up to or why it is that Oxford Street already has its Christmas decorations up. A coffee and a nice pastry is one of life's simplest pleasures, well worth the unnecessary cost.
Saturday is the day for dashing around and exerting yourself, getting chores done and keeping busy. Sunday by contrast is a day to unwind, especially if last night was heavy, and ideally for meeting up with friends. A local patisserie is the ideal destination with the promise of easy refreshment barely any distance away. The entrepreneurs who open cafes know this, ensuring every neighbourhood has an attractive-looking window display of baked goods and a multi-levered machine capable of adding milk to beans, with adequate counter space to accommodate the weekday commute and just enough tables to cater for the Sunday rush. Grabbing coffee and a nice pastry has never been easier.
If you've not seen Mags and Kian for months why not agree to meet them in Kilburn at that cafe you saw on TikTok? An hour's catch-up is all you really need, then maybe a short walk or just slink back to the station, obligation met. You can always delay the initial rendezvous until noon and call it brunch if you need a longer lie-in, or nip in really early at nine to dodge the queues that'll inevitably build up later as everyone comes out for coffee and a nice pastry.
Coffee and a nice pastry can also be a status symbol if shared properly on social media. It's all about the plumpness of the pastry, the shininess of the glazing and the succulence of the fruit. You can't go wrong with a cronut or cinnamon bun artfully arranged, and there are always bonus points for alexandertorte, knieküchle or multi-coloured macarons. For added kudos be sure to tag your vanilla slice as #mille-feuille and your apple turnover as #chausson-aux-pommes, otherwise all your attempts at perfect framing will have gone to waste.
Obviously independent cafes are best but feel free to lower yourself to a chain outlet if you must. Gail's is plainly the pinnacle, as all the yummy mummies and young professionals locally already know. Perhaps dodge Paul because it shows a total lack of originality, and never risk Greggs as they don't have sufficient tables. Remember that any outlet whose name is coffee-focused is likely to be less talented on the cake front, also that any old-school bakery that still makes Chelsea buns won't have a clue how to froth a drink. A one-off with a fancy name is always best for coffee and a nice pastry.
Few can resist the addictive allure of coffee and a nice pastry. No need to debate how to fill your Sunday morning, merely where, and the precise details of what to pick can wait until you get there. Sure it's expensive for what it is, but if you'd all travelled across town to some alternative attraction somewhere it would've cost much more, so coffee and a nice pastry is inevitably the cheaper option.
You could always make a game of it, trying to tick off the most ridiculous flavour combinations week after week. Just one outlet could allow you to catalogue a Honey & Smoked Salt bun, a Marmite, Schlossberger & Spring Onion swirl, a Bacon & Maple Danish and a Cross-laminated Gianduja over the course of a month, then switch venues and you can work through saffron, vanilla, pastel de nata and signature fig sourdough as the weeks proceed. The more artisan the better when it comes to coffee and a nice pastry.
Every Sunday more and more people make a pilgrimage across town to join the back of a line of millennials 40 strong, edging forwards towards an understaffed counter to order a few carbs and a locally-ground drink before grabbing a bench seat and snapping a photo of something that'll take 30 seconds to gulp down. The new mantra has become "where can we meet up and eat? ...anywhere on trend will do", and all because it's Sunday morning, time for coffee and a nice pastry.
This is Rail Clock, 'the first national clock designed for Britain's railways in over 50 years, inspired by the iconic Double Arrow'.
The red arrows travel around the rim every 60 seconds, with the new minute ticking over when they cross at the top. The clock was designed by brand design agency Design Bridge and Partners who won a global competition organised by Network Rail, the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Design Museum. It's 1.8m in diameter and was installed this week above the concourse at London Bridge station. It looks mighty fine.
