Thursday, July 10, 2003

Tubeway Army (no 1 - May 1979)

Thanks for all your help with yesterday's challenge. I'm therefore pleased to present our list of the top ten UK hit single artists to contain the name of a London Underground station. Only one entry per station, and the highest-charting song gets the place (which may be why your suggestion isn't here, sorry).

1) John Leyton - Johnny Remember Me (no 1 - Aug 1961)
2) All Saints - Never Ever (no 1 - Nov 1997)
3) Detroit Spinners - Working My Way Back To You (no 1 - Apr 1980)
4) True Steppers & Dane Bowers featuring Victoria Beckham - Out Of Your Mind (no 2 - Aug 2000)
5) Grange Hill Cast - Just Say No (no 5 - Apr 1986)
6) Hi-Gate - Pitchin' (In Every Direction) (no 6 - Jan 2000)
7) Jon & Vangelis - I Hear You Now (no 8 - Jan 1980)
8) Arsenal FC - Hot Stuff (no 9 - May 1998)
9) Radha Krishna Temple - Hare Krishna Mantra (no 12 - Sep 1969)
10) West Ham United Cup Squad - I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles (no 31 - May 1975)

Honorary mentions:
Northern Line - Love On The Northern Line (no 15 - Mar 2000)
Central Line - Nature Boy (no 21 - Jan 1983)

Meanwhile, here's our updated version of the top ten tube single titles. Much happier with this:

1) There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) - Eurythmics (no 1 - July 1985)
2) Waterloo - Abba (no 1 - April 1974)
3) Baker Street - Undercover (no 2 - August 1992)
4) Temple of Love - Sisters of Mercy (no 3 - May 1992)
5) The Only Living Boy In New Cross - Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine (no 7 - April 1992)
6) Finchley Central - New Vaudeville Band (no 11 - May 1967)
7) Bankrobber - The Clash (number 12 - August 1980)
8) Camden Town - Suggs (no 15 - October 1995)
9) Good Old Arsenal - Arsenal FC First Team Squad (no 16 - May 1971)
10) White Man (In Hammersmith Palais) - The Clash (no 32 - June 1978)

Unless of course you know better...

 Wednesday, July 09, 2003

Sound of the Underground (no 1 - December 2002)

London's Metro newspaper (if you don't live here, this tells you all you need to know) has published a list of the top ten UK hit singles to contain the name of a London Underground station. Only one entry per station, song titles only, and the highest-charting song gets the place. Here's their list.

1) Angel - Shaggy (no 1 - June 2001)
2) Waterloo - Abba (no 1 - April 1974)
3) Baker Street - Undercover (no 2 - August 1992)
4) The Only Living Boy In New Cross - Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine (no 7 - April 1992)
5) Finchley Central - New Vaudeville Band (no 11 - May 1967)
6) Camden Town - Suggs (no 15 - October 1995)
7) Good Old Arsenal - Arsenal FC First Team Squad (no 16 - May 1971)
8) Piccadilly Palare - Morrissey (no 18 - October 1990)
9) White Man (In Hammersmith Palais) - The Clash (no 32 - June 1978)
10) Victoria - The Kinks (no 33 - January 1970)

Now, I'm not 100% happy with this list. Not just because the number 1 is rubbish, but because I think the list is incorrect. Number 8 has got to go because the real station is called Piccadilly Circus, not just Piccadilly, and I'm sure they've missed a number of other stations out. With your help I'd like to try to update the list and publish a correct one. If you have any suggestions, please stick them in the comments box and I'll make the appropriate changes later. You might find this website invaluable.

Plus it would be good to try to compile another top 10 where the tube station is in the name of the artist, not the song. Any ideas? I'll kick that list off with Just Say No by the Grange Hill Cast (no 5 - April 1986). Over to you...

 Sunday, July 06, 2003

Know your neighbours

It's been two years since the last national census, but they've only just got round to releasing detailed statistics for all the electoral wards in England and Wales. It's fascinating to be able to compare the area where you live with the rest of your local authority and with the rest of the country. As a resident of a Suffolk village at the time the census was carried out, it's also illuminating to be able to compare rural life up there to my new urban life down here in Bow.

• Where I live now, the average flat costs just over £200,000. Where I used to live in Suffolk, the average flat costs just under £50,000. That explains where all my money's going then.
• In three months time I shall be older than the average age for people in England and Wales. Bugger. Here in Tower Hamlets I'm older than the average by 7 years already, but if I'd stayed where I was in Suffolk I'd still have 6 years to go.
• In the ward where I used to live, which covered 12 square miles, there were only 50 non-white people. Now, in an area of 1 square mile, there are fifty times as many.
• 58% of us Bow residents survive with no car, whereas nationally it's only 27%, and in the public transport black hole where I used to live it's only 11%.
• Nationally 72% of people identify themselves as Christian (it's less than 40% in Tower Hamlets), while 15% of the population of England and Wales have no religion, not even Jedi.
• The most atypical ward in England and Wales is Holywell in central Oxford, which has the lowest average age (23), the fewest under 5s (½%), the fewest retired people (½%), the fewest home owners (8%), the highest qualified residents (98½%) and, aha, the most economically inactive students (86%). Yup, I remember it being like that when I lived there.

Of course, you don't care about where I live, because you don't live here. You'll want to type in your own postcode instead. Go on then.

 Monday, June 30, 2003

Capital Numbers

Today sees the end of my month-long Capital Numbers project, an attempt to list as many interesting number-based London-related facts as I possibly could. I was intending only to go from 1 to 30 but, as you can see, I got rather carried away and went up to 33 instead (mainly because there were still some really good facts around that I hadn't used yet). It's been frustrating trying to find something interesting for every number, sometimes desperately so. Thanks for your help if you contributed any of the facts that I used. It's been intriguing to discover how much more interesting some numbers are than others (17 is far more interesting than 18, for example, and 25 beats 24 by miles too). It's also been pretty challenging to link all these facts to other London-based websites, just to make the list hyper-dimensionally interesting, so I hope you've managed to click on a lot of those as well.

I've decided that all this effort throughout the month deserves to be commemorated in some way, so I've assembled all the facts onto their very own Capital Numbers website. You can click here (or on any of the other links in this post) to find your way in. There's also a new link at the top of my sidebar to the right. As a bonus for website readers I've gone a bit further than 33 on one of the pages, just to use up a few more ideas that wouldn't fit on this page, and I've finally managed to find another vaguely interesting fact about the nigh-impossible number 18 too. I hope you enjoy all of it. And I shall look forward to having a rest in July, from all the numbers at least.

 Monday, June 23, 2003

Big Brother - the sewage connection

Yes, there really is a direct connection between Big Brother and raw sewage. It's just probably not the connection you're thinking of...

You'll remember that a few weeks ago I wandered down to the site of the old Big Brother house in Bow. Just a few hundred yards away from that site lies a startling Victorian building, shaped like a cross, topped by an ornate dome. Is it just an extravagant folly, or is there a reason that someone appears to have built a cathedral in the middle of an industrial wasteland? For the answer to that question you have to go back to the 1850s. A cholera epidemic swept London in 1853, spread by the appalling sanitary conditions in the capital. Cesspits emptied into streams that fed straight into the Thames and often overflowed into the streets. Diseases from insanitary drinking water killed thousands each year. Then in 1858 came the 'Great Stink', when the combination of an unusually warm summer and an unbelievably polluted Thames made living conditions in the capital almost unbearable. A solution to this foul-smelling solution was required, and urgently.

