1) Stand in Trafalgar Square Every year tens of thousands of New Year revellers are drawn mysteriously to Trafalgar Square as midnight approaches. They stand around beside the boarded-up fountains, just out of earshot of Big Ben, and nothing happens. Even in 2003, with the area rejuvenated as a semi-pedestrianised 'World Square', nothing will happen. The Mayor may have staged all sorts of diverse events here during the rest of the year but tonight he admits "The only thing to do in Trafalgar Square will be to get cold and wet". Cheers Ken.
2) Stand by the River Thames (dg's choice 1999/2000)
Westminster Bridge, that's the place to be. Right beneath Big Ben chiming twelve, and a grandstand view of Mayor Ken's real Hogmanay treat - a riverside firework display. Except that he'd rather you weren't here either. This brief display beside the London Eye is meant for global viewing, not for real Londoners standing out in the cold, so the police would much prefer you to stay home and watch your council tax going up in smoke on the telly instead. Cheers Ken. Let's hope it's more impressive than the 'River of Fire' four years ago.
3) Stand in a Circle Line train Ken's got one thing right this New Year - the tube will be running all through the night. This means you can attend any of the non-events in Central London and still get home without having to cram into a drunken nightbus. Instead you can allow the police to shoehorn you slowly onto an overcrowded platform waiting for a train that may not arrive until next year. Just make sure you're not under the Embankment at midnight rather than on it.
4) Stand inside the Dome Is it really a century since the eyes of the worldnation taxpayer were trained upon this upturned bowl by the Thames? Yesit is. Who could forget all those unfortunate celebrities stuck queueing at Stratford station, or the Queen trying to look excited as she shook hands with Tony Blair's vanishing credibility? I must admit I still rather like the Dome, sitting there spikes-to-the-sky at the tip of a desolate peninsula, doomed to an afterlife as the world's only billion pound bus station. But I have no plans to be there tonight for the last gasp of Winter Wonderland - an underpatronised overpriced fairground. No change there then.
5) Stand in a pub Any other night of the year you can stand in a pub for free. On New Year's Eve you have to pay £10 for the privilege, surrounded by a bunch of losers from your local neighbourhood eating mini sausage rolls from a luke-warm buffet. At midnight some greasy no-hoper will take advantage of the national thirty-second groping amnesty and plant a wet kiss on your unwelcoming cheek. The pub should be paying you.
6) Stand in a club (dg's choice 2001/02)
If you thought the pub was expensive, wait until you see what your favourite club is charging. All that ready cash is presumably essential to pay for DJ overtime and the twelve o'clock balloon drop. Try to spot the clubbers who've perfectly timed their pill-popping for a midnight high, and don't forget to feel sorry for the crowds still patiently queueing outside as the techno version of Auld Lang Syne bleeps out onto the pavement.
7) Stand around at a mate's party Accepting an invite to a New Year party always sounds like a good idea, particularly if you're getting desperate for at least some social contact this evening. Unfortunately the party will be attended by people you don't know who've only brought cheap booze and then insist on playing the naff compilation CD they've brought with them so that the TV's off when midnight comes round and you miss the chimes of Big Ben altogether, forcing everyone to raise an anti-climactic glass of sparkling wine five minutes late. Cheers.
8) Get out of London altogether (dg's choice 1998/99)
Hide away in a country cottage on a New Year break and you can miss all that unnecessary hubbub in the capital. There again, you do have to sleep under floral duvets, shiver with coin-in-the-slot Economy 7 heating and discover that all the tourist attractions in the neighbourhood have shut down until Easter.
9) Get out of the country altogether (dg's choice 2002/03)
Fly away, say, 6000 miles to the west and you'll find yourself in a totally different time zone. This means that midnight GMT will pass unnoticed by the locals somewhere mid-afternoon, and then you'll end up celebrating New Year somewhere around what's really breakfast time. It may be unnatural, but the firework display will be considerably better.
10) Sit at home on your sofa (dg's choice 2000/01)
So, looks like it's just a can of lager and that dire Scottish Hogmanay TV special for company. Try to spot which of the featured celebrities has died or been involved in a terrible accident since the show was recorded back in November. Then text all your friends pretending to be somewhere else rather more glamorous, whilst bemoaning the fact that nobody appears to have sent you any messages in return. But, smile, because you're not cold, you're not wet, you're not on a train, you're not surrounded by drunkards and you're not fifty pounds poorer. Happy New Year!
Monday, December 22, 2003
On the 3rd day before Christmas... the arrival of snow is anticipated
How fantastic it would be to wake up on Christmas morning, pull back the curtains and see the landscape covered by a thick layer of snow. All those nasty concrete outbuildings carefully blanketed, the footprints of robins scattered randomly across the lawn and Aled Jones frolicking in the lane with a couple of snowballs. Picture postcard perfect. We love snow at Christmas because it's the one day of the year most of us don't have to travel anywhere. We're already where we want need to be, the entire public transport network has already been shut down for the day and we couldn't drive safely anywhere after that pre-lunch sherry anyway. Any other day of the year and we'd all be cursing the nightmarish collapse all all local services but, on December 25th, 's no problem.
