Ooh, I like this. Mainly because I can fill in a lot more of it than the world map that's been doing the rounds lately. But also because I'm quietly amazed just how much of it I can fill in. You might have guessed that a Londoner like myself never ventures outside the M25, but as you can see you'd be wrong. Blimey, I've even lived in nine of these counties.
I've only filled in counties that I've deliberately visited, not that I've merely travelled through. In fact I've travelled through every single English and Welsh county on the map, with the exception of Pembrokeshire. It's probably just as well that Northern Ireland isn't on the map (the Ordnance Survey left it off the original), but a pity that the Channel Islands aren't included because I've done two of them. Big respect to my parents for dragging me round the UK while I was a child. Large chunks of this map would still be blue were it not for their sterling efforts. So, where's still left for me to visit?
Rutland: Bit of a cheat this, because Rutland used to be part of Leicestershire and I have been there. It's a tiny county, lost in 1974 but reborn in 1997 because its 34000 inhabitants had a very loud political voice. The local paper is full of particularly thrilling stories as you might expect. Rutland Weekend Television broadcast from here in the mid 70s, courtesy of Eric Idle and Neil Innes.
Pembrokeshire and Camarthenshire: Hmm, how come I've never quite made it to gorgeous southwest Wales? I've stalked the nearby Gower Peninsula (beautiful) and I've spent a week just over the border in remote Lampeter, but I've never quite been to these two counties. <adds Tenby and St David's to potential holiday list>
Flintshire: A thin sliver of northern Wales containing such delights as, erm. Erm. There's a large town called Mold. I may continue to give the place a miss.
Isleof Man: Definitely on the holiday list at some point, oh yes. The island's full of three-legged tailless cats riding motorbikes, you know. No? Maybe the local bloggers could paint you a fairer picture of their homeland.
Most of Scotland: I've done Edinburgh and Glasgow, and a week on the island of Bute, plus I walked over the ForthRoadBridge into Fife once for about ten minutes, but that's it for me and Scotland. Still huge areas left to visit, but all so far away. Must try harder.
About time [13]
• A year contains four quarters each of thirteen weeks (near enough).
• Chinese and Jewish years both usually have 12 lunar months, but in a leap year there are thirteen. We've just entered a Chinese leap year of the Monkey, and we enter the Jewish leap year 5765 in September.
• There were once UN proposals for a thirteen-month calendar, each month having 28 days. This proposal would have meant 13 Friday 13ths a year, but was shelved.
• According to the Mayan calendar, the world will end after a period of thirteenbaktun (that's about 5125 years). This puts the date of Armageddon a couple of days before Christmas 2012. More here.
Let's remember the top 10 records of exactly 20 years ago. (Click on a few links to remember even more)
1)Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax: It's 20 years since "I'm A Celebrity" DJ Mike Read forced the BBC to ban this record for its "overtly obscene" lyrics. They were filthy of course, but the song was fantastic, the band's megastardom was assured, and Radio 1 now playlists far worse. Relax went on to sell nearly 2 million copies and is one of the UK's top 10 best selling singles of all time. Frankie say "Thanks for coming".
2)Queen - Radio Ga-Ga: The epic industrial anthem that revitalised Queen's career, writen by Roger Taylor, reaching number one in 19 different countries (but not the UK). Freddie and his dreamers produced a memorable video featuring clips from Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film "Metropolis". All we hear is (clap clap) Radio Ga-Ga. Applause.
3)CyndiLauper - Girls Just Want To Have Fun: Brooklyn-born Cyndi launched Girl Power into the charts a decade before the Spice Girls - brash, loud and quirky. This karaoke classic stormed the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, closely followed by funeral favourite "Time After Time". Cyndi's still touring - ah, she's so unusual.
4)Matthew Wilder - Break My Stride: A one-hit-wonder, quite bouncy, bit twee, dead bland, very catchy. Matthew also wrote some of the songs for Disney's Mulan a few years ago. Less bouncy, more twee, still bland, didn't quite win a Golden Globe award.
5)Thompson Twins - Doctor Doctor: First gig I ever went to see was 20 years ago this month - Tom, Alannah and Joe live at the Oxford Apollo, supported by BowWowWow and the Bellestars. Look, real popstars! The Thompsontour coincided with the launch of classic album "IntoThe Gap", although the band had been drumming around for years beforehand. Unique and irreplaceable, I reckon.
6)Joe Fagin - That's Livin' Alright: The theme from the hit ITV drama "Auf Wiedersehen Pet", still going strong as a hit BBC drama. Scouser Joe was also the voice behind the "Gotta Lotta Bottle" milk campaign.
7)Madonna - Holiday: It's exactly 20 years ago today since Ms Ciccone first entered the UK top ten. This track was produced by boyfriend John 'Jellybean' Benitez, launching one of the most successful pop careers ever (the most ever Top 40 hits by a female artist (58), the most ever consecutive Top 10 hits (34), and some darn fine records to boot). Holiday - celebrate.
8)Fiction Factory - Feels Like Heaven: Is there a more quintessentially Eighties song than this sparkling gem? The band hailed from Scotland and got their big break supporting Paul Young on tour. Lead singer Kevin Patterson is now an IT bod at the University of Dundee. Thanks for this one Kev. See me I feel, see me I live. 9)Duran Duran - New Moon On Monday: Another hit off the album 'Seven and the Ragged Tiger', back when even an average LeBon track could become a huge hit. This was very average. Fascinating related astronomical fact: there were no New Moons on Mondays in 1984.
10)Eurythmics - Here Comes The Rain Again: A beautiful track from the album "Touch", Annie and Dave's third long player. I still have it on cassette somewhere... <goes and finds small plastic cuboid, inserts into ageing hi-fi, presses play button, memories flood back, aaaah>Is it raining with you?