The man who cleaned up London was called Joseph Bazalgette. He was the Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and his solution to London's sewage problems was nothing short of revolutionary. He ordered the building of 85 miles of new sewers to intercept the many smaller sewers that ran into the Thames, redirecting the effluent to East London where it was discharged into the Thames and flowed out to sea. (map here) North London's waste was conveyed to Abbey Mills Pumping Station in Stratford, the magnificent building in the photograph above, completed in 1868. From here the Northern Outfall Sewer continued eastwards to a huge treatment works at Beckton. That huge sewer still exists and still carries North London's effluent to the sea. The embankment covering the sewer is now the 'Greenway' - a footpath and cycle route at roof-top height through east London - although perhaps the name 'Brownway' would be more appropriate.

There are now two pumping stations at Abbey Mills, pictured here from the site of the old Big Brother House. The old pumping station (just peeking out to the left) raised sewage between two levels of the Northern Outfall Sewer, and originally housed eight coal-fired beam engines. Nowadays its pumps are on stand-by to supplement the newest ones in the building on the right, its modern replacement. However, there's a more direct connection between Big Brother and Abbey Mills than merely location. The gothic Victorian pumping station at Abbey Mills was designed by Joseph Bazalgette, great-grandfather of Peter Bazalgette, the creative director of Endemol productions who produce Big Brother. Peter is the godfather of reality TV in the UK, and also the brains behind such shows as Changing Rooms, Ground Force, and Ready Steady Cook. And his family's history lies in sewage. So remember, next time someone tells you that Big Brother is basically a load of shit, they may just be correct...
(Click on each picture to see it full size)

 Sunday, June 15, 2003

Do you Smoke?

"This is my city. This is our city. When I hang up my bag on the Met Line. When I hang from the pole of a Routemaster. When I skip through the tunnels at King’s Cross. When I run for front seat on the Docklands Light Railway. When the chimneys of Battersea loom into view. When I spot Canary Wharf from a precious new place. When I walk the warm streets of Brixton. When I run round the clock tower at Golders Green. When I wake up, half-drunk, at High Barnet. When I wake up, still dreaming, at Morden. When I find a new postcode with which I fall in love. When I find a short-cut never spotted before. When my breath catches me, suddenly, as it did that first time, and all the others, when crossing Westminster Bridge." [Introduction to Smoke#1, by Jude Rogers]

Smoke is a new fanzine about London. I read about it in the latest edition of Word magazine. Smoke is all about living in the capital, then and now. It's a sort of literary/historical appreciation. It's strap-line is "London peculiar". There's a seriously tempting sample of the contents here. I want a copy, and I want it now. Available here. Can't wait.

 Saturday, June 14, 2003

Sun beats down, London sweats.
Pasty white flesh, sprawled on grass.
Burnt scarlet, fevered, flushed.
Too-tight t-shirts, too short shorts.
Fat thighs, sandals, toenails on parade.
Dehydrated, flaking, Saturday roast.
Tanned hide, ageing flesh, mellow-noma.
Reeking sweat, perspire-nation.
Apologies, once again.
Bit more realistic this time though.

 Friday, June 13, 2003

Sun beats down, London lights up.
Sea of bodies, ocean of heat.
Sun-blessed, barely dressed.
Short sleeves, no sleeves, tanned sleeves.
Blue days, rays blaze.
Deckchairs, grass stains, extended lunch, park life.
Pavement pints, high spirits, shorts.
Sunglasses on sun-baked sun worshippers.
Buildings gleam, ice cream, lie back and dream.
Summer's smile.
Apologies, again.
I just want to be able to look back, read this and remember in six months time.

 Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Bow Road

My local Underground station is 101 years old today. Sorry, I know I'm a year late for the centenary, but I wasn't blogging this time last year. So, please forgive me while I have a quick rant about my local station. I know that this will be of no interest whatsoever unless Bow Road is your local station too, which it undoubtedly isn't, but I just want to get all this out of my system. You might want to skip past this entire irrelevant outpouring, or even just come back tomorrow instead. I know I talk about the Underground far too much anyway, no doubt because I use it every day, but just humour me on this occasion. I promise to moan about the station just this once, and then shut up about it all.

Bow Road is an Underground station, but only partly an underground station. That's because Bow Road is the station where eastbound District line trains finally emerge from their tunnel under East London and head off towards Barking and Upminster at surface level. Half the station is underground, and therefore has crap mobile phone reception. The other half of the station is open to the elements, and therefore gets wet when it rains. Pigeons appear to be happy to crap on either half.

Bow Road is a station on both the District and Hammersmith and City lines. You might think this was obvious from looking on a tube map, but it appears that nobody has yet bothered to tell anyone who works at the station. Once upon a time Bow Road used to be a station on the Metropolitan line, until this part of the line was reassigned to the new Hammersmith and City line back in 1990. That was thirteen years ago, but nobody has yet managed to update any of the signs here. The big nameplate outside the front of the station still proudly displays that Bow Road is a station on the "District and Metropolitan lines". The train indicator on the platform still lights up to announce to passengers that the next train is a "Metropolitan line train via Kings Cross". Wrong. Anyone who wanders into the station expecting to catch a Metropolitan line train is in for a very long wait.

Bow Road is a station on the Hammersmith and City line. Everyone in London thinks they live near the tube line with the worst service in the capital. Everyone else is wrong. The Hammersmith and City line has the worst service in the capital. The trains are infrequent and irregular. On the rare occasions that you might actually want to catch one, you can find yourself waiting around through fifteen minutes of endless District line trains until a Hammersmith and City finally decides to turn up. The trains are shorter than District line trains so you then find yourself having to run down the platform in order to dive headlong into the last carriage before the doors shut. However, should you be waiting to catch a District line train, you can of course guarantee that a half-empty Hammersmith and City line train will rumble into the station instead, open its doors apologetically at the platform and then rumble off into oblivion, ready to stall itself at the signals just outside Aldgate East for ten minutes while everyone in the carriage sighs, shrugs and overheats. Line from hell. Never, ever, rely on it.

Bow Road is a station round the bend. Mind the gap. You have to step carefully on and off the trains to make sure you don't slip and fall through on top of the rats scurrying around on the tracks below. Mind the gap please. More annoying is the impossibility of reading the 'next train' indicator from the far end of the platform. Please mind the gap. Not only is the next destination obscured by the bend and by a huge pillar but, in a way reminiscent of far too many other tube stations, the view is now also completely blocked by the CCTV cameras they've installed - right in front of the 'next train' indicator. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform. Please mind the gap between the ears of the station planners, more like.

Bow Road is a station with thousands of passengers every day. I know this for a fact, because every day they all seem to stand in my way and block the entrance to the ticket gates. Some of them insist on queueing up to buy tickets from the temperamental ticket machines in the entrance hall, a queue which invariably spreads out to block the two foot gap through which everyone everyone else is trying to walk. Other passengers don't bother to buy a ticket at all and instead walk brazenly up to the special gate for those with oversized luggage, open it and saunter through to the buzzing sound of the electronic alarm. Meanwhile the ticket inspector sits disinterestedly in her little booth and continues to read her newspaper, ignoring the gate even when someone with oversize luggage really is trying to get through. Could this explain why London Underground don't collect enough money from fares to invest in our stations?

Bow Road is an interchange station with the Docklands Light Railway. At least that's how it looks on the tube map. In real life, however, Bow Church DLR station is at least a three minute walk up the road, and not particularly well signposted either. You wouldn't want to change trains here carrying a suitcase (although people do, and they generally get their cases stuck in the ticket gates right in front of me too). I seem to end up at least once a week directing lost travellers from one station to the other before they stumble off lost into the back streets of Bow and are never heard from again. Tempting to send them off in the wrong direction I know, but the pavements are crowded enough round here as it is.