The plan is to roll out Rail Clock across the country, generally on existing screens, say in the corner of the departures board. Such are the advantages of a simple digital design. If I read the pressrelease correctly there'll also be wall clocks and sticky-out-discs with clocks on, but so far London Bridge is the sole confirmed example of a physical clock. The digits are really clear to read, being in the typeface Rail Alphabet 2, whose designer Margaret Calvert was one of the competition's judges. [screensaver]
Meeting under the clock at London Bridge might now become a thing, just as it is at Waterloo. If you do stand underneath you'll find a disc with the double arrow at the centre and 24 rail-related phrases around the edge. These range from the half-decent (Friends reuniting) to the peculiar (Cans warming) to the contrived (Earlybirds tapping) to the weird (Thoughts tocking) to the plain odd (Glimpses glancing) to the cringeworthy (History mingling) to the ill-advised (Headphones blaring). Thankfully the disc is a vinyl sticker so can be removed one day when the branding team see sense.
For the first two days there was also a pop-up shop on the concourse, this time outside the gateline, selling Rail-Clock-related merchandise. The stock list included a hoodie for £45, "shoudler bag" for £40, t-shirt for £20, water bottle for £20 and socks for £15. I can't believe they sold much product given limited publicity, inadequate signage and distance from the actual clock. However all the unsold stock will be available in the Design Museum's shop, this presumably why they got involved, should you want to wear a timepiece that's permanently stuck on 20:25. The clock is lovely though, and hopefully we'll all be seeing it on rail journeys soon.
Yesterday I took a bold step into certified late middle age and acquired my first pair of varifocals. I am still getting used to them.
Previously a normal lens sufficed, in my case for short sight, which means for the last five decades I've needed glasses for watching TV, driving and generally getting about. The first slight indication something was changing was on my 48th birthday, squinting slightly to read the reservation details on a dimly-lit Eurostar train heading to Paris. My first significant issues with reading were during lockdown when going to the optician wasn't an option so I found a workaround, and only now have I finally bitten the bullet and gone for proper lenses.
When you're young nobody warns you that one day your eyesight will decline due to the decreased elasticity of your eyeballs, gradually making long distance vision trickier. The effects can be eased by wearing reading glasses but if you already have a prescription then switching spectacles soon gets tiring. The solution used to be bifocals, split-lensed glasses with your normal strength up top and a separate narrower lens underneath optimised for reading. Varifocals are a cleverer solution whereby the two prescriptions merge into one single lens, thus less conspicuous and less clunky, but also much more expensive making this my dearest purchase since I last bought a new phone.
It's really hard to imagine quite what varifocals will be like until you've splashed out and got your hands on a bespoke pair. I had to base my decisions on which type to buy based on a few scrappy diagrams on my optician's table, unsure if anything they were trying to upsell was really worth having. In the end I plumped for a better lens rather than flashier frames, hoping that was wise, and only yesterday did I finally put them on and discover how varifocals look. A tad blurry in places, it turns out.
If you imagine a spectacle lens divided into a 3×3 grid numbered top to bottom, then sections 1, 2, 3 and 5 are optimised for long distance, 7, 8 and 9 for reading, and 4 and 6 are blurrier because there has to be a bend somewhere. The more you pay, the broader section 5 is. That means you see long distance if you look ahead, much clearer text if you look down and less clarity to either side unless you turn your head. I'm basing this on 12 hours of wear and also on my specific prescription, so apologies if this isn't always the case.
I tested my new glasses while walking through Whitechapel Market and was slightly unnerved to see a shimmer rather than clarity in certain directions. I tested my glasses on the Elizabeth line and discovered I can read a book much more easily than before, even if I'm not looking through the lower strip. I tested my new glasses along the Euston Road and found my surroundings look sharper if I tip my head slightly lower than I'm used to. I tested my new glasses on Thameslink and found people-watching much harder because side-eye no longer works. I tested my new glasses on the steps at Hendon station, having been told stairs might now be an issue, but everything seemed fine. And I tested my new glasses on the top deck of a bus in Harrow and can still read numberplates in the distance, which is obviously the crucial thing.