About time [12]
There are twelve months in a year because there are (very roughly) twelve full moons in a year. The Romansoriginally had only ten lunar months, then in 713BC January was added at the start of the year and February at the end. Like so: January, Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December, February
February was later moved from the end of the year to its present slot just after January. In 47BC Quintilis was renamed after Julius Caesar, gaining an extra day in line with its new importance. Then in 8BC Sextilis was renamed after Augustus. He nabbed another extra day and mucked up Julius's nice pattern of alternate 31/30 day months. See the complete changes here. Other emperors tried to name months after themselves, but only the two great calendar reformers remain commemorated today.
Problem 1: Which costs you more, a) the BBC or b) a Murdoch tabloid? a) A BBC television licence costs £116 a year. b) The Sun costs 30p on a weekday and 40p on a Saturday; the News of the World costs 70p on a Sunday.
Weekday cost = 261 days x 30p = £78.30
Saturday cost = 52 days x 40p = £20.80
Sunday cost = 52 days x 70p = £36.40
Total annual cost of a Murdoch tabloid = £135.50 Answer: Daily breasts cost £19.50 more each year than daily news and entertainment.
Problem 2: What does the latest ¼% rise in UK interest rates mean to you? i) £1000 in a savings account will earn ¼% x £1000 ÷ 12 = 21p more each month, before tax. ii) A £100000 mortgage will cost £644.30 - £629.10 = £15.20 more each month. Answer: Who cares, you still won't ever be able to afford to buy a house.
Problem 3: What's the chance of you winning the jackpot in the new EuroMillions lottery?
(Starts next Friday in the UK, France and Spain. Costs €2 to enter. To win the jackpot you need to pick five numbers from 1 to 50, plus two 'lucky star' numbers from 1 to 9.)
Chance of getting the first five numbers right = 5/50 x 4/49 x 3/48 x 2/47 x 1/46 = 1 in about 2 million
Chance of getting the two 'lucky stars' right = 2/9 x 1/8 = 1 in 36
Chance of winning the jackpot = multiply the two together Answer:1 in 76 million
Estimated time to win the jackpot @1 ticket a week = 76 million weeks = 1½ million years =crap
About time [11]
By the time the UK got round to adjusting to the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, the seasons were starting eleven days later than they should have been. An Act of Parliament decreed that Wednesday 2nd September 1752 would be followed by Thursday 14th September 1752 (see the very odd-looking calendar here). Common people were aghast that the government had seemingly stolen 11 days of their lives. A 19-day September caused no end of technical problems too - lost birthdays, overpayment of monthly rent, underpayment of monthly interest, etc. The start of the financial year was forced to move ahead from Lady Day (25th March) to 5th April, and then shifted one further day in 1800 (the first century year not to be a leap year). Further information here.
• Go visit Derelict London, a photo website showcasing decaying and derelict areas of the city (there's quite a lot of East London then). Meet the snapper here.
• Ruin all the surprises in the new series of Footballer's Wives. Quick, before it starts up again. Jason's not coming back.
• Before Playstations and X-Boxes there was the BBC Microcomputer, and there was Repton. Fantastic game, and now with this free trial you can play it again.
• The Guardian have finally updated their list of "some of the British weblogs we like". Very kind of them.
• "Oh no, not new Gavilast!" Britain's poorest-acted TV advert can now be viewed online, should you want to risk your sanity. "12 hours? What am I going to do for 12 hours?" • Blimey, diamond geezer has been voted 'Link of the year' on the wibsite - a community of Christian-type bloggers. Devilishly unlikely. Ta everyone.
• Another Wibby Award winner is this infuriating pie-eating game. Can you devour the cherry pie in 15 bites? (I can, just)
• 159 tells us "There are currently no major incidents reported at key BBC buildings in the UK". There's a surprise. Ceefax page 159 confirms it though.
• All the Olympic planning documents for London's 2012 bid have been published. They're huge downloads, but it beats paying £750 for a full set of printouts. Thankfully nobody's planning to knock my house down to make way for 3 hours of javelin hurling.
• Dead useful for anagramming - your blog name written on Scrabble tiles. Look, diamond geezer scores 27 - can anyone beat that?
About time [10]
The number 10 dominates our counting and most other forms of measurement, so it's rather odd that time just isn't counted in tens. All sorts of other numbers yes, but tens no. The French changed briefly to a metric calendar after the Revolution, with 10 days in a week and all celebration of "Sundays" banned. Each day was re-divided into 10 hours, each with 100 minutes (about 1½ normal minutes long), each with 100 seconds (only slightly shorter than a normal second). All old "unpatriotic" clocks and watches had to be replaced, at least until the calendar itself was replaced twelve years later. Metric time still has tens of modern supporters - see here (the Swatch proposal), here, here and here.
How do you work out on which day of the week a particular date falls? Assuming you don't have a calendar handy, that is?
Method 1: This handy algorithm (click).
Too complicated? Thought so.
Method 2: Learn this 12-digit number off by heart - 155274263153
For 2005, this number tells you the date of the first Saturday in each month. So, January 1st 2005 is a Saturday, and so are February 5th, March 5th, April 2nd, etc. To work out other days in each month just count on from the one day you know. (For example, want to know the date of Christmas 2005? Well, December 3rd is a Saturday, and so must be December 10th, 17th and 24th, and so Christmas Day must be a Sunday). For 2006 use the same number to give the date of the first Sunday in the month, for 2007 the first Monday, and so on. Bit of a problem with leap years though - for 2004 the number gives you Thursdays in January and February, but Fridays from March onwards.