Bow Road is 101 years old. And blimey it looks it. The whole place could do with a lick of paint, and not that ghastly combination of green and yellow they still have down on the pillars at platform level. The station could also do with one of those nice 'how many minutes is it until the next three trains' indicators like they have at the next couple of stations down the line. Not that they're very accurate, of course, but they're better than a piece of smashed glass which lights up merely to tell you there might be a train going somewhere arriving sometime. In fact I doubt that London Underground have spent a penny on this station for years. I hear we're nearly next on the list for renovation, but they've been saying that for years and nothing's happened yet. As a result I suspect the station will continue to be the endearing dump it is today for a number of years to come. However, I've promised not to blog on and on about it again, so you may never find out unless you come visiting.

Rant over. Happy anniversary. Thank you for listening.

 Sunday, June 08, 2003

The other BB House - exclusive picture

A couple of weeks ago I reported from the site of the old Big Brother House in Bow. Gone, but not quite forgotten. This weekend I wandered down to the site of the other BB House in Bow - the Big Breakfast House. Forgotten, but not quite gone.




The Big Breakfast was broadcast for nearly ten years direct from Lock Keepers Cottages, Old Ford Lock, London, E3 2NN. The Big Breakfast House nestles beside the River Lea in a quiet and peaceful backwater of East London, pretty much hidden from public view, just a short walk up the towpath from the Bow Flyover. The house used to have millions of viewers. Now its audience consists of occasional joggers, the odd dog-walker and a few disinterested ducks.

In its heyday, the Big Breakfast House was home to some of the most innovative programming ever seen on British television. It was on September 28th 1992 that Chris Evans launched himself and Gaby Roslin onto an totally-unsuspecting world, along with Zig and Zag, Paula Yates on the bed and a fledgling Mark Lamarr out on the road. When Chris went on to bigger and better things, the show faltered a little - Mark Little to be precise. It wasn't until the arrival of Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen that the show really took off again, followed by sparkling chemistry between Johnny and Lisa Tarbuck. The show started haemorrhaging viewers soon after they left, until Richard Bacon led the final conga out of the house on March 29th 2002.

It's now over a year since the Big Breakfast finished, and the house looks pretty much finished as well. The programme's makers were hoping to sell the house off for £1 million or so, but an arson attack last Autumn put paid to their plans. Twenty firefighters battled for almost two hours to control the blaze, and foul play is suspected. The house now sits locked behind an 8 foot wire fence, with blue sheeting covering a gaping hole in the roof. It's still possible to see see some of the props, scenery and staging lying around in the garden, but most of the windows are boarded up and the sunrise-painted wall in the back garden has been daubed with graffiti. However, I was surprised to see that the lawn had been freshly cut, and it turns out that the house is now inhabited again. A family with young children have moved in and are living in part of the house while the rest is renovated. It's good to know that a piece of broadcasting history is being restored, but the glory days of the Big Breakfast House are long gone.

For more on the Big Breakfast, check out the brilliantly-named a load of bow locks, or the vital statistics at brekkie.com.

 Thursday, June 05, 2003

Eastside

Think of the East End of London and no doubt you think of pearly kings and queens, rhyming slang, jellied eels, the Blitz, slums, smog, bare-knuckle fighting, crime, murder, death... ah, it's not a place with the best associations, is it? Especially if you're a potential American tourist. It appears that visitors to London are foregoing the delights of the East End and are instead spending all their time (and money) in the fashionable West End instead. No doubt they're tempted by the best selection of theatre and entertainment in the world, historic landmarks, culture, shopping, the Royal Family and... well, it's fairly obvious why they're ignoring the East End really.

Enter Mary Tebje, a consultant for the new tourist body TourEast. She, along with four underwhelmed London boroughs, have decided to try whip up international interest in the East End by rebranding it under a new name. Welcome to the Eastside. Mary hopes that local residents will embrace the new name. In fact, what she actually said was "We want to promote a sustainable tourism economy for East London", which sounds rather more like a publically-accountable marketing buzzphrase to me. Her Eastside brand is designed specifically to appeal to American tourists, on the basis that it's a word they already know. The danger here is that Americans might book flights to Eastside New York by mistake, and probably have a much more exciting time as a result.

Having said all that, Eastside London has a lot going for it. Tower Hamlets is home to Docklands and Canary Wharf, as well as the Tower of London (which just sneaks into the borough outside the old City wall). Newham has the ExCel exhibition centre in the Royal Docks, as well as Green Street with its international reputation for quality Asian goods. Greenwich is, well, Greenwich, which as a world heritage site is literally dripping with history. And Lewisham has... well, no, actually you've stumped me there. The 'best' attraction in Lewisham that Mary's managed to come up with is the shopping centre and its award-winning Shopmobility scheme. I've been and, believe me, nothing else about that shopping centre is award-winning.

And there's the one big problem with the Eastside brand - much of East London just isn't up to the expectations of the international tourist. Deptford as a 'core tourist area'? I don't think so. Visitors flocking to the 'Stratford Cultural Quarter'? I think not, not for the next nine years anyway. Hordes of Americans on the streets of Plaistow? Only if they're extremely lost.

East London is a great place to live, and there are some absolute tourist gems here (try pointing your mouse at these ten links, for example • • • • • • • • • •), but I hope Mary's rebranding fails. I'd rather be an EastEnder than an Eastsider any day.

 Sunday, May 25, 2003

The Big Brother House - exclusive pictures

Here they are, exclusive photographs taken this weekend from inside the Big Brother house.
(Click on each picture to see it full size)

This first picture shows the view from the Big Brother lounge, looking out over the Big Brother garden towards the entrance to the Big Brother compound. The Big Brother housemates entered here to face nine weeks of confinement, watched by countless TV cameras and the viewing public across the nation. Intrigue, drama, boredom, seething sexual tension, chickens - this patch of land has seen them all. In fact, this is one of the most heavily watched locations in the entire country. Just not this year...

As you may have guessed, this is the site of the first Big Brother house, used in series 1 and 2. This field is in Bow, East London, just 15 minutes walk from my house. Channel 4 built the first Big Brother House here right next to Three Mills film studios, the nerve centre for the first two series. However, Channel 4 weren't sure that the show would be a hit and only had planning permission for two years, after which Newham Council insisted that the house be pulled down and the site returned to a natural habitat. This has since happened and, as you can see, you'd never guess now from this green patch of wasteland that TV history had ever taken place here. Marjorie the chicken is long gone.

This picture shows the Big Brother lounge. It feels very strange to stand here now, surrounded by grass and gasworks, and to think back to everything that happened right here on this unassuming site. Nominations, evictions, weekly tasks and numerous secrets spilled in the diary room. Nasty Nick unmasked as a a liar and a cheat at the infamous kangaroo court round the dining table. Nichola and Craig's nude body-painting. Celebrity Jack's bid to escape through the fence. Dean's world record-breaking tower of sugar cubes. Helen falling for Paul and Paul falling for Helen. Brian's gasp at an unexpected victory. And not a blue plaque in sight.

This is the view today out of the old Big Brother compound, through the gate, over the bridge and off towards the Big Brother studios. The outside world was never very far away from the original Big Brother House, so the production team were always on the lookout for people standing on the other side of the fence, shouting out things that the contestants were never meant to hear. The new house built thirty miles away on a film lot in Elstree doesn't suffer from a public footpath along its southern border, which must help security no end. There's no security at all on the site in Bow now, just an unlocked gate into a deserted field.