Where things are currently hardest to reconcile is at home. I don't mind the carpet looking fuzzy as I walk around and I'll get used to the clock under the TV being less sharp than the picture above. The main issue seems to be my laptop because my normal eye position isn't what my glasses were designed for. Text on the screen is crystal clear if I tilt my head up slightly to the optimum angle, but in future I reckon I'm going to have to adjust my usual posture, lower my laptop or raise my chair. Alternatively I could revert to the reading glasses I was using previously but that feels like a waste of hundreds of pounds so I'll try to adapt instead.
The best thing is being able to read easily again, and the worst is a nagging blur that follows my eyes around. It's very early days so I still have much to learn about my complex compartmentalised choppier vision. But overnight I've become one of those old people who wears varifocals, and I hope you'll never notice.
NATIONAL TRUST:575 Wandsworth Road Location: Clapham, SW8 3JD [map] Open: pre-booked tours at 11am, 1pm, 3pm, Thursday & Friday only (May to October) Admission: £12 Period: A long-term millennial project
Khadambi Asalache was born in Kenya, studied fine art at several European universities and moved to London in 1960 at the age of 25. He wrote poems and books, and after further studies in mathematics took a job at the Treasury, commuting in each day on the number 77A bus. In 1981 he spotted that a former squat on Wandsworth Road was up for sale, turfed out the chickens and moved in, inexorably transforming it into an astonishing work of art. You'd never guess from out front, other than a small National Trust sign inviting pre-booked visitors to wait outside.
Khadambi died in 2006, 20 years after starting work on the ultimate interior design project. It started out as a means of covering up damp on a wall shared with the nextdoor laundry, and eventually spread across every room in the house. It's perhaps best described as fretwork, a series of wooden twiddles in geometric and naturalistic forms, although additionally combined with a splash of paint, homely artwork and an accumulation of objets. Most of the wood was reclaimed from skips or other local leftovers, and all of it hand-carved using a Stanley knife with a padsaw blade. I can't show you what the interior looks like because Khadambi didn't believe in photographing his work sovisitorscan'teither.
Before his death Khadambi's friends encouraged him to pass it on to the National Trust, who then took four years to decide whether they were able to take it on. 575 Wandsworth Road finally opened to the public in 2013 after substantial fund-raising, with the caveat that only 2000 visitors a year could gain admittance. It's a narrow terraced house and a lot of the surfaces are potentially fragile, still with sticking-out pins in places, so free-flow visits could be a disaster. Each tour is thus restricted to just six people and there are only six tours a week, plus the house is closed from November through to April for conservation work. It is thus ridiculously hard to visit because the places go so fast, so I was most fortunate to snap up one of 2025's last tickets.
You start on the lower ground floor seated around the kitchen table for scene-setting and the health and safety talk. Every visitor is asked to bring rubber soled slippers or thick, gripped socks to protect the painted floors upstairs, although staff do keep a few spare socks in case anyone forgets. The intricate fretwork is readily apparent all around, never quite symmetrical but always in harmony and balance. I can only imagine how long each short section took to complete and how much of Khadambi's spare time this project absorbed. The shelves also include a surfeit of glasses, crockery and lustreware, all the better to reflect light and give the house some sparkle. Many of the plates still have a price label on the back, not that you're allowed to look and check.
Upstairs things get brighter and dazzlier, especially the living room with its African wall hangings, hand-carved lampshades and decorated doors. The Trust retained everything including Khadambi's extensive book collection, and it's wonderfully jarring to see a stack of compact discs preserved as part of a National Trust historic house. Every item is regularly cleaned by house staff and meticulously put back in the right place in the right orientation according to photographic guides treated as gospel. The bathroom is a little calmer, with much of the design work invisible were you lying in the bath. But the hallway is exquisite, like a backpassage in a Moorish palace, complete with well-disguised coathooks where Khadambi used it as his transition into the outside world.