Method 3: Use the Doomsday algorithm
Nothing to do with the end of the world, but a supposedly-simple way to calculate days of the week invented by the famous Liverpool mathematician JohnConway. It's rather like the previous method but without a 12-digit number to memorise. Each year has its own so-called Doomsday, and Doomsday is always the last day of February. For 2004, February 29th is a Sunday, so Doomsday is a Sunday. In the other even-numbered months, 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10 and 12/12 are all Doomsdays (Sundays). Odd-numbered months are trickier to remember, but 9/5, 11/7, 5/9 and 7/11 are all Doomsdays (works in the US as well as the UK, thankfully). As for March, that begins on the day after Doomsday, and then there's January... But if you've followed this so far, I suspect you'd be better off reading the proper instructions - here. Bit tricky, especially working dates out in different years, but it is dead clever.
Method 4: Cheat
Even if you don't understand the Doomsday algorithm, this bloke does. Just type the date into his webpage and his program will work out the day of the week for you.
Method 5: Cheat properly
Choose any year from 1582 to 3000 and find the whole calendar here, or here.
About time [7]
There are seven days in a week for a number of reasons (to do with planets, the phases of the moon and the book of Genesis - go back and read my last post on the subject, go on). However, seven doesn't divide exactly into 365 (or 366 for that matter) which is why the days of the month fall on different days of the week each year, and why you keep having to buy new calendars and diaries every year. If your birthday is on a Monday this year then it'll be on a Tuesday next year, Wednesday the following year, and so on. That is until we hit a leap year, at which point the day of the week 'leaps' forward two days instead of one. And yes, that is how leap years get their name.
I was invited to a swanky party in town last night. The London News Review is launching in print next month and everyone who bought a copy of the pre-launch issue also got an invite to last night's knees-up. How exciting could that be? Perhaps more exciting than the pre-launch issue of the magazine anyway. They've promised that issue 1 will be better.
The party was held at what used to be the Limelight club, a renovated church down Shaftesbury Avenue. Last time I was there Daphne and Celeste were performing, so this had to be an improvement. The Limelight has recently been reborn as yet another bar in the Walkabout chain, all Australian-themed (as if there isn't enough Australia on the telly and in blogworld at the moment). The LNR team had taken over the bar on an otherwise dead Monday and were hoping to pack the place out with 500 movers, shakers and general technorati. Success.
I went along in the hope of meeting some interesting people. The organisers even promised that some MPs would be present (and maybe those four slightly odd-looking suited blokes were, but I'm not sure). On the way in we were offered the choice of ten coloured ribbons to wear, so I opted for the orange one ("weblogs can be fun, ask me how"). This would have been a very successful idea were it not for the fact that the club was lit by a bright red light, shining down from the dome above, so I could have been wearing yellow (Liberal Democrat), white (disappointed by Hutton) or red (dog-killer) for all anybody knew. Nobody asked, anyway.
I hoped that there might be at least someone there that I knew, and there was. There was Dave Gorman. That's the famous one of the 54. He seemed to be enjoying the evening, even if the general public weren't leaving him (and his elfin girlfriend) alone very much of the time. The general public were also very busy talking to each other. My latent Aspergers kicked in and I stood back and watched the other 499 people having quite a good time. Ah well, at least there were free nibbles. On my way back to the tube afterwards I passed the smiling crowds coming out of the The Streets gig at the Astoria. Hmm, maybe I should have gone there instead - geezers need excitement.
About time [4]
A normal year of 365 days is a quarter of a day too short to match the orbit of the Earth round the Sun. We add one extra day every four years to keep the seasons in line from year to year. Here's how it works. The spring equinox (in the UK) fell on March 20th in 2000, 2001 and 2002 (about six hours later each year) but on March 21st in 2003. The extra leap day at the end of this month ensures that the spring equinox returns to March 20th in 2004. That's the simple explanation anyway - you can check the exact equinoctial dates and times here, if you're so inclined.
...jumble those letters around to make the name of a well-known webpage. Ahh, few things in life are quite so satisfying as a well-constructed anagram. Here are some particularly clever ones.
(read each anagram by hovering your mouse over the question mark)
About time [3]
When Julius Caesar introduced the first leap year in 45BC, his intention was that these would repeat every four years. Unfortunately he was assassinated on the IdesofMarch the following year, and Roman priests then counted wrongly and added leap years every three years instead. This incorrect sequence continued as far as 9BC, at which point the emperor Augustus realised the mistake and banned leap years until 8AD. By this point the calendar had caught up again, and leap years then occurred every four years as originally planned. However, we can be certain that Jesus wasn't born on a leap day, because there weren't any at the time.
Welcome to an extended February. It's a leap year, so there are five Sundays in February for the first time since 1976, and March is further away than normal. Good, that means I won't be getting older quite so quickly. I'm celebrating this 'leap month' by bringing you a daily dose of time-related trivia, investigating how our calendar came to be. Each time fact will be number-related, so I'm starting today with '0' and gradually increasing to reach '25800' by the end of the month. There'll be plenty of other non-time-related stuff too, as usual, but I'll start today with a very brief summary of how the calendar we use today has developed.
Man has attempted to map the seasons since prehistoric times. The phases of the moon provided the most obvious means of doing this, the period from one new moon to the next becoming one mo(o)nth. Unfortunately the time the moon takes to orbit the Earth isn't easily related to the time the Earth takes to orbit the sun. 12 lunar months make a year that's too short, but 13 are too long, so lunar calendars are doomed to inaccuracy. The Babylonians and Ancient Egyptians both spotted this problem and added whole extra months as required to try to keep in line with the rising of the stars and the flooding of the Nile.
Our calendar would be a simple matter if the Earth took exactly 365 days to orbit the Sun once. Unfortunately it takes a little longer than this, roughly (but not exactly) a quarter of a day extra. Miss out the quarter days and slowly, inexorably, the seasons don't match up with the calendar any more. Julius Caesar discovered a solution to this problem when he met Queen Cleopatra's chief astronomer during a bonking diplomatic visit to Egypt. Caesar introduced his Julian Calendar in 45BC, ending an age of chaos in which Roman years could be as long or as short as the priests decreed. He established 12 months of roughly equal length, and announced that February would have an extra day every four years. More on the Roman calendar here, here and here (and more details later in the month).