Will there be a White Christmas this year? Well, no, sorry, there won't. Even this morning, when snow was actually forecast, the streets of London remain resolutely grey. Alas, a snowy Christmas Day in the UK is a rare event. Even rarer is a 'proper' white Christmas, rather than the 'a flake of sleet will do' travesty of a definition that the bookies now use. December's always been a bit early in the winter for snow (January and February are rather more likely), and global warming threatens to make the entire 21st century a bit late in the millennium for snow too. White Christmases were rather more common here during the 'Little Ice Age', back when the Thames used to regularly freeze over, but the last London Frost fair was held as long ago as 1814. In the future any light sprinkling of white across the capital is far more likely to be the result of terrorist-induced nuclear fallout.
Only ten of the last Christmases in London have been white. That'd be 1916 (sleet), 1927 (snow, falling and lying), 1938 (sleet, but 15cm of snow lying on the ground), 1956 (snow), 1964 (snow), 1968 (sleet), 1970 (snow, falling and lying), 1976 (snow), 1996 (sleet) and 1999 (sleet). You may also remember a white 1981, but that year doesn't officially count because no snow fell on Christmas Day itself. Me, I remember 1970 well enough, which may be just as well because if I were any older I probably wouldn't be able to remember a proper white Christmas at all. Alas, today's children have probably missed out on seeing one for good.
On the 7th day before Christmas... here's the Underground Christmas story
1 One day, while Mary was still slepping, the Angel of the Lord visited her. Mary fell to her Neasden looked up. The Angel told her she Woodford have a baby who'd be Wapping important.
2 Mary-lebone and husband Joseph had to go Upney to Bethlehem, also known as Park Royal David's White City. Mary on a BlackHorse Rode because she was Leyton in her pregnancy.
3 There was no Morden room anywhere down the Old Street, but one innkeeper Maida Valeable the stable round the back. Baby Jesus was Holborn there surrounded by Barking animals.
4 High in the Hillingdons, abiding in the Southfields, there were Shepherds Bush watching over their flocks by night. And lo the Angel of the Lord came upon them, so they got off their Arsenal and walked the Mile End into Bethlehem to see the baby.
5 There came three Blackfriars from Dagenham East, following a star. They brought gifts of Golders Green, Farringdon and Moorgate. On the way they stopped off at a Mansion House to meet Kings Cross Herod.
6 Herod couldn't StanMore of this. It was enough to Turnham Green with anger. "Kill, Burn the children!" he cried. But baby Jesus and his parents had already escaped Northwood, far beyond Zone 6.
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
On the 9th day before Christmas... the shops are full of people buying rubbish
There comes a day whe you finally have to grit your teeth, knuckle down and head to the shops to buy stuff for Christmas. Yesterday I succumbed, even though it meant squandering 4% of my annual leave entitlement merely to avoid the weekend crush. And so I spent the afternoon trawling the West End, trying desperately to find some presents that other people might find borderline acceptable. I no doubt failed, but other people do always seem to prefer being bought something to being bought nothing, even if that something is rubbish. And there's certainly plenty of rubbish around to be bought, all stuff that you'd never ever buy for yourself, and you'd never dare buy for anyone else unless it was Christmas.
Oxford Street was full of of other people who weren't working, all seeking that elusive perfect Christmas gift. I pity the someone somewhere who's going to wake up to a fake Rolex on the 25th, or the DVD of some film that ITV's screening on Boxing Day, or one of those tiny 'gift' books with three words on each of fifty pages. Shoppers bustled by, some with the full set of designer carrier bags, others with only a bemused frown. Stores prayed that some of the passers-by would stop, come inside and part with large amounts of money. A couple of policemen mopped up a pool of blood from the road where an inattentive shopper had wandered into the path of some unexpected traffic. In Berwick Street market the sprouts were almost as big as the fake glass baubles. Christmas approached, inexorably, just 125 shopping hours to go.
A brand new Tesco Metro store had just opened, part way down Dean Street on the way into Soho (see eye-catching poster adverts here). This was launch day so management were standing outside offering free mince pies and red wine to passers by in a vain attempt to make the store look busy. A row of bored till operators sat at the checkouts with nothing to do but gawp (they'd be more than welcome at my local Tesco which appears to be five times the size but with half the staff). I had a '£3 off champagne' coupon thrust into my hand (the chilled bubbly section is noticeably larger than the area selling milk), but declined to use it. Wouldn't have been much use to the closest residents either, those who live in the local shop doorways.
But yes, in the end I did manage to buy my family some presents that hopefully aren't rubbish. I hope they've managed the same, because I'll need at least one present to read/play/devour on Christmas afternoon to get me safely through the third screening of my niece's new Barbie Swan Lake video. And apologies to the rest of the family - while I was in Tesco I did buy Mum that CD. All rubbish is relative, it seems.
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Cup Routes: the capital celebrates Bus O2: Marble Arch - Trafalgar Square
Location: London central
Length of journey: 1½ miles, 80 minutes
Forgive me if I report on just one more bus journey. The service on this particular route is appalling - passengers crawl through central London at about one mile an hour. The space available on the bus is wholly insufficient - travellers are left waiting ten-deep on the pavement. The fare to board the bus is out of most people's reach - one gold piece. Conditions on the bus are inhumane - there's no roof and passengers are forced to stand in freezing conditions throughout the journey. And the frequency on this route is abysmal - you wait 37 years and then three buses turn up at once. But yesterday this shambolic service was the most popular bus route in the country.
You'll remember England won the Rugby World Cup a fortnight ago by outperforming a handful of serious countries, some comedy also-rans and a few South Sea islands. It's not often we defeat the rest of the world at a sport we invented, so how better to celebrate than going for a short bus ride one cold grey midweek lunchtime. Three quarters of a million people turned out all the same, thronging the streets of the West End and blocking off all the shops. A trio of open-topped buses set off from Marble Arch at noon, the squad in the first, management in the second and media in the third. I thought I'd catch up with the procession as it passed through Piccadilly Circus.