I can't imagine how long the landing took to decorate, this a later stage of the project so more colourful, more elaborate and with birds and elephants amongst the symbols in the fretwork. The bedroom has even more painted elements with an African flavour, including a tiny green parrot drawn looking into a mirror, plus hearts and CND symbols incorporated into the wooden flourishes at the foot of the bed. From his typewriter in the study Khadambi could look down across a flourishing garden, now without the mimosa that was once its centrepiece (which had to be removed so it couldn't affect the foundations). The drive for authentic preservation even extends to the kitchen where all the original foodstuffs remain in the cupboards, even the opened packet of cornflour. The conservators are currently debating whether the time has finally come to empty the bottle of mustard vinaigrette now that mould has appeared around its stopper.
You won't get into 575 Wandsworth Road this year, and given the paucity of spaces probably not next year either. But if you do ever get the opportunity then grab it because it's astonishing to see how a very ordinary terraced house has been transformed into something utterly extraordinary through one man's brilliance and artistic vision.
NATIONAL TRUST:Rainham Hall Location: Rainham, RM13 9YN [map] Open: 11am-4pm, Thursday-Saturday only Admission: £6.50 Period: The Georgian one
Rainham is an outlier village almost on the Thames estuary, now the southernmost suburb in the borough of Havering. It seems ridiculous that the National Trust should have anything here but a Georgian merchant's house survives in situ by the parish church, conveniently close to the station. It took them over 60 years to open it up to the public, also £2.5m to fund the renovation, but since 2015 it's been a Queen Anne jewel not enough people traipse out to see. Don't worry about the scaffolding all over the front of the building, it's nothing structural.
With no furniture and fittings to show off, bar some Delft tiles and a dumb waiter, what the National Trust has done is dig into the catalogue of 50 former residents and tell their stories instead. In opening year it was Captain John Harle, the merchant sea captain who built the Hall in the first place, followed by some babies from a postwar nursery. In 2019 they played their trump card - Anthony Denney, a flamboyant photographer for Vogue - who spent much of the 1960s here as the Trust's tenant/custodian. The current focus is Nicholas Brady, for 33 years the rector of neighbouring Wennington, who used the Hall as a vicarage rather than live closer to his flock.
It is somewhat extraordinary to find a three-roomed exhibition devoted to one of London's remotest villages but also rather brilliant, not least because St Mary & St Peter has lots of goodies they can lend. Exhibits include a winged lectern, the Reverend's memorial plaque and some fabulous glass negatives showing how the interior of the house looked on his watch. Brady took a long-term interest in zoology, archaeology and crystallography, which may explain some of the clutter. In the 1890s a nonagenarian relative called Henry Perigal came to stay, most famous for his five-piece cut-and-shift dissection proving Pythagoras's theorem, a diagram which appears on hismonument in Wennington's graveyard.
Where the Trust have been clever is in reusing material from previous exhibitions on the upper floors. Hence John Harle's story still fills two rooms (or three if you include the fleet of ships in the bath), most notably the incredibly unlikely tale of how his will was uncovered by a Rainham resident at a car boot sale in Newark. Anthony Denny's leftovers are gorgeous, and smell good too courtesy of a display referencing the cookery books he illustrated for Elizabeth David. The rooms given over to the nursery and the early 20th century residents aren't quite so engaging but are still very much part of the overall story and may be highlighted downstairs eventually.
There's also a decent-sized garden to enjoy, complete with long herringbone path, stone urn and the pumpkin it seems obligatory all National Trust houses display at this time of year. Part of the original funding conditions was that this be a community garden so everyone's welcome to wander the borders, although it's only unlocked for 25 hours a week so harder to take advantage of than it could be. The cafe in the coachhouse operates similarly. My thanks to the stewards who offered full background info on my way round, be that waiting politely to be asked or creeping into the room and launching into a full-on anecdote. And come on, £6.50 for all of this is a bargain so do come and make Rainham Hall's acquaintance soon, especially if you already have National Trust membership and it's all free anyway.