Finally here's the legendary Big Brother bridge, leading across a particularly ugly concrete-banked water channel, part of the Bow Back Rivers. Davina would have crossed here twice on eviction night, once to collect the evicted housemate and then back again, running the gauntlet of the tabloid press and a baying crowd. Unfortunately I moved into the local area just a few weeks too late to attend any of the Big Brother evictions held down by the bridge. By the time I was setting up my home they were pulling down this one. However, two years later on it's fascinating to be able to walk down to the place where it all happened and to picture the ghosts of Big Brother still haunting a forgotten field. It's also a salutary lesson to this year's housemates. Enjoy your fleeting fame in the headlines while you can - you'll soon be completely forgotten too.

 Saturday, May 17, 2003

The local Olympics

So, at last, the Government is backing a bid for the 2012 Olympics to come to London. To be specific, East London. To be more specific, Stratford. To be even more specific, within walking distance of my house (OK, I know that last weekend we established that 'walking distance from my house' could be as far away as St Paul's Cathedral, but in this case I mean less than half an hour away). This is all rather exciting. Normally the Olympics are held somewhere glamorous, like Athens or Sydney or Barcelona. In 2012 they may be held at the end of my road. I just hope they manage to clean the area up in time.

Now, you might think that the Olympics were about sport, but you'd be wrong. The sport bit only lasts for a fortnight. The world's finest athletes descend like a swarm of medal-devouring locusts for two weeks, compete in loads of sports you've never heard of and would never normally watch, and then bugger off straight away afterwards to prepare for 2016.

No, the Olympics are about kudos. Countries battle to host the Olympics so that they can turn smugly to the rest of the world and say "See, we told you we were important." In the last 25 years the United States has hosted the Olympics twice (in fact, four times if you include the winter games). The USA is clearly a very important country - either that or they've been particularly good at bribing the International Olympic Committee recently. The UK, by contrast, hasn't hosted the Olympics since since 1948, and that was only as a hastily-put-together post-war compromise location. 2012 would be the first time London has ever won on its own merits, and not just because nobody else was interested.

But, most importantly, the Olympics are about legacy. It's not so much about how you get there as what you leave behind. Barcelona used its Games in 1992 to implement a wide-ranging urban renewal plan, transforming a decaying industrial city into a sought-after tourist destination. Sydney's Games in 2000 were a world showcase, boosting Australia's economic and cultural confidence (and Kylie's record sales). London hopes to benefit in all these ways and more. Some important transport links that have been stalled on the drawing board for years may finally get built. Some of the UK's most deprived boroughs would at last be regenerated by substantial financial investment. The redevelopment of run-down East London could mean the creation of an impressive 16000 new jobs and 7000 new homes. And most of those new homes would be on the site of the Olympic Village, which it's proposed would be built just five minutes walk from my house. It'd be strange having world class athletes as neighbours, although quite frankly we have a big enough drug problem round here as it is.

There's still two years to wait before a final decision is made, and then a huge bill to pay if that decision is yes, but I hope London's bid is successful. I can put up with two weeks of mixing with weightlifters and synchronised swimmers if that means that afterwards I finally get to live in the world class neighbourhood of a world class city.

 Sunday, May 11, 2003

My London walk 01:00

Twice in the last week I've found myself in the City of London after the tube had shut down, trying to make my way home. No problem, usually. London has an impressive network of nightbuses, including one that stops outside my house every 10 minutes. Absolutely perfect, usually. However, on busy nights this particular bus has a nasty habit of becoming jam-packed full of drunken revellers by the time it leaves the West End. Should you attempt to catch the nightbus any further east than Oxford Street the driver just sails straight past your stop, leaving you stranded. You can wait for the next nightbus, of course, but that's probably a non-stopping sardine tin too. So, last night I found myself stranded in the City of London for the second time in a week, thwarted in my attempts to catch a nightbus home, faced by a three mile walk home. (I don't do taxis, remember?). So, I followed the route of the District Line home, above ground. It only took an hour, which surprised me. And the walk went something like this:

Bank/Monument: The City of London may be the hub of the world's financial markets but, outside business hours, the place is dead. This is especially true in the early hours at the weekend, with just a few lost souls walking the streets and some bored policemen keeping an eye on them. The 41-storey Gherkin hangs ignored in the sky, illuminating the empty streets. I walked past the occasional posh bar with chauffeured cars waiting outside to pick up young Debs and her pals, but everywhere else appeared mothballed waiting for life to restart at 8am on Monday morning. Just 3 miles to go...

Aldgate: Aldgate marks the easternmost part of the City, the edge of the historic centre of London. During the Plague in 1665 a 'Great Pit' was dug here to bury the bodies of London's dead. The place hasn't improved much since. Nowadays Aldgate is just a giant roundabout, with the tube station and a few other buildings hemmed in the middle. Pedestrians are forced to use the subways, which is very annoying when there's virtually no traffic on the roads above. One subway contains motion sensors, triggering a series of recorded directions to the local shopping centre as you walk through. It's most unnerving as a disembodied voice shatters the silence, and quite pointless at 1am too.

Aldgate East: It's only a short walk from Aldgate to Aldgate East at the start of the Whitechapel Road. This has been the main road east out of London since Roman times, heading out to an ancient ford over the River Lea and onwards to Colchester. The best nightlife round here has to be the legendary Beigel Bake just up Brick Lane, home to the very best early-hour cuisine that 50p can buy. Nearby some early traders were already setting up their stalls for Petticoat Lane market - it was already the start of the working day for some.

Whitechapel: Whitechapel lies at the very heart of the East End. It's no longer appropriately-named because most people here aren't white and there aren't many chapels left (although there is the highly impressive East London Mosque). Back in 1888 very few people would have been brave enough to walk the streets of Whitechapel after dark, for this was the site of the infamous Jack the Ripper murders, and 75 years later the notorious Kray Brothers would have scared everyone indoors instead. Today the local population seem somewhat braver, with many staying out late especially to sample the local delicacy - dodgy fried chicken and greasy chips.

Stepney Green: 900 years ago Stepney was one of the first villages that grew up outside London. Parts of Stepney still retain a village-like period charm, particularly those around the oasis of St Dunstan's Church. Unfortunately I was walking home along the Mile End Road, which is the arse end of Stepney. It's no surprise that William Booth founded the Salvation Army round here in the 19th century. I walked hurriedly past numerous minicab offices, each of which offered a dodgy-looking shortcut home that would either shorten my journey or my life.

Mile End: Mile End is so named because it lies exactly one mile from Aldgate. However, the village of Mile End grew up long and thin alongside the road to Essex, so Mile End station actually lies nearer two miles from the City. It's a colourful area. Here you'll find the Green Bridge, a Millennium-funded project which is actually a yellow bridge carrying Mile End Park over the main road. After dark you'll also spot the recently-relaunched Purple nightclub fully illuminated in what can only be described as a hideous shade of pink, along with a lot of white speckled with orange on the pavements outside.

Bow Road: At last, I was on the final stretch of my long walk home. Bow was originally a small village that grew up alongside the first bridge over the River Lea. Queen Matilda (yes, honestly, check your history books) ordered the bridge to be built in the 12th century after nearly drowning in the river while trying to cross to her favourite hunting grounds. That ancient bridge has since been replaced by the hideous concrete Bow flyover, but last night it was a welcome sight for me. It had been an interesting and sobering walk home, and a reminder of how compact much of London really is. Next time though, I hope there's space on the nightbus with all the drunks and nutters.