Every space along the route was packed with people - office workers, beery rugger types, cheering pensioners and schoolchildren who really should have been elsewhere. It was impossible to tell when the bus was coming, the curved buildings of Regent Street blocking off the view and four helicopters drowning out any approaching cheers. Eventually the cheers drowned out the helicopters and the first bus edged into sight. The crowd went wild (well, wild-ish) and waved their free Evening Standard flags and Daily Mail placards. A mass of cameras, camcorders and mobile phones were raised into the air, simultaneously capturing the view and blocking it. The team breathed in the adulation and waved the shiny gold cup in the air. I think they smiled, but they were too small to see.
As the bus disappeared behind Eros, the crowd started to ebb away. Many of us poured down the sidestreets to intercept the bus again further down Haymarket. A bit of judicious squeezing saw me much closer to the action, ready for Jonny Wilkinson's second coming. I was now surrounded by ecstatic rugby disciples, a fire in their belly and a song in their heart (Swing Low Sweet Chariot, naturally, over and over and over). This time I saw the cup and the players close up, and even recognised someofthem. Nice suits, lads. Team coach Clive Woodward waved enthusiastically at me - me, the hardened rugby refusenik from school. I suspect he was waving at anybody by this point. Light showers of shredded paper fell from a few office windows, and the parade passed by again.
Trafalgar Square was absolutely packed - a bit like it used to be with pigeons, but with people instead. Had this been an anti-war protest, the police would no doubt have tear-gassed everyone by now. It was impossible for us latecomers to squeeze in far enough to see either of the giant TV screens, let alone the approaching buses. Loudspeakers broadcast a BBC commentary across the crowds, so at least we knew what we were missing. I left before the unctuous speeches began and headed off down the Mall, a good half hour ahead of the team, and against the continuing flow of of human traffic. I can't get excited about rugby, even if we are quite good at it. But, good try lads.
Monday, December 01, 2003
Cube Routes
It's time for diamond geezer to spend a week exploring London, by bus.
London's a huge place, far bigger then the central zone most tourists see. I thought I'd get out and view some more of the capital from the best vantage point of all, the top deck of a London bus. And then I'd come back and write about what I saw. (Trust me, you can do this sort of thing when you're single. Nobody looks at you with a withering stare when you walk out of the house clutching your bus pass, as if to say "But you can't do that, it's pointless... and anyway, we have a bathroom that needs redecorating.")
Seven days, seven different buses. But which seven, there being more than 500 to choose from? I decided to follow a mathematical pattern (did you really think otherwise?) and selected all the buses whose route numbers were cube numbers. Cube routes. (You remember cube numbers... 1x1x1, 2x2x2 and so on. They're one of those bits of maths you learnt at school that are of absolutely no use whatsoever when you're older. Until today of course.)
So, seven routes, sort of picked at random, and covering the capital. I made all seven bus journeys during the last month, I took my camera with me, and this map shows where I went. Outer and inner, suburbia and urbia, north and south, east and west, upmarket and downmarket, rich and poor, day and night, but all 'London'. Hold very tight please, the first bus is about to depart.
Famous places within 15 minutes walk of my house Number 2012 - The Olympic Stadiumii
An Olympic Stadium is a large circular-ish object, requiring space for a 400 metre running track, seating for the nations of the world and sufficient space round the edge for the selling of hotdogs and novelty fluorescent headgear. So, where to put it? It appears that the authorities have merely worked out how large a circle they need, found a map of the local area and hunted down the one location where that circle would fit without overlapping one of the many river channels round here. And the location they've found is a godforsaken industrial estate halfway up a boy-racer lane just north of Pudding Mill Lane DLR station. Middle of nowhere. This is Marshgate Lane, a 100% non-residential slice of East London, one solitary road cutting across the flood plain of the River Lea. If anywhere in London deserves to be regenerated, it's this unloved heap of warehouses, incinerators and industrial units. Up to 350 companies will be forced to relocate if the Olympics come to Stratford, but an Olympic flame would suit the area far better than the present smell of burning waste, fats and cooking oils.
I got myself a decent map and walked up Marshgate Lane to find the exact location of the centre of the stadium for myself. It's just past Knobs Hill Road, right opposite Parkes Galvanizing Ltd, where a couple of small roads run off the lane onto the Marshgate Trading Estate. Here you'll find a company that hires skips, a giant nondescript warehouse, the odd big family business, a company that prepares caviar and smoked salmon and, right in the middle, a Mercedes Service Centre. This is where the javelins will land, where 3000 perfectly-choreographed local schoolchildren will tapdance through the opening ceremony and where all the medals will be presented. I was disturbed to see three Mercedes flags flying over the exact spot - it looks like the Germans have staked their claim for the top of the medal table already.