The National Trust maintains nine historic houses in London but only four are open for walk-up visits, the others now require advance booking. So I've walked up to the four you can still walk up to and given my membership card a wave, because it pays to reacquaint yourself rather than assume you've seen everything before. Here are the easily visitable foursome, largest first, in the hope I might encourage some visits and revisits.
NATIONAL TRUST:Ham House Location: Richmond, TW10 7RS [map] Open: 12-4pm, daily Admission: £17 Period: The Jacobean one
You don't have to leave London to visit a large stately home with glorious gardens, there's a fine one by the banks of the Thames just upstream of Richmond. Ham House was built in 1610, then extended in the 1670s when it was taken over by a court favourite of Charles II. Its original H-shape was half filled-in to create a south-facing facade looking out towards a formal garden, and the interior was lavishly redecorated. The Earls of Dysart looked after the place until maintenance costs became too much and the National Trust snapped it up in 1948. It's scrubbed up beautifully since.
Your wander round the house begins in the Great Hall with its chequered floor and looping overhead gallery. The self-guided tour soon heads upstairs via the wonders of the Great Staircase, its dark wooden panels all hand-carved and watched over by old masters, but also a tad gloomy because they didn't have spotlights in the 17th century so a few electric candles are doing a lot of heavy lifting. The finest first floor room is the Long Gallery, a vision in black and gold flanked by paintings of royalty and the nobility. The house is also littered with intricate cabinets, be they marquetry, lacquerwork or merely ebony and tortoiseshell, these a particular decorative favourite of Elizabeth, Countess of Dysart. They're not labelled so you'll need a QR code to unpick them all, or else ask one of the many strategically-located stewards because they're only too willing to impart a nugget of hard-learned background info.
Back downstairs a long chain of richly bedecked rooms leads through the Queen's Apartments to a ducal bedroom, with furniture, wallpaper and tapestries to match. Even the closets are unnecessarily showy. Exit is through the cellars, which prove to be extensive, including a kitchen and a cloaked tub on a dais that formed one of England's first internal bathrooms. Visitors are then nudged towards the gift shop and second-hand bookshop, both a courteous distance across the courtyard, where the lavender bushes are now going for half price. The Orangery Cafe looks out across a splendid walled garden that's still blooming and delivering seasonal veg, and beyond is that a large formal lawn and criss-cross wilderness garden. My favourite zone is the diagonal parterre with its clipped box cones surrounded by yew hedges, even if it has no basis in the house's horticultural history. And all of this is on Londoners' doorstep, so lucky us.
NATIONAL TRUST:Osterley House Location: Osterley, TW7 4RB [map] Open: 11am-3pm, closed Monday and Tuesday Admission: £17 (£9.50 for just the gardens) Period: The neoclassical one
Osterley was a quiet corner of Middlesex when banker Sir Francis Child bought a Tudor house and asked architect Robert Adam to remodel it. It took him 20 years. Today the Heathrow flightpath roars down one side of the estate and the M4's swiped the other, but the neoclassical mansion in the middle still looks out across a pastoral scene of fields and lakes. Hounslow residents love to drop by and enjoy the parkland, not to mention the cafe, but the National Trust guard the kiosk that allows you further in. The big attraction is the house, a U-shaped block with turrets, pedimented screen and a central courtyard visitors no longer enter through. Instead you slip in through a side door and then straight upstairs - already dazzling - to discover what sights a circuit will bring.
There are several ostentatious rooms to look into, including a tapestry-walled drawing room and a bedroom with a dome-topped eight-poster. Someone from the 18th century had a penchant for greens and pinks which you could describe as clashingly vibrant or else tonally unwise. The extravagant entrance hall is the finest space, a monochrome riot of columns and curves designed to impress. Alas I turned up while the six-monthly floor-wax was taking place so could only stare into the panelled long gallery through a door at the far end for fear of inhaling fumes. Also I see the scullery's no longer part of the free-flow route, and with several rooms roped off if I'd paid the full £17 I'd have felt short changed. That said the fee also lets you into the grounds which are seriously extensive, spanning woodland trails, a Long Walk by the lake and a Tudor walled garden, so could occupy anything from 10 minutes to an hour.