(with a nod in the direction of Swish Cottage)

 Friday, May 02, 2003

How not to impress an American tourist

1) Invite your American tourist to London on a wet windy day in May, trying in vain to convince them that the weather's not always this bad and that they only narrowly missed a forty-day drought.
2) Visit St Paul's Cathedral, having explained how stunning the ceiling is, only to discover that the entire central part of the building inside is encased in scaffolding for long-term renovation work.
3) Visit the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, having explained how many famous people are buried there, only to discover that none of them are actually famous to an American.
4) Visit the Whispering Gallery 259 steps up inside St Paul's Cathedral, having explained how a whisper on one side of the gallery can be heard 100 feet away on the other side, only to discover that the excessive scaffolding means this phenomenon doesn't work at the moment.
5) Visit the Golden Gallery 530 steps up outside St Paul's Cathedral, having explained how fantastic the view will be from above the dome, only to discover that its pissing down with rain outside and that most of the view is obscured by thick grey rainclouds.
6) Descend down numerous staircases behind snail-paced tourists back to the floor of St Paul's Cathedral, only to discover that the sun has now come out and the view from up top would have been tons better fifteen minutes later.
7) Go for an open-topped sightseeing bus tour of London, sitting in rain-splattered seats, listening to a limp commentary that merely repeats all the historical facts you could have told them anyway, gently developing hypothermia in the drizzly breeze.
8) Go for a boat trip down the Thames from the Tower to Westminster, trying to explain that half of the commentary is an example of something called the 'British sense of humour' and therefore isn't actually true.
9) Go for tea at the top of the Tate Modern, where the chips are bloody good but then they really ought to be for £2.75, with a perfect view across the river of happy tourists out round the Golden Gallery of St Paul's Cathedral enjoying the bright sunshine you missed earlier on.
10) Walk across the Millennium Bridge in driving rain, explaining that this bridge was originally closed for being too wobbly whereas now it merely feels as if it should be closed for being too damp and windswept.

 Sunday, April 13, 2003

The London Snickers

One week after the Boat Race, this morning London was once again the setting for another classic sporting fixture. The London Marathon brought more than thirty thousand runners out onto the streets of London, ready to prove themselves against the trials of the 26-mile course. The marathon route snakes its way along the river from Greenwich to Buckingham Palace, passing through most of East London at least twice along the way. I popped down to Canary Wharf to watch the race go by, finding a good vantage point just below Westferry Circus. Here the race doubles back on itself at the start and finish of the Docklands loop, so I was able to catch the runners at Mile 17 on one side of the road and Mile 20 on the other.

Today's race took place in crystal-perfect conditions, with clear skies, light winds and spring temperatures. I arrived at Canary Wharf after 10 o'clock, just before the race arrived. The Great British spectating public were already out in force, doing what they do best on such occasions - eating and taking photos. There was a commotion in the distance as the first competitors approached. "Ah, it's only the wheelchairs," said the lady behind me in the sponsor's shirt. A brass band started up in a nearby square - the spectacle was about to begin.

The three-wheeled athletes sped by, followed a few minutes later by the approach of the leading women. Or, in this case, woman. Paula Radcliffe emerged at the top of the slope, flanked by two pacemakers, nearly three minutes ahead of any other runner. I've written before how I have a personal interest in Paula's progress, so I was pleased that she was already on course to smash her existing world record in some style. Many of the crowd had come especially to see the Sports Personality of the Year come nodding by, a far cry from her anonymous training runs I used to watch on miserable wet winter mornings about six years ago. Fifteen minutes later Paula reappeared back on the other side of the road, heading back towards Central London, fame and glory.

An official marshal in an orange vest was in place to initiate the spontaneous applause every time a wheelchair athlete sailed past. I was flanked by two particularly keen clappers, who applauded everyone and shouted encouragement with the fervour of a school PE teacher. Two ladies from Kelloggs approached us from behind, offering members of the crowd samples of some new cereal-based snack. Like sirens, they lured the unwary away from their position at the crash barrier, only for them to find that their viewing space had been hijacked when they returned. A few female runners dribbled past our position, until at last we thought we saw the first man go by... but no, on closer inspection everyone agreed it was probably just another woman.

Just after 11 o'clock the leading pack of male runners finally appeared. A slow trickle of runners followed behind, building to a stream after 25 minutes, a torrent after 45 minutes and a flood after an hour. The more knowledgeable spectators in the crowd were able to pick out each club runner by the colour of his vest, almost the athletic version of train-spotting. As the numbers passing by increased, so the crowd's enthusiasm to cheer everyone decreased, saving their applause only for those who passed a certain fancy-dress threshold. A number of fairies ran past, along with a snail, a couple of wombles, the odd rhino, a fair few Batmen and at least six Elvii. Many runners had dyed their hair to make themselves more noticeable, but many had failed to realise that red hair really doesn't stand out in a sea of red faces. Anyone with an afro or a comedy mohican was more easily spotted. A even better bet was to emblazon your name or nickname across your chest so that spectators could cheer you on with personal encouragement. "C'mon Billy!" "C'mon Dicko!" "C'mon Flora?"

Many of the crowd had come to support a relative, friend or colleague, press-ganged to attend in much the same way that a school concert gains its audience. The more technologically-literate amongst the crowd utilised the twisting course, mobile phones and public transport to rendezvous across London, cheering their loved ones on at various points along the route. Others stayed in one place, set up camp and waited. The family immediately to my left had come down from Norfolk for the day to support Dad. Mum kept a look-out for someone 'in a white vest' so that Gran could be ready to film his appearance on the camcorder. Meanwhile Son and Daughter sat patiently, ready with some water and a banana for when Dad finally arrived. The family plan worked like clockwork, culminating in a magic thirty seconds those children will never forget. A number of mothers were less fortunate. They lay in wait for their offspring to pass by, only to discover that their own voices weren't quite loud enough to carry far enough across the track. One mother looked visibly disheartened as 'James' limped by without once noticing his concerned supporter gesticulating wildly in the crowd.

As the race wore on a wide variety of different running styles were in evidence, most of which could best be categorised under 'pain'. A fierce-looking St John's Ambulance woman was on standby with a dollop of muscle grease and a rubber glove, but few seemed eager to take her up on her kind offer. Watching the later runners felt more like watching a charity parade than a competitive race. It was sad to be reminded that there are so many good causes out there in need of publicity and fund-raising, but heartening to see how much support each charity was getting. I kept a special eye open for the celebrity runner for Everyman - action against male cancer, but I'm afraid I didn't manage to come away with a photo of Dermot looking tired and sweaty. Thankfully Hazel Irvine and the BBC obliged later.

As I headed for home, the sky was still full of helicopters and lost helium balloons. I had spent longer watching the London Marathon than Paula Radcliffe had taken to run it. I left the fun runners still streaming through Docklands, and into their own personal record books. It's an inspiring day out - long may it continue.