This weekend, as a genuine local resident, I've also attended one of the public consultation events for the Olympic masterplan. The Lower Lea Valley regeneration team have been setting up their display boards in a variety of community-type institutions, asking people what they think about the plans and the legacy to be left behind for the local area. It turned out that most of the display is available on the internet anyway, but there were some nice extras including some fantastically detailed maps of the minutiae of regeneration and a 3D model to bring the plans to life (pictured left). The organising staff seemed keen to welcome us all, but even keener to get at least one person present to fill in one of their less-than-thrilling questionnaires. I would have spoken to somebody official about the plans, except that one of them was being persistently harangued by a pessimist explaining how the Dome was a white elephant and the whole bid thing would undoubtedly be a financial disaster, while most of the rest of the staff were too busy trying to set up a Powerpoint presentation. At least it was encouraging to see my community's future being taken seriously for once. Whether the Olympics arrive here in 2012 or not, local regeneration is on track.
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Famous places within 15 minutes walk of my house Number 2012 - The Olympic Stadiumi
OK, so this may look like the same old photograph of the run-down Big Breakfast house that I've shown you before, and indeed it is, but what's new is that London's Olympic Stadium is now planned to be built less than a javelin's throw away on the other side of that row of trees. It's all bloody exciting, for us locals at least. This redevelopment depends on London actually being selected by the IOC as the winning host city for the 2012 Games, of course, but detailed new proposals announced this week bring that dream a little closer to reality. And much closer to my house.
Plans for London's Olympic bid have been a little sketchy up until now, with plans for a stadium sort of near Hackney Wick, upriver from Stratford-ish, in that run-down bit of East London probably. This week the plans are revealed in their full geographical splendour, and the proposed site for the stadium shifts half a mile south from (just) Hackney into (nearly) Bow, much nearer to major transport links. The new site is currently bleak industrial land, surrounded on three sides by the Bow Back Rivers, which apparently makes the area pretty secure from international terrorist attack. You can view a fine and detailed map showing the Olympic regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley here, whether you're an international terrorist or not.
To your right is another photograph showing the heart of the proposed Olympic zone. This is the Greenway, a footpath slicing through East London atop the legendary Northern Outfall Sewer. Today a tree-lined haven for local wildlife, tomorrow the focal point of global consciousness (maybe - terms and conditions apply). Just to the right of the photo will be the warm-up tracks where the world's finest athletes will prepare for their few seconds in the spotlight. And just to the left, opening ceremonies, Olympic flames, 100m finals, track and field, drug scandals, medal ceremonies, marathon finishes and 100% total history. Bloody hard to picture it all at the moment, though.
The eighty-thousand-seater stadium will be at the heart of a compact area full of top Olympic facilities. Three indoor sports arenas will replace the Hackney Greyhound Stadium, and there'll also be a new all-weather tennis complex, hockey complex and velodrome. A huge aquatic centre (complete with Olympic-sized swimming pool, naturally) will be constructed close to Stratford town centre - this no matter whether the Olympic bid is successful or not. And the athletes' village will be built just to the north of the new Stratford International Eurostar station, leaving a legacy of 17000 homes for local residents after the Games have gone. Let's hope they're sports fans, otherwise all these fantastic state-of-the-art facilities will go stale pretty fast afterwards.
This miserable bunch of warehouses close to the Bow Flyover is scheduled to become home to the entire world's media throughout that extra-special Olympic fortnight. There'll be a huge International Broadcast Centre located here plus an only-slightly-less-huge Press Centre, both less than 5 minutes walk from my house. To think, I might catch Sue Barker nibbling a McChicken sandwich in the drive-thru by the roundabout, or bump into the Bolivian equivalent of Gary Lineker buying deodorant in the nearby 24 hour Tesco. I'll have the perfect Grandstand view.
To find out more about all these proposals, complete with more pretty maps, take a look at the official website for London's 2012 bid, or click through the masterplan for the regeneration of the Lower Lea valley. Alas, all of these fine five-ringed dreams remain at the planning stage at the moment, and many of the proposals may never come to pass. But there seems to be an unstoppable political will to make sure that something happens round here in East London, even if the Olympics don't. So, I'd like to thank all of you out there in the rest of the country for your imminent generosity in pouring millions of pounds of taxpayers money into my community. We'll put on a good show for you, honest. Just give us a sporting chance.
I've recommended two magazines this year. The first was Word magazine, a monthly mix of music, books, gadgets, entertainment and culture. Started off really well back in February, but I've recently been rather disappointed and disillusioned by Word's evolution into a music, music, DVD and music magazine. Pity. And the second magazine was Smoke.
Smoke is a kind of London fanzine, first published in June, successful enough to be out again this month, and scheduled to be quarterly in the future. Joy. Black and white with a tasteful blue cover, Smoke peers out at the capital from an obtuse angle. It drips quirkiness, design and detail, and it demands to be read, owned and loved.
This month in Smoke... the desolation of Shoreditch station; Christopher Fowler observes the squirrels of Regent's Park (and the rest of London's Nature Wonderland); Trocadero hell; London's campest statue in Temple Place; bus route of the month is the number 360; spotlight on Putney; the inconsistency of the Monopoly board; prodigy houses; a London Shipping Forecast (Bow Church to Island Gardens, wind easterly 4 or 5, visibility moderate or good); dancing with poodles... Oh go on, read some proper snippets here. And then go buy your own copy for just £1.70 here. Quality.
Saturday, November 01, 2003
c2c 4£1
There's a special offer on the trains all weekend, meaning that every journey on c2c(the London-Southend line) costs one quid. So I went exploring. For a start, I've never ever been to Fenchurch Street station before. This must be central London's most obscure manline station, tucked away off the beaten track in a forgotten corner of the City, and is virtually deserted at weekends. It's also the only mainline terminus without a tube station, so goodness knows how it got selected as one of the four 'famous' London stations on a Monopoly board. Fenchurch Street station, which is 150 years old next year, is a small Victorian island in a financial sea of concrete and glass. It's built on a viaduct above a three-storey warehouse and below a stack of new offices, and is everything that the commuters of Southend deserve.