The Julian Calendar was good, but it wasn't perfect, so by the middle of the 16th century the seasons and the date of Easter were again in a right mess. Pope GregoryXIII was forced to remove 10 days from the year 1582 in order to allow the Earth to catch up with the calendar. He also announced that, in future, end-of-century years would no longer be leap years, except for years divisible by 400 which still would. The non-Catholic UK (and America) waited until 1752 to make this change, by which time an extra day had to be lost. Were it not for this calendar alteration then today's date would still be January 19th, not February 1st. Few people have changed our view of the world quite so fundamentally as Cleo, Jules and Greg.
About time [0]
There was no year zero. 1BC was followed by 1AD. Obviously nobody noticed at the time, because Jesus was still a toddler and the Romans were busy counting years ab urbe condita (i.e. since the founding of the city of Rome). The renumbering of the calendar occured 500 years later, thanks to a well-meaning monk named Dionysius. He decided (wrongly, as it turned out) that Jesus had been born in the year 753 AUC, and so renumbered everything from 754 AUC onwards as years Anno Domini. It wasn't until two centuries later that the Venerable Bede introduced the concept of years 'BC', and it was he who failed to introduce a year zero (this because the number 'zero' hadn't been introduced in Europe at the time). The world's calendar is still based on this fallacious system, which means we all celebrated the last millennium about four years too late.
05:43 Prayer For The Day "Oh God, please let public service broadcasting survive." 05:45 Farming Today Including a report from Andrew Gilligan's remote sheep farm in the Outer Hebrides. 06:00 Today The cautious investigative news programme, featuring... 06:05 We ring Downing Street for permission to broadcast 06:07 Pause for Thought 06:40 Hard-hitting exposé of the Bolivian llama trade 07:15 What The Papers Say - mostly provocative lies, but the government doesn't shut them down 07:55 Commercial Break 08:25 A Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the highest bidder 08:30 Rupert Murdoch's Wholly Unbiased Editorial Half Hour 09:00 Kilroy 09:45 Book Of The Week Alistair Campbell reads from 'The Hutton Report' (part 37, repeat) 10:00 Woman's Hour Fern Britton brings you the latest showbiz gossip and make-up tips. 11:00 Any Questions? Apologies, but we're not allowed to answer them any more. 12:05 You And Yours Investigating the sell-off of the BBC proposed in Tessa Jowell's new BBC Charter. 12:30 I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Still wondering where those weapons of mass destruction are. 13:00 The World At One Special report - is freedom of speech under global threat (or is it just here)? 13:30 Appeal on behalf of The Lost Licence Fee: please send your £116 to BBC TV Centre, The Office, Trading Estate, Slough. 14:00 The Archers (sponsored by McDonalds, where the beef comes from) 14:15 Afternoon Play "Auntie's Last Stand" 15:15 Desert Island Discs Greg Dyke is cast away. 16:00 Meet The Director General Tony Blair tells us how much he's enjoying his new job. 17:00 PM Gordon Brown, obviously. 18:00 Home Truths The BBC Governors apologise deeply for everything they may ever have done. 18:30 Just A Minute Because that's all the news we're allowed to broadcast these days. 18:31 Today In Parliament All those jolly good things that the Government announced this afternoon. 19:00 Shipping Forecast Tape-looped for a full hour, because it's terribly uncontroversial. 20:00 Sorry, we've run out of money for today, so time to join Talksport for an evening of phone-ins and betting updates.
I'm just back from deepest Hertfordshire, my two days of 'team-building' complete. Thankfully what we got to do was quite useful - no trying to support bricks on towers constructed from newspaper for us - although other groups of delegates on site weren't quite so lucky. I've suffered from both overeating and overheating, so it's good to have escaped the corporate hotel lifestyle and to be back home again.
The old mansion at Theobald's Park looked delightful in the snow, looking out across the glistening Lea Valley, surrounded by deer-filled woodland. The original Theobalds was the favourite hunting lodge of James I, but fell into ruins after the king died here in 1625. The main part of the present building dates from the 18th century and has since been owned by an MP (1763), a rich London brewer (1820), the Admiral of the Fleet (1910), the Metropolitan Police riding school (1939), a local secondary school (1951), and finally a conference centre (1995). The latest owners have restored some of the old house to gilt-edged wood-panelled splendour, but I don't think that flipcharts, vending machines and Sky TV were part of the original Georgian decoration.
And yes, down at the end of the drive, within sight of the 'Lady Meux restaurant', lies Temple Bar (see yesterday). Or, at least, what's left of Temple Bar, which isn't much. Just a small section of the east wall remains, surrounded by towering scaffolding that gives some idea of the scale of the original structure. A handful of workmen were hiding in the portakabins for warmth, occasionally popping out to dismantle a little more of the remaining wall. Some of the large stones that made up the arch were lying around on pallets, covered by snow, ready to be transported back to London. It won't be long before there's nothing left here but a muddy clearing in the woods, and conference delegates will have to make do with a stroll in the Italian Garden, or just another dip in the spa bath.
You'll be able to see Temple Bar reborn later this year, back in London at Paternoster Square beside St Paul's Cathedral. Latest news here. This ancient gate to the City of London certainly deserves to be seen by more than a few corporate freeloaders, squirrels and delivery lorries, but I'm sure one corner of Hertfordshire will be sad to see it go.
Work are sending me away, out of snow-splattered London, for two days. It's only for one night, but I can't say I'm delighted to be uprooted from my spiritual home merely for the sake of 'team-building'. I think that was the excuse they gave anyway. Still, things could be much worse. They're sticking us in a country-manor-cum-conference-centre within half a mile of the M25, which is barely outside London at all. And, lurking in the grounds, forgotten for decades, lies one of the City's most famous landmarks...
