gherk (verb): to queue for hours and hours in the hope that the final view will be worth the wait.
The centrepiece of London Open House weekend was the first public opening of the Swiss Re building, better known as the Gherkin. It's the right-hand building in this photo, lined up next to Tower 42 and Lloyd's, and was finally opened for business earlier this year. Thousands of people turned up over the weekend to visit this new London icon, hoping to look both inside and out, but the queues were horrendous and most of them went away disappointed. I was one of the lucky ones, eventually.
I'd heard stories of four hour queues on Saturday, and that more people had been turned away than actually got to look inside, so I was determined to arrive early on Sunday to stake my place in the line. I thought an hour early would be good enough, but I was wrong. I walked along the queue until I found the end, which took rather longer than I was expecting, and was unnerved to watch the queue lengthening at a rate of 5 metres a minute behind me. And then the waiting started. And then the waiting continued. We shuffled slowly forward in small irregular bursts, unable to see our target except reflected in the office blocks around us.
A fatalistic cameraderie developed amongst those in the queue. Some dashed off to nearby coffee shops to ease the boredom, while others found time to read the entire Sunday Times and all its supplements. After two hours we finally reached the foot of the Gherkin and could see the front of the queue, except that we still had one revolution of the building to go. One family gave up at this point and went off in search of alternative venues. The rest of us shivered slightly, gritted our teeth and continued our gradual progress clockwise.
I doubt that London has seen a queue this long since the Queen Mother snuffed it. There was one easy way to jump the queue, however, and that was to have signed up as an Open House volunteer. One flash of your special green badge and you were permitted to walk straight into the building without any wait whatsoever. And yes Elsie, I saw you swanning in through the side entrance just after 11 o'clock when I still had more than two hours to go.
At last, after 4½ hours, the long wait was finally over. We were ushered through security and into one of the high speed lifts that whisked us up to the 34th floor in 30 seconds flat. One more lift, a flight of stairs and we were on the 40th floor, the Gherkin's very top slice. Suddenly the wait was worthwhile. Elegant glass triangles rose to a peak in a ring above our heads. People were drawn magnetically to the windows, staring out at stupendous views in all directions. We were higher than the London Eye and I could see further across the capital (and beyond) than I have ever seen before. I was struck by how much green there was, and how beautiful the urban environment can be on a miniature scale. I joined the rest of the crowds in taking countless photographs and trying to pinpoint my house and various other landmarks. The white tablecloths that reflected up from the restaurant below spoiled the western view a little, but the whole experience was quite breathtaking.
And there was more. Lifts took us down to the 17th floor where we had the freedom to roam across 1600 square metres of as yet unoccupied office space. The views through the diamond windows were a little less spectacular than before, but easier to access and still most impressive. This was also a good opportunity to admire the internal architecture of Sir Norman Foster's signature building. There was a real feeling of light and space, as well as the illusion of curvature despite the fact that the only curved glass in the building was the lens we had seen at the very summit. Most of us also sampled the toilet facilities - welcome relief after five hours of abstinence. There was no rush, we were able to stay on the 17th floor for as long as we liked before finally descending contentedly to the ground.
A few hours later I was standing back outside my local tube station after a busy and successful Open House weekend. To the west, framed perfectly down Bow Road, stood the proud figure of the Gherkin. I smiled, knowing that three miles away on the top observation deck there were still people smiling back down at me.
Stop Press: Back in June I rode on the very last number 8 Routemaster bus back to Bow Garage. You must remember - I went on and on about it at the time. A BBC film crew were on board too and, if you're in the London area, you can watch their report tonight on Inside Out, BBC1, 7.30pm. You might even catch sight of me too. I'm the one not wearing an anorak.
My life is complete. I have stood in the Blue Peter Garden. Look, there's Petra's statue, and there's the pond full of goldfish in the Italian Sunken Garden which yobboes thoughtlessly trashed one tragic day in 1983. Oh how Janet Ellis cried, and oh how we laughed at school the following morning. The garden is a lot smaller in real life than it looks on screen delimited by a magic rectangle. But then everything on television is like that, and yesterday I went on a guided tour of the house of illusion.
My illusions are shattered. I have seen the Tardis and it is nothing but a wooden box on wheels. I did wonder whether what we were being shown wasn't the Tardis but just a Tardis, but our charming guide assured us that it was being used for filming the new series. I'm also a little jealous that the tour group behind us were allowed to go inside (not all at once, you understand, although had this been the real Tardis I'm sure that would have been possible).