I could have gone to Southend, but the first train out of the station was going somewhere far less glamorous - Grays. Final Destination. My train hurtled past the giant Ford works at Dagenham, across the bleak Rainham marshes, past docks, containers and refineries, on into grimmest Thurrock. Alongside this underused line the new high speed Channel Tunnel Rail link is being built, now just a grey pathway of concrete edging and portaloos. In three years time international Eurostar trains will speed this way, hopefully with the windowblinds down. Grays itself appeared to be a cheap shopping centre surrounded by featureless redbrick estates. Proud shaven-headed dads stood outside Iceland watching their offspring perform in the local talent contest hosted by the non-entity who came third in Fame Academy. Fat grans in light blue towelling buzzed past on mobility scooters, hoping to snap up some fake bargain jewellery on one of the market stalls. I stayed in the town no longer than 19 minutes.
Just four minutes up the line lies another very different shopping centre - Lakeside. Here are all the designer stores that Grays lacks, selling dreams to the upwardly mobile of Essex. Almost nobody arrives here by train, the sun glinting off the windscreens massing in the IKEA car park. The whole retail cathedral was packed with happy shoppers, out spending time spending money. A swarm of designer teenagers swept by on an urgent quest for the latest must-have accessory. Proud shaven-headed dads pushed their offspring around in turbo sports pushchairs, their waddling wives dripping with expensive carrier bags. Only just over 50 shopping days remain before Christmas, but I suspect this lot need little excuse to get out and flash their plastic.
What a fine idea - the world's first global flash mob. In 81 cities around the world at 2:15pm local time a crowd would gather, address the wider world in some way, and 10 minutes later jump for joy, cheer and disperse. That was the idea anyway. As I say, a fine idea that probably worked really well elsewhere, but alas it all fell a bit flat here in London.
Covent Garden was the chosen target of the London flashmobbers, the idea being for a huge crowd to walk in single file round the market building in the centre of the plaza. We were issued with a list of eight international greetings to use as we passed each corner of the building (bonjour, enchanté de vous rencontré). And that was about it.
If you know Covent Garden, you'll know that it's a magnet for tourists. There are jugglers, acrobats, guitarists trying to sell CDs recorded in their garage, and mime artists spray-painted silver in the hope that people will throw money at them for being complete aerosols. In fact, on a Saturday afternoon the whole of Covent Garden looks like it's already been invaded by a mob of tourists (ciao! Piacere di conoscerti!) and one more mob is going to be very hard to spot. And that was the problem.
At 2:14 you'd have been hard pushed to realise that a mob was assembling at the eastern end of the plaza, save for the bloke with the TV camera pointing his lens towards the cobbles where he hoped something was about to happen. At 2:15, magically coalescing out of the crowd, a surge of mobsters headed off in a clockwise direction. It wasn't so much single file as lots of people all out together for an afternoon stroll, and that made the queue rather on the short side. At each corner we tried out a new international greeting (ni hao! wo jiandao ni hen gaoxing) but it's a big market and we never got through all eight on the list.
We weaved our way slowly through the thronging tourists, completely failing to get noticed. Except by the press that is. A young gentleman from BBC Radio poked his big woolly microphone in my face and asked me if I'd mind telling him why I'd decided to come along today. He looked most hurt when I told him I did mind actually thankyou. At the next corner I was greeted by a beaming warmly-dressed young woman, to whom I would have replied privet, jarad tebja videtj if only she hadn't been standing primed with a TV camera in her face. Sadly de-press-ing.
After ten minutes, and not-quite-two circuits of the market, it was time to jump for joy. Only those members of the public in the north-east corner of the market heard the two hundred cheers that went up, and perhaps wondered whether this was just another piece of performance art. At least nobody threw any coins at us (hola, encantado de conocerte). And then we dissolved back into the crowd, as if we'd never been there, which we might as well not have been.
Nice idea, good try, no impact. It was good to have an audience for a change, but not one that was far bigger than the mob. Next time, if there is a next time, I hope it's all a bit more flash.
Friday, October 24, 2003
Final approach
Just before four this afternoon three ageing sisters appeared in the sky over London. Office workers stood respectfully on rooftops, pointing eastward as the first Concorde appeared. A second silver speck grew slowly in size to the south, and finally a third joined the procession across the capital. Nose down, landing gear down, engines blaring, the three planes cast their shadow across the city for the last time. I watched all three pass by, heading gracefully into the sun, towards Heathrow and into retirement. And then they were gone, and only a lump in the throat remained.
Birdwatching
I used to live under the Heathrow flight path, just a few miles away from the airport. Every evening at ten past seven I'd turn up the volume on my television to prepare for Concorde's daily flypast, awaiting the sudden arrival of a screaming silver bird in the sky, and then two minutes later return my TV to its normal volume. Anywhere else in the country a Concorde flypast would have been a special event, with crowds out on the streets to watch her pass over, but few of the locals round where I lived ever even stopped to look up. Their loss.