Temple Bar used to be located where the Strand meets Fleet Street, one of the ancient gateways into the City of London, named after the local Inns of Court. The first bar was just a chain across the road, the second a wooden structure with a prison on top, and the third (and final) a magnificent arch built from Portland stone. And yes, like everything else in this Fire-ravaged part of London it was built by Sir Christopher Wren - did this man ever rest? In the 18th century the heads of traitors were displayed on iron spikes across the top of the arch. Sorry, this is all sounding like a repeat of last week, isn't it?
By the late 19th century there was just one tiny problem - the gateways through the arch were rather narrow and therefore unsuited to ever-increasing amounts of road traffic. In 1878 the Corporation of London dismantled the arch, brick by brick, and hid it away in a yard off Farringdon Road. A pedestal with a large gold dragon was erected in its place, and the old bar was forgotten.
Salvation came from an unlikely source. Lady Meux was a banjo-playing barmaid who had married into high society but wanted desperately to prove her respectability. She had the bricks of Temple Bar shipped up to Hertfordshire on horse-drawn trolleys and reassembled in the grounds of her country house - Theobald'sPark. Garden parties were held to celebrate its arrival, and such famous people as Edward VII and Winston Churchill were entertained in the arch's upper chamber. For a brief season, Temple Bar was back in the limelight. It didn't last. Before long the monument was lying fenced off and forgotten in overgrown woodland, slowly crumbling away.
Until recently, that is. Suddenly Temple Bar is on its way back to the City, not to its original location but to a new site in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral. This is Paternoster Square(above left), a new piazza of questionable architectural merit, yet another swathe of office space and designer shops. The developers want to add a certain historical respectability to their new project, just like Lady Meux, so they're having Temple Bar shipped all the way back from Hertfordshire. Workmen started dismantling the arch at Theobalds last October and it appears I'm visiting only just in time before they take the last few bricks down for good. Meanwhile the scaffolding is going up in Paternoster Square (right) and Temple Bar should be reassembled here by the end of the year.
An excellent website charts the progress of the Temple Bar project, with daily photos of the stonemasons at work and all the latest news (they found a time capsule inside one brick a couple of weeks ago).
So, I may be out of general circulation until late tomorrow, but at least I'll have another slice of lost London to keep me company. Hopefully I'll have time to sneak out from the planned team-building activities to take a look at the team doing the unbuilding. Temple Bar, poor thing, has been trapped out of town for over a century. I'm only away for the one night, but I'm pleased we'll both be back home soon.
1) Tuition fees: Last night MPs were invited to vote for either 'a complete disaster' or 'a complete disaster'. Alas, the complete disaster won. Stilll, if 3 MPs had voted the other way, the other complete disaster would have happened instead.
2) US Presidential primaries: For heaven's sake, the election is still 40 weeks away. Whatever the outcome of these primaries, come November and US citizens will also be asked to vote for either 'a complete disaster' or 'a complete disaster', as usual. Britain's next election looks slightly further away this morning, but at least it'll all be over in a month.
3) The Hutton Inquiry: The finger of blame is about to be pointed. Someone will take the rap, probably someone with overall responsibilty rather than direct responsibility, and the feasting media vultures may then be satisfied. Me, I'd prefer to call an inquiry to find out who's responsible for the culture of blame developing in this country.
4) Leaky tabloids: So much for secrecy. The Sun (which worships the PM and despises the BBC) owned by Rupert Murdoch (who likes the PM and hates the BBC) has leaked the Hutton report (which apparently exonerates the PM and blames the BBC). One day, one day, this execrable rag might do something I don't shout back at.
5) I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here: Is Johnny Rotten selling out? Does Jordan have a three-dimensional character? Who's wearing a toupee? How do we tell which ones are the cockroaches and which aren't? And why are so many of us watching? Did you see last night's...?
6) The Mydoom email worm: I got home last night to discover my inbox filled by viral spam. I haven't opened any, but it appears that the worm has been taking my email address in vain. I'd like to apologise now to jose at cdwow, robert at amazon and anna at tesco - I didn't send those emails, honest.
7) The Oscar nominations: Some films will win. Most films won't. Everyone will argue that the films that didn't win should have done. Repeat over 460 different categories. Yawn. The only interesting thing about the 2004 Oscars is that this will be the first time they've been awarded on February 29th since 1940 (when Gone With The Wind won 8, by the way).
8) Fuel-cell buses: I finally saw one of those new pollution-free buses going past my house the other day. It looked like a normal single decker, but with clouds of non-stop steam gushing upwards into the air. I noticed they'd had to write 'no emissions' all over the bus in very big letters so that passers-by didn't get too worried.
9) Burberry scarves: Sorry, but the cold weather has brought this tasteless neckwear onto the streets in enormous numbers. Wool, as worn by sheep. However, I think I've discovered Britain's biggest Burberry fashion victim - here (from ChavScum - "a humorous guide to Britain's burgeoning peasant underclass")
10) Snow: It didn't, did it? Well, it did a bit a bit North, and a lot a lot North, but nothing of note here. If our weather forecasters cry wolf again, we're just not going to believe them next time are we? Same time next year then.
Drat... 10 things I could be bothered to blog about
Remember Winter? We used to have Winters once, before our industrial policies kick-started inexorable global warming. Well, our weather boffins tell us that a brief spell of proper Winter is on its way. There may even be snow. Don't be scared - many other countries survive Winter relatively unscathed each year. However, just in case you're worried by the threat of total whiteout, here are some top tips to help you through the imminent cold spell.
Do • Wear a woolly hat to preserve body warmth, because everybody else will be and nobody will laugh at you, honest.
• Get out that sledge you've been meaning to use since 1987. You can put it away unused later.