If nothing else, come see the outer park.
NATIONAL TRUST:Eastbury Manor House Location: Barking, IG11 9SN [map] Open: 10am-4pm, Friday and Sunday only Admission: £8.00 Period: The Tudor one
Clement Sisley built his marshside manor during the reign of Queen Elzabeth I, an amazing survivor given it later got seriously neglected and put to alternative use as stables, hayloft and cart-shed. The Society for the Preservation of Buildings recognised its worth in the 1910s and ensured it ended up safely with the National Trust, even when postwar housing estates were built all around it. It's still astonishing to walk down council avenues between Upney station and the A13 and find a Tudor house with twizzly chimneys and a knot garden plonked incongrously in the middle.
There's plenty of house to explore, including attics, backstairs and courtyards that bring a frisson of discovery. Only one of the original spiral staircases survives, ascending via an astonishing curl of oak planks to an upper garret with views towards Barking and Docklands. One room has a fine old fireplace (but not the original, which for some reason ended up in Sussex), another some wispy wall paintings commissioned 400 years ago by a City alderman. But there's a lot of emphasis here on noticeboards and interpretation rather than the shell of the building, including a new exhibition called Eastbury Saved I hadn't had the chance to enjoy before. Even the cafe's more a ploughman's and paninis kind of counter, I suspect in attempt to tempt in more local punters for whom olive and feta frittata probably wouldn't cut it.
I like that you get a proper folded map to take round with you, also that there's so much to read which definitely extends the length of your visit. Eastbury feels a lot more homespun than the two big mansions described above, and is all the better for it.
NATIONAL TRUST:Rainham Hall Location: Rainham, RM13 9YN [map] Open: 11am-4.30pm, Thursday-Saturday only Admission: £6.50 Period: The Georgian one
I'll save this one until tomorrow, save to say it's always well worth the trek.
If today's post inspires you to visit any of these four NT houses, do come back and leave a comment to say so. They're all open on Fridays, so you could plan to make an early start.
According to the National Street Gazetteer there are only seven Squares in Waltham Forest. Three are long thin loops on council estates with a scrap of grass up the centre, and four are part of modern housing developments overlooked by newbuild flats. I plumped for one of the latter because I hoped it might stretch to three paragraphs.
We're on Wood Street, an east Walthamstow neighbourhood with a run of half-decent shops. Around ten years ago the council saw the opportunity to do up an existing precinct and a car park, also to replace past-it flats on the Marlowe Road Estate with a mass of mixed-tenure apartments. The development was called Feature 17 in honour of the fourfilmstudios that existed around Wood Street between 1910 and 1924 - not precisely here, but that doesn't matter when you're a branding agent in need of a local heritage angle. I'm still not sure why the upgraded plaza got renamed Troubridge Square, given that the only famous Troubridges derive from a baronetcy that originated in Plymouth, not E17. Update: It's named after HMS Troubridge, the WW2 destroyer adopted by Walthamstow during “Warship Week" in 1942.
The only survivors from the former precinct are a very tall CCTV pole and five concrete cubes, each with a single letter spelling out PLAZA (because this was formerly Wood Street Plaza). Another row of concrete cuboids suffices as unvandalisable seating, and the remainder proved so bleak they came back later and added three small flowerbeds. An enlarged Co-op got built before they knocked the old one down and this gets most of the footfall. It's also the canvas for the portrait of an inspiring local resident, as captured by fellow resident and photographer Matt Joy. In warmer weeks the potentially lively part is the grid of dry deck fountains at the far end (on at 10am, off at noon), but for now the large playground area is where lots of parents take lots of kids.