I used to live in Suffolk, where to spot any plane in the sky was a rare sight and Concorde was never seen. It still impacted on our lives though. On Tuesday 25th July 2000 a group of Suffolk students were on a summer trip to France and due to be staying in a small hotel in Gonesse, an obscure suburb of Paris. Their coach was still a few miles short of checking in when Concorde hit a metal strip on the runway at nearby Charles De Gaulle airport, burst into flames and crashed onto that very same hotel. Had the accident happened an hour later the terrible loss of life in that fireball would have been even greater, and would have included people I actually knew. Great loss.
I now live in London, rather further from Heathrow, but Concorde is still sometimes part of my sky. I remain one of those people who stops and stares every time she flies over, in the same way that an ornithologist would stop and stare at a passing osprey. Last year I took up position in Trafalgar Square for the Queen's Golden Jubilee flypast, not for the antique planes but for Concorde to fly directly overhead, flanked by nine Red Arrows. Most impressive. Today's final flypast sees three consecutive Concordes due to swoop into Heathrow at 4 o'clock this afternoon. I hope their final flightpath takes them over central London, because I'll be watching from my 7th floor office window just in case I'm allowed one last fleeting glimpse before the species becomes extinct. Our loss.
It's said that we English talk about the weather far too much. That's probably because we actually have weather in this country, where it can be cold and dry one day but mild and wet the next. We love to kick off our conversations by telling each other the meteorologically obvious ("sunny, isn't it?"). And can there be another country in the world where the weather forecast starts off with what the weather has been before going on to tell us what it will be? Ah, the weather, we do love it, even if it doesn't love us.
Every year the Tate Modern attempts to fill its giant Turbine Hall with a giant work of art. In 2000 they installed a couple of tall twirly staircases and a giant spider, sculpted out of steel by Louise Bourgeois. In 2001 there were lifts disappearing upwards through a series of darkened rooms courtesy of Juan Muñoz, and last year Anish Kapoor's giant red ring thing that somehow I completely managed to miss seeing. But now for 2003, rising for the first time last week, it's Olafur Eliasson's solar-inspired The Weather Project. And what better way to fill a huge space than with light?
I visited the Tate Modern yesterday for an early view of this new meteorological phenomenon. An enormous yellow sun now beams out from the eastern wall of the Turbine Hall. Clouds of fine mist hang in the air and the ceiling above is completely covered by mirrors, doubling the height of the sky. The whole place feels like a cathedral to the great sun god, which must be why half the population of London has come along to worship. Down on the floor a congregation has gathered, most gawping in awe and wonder at the great solar disc, others lying prostrate to gaze upon their distant reflection in the mirrors above.
If you walk right to the end of the hall to stand behind the sun, the illusion is shattered. Above your head is suspended a semicircle of yellow lamps, reflected in another mirror to form a ring of light. Look back into the hall and all you see now is a crowd behaving strangely, like a bunch of weather-obsessed primitives worshipping a scientific phenomenon they don't understand. But walk back into the light and the eclipse is over, the magic returns and you become a sun-worshipper again. Most impressive.
On leaving the Tate Modern yesterday it was back out into the autumn sunshine (10°C, northwesterly wind at 5mph, skies mostly clear, showers threatening later). There in the sky hung a distant small yellow globe, totally ignored by those exiting the gallery. Somehow the real thing couldn't hold a candle to the artificial sun inside. But then you can't walk round the back of the real sun to see how it works (well, not unless you're willing to wait for six months anyway). Let there be light. And do come and see it before it sets.
Friday, October 10, 2003
Tube watch (5)This week terminates here I wasn't sure whether an entire week devoted to the London Underground was a good idea or not. As it turns out, I needn't have worried. Either you lot out there are as obsessed with the tube as I am, or you've kept coming back to see how much lower I could sink. I'm stopping now and going back to whatever 'normal' on diamond geezer is, but I think I have enough material to try hosting another tube week sometime. Just not soon, OK?
To finish, here are some tube-related websites I've discovered this week, or used to aid my research: • Geoff's selection of silly tube maps, including a rude version, an upside-down version, a German version, a geographically realistic version, a motorway version, a blank version and a version without the Central line. • Rodcorp's Walklinesmap, showing all the stations less than 500m apart at ground level. • Owen's Mappers Delight page, which links to more than 30 different webpages about the London tube map. • A London Underground report from a few years ago, with a zoom-in-able ultra-detailed geographical tube map on the back cover, plus tons of journey-related statistics. • Clive's UndergrounD line guides - his anorak is bigger than mine. • The official London Underground webpage, with a lot of statistics hidden beneath the surface. • Transport plans for the London area, which hasn't been updated for a couple of years but is fascinating all the same. • The h2g2Ultimate Guide to the London Underground, an eclectic selection of facts, observations and trivia. • Tube Prune, the Underground seen from a tube driver's point of view. • Proposals to introduce Business Class and Cattle Class on the new-tube. • Tons of stuff on disusedtube stations (but that's for next time...)
Tube geek (5)Speed It can take forever to drive across London. The streets are crowded, there are traffic lights every 200 yards and half the roads are in fact only bus lanes. The Underground is therefore a quicker way to get around, as you can always tell when your train hurtles round a sharp curve throwing you into the lap of an unsuspecting fellow-traveller. However, your tube train probably isn't going as fast as you might think. Even if the driver does manage to get the speed up to 40mph, it's never long before he has to slam the brakes on again to stop at the next station. And then another station, and another, stop, go, stop, go, getting nowhere fast.