• Pop round and check that an elderly neighbour isn't sitting in their back garden wearing only a dressing gown.
• Make sure that, in national news coverage, six snowflakes in London are given higher priority than six-foot drifts in Northumberland.
• Hunt down that free plastic ice scraper that Reader's Digest sent you last year.
• Make the most of all the free heating available in shopping malls, cinemas, trains and your neighbour's house.
• Zip up your parka really tight, and make that furry hood stick forward like a snorkel.
• Take time out to remind yourself how negative numbers work.
• Bore your grandchildren rigid by telling them that it always used to be like this when you were a kid.
• Add sugar to your birdbath to lower the temperature at which the water in it freezes.
• Stay indoors and wait for the entire UK transport network to suddenly grind to a halt.
Don't • Stock up on tins of warming soup, because that means going out in the cold to buy them.
• Sleep with your windows open.
• Use the snow to make snowmen, unless you balance this by building an equivalent number of snowwomen.
• Run out of anti-freeze and end up joining the community of broken-down vehicles on the hard shoulder of your local motorway.
• Moan that you can't get to the airport to fly off on your skiing holiday.
• Wonder why that nice man who sells the Big Issue seems to have suddenly disappeared.
• Try to cross the road in the slipstream of one of our gritter lorries.
• Read tomorrow's newspapers - use them instead to protect your car's windscreen from frost.
• Go outside and lick the salt off the pavement.
• Be surprised if nothing much happens and the whole thing's a complete anti-climax.
I firmly believe that some people have no idea quite how much space they're taking up. This has nothing to do with weight, and everything to do with thoughtlessness. These people blunder through life oblivious to everyone but themselves, getting in everybody else's way, never once aware that they might be inconveniencing those around them. We've all met them, we've all been annoyed by them... but are you one yourself? Probably without noticing? Test yourself against this handy checklist. Score 5 points for each that applies to you.
Do you ever... • Walk around in a busy public place completely engrossed in a book or newspaper?
• Walk three-abreast down a two-abreast pavement, forcing oncoming pedestrians into the road?
• Tip your plane seat back as far as it will go, from the moment your flight is airborne until just before it lands?
• Insist on using a pushchair the size of a wheelbarrow in the middle of a crowded department store?
• Stand on the left on an escalator or, even worse, stand in the middle carrying a lot of shopping?
• Pull your wheelie suitcase along behind you at an angle greater than 20 degrees to the vertical?
• Speed down the empty outside lane before some roadworks, then try to nudge your way back into the front of the queue?
• Allow your elbows to take up more than half of an armrest, digging into the ribs of the person beside you?
• Park your car in a space so small that nobody around you will ever get into their car afterwards?
• Use the middle urinal when there are three to choose from?
• Hold hands with your partner in public? (sweet, but you're completely blocking the pavement for us single people)
• Jump every red light because you refuse to believe that the Highway Code applies to cyclists?
• Fail to hold open a door because you didn't look behind you to see if anyone else was following?
• Take up more than two-thirds of a double bed, squeezing your partner into a small strip down the edge?
• Drive 20mph below the speed limit down a long winding single carriageway road, with or without a caravan?
• Leave your supermarket trolley blocking a whole aisle while you're busy hunting for something else?
• Insist on walking up an escalator but really slowly, gathering a seething queue behind you?
• Stop suddenly in the middle of a narrow passageway to take a call on your mobile?
• Barge into a train carriage to grab a seat before the rest of us have even started getting off?
• Wear particularly strong aftershave or perfume which lingers for minutes after you've passed by?
How did you score? 0: You must be insufferable to live with.
5-15: You are spatially aware, and the world is a happier place as a result.
20-35: Look around you a bit more, and see if you can't think of others a bit more often.
40-55: I meet people like you every day. You meet people like me every day. The difference is, I notice.
56-59: It's impossible to score 56-59. You might want to learn to add up first.
60-95: You are one of the great un-overtakeable, and the rest of us hate you.
100: You are ideally suited to a career in politics, and the world is in big trouble.
I couldn't be bothered to do the test because I knew it wouldn't apply to me: I think you've just proved my point.
Just to the northwest of Marble Arch, where the Edgware Road meets the end of Oxford Street, stands a cobbled triangular traffic island. It's all barriered off, and pretty difficult to reach without getting yourself mown down by passing vehicles. Nobody gives it a second look, but for centuries this was the site of the most watched entertainment in town. This is Tyburn, for six centuries home to London's public executions.
The River Tyburn ran (indeed still runs, somewhere underground) from Hampstead to the Thames, and the first public hangings took place from tree branches along its banks. In 1220 the first gallows was built, and in 1571 the infamous Tyburn Tree was constructed. This was a huge wooden tripod, 18 feet high with crossbeams 9 feet long. Prisoners suffered a slow agonising death from asphyxiation, which gave the waiting crowds a real spectacle to watch. If you liked that sort of thing, which tens of thousands of did.
Condemned prisoners started their last day at Newgate Prison, two miles away from Tyburn, just outside the old city walls. At noon they set off on a horse-drawn cart through the prison gates, with the bells of neighbouring St Sepulchre's church ringing out to mourn their passing. That's the bells of Old Bailey from the nursery rhyme - you knew there'd be a connection eventually. The procession stopped outside the church, where the prisoners received a nosegay of flowers, and stopped at a tavern or two later along the route so they could enjoy a final pint of ale. The phrase 'on the wagon' is reputed to derive from these pub stops - when the prisoners climbed back on the cart they would definitely never drink again.