 Friday, April 11, 2003

Let's do lunch

Every day at work, the same problem. Where to go for lunch? There's also the problem of when to go to lunch (early? calm that rumbling stomach? or late? shorten that afternoon?) but I'll leave discussion of that for another day. I work near Green Park tube station, in the heart of Mayfair, where the choice of places to go for lunch isn't as wide as you might expect it to be. There's not a chip shop or a McDonalds in sight, for example (although at least one of those is definitely a good thing). There are sandwich shops, and cafés, and pubs, and coffee shops, and bars, and posh restaurants, and a supermarket, all competing daily for my hard earned cash. And from today there's even more competition as Marks & Spencer are opening one of their Simply Food outlets right above the tube station, seeking their slice of the lunchtime market. I'll be popping along there later to see what they have to offer the weary office worker, assuming I can get near the place for queueing secretaries. Meanwhile, here's a detailed list of my main lunch options:

Sandwich shops: These tiny little eateries hide in the gaps between real shops, dispensing lunchtime bread to passers by. They always look reassuringly amateur, as if the bloke behind the counter popped down to the supermarket first thing this morning, bought some sliced bread and mixed vegetables, sliced them up with five tins of tuna and then shoved the resulting mixture into a row of empty margarine tubs. The shop may only be packed for two hours each day, but charging three quid a time makes for impressive profit margins.

Pret A Manger: Spread across London like a very expensive rash, these shops specialise in mass-produced hand-made sandwiches, available in a variety of slightly exotic flavours, with accompanying small pots of sliced guava, thimbles of soup and cubes of chocolate brownie. Nevertheless they succeed in the marketplace because the chain's founders recognised one very important fact - that nobody ever likes making a packed lunch in the morning. We all know we could assemble a well-balanced nourishing boxful with twice the volume for a tenth of the price in our own kitchens but, somehow, at quarter past seven this never feels like quite such a good idea. More fool us.

Benjy's: The opposite of Pret, these cheap 'n' cheerful sandwich shops have sprung up across London in the last year. You can buy a complete lunch in Benjy's, complete with shrink-wrapped Chelsea bun, for less than the price of a Pret brie, tomato and basil baguette. This is a good thing, not least because it tends to attract a clientele of dirt-cheap local workmen, rather than the usual upmarket crowd. OK, so they could put a bit more filling in their torpedo rolls, and the choice of crisps is a bit limited, but at these prices I'm not complaining. A regular haunt of mine, then.

Cafés: Mayfair may be a bit posh, but there are still boltholes that will serve up a plate of fried breakfast washed down by luke-brown tea. Of course, this being Mayfair they also have to serve up plates of falafel, and bowls of pasta smothered in dilute tomato sauce and grated parsley, but the full bacon and sausage platter wins hands down for me every time.

Sainsburys: It took the big chains a while, but they've finally worked out that small scaled-down supermarkets in the middle of city centres can rake in the money. A small basket five times a week on top of your weekend trolley dash, it all adds up. All they need is a stockpile of pre-packaged sarnies and a salad bar, and all you get are a few reward points you'll never bother to redeem anyway.

The pub: It is theoretically possible to fit a pub lunch into the regulation sixty minutes of the office lunch hour. Minutes 1-5 are spent shepherding everyone out of the office whilst waiting for one straggler to reappear from the toilets. Minutes 6-10 are spent walking to the pub, then minutes 11-15 are spent ordering the first round of drinks, just a half for me please, it's lunchtime. Minutes 16-20 are spent perusing the pub menu, and minutes 21-25 trying to order the chicken in a basket, and you wanted ravioli didn't you, and just a salad for Sandra please, without onion. Minutes 26-35 are spent happily chatting and waiting, but minutes 36-40 are characterised by the growing realisation that the food might not arrive in time before you have to be back in the office. During minutes 41-45 someone wanders reticently up to the bar to ask them when the food's coming, and buys everyone another swift half while they're at it. The meals finally appear towards the end of minutes 46-50, except Sandra's salad, which turns up during minutes 51-55, so she's still picking the onion off while everyone else is nearly halfway through their pile of chips. Finally, in minutes 56-60, everyone is forced to wolf down whatever they can of the mountain still remaining on their plate before staggering back to the office late, but it's ok because the boss is still only halfway through his scampi at the pub down the road and won't be back until three at the earliest.

The Ritz: This bastion of the upper class serves the well-do-to, the old-and-fuddy and the more-money-than-sense with genuine Mayfair fare. Men must wear a jacket and tie, and it would appear that some obscure rule forces all the women to wear a floral twin set and pearls. It's a little on the expensive side for lunch, and even the legendary afternoon tea will set you back nearly thirty quid. Still, if I ever fancy a £28 omelette for lunch, I know where to come.

Marks and Spencer - Simply Food: Rarely has the opening of a new glorified sandwich shop been so eagerly awaited by the local population, and by a company's shareholders. Green Park's new M&S foodstore opened at 7am this morning, and by the time I arrived 75 minutes later there were already queues. I was pleasantly surprised to find an appealing range of well-packaged food at über-Benjy's but sub-Pret prices. The till staff had learnt the script for their cheery greeting well, without ever sounding transatlantically insincere. By lunchtime the shop was even more packed than a prawn, avocado and salad panini, so I was glad I'd stuck my turkey doorstop in the office fridge earlier on. And there were still crowds in there when I left work at 7pm this evening. It's a licence to print money, I tell you. And a tip for any of you thinking of visiting in the future - it's much quieter downstairs, and they do mini double chocolate muffins down there.

 Sunday, April 06, 2003

6) a trip to the Boat Race

The Boat Race is one of the most popular events in the British sporting calendar and attracts a massive crowd of around 250,000 to the banks of the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake. This year it was 250,001.

I come from a very Cambridge-supporting family, so it was a bit of a shock to them 20 years ago when I switched allegiance and got a place at Oxford instead. Not in the rowing team, you understand, but the university. Rowers are a very keen band of people, and so during our first week at Oxford all us freshers were gathered together in an upper room and asked if we wanted to join the college rowing team. Those of us from comprehensive schools had probably never really considered rowing as a participatory sport before, so we were a bit bemused. From what we saw before us, rowing appeared to be about long spindly arms, breathlessness and long periods spent in the college bar after every training session. I wasn't taken in, but the girl in the room next to mine signed up, at which point I discovered the real problem with rowing. Her alarm clock would ring, loudly, at half past five every morning so that she could be up and out for the early-morning practice session on the river. Be it mid-November or mid-May, she was freezing and I was wide awake. All that pain and hardship, and still the college rowing team lost every single race for the rest of the year. No Oxford Blues in our college, just Oxford blues.

It beats me why eight grown men (and one not-quite-so-grown man) would ever want to climb into a small boat and row more than four miles round a bendy river when there's a perfectly good train service that can do the trip direct in six minutes flat. However, that doesn't seem to have stopped Oxford and Cambridge from battling it out on the River Thames almost every year since 1829 (current score Oxford 71, Cambridge 77). This afternoon I went along to see what all the fuss was about. I could have stayed in and watched saturation coverage on the television but no, my dice had spoken (see below) so I was off to experience the whole heady event for real.

I reached Putney Bridge with five minutes to spare before the reserve race began. The whole area was full of tourists looking lost, families looking bored and yuppies looking drunk. I made my way down to the river, pushing past the acres of pushchairs, and tried to see if anything was happening. I was glad I'd remembered to wear the right colour blue. The crowds were one-deep, looking out across the river towards the boathouses in case anything was actually happening. The sensible amongst them had brought radios to find out what was going on, thermos flasks to keep them warm and a football to keep the kids occupied. The less sensible had brought cold meat picnics and grandma. There were a lot of twenty-somethings in the crowd, a lot of courting couples, and a high proportion of students using the race as a social opportunity to meet up with their jolly good mates during the Easter break. The BBC were blocking the towpath, making sure that six million TV viewers could watch the event, even if we couldn't. The reserve race kicked off at 4pm to muted cheers, at which point a number of people left and went home thinking they'd just seen the main event.