I have stood in the central circular courtyard where Roy Castle broke the mass tap dancing world record. I have seen the world's first multi-storey cantilever staircase hidden inside the question-mark-shaped TV Centre building. And I have stood on the floor of Studio 8, once home to Fawlty Towers and currently being used to stage that rather more forgettable sitcom, The Crouches. But during the 50 minute tour it was the Blue Peter Garden that resonated most. Here was my childhood laid out over a few yards of turf, from the legendary Tree for the year 2000 to the more recent grave of George the tortoise. Youthful memories are always strong, and here were some I made earlier.
2) St Pancras International
The whole Kings Cross area looks like one giant building site, and yesterday I got to don a safety helmet and walk into the middle of it. A new international station is being created at St Pancras so that, in three years' time, quarter-mile-long Eurostar trains can pull right up to the buffers under the magnificent Victorian arched roof. An extraordinarily complex engineering operation is underway to enable this, whilst simultaneously keeping Midland Mainline, Thameslink and London Underground trains operational throughout the construction period.
From our vantage point high above the construction works we could see the platforms of the extended station taking shape and the concrete roof of the new subterranean Thameslink station being poured into place. In the distance we saw the original mainline station (the 'BarlowTrainShed') being gutted, and scaffolding being erected inside so that the roof can be restored and replaced. Today an extremely busy building site, but in 2007 the gateway to a nation. Let's hope the work stays on schedule.
3) Freemason's Hall
It's not every day that you're allowed to enter the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England without a rolled-up trouser leg, so yesterday I took the opportunity to investigate this imposing building. No expense has been spared on the internal decoration, and the central Grand Temple is an opulent mix of gold leaf and symbolism (rather like an Egyptian-themed 1930s cinema, I thought). There's a huge cloakroom with 600 coathooks where suited men can change into their Masonic regalia, and a shop in the basement that sells apron-clad teddy bears should you ever run out of Christmas present ideas. To me the whole thing looked like a lot of middle-aged men who've invented their own substitute for religion and like to dress up a lot. I was relieved that nobody attempted to shake my hand on the way out.
Brook Road, Neasden, is a very ordinary looking suburban road. There's some social housing, an old people's home, a bit of office space... and a small squat brick building lying innocuously in someone's front garden. But this is no ordinary building - it's the entrance to the Government's most secret World War Two bunker. Not that you'd guess from looking at the building today. There's no giant red arrow pointing down the steps towards the entrance in real life, oh no. Hush hush, careless talk costs lives.
It was in 1938 that the Government started to get panicky about the imminent outbreak of war and started asking the unthinkable. What would happen if the Cabinet War Offices in Whitehall were bombed? What if Hitler were to invade the country? The British Government had to be able to continue to try to run the country, but from where? Hurriedly they set about building a new secret underground control centre in Neasden, just in case. The bunker was designed to hold the entire war cabinet along with 200 support staff. Two floors were hollowed out of the hillside beneath the Post Office Research Station, protected beneath five feet of reinforced concrete so that the facility could withstand a direct hit from a German bomb. The bunker, codenamed 'Paddock', was ready for operations in 1940 and Churchill visited in October of that year.
"We held a Cabinet meeting at PADDOCK far from the light of day, and each Minister was requested to inspect and satisfy himself about his sleeping and working apartments. We celebrated this occasion by a vivacious luncheon, and then returned to Whitehall."
Me and Louise visited Paddock today. I nearly didn't make it in time, what with over-running tours at St Pancras and engineering works on the Jubilee Line, but eventually I puffed up the hill to the site entrance with just a couple of minutes to spare. It's always a pleasure to meet a blog reader, and even more so to descend with them into the bowels of the earth wearing a fetching yellow safety helmet. Hi Louise, thanks for coming along, and thanks for not laughing when it took me five attempts to put my helmet on correctly.
Our tour guide clearly relished his role as entertainer-in-chief. He led our group down to the first level where it was cool and most definitely damp, ushering us into a couple of dingy rooms filled with rusting machinery. We headed on down a corroded spiral staircase to the lowest level, 40 feet beneath the surface. Here another long corridor stretched off into the distance, tens of small rooms lying dark and forlorn to either side. We stood in the Map Room where Wrens would have pushed little model battleships around on a big chart, and we also stood in the War Cabinet Room where Churchill held that one cabinet meeting back in in 1940. Thin stalactites hung from the roof, dry rot covered the ceiling and the mulchy remains of rotten lino squelched underfoot. Back upstairs we saw the remains of a telephone exchange and the tiny kitchen where food was prepared, although apparently there was a planning oversight and the architects forgot to include toilets anywhere in the complex. We very tried hard not to imagine Winston straining over a small tin bucket.