Huge crowds lined Holborn and what-would-be Oxford Street, cheering and jeering the condemned. You can read more about the journey here, or perhaps relive most of the experience on board a modern number 8 bus. At Tyburn itself a grandstand was built and there was a real festival atmosphere - for all but a few present, that is. The prisoners' last speeches were drowned by the roar of the mob, then they were finally blindfolded and strung up. The cart beneath the prisoners was pulled away, and they were left to die. This could take nearly an hour. The crowd listened for their screams, and watched for the tell tale dribble of urine dripping from one leg that meant death had finally arrived.
The last public hanging at Tyburn took place in 1783, Executions then moved to a site immediately outside Newgate Prison, where crowd control was easier, with the last public hanging in the UK held here as late as 1868. The closure of Tyburn finally allowed respectable London to grow rapidly to the northwest. A convent (with flash webpage) was founded close by the site of the old gallows, and a small group of snooker-playing nuns still pray for the souls of the dead. Most Londoners may drive past Tyburn without noticing, but the capital's punishment has not been forgotten by everyone.
[Oranges and Lemons trivia: The City of London is divided into 25 wards for electoral and ceremonial purposes (map here). Both St Clements and St Martins lie inside the tiny ward of Candlewick (old map here, new map here, number of residents on the electoral roll - two). The ward is named after Candlewick Street, now much better known as Cannon Street.]
It's hard to imagine modern life without electric light. Flick a switch or walk out onto the street nowadays and the sun never sets. Go back just 200 years, however, and London was still lit only by candles and oil lamps. Richer folk lit their homes with candles made from beeswax or whale oil, whilst poorer folk had to make do with smelly, smoky tallow candles made from animal fat. In 1807 Pall Mall became the first street in the capital to be lit by gas, spreading to 213 streets by 1823, but indoors candlesticks and candelabra still ruled. In 1859 the Houses of Parliament were lit by gas for the first time and only then did gas lighting start to become fashionable inside the homes of London's wealthy. Electric light arrived on the streets in 1878, starting on Holborn Viaduct, but its use was not widespread indoors until after the First World War.
Today, London belches light out into the night sky. Street lamps, spotlights, illuminations, adverts, security lighting and three million houses, all contribute to the most severe light pollution in the UK, beaming light upwards where it isn't needed. This satellite photo (hi-res version here) taken from the International Space Station shows London lit up like a giant, luminous amoeba, with a dazzling central nucleus. The night sky over the capital has a dull orange glow and only a few of the brightest stars are ever visible - in fact the only star some London children will ever have seen is the Sun. And it's getting worse across the rest of the country too (check your region here) where sight of the Milky Way has become merely a distant memory. Join the campaign for better-designed street lighting and darker skies here. Maybe there was a lot to be said for candle-power after all.
To be a true Cockney you have to be born within the sound of Bow Bells. And, despite what most people think, Bow Bells aren't in Bow. They are in fact the bells of the church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, Cheapside, in the City of London. Recent research has suggested that, given the right atmospheric conditions and an absence of traffic noise, the sound of St. Mary-Le-Bow's bells could have been heard up to five miles away, even out as far as Bow itself. But no longer. Presumably there were a lot more genuine Cockneys around hundreds of years ago than there are now.
Back in the 14th century the bells of St Mary-le-Bow rang out a curfew across central London at 9 o'clock to warn the locals that it was time for bed. These are the bells that Dick Whittington heard in 1392 that made him 'turn again' (he was real, by the way). The bells were (you won't be surprised to hear) amongst the many destroyed in the Great Fire, but were also (you will be surprised to hear) silenced for two years in 1856 by an eccentric local woman who believed that the noise of their clanging might otherwise kill her. The BBC used the peal of Bow Bells at the start of every one of their broadcasts to occupied Europe during World War II, but that didn't stop the bells being destroyed yet again in the Blitz of 1941. A new peal of 12 bells was installed in 1956, each inscribed with a verse from a psalm, and the initial letters of those 12 psalms spell out the name 'D WHITTINGTON'. Ahhh, sweet.
As for the church, it's yet another of Sir Christopher Wren's, and one of his very finest. The classical steeple is topped by a golden ball on which sits a nine foot dragon, turning with the wind. The arched crypt dates from Norman times and is occupied in part now by a renowned vegetarian café. The church adjoins narrow cobbled alleyways to the south, but hideous seventies offices to east and west. And those bells they still ring out - every quarter hour, for the Lord Mayor's Show, and for four-hour peals several times a year.
1) Where is the 'Golf Sale'? 2) Why doesn't the tube run throughout the night at weekends? 3) Where is the true centre of London? 4) Has anyone ever seen a Pearly King (or Queen)? 5) Why doesn't London have a (paid-for) local morning newspaper? 6) From where is the best view in London? 7a) Why would anybody want to live here? 7b) Why would anybody want to live anywhere else?
Answers in the comments box, or read most of them listed here.
This is St Dunstan's church, Stepney, one of of only a handful of medieval buildings remaining in the East End of London. Looks gorgeous doesn't it, and it is. An ancient church set on a village green at the heart of its community - this photo could have been taken in deepest Suffolk. Except what you can't see in the picture are the faceless council estates all around, and you can't smell the pigs grunting on the city farm over the road. Somehow this church has survived a millennium of change, while the surrounding neighbourhood has risen and fallen. Especially fallen, lately.
There can't be many churches in the UK named after the saint who built them, but St Dunstan built this one in 952, just before he was made Archbishop of Canterbury. Stepney was the seat of the Bishop of London during medieval times, being the richest village to the east of the City at the time. By the 16th century this was a popular rural retreat for London's wealthy, but also increasingly attractive to ordinary people seeking work at the local docks. Stepney trebled in population in just 40 years as London expanded to the East. Some fine 17th century houses still exist on Stepney Green, an unfeasibly quiet thoroughfare close to the church, but prosperity in the area was soon replaced by poverty. The Blitz helped clear away the worst of the slums, but nothing very inspiring was built in their place. Stepney today is a mere shadow of its formerself - poor, bland and forgotten. Only the church hints that it was ever otherwise.