At ground level on the south side is the new Wood Street Library. It replaced the landmark building on the corner of Forest Road, which is now a block of flats, and now finds itself beneath another block of flats in a move nobody round here wanted. According to the council "the new library is fit for purpose and offers a more cost-efficient and modern way to deliver vital library services to the community", but I'd say it looks quite light on books. Also the bus stop outside the demolished building is still called Forest Road/Wood Street Library so perhaps somebody at TfL could sort that. Meanwhile the plan is to complete the redevelopment of the Marlowe Road Estate by this time next year, having added 440 homes, and only then will Troubridge Square and its overbricky environs be complete.
If it's mid-October then Tate Modern must have plonked some fresh art in their Turbine Hall. So what have we got this year? Hides and fencing.
These are the animal skins, 72 reindeer hides strung out on electric cables from floor to ceiling. They don't move or flash but there is the occasional buzz as part of the ambient soundscape. Apparently they also smell, this the ‘váivahuvvon hádja' that reindeer release when in a stressful situation, but I didn't get any notion of a tang, whiff or aroma when I walked by.
This year's artist is Norwegian, more specifically from the Sápmi region of northern Scandinavia formerly known as Lapland. Máret Ánne Sara's art journey began when her brother was ordered to cull 40% of his reindeer herd as part of a national quota system. She exhibited 200bullet-piercedreindeer skulls outside the Norwegian Supreme Court, they voted down the legislation and here she is on the South Bank. The juxtaposition of hides and cables is meant to represent the tension between energy extraction and ecosystems, obviously.
That's Goavve and at the other end of the Turbine Hall is Geabbil, a loopy labyrinth with walls made from birch branches. At certain points you'll find vertical clusters of reindeer remains - a stripe of jaws, a wall of skulls - also signs urging you not to touch. Within the maze are four listening areas where you can sit down on reindeer skin and don chunky headphones to hear conversations with Sámi reindeer herders and knowledge keepers. What they don't warn you is that the four audio streams each last 20-30 minutes so nobody's going to stay for all of them, plus they're a bit dry, so to save you the effort I flashed the QR code so if you're really interested you can read the transcripts at home.
The shape of the artwork is based on the internal anatomy of a reindeer's nose. Their snout is mostly cartilage and cavities, an energy-efficient arrangement which rapidly heats inhaled air across an extensive surface area, such is the genius of evolved nasal geometry. According to the blurb "as we move through the structure, Sara invites us to connect with the enduring knowledge and energy that flows through its materials and passages", although if you're a small child you'll probably just run around a lot.
Goavve-Geabbil won't detain you long, it's fairly slight given the voluminous space available. I don't think it's as poor as The Guardian's 1-star review, and does at least shine a light on indigenous art we rarely consider. But it's not up there with the greatest Turbine Hall commissions, indeed it's been four years since the last must-see, as yet another artist fails to grasp the full possibilities of London's largest gallery space.
You may remember I've been trying to spot all the pairsof letters at the start of a modern vehicle registration plate.
AA AB AC AD AE AF AG AH AJ AK AL AM AN AO AP...
BA BB BC BD BE BF BG BH BJ BK...
CA CB...
...
........YJ YK YL YM YN YO YP YR YS YT YU YV YW YX YY
There are a heck of a lot of them.
You might expect there to be 26×26 = 676 possible combinations, but the letters I, Q and Z are never used (for alphanumeric confusion reasons) which shrinks the list to 23×23 = 529.
Also four pairs have never been issued. FO and FU are banned for sweary reasons and NF for fascist reasons. The only other blacklisted pair is MN, which has long been reserved for the Isle of Man but the IoM has never taken up the DVLA's kind offer. This reduces the list to 529 - 4 = 525.
Also XA-XF are reserved for exports. You don't expect to see these on UK roads so I've discounted them too. This reduces the list to 525 - 6 = 519.
Well the good news is that I've finally seen all 519 of them, and it only took 22½ months.