I've had a go at finding London's fastest, and slowest, tube lines. I've measured the longest possible journey on each tube line (for example, on the Northern line that's High Barnet to Morden, via Bank). Then I've used London Underground's route finder to find out how many minutes that journey takes, and used that to calculate an average speed. Two of the longest lines come out on top, maybe because the distances between the stations are greater, although the equally long Piccadilly and District lines come a lot further down the list. The poor old Circle line is the slowest, its infrequent trains held up by services on other lines in endless queues round a never-ending loop, but it's still faster than your average car (just about).
Speed limit on roads in central London: 30mph
Central: 34 miles in 81 minutes (25 mph) Metropolitan: 28 miles in 70 minutes (24 mph) Jubilee: 24 miles in 62 minutes (23 mph) Waterloo & City: 1½ miles in 4 minutes (22½ mph) Victoria: 13 miles in 36 minutes (22 mph) Northern: 23 miles in 69 minutes (20 mph) Bakerloo: 14 miles in 43 minutes (19½ mph) Piccadilly: 32 miles in 100 minutes (19 mph) District: 27 miles in 88 minutes (18½ mph) Hammersmith & City: 17 miles in 58 minutes (17½ mph) East London: 4 miles in 15 minutes (16 mph) Circle: 13 miles in 56 minutes (14 mph) Average speed on roads in central London: 11mph
Tube quiz (5)All change (Just the one problem today, but it's a really tough one) The problem: There are 12 tube lines in London, plus the Docklands Light Railway. Your challenge is to identify a journey that travels along each of these 13 lines once, and travels exactly one station along each line.
Note: No walking from one station to another is permitted. You may not use transport other than these 13 lines (no buses, taxis, Thameslink, etc). After travelling one station along any line, you must change to another line.
Example: Start at Farringdon, travel on the Circle Line to Kings Cross, travel on the Northern line to Euston, travel on the Victoria line to Warren Street... and now you're stuck because you've already travelled on both the lines passing through this station.
The solution: As far as I know, this problem has a unique solution (apart from a couple of different options for the first and last stations on the route).
A hint to get you started: If you think about it, there's a couple of one-stop journeys that must be part of the correct route.
Chance of you lot coming up with the correct answer: Very small. Go on, prove me wrong. (Bloody impressive James, spot on: Well done. And all while the rest of us were asleep.)
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Tube watch (4)Ten ways to reduce tube overcrowding • Encourage short journeys: turn up the heating in the summer and install air-conditioning in the winter.
• Increase overground capacity: double the number of buses and increase the Congestion Charge to £50.
• Reflect best practice in mainline rail travel: demand seat reservations and pre-booking for all tube journeys.
• Increase available space in carriages: confiscate all rucksacks and wheelie suitcases at the ticket barriers.
• Introduce selection: demand that passengers pass an entrance exam before issuing them with travelcards.
• Reduce demand: shut down the whole system, because if there are no trains there'll be no overcrowding.
• Establish a culture of fear: place an accordion player on every train, or hang up gasmasks in every carriage.
• Reduce passenger numbers: install razor-sharp sliding doors on trains and remove all safety notices.
• Relocate excess capacity: swap station names to confuse foreign tourists, for example Chigwell with Oxford Circus.
• Invest in tube infrastructure: sorry, I've been trying to keep ridiculous and improbable suggestions off this list.
Tube geek (4)London's busiest stations Lurking deep on the tube's official website lie a mountain of facts and figures on a page called London Underground performance update. Click on 'customer metrics', and then 'entries and exits', and you'll find detailed information on passenger numbers for every tube station on the network (well, all except three, for some reason). I now know, for example, that I'm one of 2188 passengers who enter my local station during the morning rush hour, whereas 87653 people exit Oxford Circus station every Saturday. Anorak heaven.
I've been busy investigating the total number of passengers using each station during 2001, attempting to come up with some sort of league table. The figures are for passengers entering or leaving the station only, not those changing lines, so some stations are even busier than shown. And sadly Victoria is one of the three stations with missing data, which is a shame because I think it's top of the list...
More than thirty million: Victoria (millions), Kings Cross St Pancras (79 million), Waterloo (66 million), Oxford Circus (64 million), Liverpool Street (54 million), Baker Street (43 million), London Bridge (38 million), Leicester Square (35 million), Piccadilly Circus (33 million), Tottenham Court Road (32 million), Paddington (31 million) More than fifteen million: Bond Street (28 million), Green Park, Euston, Hammersmith, South Kensington, Holborn, Finsbury Park, Bank, Charing Cross, Moorgate, Earl's Court, Tower Hill, Canary Wharf, Embankment, Brixton, Knightsbridge, Stratford, Covent Garden, Farringdon, Camden Town (15 million)
Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the list, below are London's least used tube stations. Most are on the edges of the tube network, although there are three poorly used stations in Zone 2 on the East London line, all of which are under threat of closure. The far reaches of the Metropolitan line are rather quiet, particularly the station that was my local while I was growing up. But it's the Hainault loop of the Central line that's especially underused, which would explain why a whole stretch of it shuts down at 8pm every evening. I guess everyone in Chigwell has a car...
Less than a million: West Finchley (947099), Hillingdon, Rotherhithe, South Ruislip, Northwood Hills, Chorleywood, Kenton, Canons Park, Heathrow Terminal 4, West Harrow, Wapping, Watford, Mill Hill East, West Ruislip, Ickenham, North Ealing, Upminster Bridge, South Kenton, Chesham, Moor Park (520850) Less than half a million: Barkingside (471998), Croxley (447897), Ruislip Gardens (432271), Theydon Bois (388698), Shoreditch (327844), Fairlop (327036), Roding Valley (175851), Grange Hill (156065), Chigwell (110556)
Tube quiz (4)Name that station (2) 1) Name the only station served by six tube lines.