1st century: The Romans build Ermine Street from London to Lincoln, passing through what will one day be Shoreditch. 12th century: The area is still mostly fields. St Leonard's church is founded. 16th century: A prosperous village. Richard Burbage opens "The Theatre" in Shoreditch (because playhouses have been banned inside the City). One of the actors in his company is a young William Shakespeare, and Romeo and Juliet is first performed here. 17th century: Burbage is buried in St Leonard's, known as "the actors' church". 18th century: St Leonard's church is rebuilt (see photo). The spire is an imitation of Wren's steeple on St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside. 19th century: Shoreditch descends into poverty, crime and prostitution. 1900: A huge area of slums to the east of the High Street is reborn as the magnificent Boundary Estate. 1940s: The area is heavily bombed in the Blitz, and later heavily redeveloped. 1990s: Artists move into Shoreditch seeking cheap studio space. The White Cube gallery opens in Hoxton Square, trendy bars, clubs and restaurants follow, and Shoreditch is suddenly the hip arty place to be and to be seen. 21st century. It's all a bit passé now, darling.
The City of London must be the richest square mile on the planet. There's the Stock Exchange (home to thousands of sharp-suited gamblers), Lloyd's of London (home to thousands of sharp-suited gamblers), various non-high-street banks (ditto) and hordes of other esteemed financial institutions. Get the right job here and, providing you can stand the pace, you could soon be very rich indeed. Like the girl living in the room next to mine in my last year at university. She got a job in the City and, 18 months ago, received a £1.4 million payout through the courts because her company dared to insult her with a piddling £25000 bonus. Most Londoners would be thankful for a £25000 salary. There again, her male colleagues were getting bonuses of up to £650,000, so I can see her point. Different world, the City.
London may have wealth, but it's also a ridiculously expensive place to live. An average wage goes nowhere, unless you're willing to flatshare the best years of your life in a tumbledown apartment on the outskirts of some godforsaken borough. If you own property you're laughing - if you don't you're doomed. 40 years ago my parents bought a tiny terraced house in Watford (2 up, 2 down, outside toilet) for the princely sum of £3000. They've since climbed the property ladder far enough to reach a detached house in Norfolk, but that's 100 miles from town and the market in London has moved on. This month that old house in Watford is up for sale at 100 times the price my parents paid for it, and they could never afford to move back, not even to the bottom of the heap.
If the City were a nation state, it would be amongst the top 20 richest nation states in the world (just ahead of Belgium). However, London is also home to 13 of the poorest 20 local authorities in the UK. When those City workers go home at night, back to their overpriced terraced houses, an underclass of invisible workers move in from rundown council estates and clean for peanuts. Sure there's plenty of money to be made in the City but, it appears, there's not enough to share.
They say the streets of London are paved with gold. They're wrong. The streets of London are paved with cardboard boxes, inhabited by provincial dreamers lured to the capital to seek a fortune that isn't here. That's rich.
About time [13]
Problem 1: Which costs you more, a) the BBC or b) a Murdoch tabloid?
Anagram quiz
The old mansion at Theobald's Park looked delightful in the snow, looking out across the glistening Lea Valley, surrounded by deer-filled woodland. The original Theobalds was the favourite hunting lodge of James I, but fell into ruins after the king died here in 1625. The main part of the present building dates from the 18th century and has since been owned by an MP (1763), a rich London brewer (1820), the Admiral of the Fleet (1910), the Metropolitan Police riding school (1939), a local secondary school (1951), and finally a conference centre (1995). The latest owners have restored some of the old house to gilt-edged wood-panelled splendour, but I don't think that flipcharts, vending machines and Sky TV were part of the original Georgian decoration.
And yes, down at the end of the drive, within sight of the 'Lady Meux restaurant', lies Temple Bar (see yesterday). Or, at least, what's left of Temple Bar, which isn't much. Just a small section of the east wall remains, surrounded by towering scaffolding that gives some idea of the scale of the original structure. A handful of workmen were hiding in the portakabins for warmth, occasionally popping out to dismantle a little more of the remaining wall. Some of the large stones that made up the arch were lying around on pallets, covered by snow, ready to be transported back to London. It won't be long before there's nothing left here but a muddy clearing in the woods, and conference delegates will have to make do with a stroll in the Italian Garden, or just another dip in the spa bath.
Temple Bar used to be located where the Strand meets Fleet Street, one of the ancient gateways into the City of London, named after the local Inns of Court. The first bar was just a chain across the road, the second a wooden structure with a prison on top, and the third (and final) a magnificent arch built from Portland stone. And yes, like everything else in this Fire-ravaged part of London it was built by Sir Christopher Wren - did this man ever rest? In the 18th century the heads of traitors were displayed on iron spikes across the top of the arch. Sorry, this is all sounding like a repeat of last week, isn't it?
Until recently, that is. Suddenly Temple Bar is on its way back to the City, not to its original location but to a new site in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral. This is Paternoster Square (above left), a new piazza of questionable architectural merit, yet another swathe of office space and designer shops. The developers want to add a certain historical respectability to their new project, just like Lady Meux, so they're having Temple Bar shipped all the way back from Hertfordshire. Workmen started dismantling the arch at Theobalds last October and it appears I'm visiting only just in time before they take the last few bricks down for good. Meanwhile the scaffolding is going up in Paternoster Square (right) and Temple Bar should be reassembled here by the end of the year.
Oranges and lemons
Just to the northwest of Marble Arch, where the Edgware Road meets the end of Oxford Street, stands a cobbled triangular traffic island. It's all barriered off, and pretty difficult to reach without getting yourself mown down by passing vehicles. Nobody gives it a second look, but for centuries this was the site of the most watched entertainment in town. This is Tyburn, for six centuries home to London's public executions.
...say the bells of Stepney