I wandered upstream, trying to get to Hammersmith Bridge before the proper race arrived half an hour later. I was forced to make a detour inland around Mr Al Fayed's football ground at Craven Cottage, after which the riverside was noticeably less crowded. The spectators here tended to be families, and very middle class in the same way that nobody in East London is. Some people looked like they'd not been anywhere near London since the Countryside Alliance march last year, and weren't planning on coming back until they needed their Barbour jacket re-tailored. The Boat Race also appeared to signal the beginning of the UK barbecue season, even when the temperature was only ten degrees Celsius, and the smell of burnt sausages drifted across from gardens backing onto the river. The residents of an old people's home were having a Boat Race party, beaming broadly beneath blue-ribboned bonnets. The crowds were thickest within fifty feet of the few riverside pubs. The event's sponsors should consider replacing their logo with a plastic lager glass, as this seems to best represent why most spectators turn up.

I stopped in sight of Hammersmith Bridge, which the police had helpfully closed just in case anyone might get a decent view. Trees on the opposite bank were bursting into leaf, although the sun was defiantly not shining. Somewhere in the distance came the welcome sight of two tiny boats edging closer upstream, a helicopter buzzing overhead marking their position. We waited for the action to draw nearer. Eventually the two boats swept past, neck and neck, or maybe the yellow boat was just ahead of the yellow boat, it was hard to tell. The two teams were followed by a flotilla of champagne-fuelled launches, spread out across the river, making the most of their eighteen minute chase. I made the mistake of whipping out my digital camera to record the spectacle, so I ended up concentrating more on the camera than the boats at the crucial moment. And then, as fast as they came, the boats disappeared off under the bridge, round the bend and out of sight. The small crowd turned to look at one other, shrugged and headed back to the nearest pub.

It struck me that, by attending the Boat Race in real life, I had completely failed to experience it. From the riverside it was impossible to tell who was winning and, ultimately, which team was the winner. By the time the race ended I was already descending into Hammersmith station to start my journey home, totally oblivious of the result. I eventually got back to watch the whole thing 'properly' on video from earlier in the afternoon. Only then did I discover how exciting the race apparently was, how close it had been all the way through, and how the whole thing came down to a breathtaking photo finish. The two teams differed by just one foot after four and a quarter miles. Outstanding, record-breaking, even epic, apparently. And I missed it because I was there. Next year I shall stay at home and watch the race on television. Or maybe just check the result in the paper on Monday morning.

And who won? Who cares. If I've learnt one thing about the Boat Race today, it's that 'who won?' is the one fact that really doesn't matter.

The Dice Man

I bought two books yesterday. One was Tilting at Windmills by Andy Miller, the tale of a sports atheist who was always picked last for the football team at school. This book speaks to me, even if I have no intention of going one step further like Andy and attempting to cure myself by aspiring to become UK crazy golf champion. And the second book I bought was The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart, the 1971 classic about a bored psychiatrist who lets the throw of a dice govern every decision in his life. I've decided to follow Luke's modus operandi today in order to decide how to fill my day. I'm going to list six different places in London that I could go out and visit today, then I'm going to roll a dice to see which one of them I have to go to.
Remember, one of the great things about being single is that you can do something totally off the wall like this without anyone turning to you at the breakfast table and asking "You want to do what? You must be completely mad!" Plus you don't get to spend your Sundays somewhere dull like B&Q or IKEA instead.

Here's the list of options:
1) a walk along the Greenwich Meridian
2) a walk along the Thames west from Docklands
3) a randomly chosen museum from this list
4) a randomly chosen art gallery from this list
5) a random dice-controlled journey on the Underground
6) a trip to the Boat Race

So, six possible locations, one dice, which location will it be?
I'll roll the dice now, and come back later to tell you all about my day out.

 Thursday, April 03, 2003

Ghost trains

I saw a completely unexpected train this morning.

I'm not talking about the Central Line here, although that did reopen through Central London today after a 68 day break. Emphasis on the break. It was strange to see crowded platforms at Mile End again, unlike the last 10 weeks where the place has been like a brief subterranean halt on a ghost train. That may have been strange, but it wasn't unexpected.

I saw the unexpected train before I got to my station. There used to be three rail stations along Bow Road within a quarter of a mile of each other. Two are still there, one on the District Line and the other on the Docklands Light Railway. The third station has long since closed. There's a rail bridge over Bow Road that used to carry passengers but now just blocks the view. Dirty black steps lead up to a deserted platform, blocked off somewhere behind a car repair yard. Nobody travels from Limehouse to Stratford any more, not in one journey anyway. It's just like the railway bridge in EastEnders - ever present in the local scene but no train is ever seen upon it. Except this morning, when I was amazed to see a passenger train rumbling across, completely out of place, a reminder of the branch lines that used to exist before the savage rail cuts of the 1960s.

It's exactly forty years since Dr Beeching's infamous report lopped the least busy branch lines from the country's rail network. He proposed closing almost a third of the network, around 5000 miles. Over 2000 stations were closed, thousands of passenger carriages were scrapped, and several communities found their rail connections severed. The railway had lost its dominance to the car, a position from which it has never recovered.

Some branch lines have since survived in name only. Denton in South Manchester has one train a week, in one direction only. The 14:56 to Stalybridge never returns, but this useless skeleton service is enough to prevent the rail authority from having to close the line officially. Ten years ago in Croxley Green (where I used to live) the service on the local branch line was suddenly cut to a single train from Watford and back at 6 o'clock on weekday mornings. In 1996 that one daily train was replaced by one daily taxi and the line fell into disrepair. However, by the letter of the law, that taxi means that the overgrown and partly-demolished Croxley branch line (photos here) is officially still open.

Londoners escaped most of Dr Beeching's cuts, with new railway lines opened and more under consideration. We've been lucky. 10 weeks waiting for the Central Line to reopen is nothing compared to 40 years without any train service at all. I shall try to remember that when I collect my thumping great Central Line compensation payment...

 Wednesday, April 02, 2003

The Front Line

 Thursday, March 27, 2003

Extra dry

It's been three weeks since it last rained in London. It might, just possibly, rain here on Saturday, but otherwise the drought is set to continue into next week as well. This is bad news to some but, given that I don't have a garden outside busily dying on me, I'm perfectly happy with the current lack of rainfall. No doubt we can all expect a hosepipe ban by the middle of next week, standpipes in the street by the middle of next month, water rationing by the middle of next year and the Sahara Desert encroaching across what used to be the English Channel by the middle of next century.

Britain's longest ever drought was recorded right here in London E3, exactly 110 years ago. 1893 brought an exceptional spring of heat, sunshine and lack of rain, with dry weather settling in during the first few days of March and lasting until early July. Mile End in the east end of London saw no measurable rainfall for more than two months, from 4th March to 15th May 1893. Those 73 consecutive dry days have never been equalled at any other time in any other place across the UK since weather records began. Meanwhile the ten driest towns in the country are also all to be found in south-east England (Thurrock, Sheerness and Felixstowe are the top three, followed by Dagenham, Tilbury, Southend, Colchester, Ipswich, Cambridge and Ely). This is because, as any geography student knows, by the time big grey rainclouds have blown eastwards all the way across the country from the Atlantic, they've normally dumped most of their load on south Wales instead. Perfect.