2) Name the only station served by five tube lines.
The following five old stations have been renamed. What are they called now? 3) Post Office
4) Aldersgate
5) Dover Street
6) Trafalgar Square/Strand
7) Charing Cross
And I don't claim that these last three questions are original, but they're good all the same. 8) Name the only tube line that interchanges with every other tube line.
9) Name the only tube station which shares none of the letters in its name with the word 'mackerel'.
10) It's possible to take one tube train and travel through ten consecutive stations all starting with the same letter of the alphabet. Where?
ND1) Stand in Trafalgar Square
4) Stand inside the Dome
9) Get out of the country altogether (dg's choice 2002/03)
On the 3rd day before Christmas...
Cup Routes: the capital celebrates
It's time for diamond geezer to spend a week exploring London, by bus.
Famous places within 15 minutes walk of my house
I got myself a decent map and walked up Marshgate Lane to find the exact location of the centre of the stadium for myself. It's just past Knobs Hill Road, right opposite Parkes Galvanizing Ltd, where a couple of small roads run off the lane onto the Marshgate Trading Estate. Here you'll find a company that hires skips, a giant nondescript warehouse, the odd big family business, a company that prepares caviar and smoked salmon and, right in the middle, a Mercedes Service Centre. This is where the javelins will land, where 3000 perfectly-choreographed local schoolchildren will tapdance through the opening ceremony and where all the medals will be presented. I was disturbed to see three Mercedes flags flying over the exact spot - it looks like the Germans have staked their claim for the top of the medal table already.
This weekend, as a genuine local resident, I've also attended one of the public consultation events for the Olympic masterplan. The Lower Lea Valley regeneration team have been setting up their display boards in a variety of community-type institutions, asking people what they think about the plans and the legacy to be left behind for the local area. It turned out that most of the display is available on the internet anyway, but there were some nice extras including some fantastically detailed maps of the minutiae of regeneration and a 3D model to bring the plans to life (pictured left). The organising staff seemed keen to welcome us all, but even keener to get at least one person present to fill in one of their less-than-thrilling questionnaires. I would have spoken to somebody official about the plans, except that one of them was being persistently harangued by a pessimist explaining how the Dome was a white elephant and the whole bid thing would undoubtedly be a financial disaster, while most of the rest of the staff were too busy trying to set up a Powerpoint presentation. At least it was encouraging to see my community's future being taken seriously for once. Whether the Olympics arrive here in 2012 or not, local regeneration is on track.
OK, so this may look like the same old photograph of the run-down Big Breakfast house that I've shown you before, and indeed it is, but what's new is that London's Olympic Stadium is now planned to be built less than a javelin's throw away on the other side of that row of trees. It's all bloody exciting, for us locals at least. This redevelopment depends on London actually being selected by the IOC as the winning host city for the 2012 Games, of course, but detailed new proposals announced this week bring that dream a little closer to reality. And much closer to my house.
To your right is another photograph showing the heart of the proposed Olympic zone. This is the Greenway, a footpath slicing through East London atop the legendary Northern Outfall Sewer. Today a tree-lined haven for local wildlife, tomorrow the focal point of global consciousness (maybe - terms and conditions apply). Just to the right of the photo will be the warm-up tracks where the world's finest athletes will prepare for their few seconds in the spotlight. And just to the left, opening ceremonies, Olympic flames, 100m finals, track and field, drug scandals, medal ceremonies, marathon finishes and 100% total history. Bloody hard to picture it all at the moment, though.
This miserable bunch of warehouses close to the Bow Flyover is scheduled to become home to the entire world's media throughout that extra-special Olympic fortnight. There'll be a huge International Broadcast Centre located here plus an only-slightly-less-huge Press Centre, both less than 5 minutes walk from my house. To think, I might catch Sue Barker nibbling a McChicken sandwich in the drive-thru by the roundabout, or bump into the Bolivian equivalent of Gary Lineker buying deodorant in the nearby 24 hour Tesco. I'll have the perfect Grandstand view.
I've recommended two magazines this year. The first was Word magazine, a monthly mix of music, books, gadgets, entertainment and culture. Started off really well back in February, but I've recently been rather disappointed and disillusioned by Word's evolution into a music, music, DVD and music magazine. Pity. And the second magazine was Smoke.
Just before four this afternoon three ageing sisters appeared in the sky over London. Office workers stood respectfully on rooftops, pointing eastward as the first Concorde appeared. A second silver speck grew slowly in size to the south, and finally a third joined the procession across the capital. Nose down, landing gear down, engines blaring, the three planes cast their shadow across the city for the last time. I watched all three pass by, heading gracefully into the sun, towards Heathrow and into retirement. And then they were gone, and only a lump in the throat remained.
The Weather Project
I visited the Tate Modern yesterday for an early view of this new meteorological phenomenon. An enormous yellow sun now beams out from the eastern wall of the Turbine Hall. Clouds of fine mist hang in the air and the ceiling above is completely covered by mirrors, doubling the height of the sky. The whole place feels like a cathedral to the great sun god, which must be why half the population of London has come along to worship. Down on the floor a congregation has gathered, most gawping in awe and wonder at the great solar disc, others lying prostrate to gaze upon their distant reflection in the mirrors above.
Tube watch (5) This week terminates here