After nearly an hour underground we returned to the surface, back to normality. A democratic self-governing reality which, had Paddock ever been used for real, might not be the norm today at all. Thank goodness it was only ever a standby facility, and that today it lies rotting and abandoned. The housing association who now own the land above are only contracted to open the bunker twice a year, but there is an excellent virtual tour that allows you to follow in our somewhat-damp footsteps. You may not have been there today, but you can still take a look into the hidden depths of what might have been, beneath the hills of Neasden.
The centrepiece of London Open House weekend was the first public opening of the Swiss Re building, better known as the Gherkin. It's the right-hand building in this photo, lined up next to Tower 42 and Lloyd's, and was finally opened for business earlier this year. Thousands of people turned up over the weekend to visit this new London icon, hoping to look both inside and out, but the queues were horrendous and most of them went away disappointed. I was one of the lucky ones, eventually.
A fatalistic cameraderie developed amongst those in the queue. Some dashed off to nearby coffee shops to ease the boredom, while others found time to read the entire Sunday Times and all its supplements. After two hours we finally reached the foot of the Gherkin and could see the front of the queue, except that we still had one revolution of the building to go. One family gave up at this point and went off in search of alternative venues. The rest of us shivered slightly, gritted our teeth and continued our gradual progress clockwise.
At last, after 4½ hours, the long wait was finally over. We were ushered through security and into one of the high speed lifts that whisked us up to the 34th floor in 30 seconds flat. One more lift, a flight of stairs and we were on the 40th floor, the Gherkin's very top slice. Suddenly the wait was worthwhile. Elegant glass triangles rose to a peak in a ring above our heads. People were drawn magnetically to the windows, staring out at stupendous views in all directions. We were higher than the London Eye and I could see further across the capital (and beyond) than I have ever seen before. I was struck by how much green there was, and how beautiful the urban environment can be on a miniature scale. I joined the rest of the crowds in taking countless photographs and trying to pinpoint my house and various other landmarks. The white tablecloths that reflected up from the restaurant below spoiled the western view a little, but the whole experience was quite breathtaking.
And there was more. Lifts took us down to the 17th floor where we had the freedom to roam across 1600 square metres of as yet unoccupied office space. The views through the diamond windows were a little less spectacular than before, but easier to access and still most impressive. This was also a good opportunity to admire the internal architecture of Sir Norman Foster's signature building. There was a real feeling of light and space, as well as the illusion of curvature despite the fact that the only curved glass in the building was the lens we had seen at the very summit. Most of us also sampled the toilet facilities - welcome relief after five hours of abstinence. There was no rush, we were able to stay on the 17th floor for as long as we liked before finally descending contentedly to the ground.
My life is complete. I have stood in the Blue Peter Garden. Look, there's Petra's statue, and there's the pond full of goldfish in the Italian Sunken Garden which yobboes thoughtlessly trashed one tragic day in 1983. Oh how Janet Ellis cried, and oh how we laughed at school the following morning. The garden is a lot smaller in real life than it looks on screen delimited by a magic rectangle. But then everything on television is like that, and yesterday I went on a guided tour of the house of illusion.
My illusions are shattered. I have seen the Tardis and it is nothing but a wooden box on wheels. I did wonder whether what we were being shown wasn't the Tardis but just a Tardis, but our charming guide assured us that it was being used for filming the new series. I'm also a little jealous that the tour group behind us were allowed to go inside (not all at once, you understand, although had this been the real Tardis I'm sure that would have been possible).
I have stood in the central circular courtyard where Roy Castle broke the mass tap dancing world record. I have seen the world's first multi-storey cantilever staircase hidden inside the question-mark-shaped TV Centre building. And I have stood on the floor of Studio 8, once home to Fawlty Towers and currently being used to stage that rather more forgettable sitcom, The Crouches. But during the 50 minute tour it was the Blue Peter Garden that resonated most. Here was my childhood laid out over a few yards of turf, from the legendary Tree for the year 2000 to the more recent grave of George the tortoise. Youthful memories are always strong, and here were some I made earlier.
The whole Kings Cross area looks like one giant building site, and yesterday I got to don a safety helmet and walk into the middle of it. A new international station is being created at St Pancras so that, in three years' time, quarter-mile-long Eurostar trains can pull right up to the buffers under the magnificent Victorian arched roof. An extraordinarily complex engineering operation is underway to enable this, whilst simultaneously keeping Midland Mainline, Thameslink and London Underground trains operational throughout the construction period.
Brook Road, Neasden, is a very ordinary looking suburban road. There's some social housing, an old people's home, a bit of office space... and a small squat brick building lying innocuously in someone's front garden. But this is no ordinary building - it's the entrance to the Government's most secret World War Two bunker. Not that you'd guess from looking at the building today. There's no giant red arrow pointing down the steps towards the entrance in real life, oh no. Hush hush, careless talk costs lives.