I started on 1st December 2023. It was a bit of a torrent to start with because most of the pairs are quite common, especially those starting with L (London), E (Essex) and G (Kent). Pairs starting with B (Birmingham) and S (Scotland) are also frequent because they're issued across populous parts of the country.
By the end of December I'd seen all the As, Bs, Ds, Ks, Ls, Ss and Ys and was already up to 433 out of 519, that's 83% of the overall total. By the end of January I'd added all the Es, Fs, Hs, Js, Ts and Ws and was up to 480 (92%). And by the end of February I had the Cs and Ms under my belt and had reached 495 (95%). How difficult could the last 24 pairs be? Very, as it turned out.
The catch is that some pairs are considerably rarer than others.
i) 4 letters aren't used as regional identifiers. You'll only find J, T, U and X at the start of a personalised plate, not a bogstandard forecourt-bought vehicle.
ii) Some geographic regions don't issue all the pairs they have ownership of (so for example Reading seemed very reticent to release RC, RG, RL, RM and RP).
iii) Some letter pairs are held back so the DVLA can make some money out of them. The definitive list is AH, AL, BY, DR, ED, EH, GO, HO, MO, MR, MS, MY, OK, ON, OR, OS, RU, SU, VD, VW and WC.
I was fairly amazed when I finally saw a VD, but I've since seen several more.
After six months I was missing ten pairs (NR, RL, UE/UT/UV, VH/VJ/VL and XG/XY).
After nine months I was missing four pairs (UE/UT/UV and VH).
After twelve months I was still missing four pairs, that's how tough this game is.
UT finally turned up on an Audi in Crewe in March 2025.
VH finally turned up outside the Texaco garage on Bow Road in April 2025.
UE finally turned up on a Toyota outside Bromley-by-Bow station in June 2025.
And at the weekend I finally spotted UV on a Volkswagen in Ilford.
Obviously I got off the bus to take a photo.
The car was parked outside a block of flats on Ilford Lane. I've been down this road several times in the last two years but never seen it before, so maybe it was a one-off visitor. It starts with U so it has to be a personalised plate. The digits and last three letters appear to form the word LOSER. I'm still speculating why someone would pay good money for this particular plate, but I thank them deeply because otherwise I'd still be playing, almost 700 days later.
I have finally spotted all 519 pairs of letters at the start of a modern UK vehicle registration plate, and it only took 22½ months.
I'm still trying, very slowly, to visit England's 100 largest towns and cities by population. At the start of the year I had 13 to go but since then I've ticked off Sunderland (32nd), Hartlepool (84th), Stockport (60th), Chesterfield (85th), Mansfield (99th), Warrington (34th) and St Helens (71st). I'm chuffed to have halved the list this year. Of the six towns that remain the largest is Huddersfield (33rd), the southernmost is now Oldham (49th) and all lie in a narrow stripe between Lancashire and Lincolnshire.
Visiting Warrington ticked off another postcode area (WA), so my sole omissions within England and Wales are now BB and HD, i.e. Blackburn and Huddersfield.
In the last ten years I've been to every county in England at least once except Northumberland and Lancashire. I have obviously been to both of those, just longer ago. Technically I went to the historic county of Lancashire last week when I went to St Helens, but not the ceremonial county so it doesn't count. Only four miles out though.
I managed to keep the cost of my 430-mile round trip to just £25 by taking advantage of an LNWR half-price flash sale. The 6.43am departure from Euston to Crewe always has rock bottom advance fares anyway, plus Northern offer advance fares on certain bogstandard local routes so I managed to pre-book Warrington to Liverpool for just £1.30.
To complete my Top 100 list I reckon I need a day trip to Blackburn/Burnley, a day trip to Huddersfield/Barnsley, a bolt-on to Oldham next time I'm in Manchester and a potentially pointless day trip to Scunthorpe. I doubt I'll be able to manage any of those so cheaply.