 Friday, March 21, 2003

Spring Equinox (00:59 GMT)

One complete wall of my office is covered by a breathtaking work of art. I can stare at this masterpiece for hours, seeing something new and awe-inspiring in the picture every day. It's a classic composition, built up with depth in layers over many years. Colours blend subtly as the eye wanders across the panorama, juxtaposing natural beauty with artificial sculpture. The artist has combined classical formations, gothic structures and contemporary influences in a fantastically complex gallery of contrasting styles. My daily work of art is a glass-framed landscape entitled "View over London from the 7th floor".

I never fail to be impressed by the view from my office window. In my last job I had the less-than-stunning view of the side of a Courts furniture warehouse. Today I can see Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Battersea Power Station, the London Eye (full on, so it looks like a perfect circle) and the brick minaret of Westminster Cathedral. Rather more impressive, I think you'll agree. Swivel a little further round and there's St Paul's, and the new Gherkin, with Canary Wharf beyond. In the far distance I can see the Crystal Palace TV mast and the rolling suburban foothills of south-east London. Aeroplanes fly over this patchwork of history, on some days huge jets lumbering into Heathrow, on other days tiny planes twisting towards City Airport. Tourists would pay a fortune for a room with this view, and I have the privilege of staring at it every day.

My desk is positioned just above treetop level, overlooking Green Park. In a few weeks time I shall be looking out over an ocean of green, with the flagpole of Buckingham Palace sticking up like a tiny periscope trying to peer above the new-born leaves. Until then, bare branches with budding blossoms allow me to see through right down to the Royal park below. Beds of bobbing yellow daffodils bring colour to the landscape, and smiles to the faces of passers-by. Office workers and tourists can now be seen across the park enjoying some long-forgotten sunshine and almost-warmth. Ball games, deckchairs and blokes-in-shorts are starting to make a reticent comeback. Spring is finally here, and the best six months of the year have finally begun.

When the next spring equinox comes round I expect I'll have been moved to a different office, on a different floor, with a different view of London, probably of a brick wall or a basement knowing my luck. Some might call it modern art, but I'll be pining for my classic landscape. In the meantime I'll continue to watch the seasons spread across the canvas of the capital with awe and wonder. And I promise to get some work done inbetween, honest.

 Friday, March 14, 2003

The 7am link (Friday): If you're not staying in to watch Comic Relief tonight, there's a fantastic-sounding party tonight here. Your party venue is round the circumference here or, if you prefer that map more geographically accurate, not-so-round here.

 Thursday, March 13, 2003

The Press

There are 68 seats in every District Line train carriage. When there are more than 68 people in the carriage, you have to stand, or maybe lean. There are 16 glass bits you can lean against next to the main doors and there are 2 more doors to lean against at the end of each carriage. When there are more than 86 people in the carriage, you have to stand and hang on. There are 16 metal poles to hang onto in every carriage, two for each door. When there are more than 102 people in the carriage, you have to grab one of the dangly strap things. There are 48 dangly straps in every carriage. When there are more than 150 people in the carriage, there's nothing left to hang onto. When there's nothing left to hang onto, I can't read my newspaper.

When I can't read my newspaper, I have to resort to 'not-looking' at people. This a special skill only found on public transport and in doctors' waiting rooms, involving staring at anything, everything, even the stain on the window, just to avoid looking directly at someone else. This isn't normally a problem, because all the other people are busy 'not-looking' too, or else they're amongst the 150 who don't need to 'not-look' because they can read their books and newspapers in relative comfort.

This morning, for the second day in a row, I bought my daily newspaper, boarded my District Line train and entered a jam-packed carriage containing more than 150 people. For the second day in a row I ended up travelling to work carrying a newspaper I couldn't possibly read. Yesterday I had to resort to spending the entire journey 'not-looking'. Today, however, I'd brought with me that special mini-booklet of 21st century classics off the front of my Word magazine. It was thankfully still possible to read a mini-booklet measuring 12½cm by 9½ cm in a tube carriage containing more than 150 people. This improved my journey no end. I spent my journey agreeing with their choices for the best recent film and trivia book, and now I'm going to hunt down their suggestion for the best theory book. I might even try reading that book on my way into work on Monday, just so long as 150 other people don't have the same idea.

 Friday, March 07, 2003

Isn't that? It is, isn't it?

According to the latest census there are 58,789,194 people in the UK. It never fails to amaze me when, out of the blue, I recognise one of them. The human brain has an uncanny ability to distinguish facial features and put a name to them, even when it's someone you've not seen for years or never seen in the flesh before.

I was getting off the tube the other evening when voices in my subconscious brain latched onto one of the men on the platform, waiting to board the carriage.
"Isn't that, you know, him, thingy, whatshisname?"
"Erm, he has a sort-of familiar look about him. I must try to put a name to the face."
"Could it be, hang on while I dredge his name out of my the dark recesses of my visual memory, him?"
"No, it can't be, he looks too old, and he looked taller than that on the telly, and I'm sure he never used to be that full-faced."
"It is him though isn't it? Cos last time I remember seeing him in the news he was about five or ten years younger, and he does look exactly how he ought to look today doesn't he?"
"Hmmm, I guess what I'm seeing now is how he'd really look without the help of on-screen make-up, and with what's left of his hair uncombed and flapping lankly."
"He certainly looks like a man who's taken full advantage of all the high life, good-living and junket-attending you get when you're one of the UK's top European Commissioners."
"Well maybe he only looks like a top politician. Maybe it isn't him at all, but merely a lookalike? Try to come up with some convincing evidence."
"The train's just pulling into Westminster tube station."
"OK, so I am convinced, it is him. Blimey, it's the Neil Kinnock."
All that happened inside my head in less than two seconds, synaptic recognition just in time for me to walk straight past the bloke as he boarded the train. Not the most exciting celebrity to spot, admittedly, but there's still a certain frisson in identifying a well-known face wandering through my everyday world.

I've spied quite a high number of famous people randomly walking the streets of London (rather more than Suffolk, obviously). Every time I notice a famous face in an everyday situation there's a sudden spark of inner recognition as I struggle to place them before they've passed me by, and I usually manage. I saw the legendary Una Stubbs crossing Piccadilly outside Fortnum and Mason once, smiling her way through life. I saw Peter Stringfellow striding round Covent Garden with an entourage, and he's even more orange in real life than I was expecting. I spotted Jeremy Bowen off Breakfast News walking past my restaurant once, though that was only mildly thrilling. I saw Philip Franks (Countdown favourite, and Catherine Zeta's Darling Buds of May love interest) sitting in a window of Starbucks in Oxford Street slurping latte. I saw film star Rupert Everett in LA3 last year looking very tall, very bored, very haggard and very alone (which cheered me up no end). Most excitingly, I spotted the goddess Judi Dench standing in the queue behind me buying Christmas cards last year, and somehow resisted the urge her to ask her to autograph all sixty cards I was buying at the time.

The distant recesses of my brain have also helped me to spot a few of my old school friends wandering around London, despite the fact they must be a good twenty years older than when I last remember sitting next to them in double geography. I seem to bump into my best mate from secondary school in the most unexpected places about once every seven years, recover from the shock of him being *there* and then say hello. He never recognises me though, which I take to be a good thing. Oddly, none of the celebrities I meet recognise me either. Maybe one day...

 Friday, February 28, 2003

Satellite image of the month: Ever wondered what London looks like from space? The international space station flew over earlier in the month and took this rather fantastic snap of the South East at night. It turns out that London looks like a huge glowing amoeba with tentacles. If you look at the image carefully you can see the cell nucleus that is central London, a surprisingly large ribosome at Hyde Park, plus the vacuole called Essex. And much respect to Steve who's taken the NASA photo and done something really Flash with it. Awesome.

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