Earlier this morning the sun was eclipsed by the moon. You missed it, didn't you? I know you'll be out there later, soaking up the sun and basking in the 30° heatwave. But, as for the last solar* eclipse* that you* could ever see in* this country*, you slept through it, didn't you? Never mind, you probably missed nothing.
Eclipses are all about shadows. Over the past couple of hours the moon's shadow has swept over the North Atlantic from Scotland to Greenland. Skywatchers in favoured locations will have seen a 'ring of fire', created because the moon is slightly too far away in its orbit to completely obscure the sun. However, the moon wasn't the only thing obscuring the sun this morning...
I got up ridiculously early to go out and watch the eclipse. This was only ever going to be partial in London, but I reckoned 69%-obscured would be well worth seeing anyway. I headed out to the Greenway, a raised footpath through East London, to try to get a good view. However, the first part of the eclipse happened before dawn, meaning that the sun was obscured by the horizon and therefore invisible. Streaks of sunlight shone up into the dawn sky, but of the sun itself there was no sign. Sunrise came at 4:51, at which point the sun rose majestically above the horizon, with a huge chunk bitten out of its left hand side. However, it's nigh impossible to get a clear view of the horizon in central London, so this early part of the spectacle was obscured by houses, factories and tower blocks, and I saw none of it. The sky above me slowly brightened, blue and cloudless. A glorious sunny day was in prospect. The eclipsed sun rose slowly higher in the sky. However, the entire eastern horizon was obscured by fluffy grey cloud, so I saw nothing. It was all sadly reminiscent of the total solar eclipse four years ago in Cornwall - another solar spectacle blotted out by the weather.
Finally, with just twenty minutes of the partial eclipse remaining, I caught sight of a deep red crescent through a gap in the clouds. At last. Less than half of the sun's disc was still eclipsed by this time, but the sight was pretty impressive, even if the photograph I managed to take wasn't. Ten seconds later the clouds were back in the way again and the eclipse continued unseen. Slowly the sun edged out of the moon's shadow, until just a tiny sliver was missing from the left hand side. At 5:30, just as the eclipse ended, the sun finally rose up above cloud level, ready to shine down for the rest of the day. Too late, it was all over. All over until 2090.
It's going to be a fantastic summer's day today. The sun will be beating down on the UK, 100% visible. But I saw it earlier, when it wasn't all there. And you didn't.
Eviction 1 Big Brother House, this is Davina: The phone lines are closed, the votes have been counted and verified, and I can reveal that the first person to be evicted from the BB house is...
First housemate out: Anouska, with 46% of the vote.
Blimey: OK, so I was wrong. All the bookies were wrong. My faith in human nature is almost restored as the 34DD cup is evicted ahead of the IQ of 130. The Sun will be gutted that its Operation Save Anouska has failed dismally, although I bet she appears on Page 3 before the end of next week. Jon gets to stay, although I suspect the public are only keeping him in for geeky comedy value. I really must buy some more Celebdaq shares in Mr Tickle immediately, £2.49 and rising.
Evicted next week? Sissy out please.
Reminder 1: There's an annulareclipse tomorrow morning at sunrise. The UK weather forecast looks really good, except in north-west Scotland which is the one place that really matters. You can read the latest information here, and there's an excellent graphic here showing how the moon's shadow will cross the Earth early tomorrow morning. Check out the eclipse if you can. It's not to be missed.
Reminder 2: Today on ITV at 5pm it's the very last ever episode of Crossroads. I know there have been two previous last-ever episodes, but this one really is the end. You may never usually watch such lowculture television but, trust me, the twisted ending they've dreamed up is jaw-dropping. Checkout the final scene. It's not to be missed.
Eviction 1? Up for eviction tonight: Anouska, Federico, Jon and Scott.
Who do I want out?Anouska.
What is the reason for my nomination? Sorry, but I have no desire to be the continued target of countless Google searches seeking clothesless visual representations of the shallow one.
Who will actually be evicted?Jon And why's that? Jon has an IQ over 100. Worse, Jon has been busy demonstrating that he has an IQ over 100 by performing science experiments, discussing Lord of the Rings in enormous depth, expounding on deep mathematical theories and analysing alternate Star Wars universes. This is not a good game plan when your every move is being watched by tabloid newspapers ready to mock what their readers cannot understand. If there's one organ you should never whip out on Big Brother, it's your brain.
You decide.
1Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, 2located in the Himalayan mountains 3on the border between Nepal and Tibet. 4To be exact, you'll find it at latitude 27º59’16" N and longitude 86º55’40" E. 5In Nepal the mountain is called Sagarmatha, 6which means "goddess of the sky". 7In Tibet the mountain is called Chomolungma, 8which means "mother goddess of the universe". 9The British gave the mountain the rather dull name of Peak b in 1841, 10then renamed it the equally uninspired Peak 15 in 1854. 11The mountain was finally renamed Mount Everest in 1865 12in honour of Sir George Everest, the surveyor-general of India, 13who was the first person to produce detailed maps of the Indian subcontintent.
14Mount Everest is 8848 metres high 15(that's 29,029 feet), 16or at least it was that height until it was measured again by satellite in 1999 17and found to be 6 feet (2 metres) higher. 18The mountain is still rising between 4 and 10 centimetres each year, 19even though it was first formed over 60 million years ago. 20Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa is actually the world's tallest free-standing mountain, 21rising from plains at approximately 2000 metres right up to its summit at 5 895 metres. 22Meanwhile Mauna Loa, an extinct volcano in Hawaii, is the tallest mountain in the world at 9170 metres, 23including the 5000 metres down to the ocean floor.
24Everest was first climbed exactly fifty years ago on May 29th 195325on a British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt. 26He decided the team should climb via the South Col route in Nepal 27because the Chinese had taken control of Tibet three years earlier and put a stop to all ascents from the North. 28Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon were chosen to make the first assault on the summit, 29but this pair had to turn back because of faulty oxygen equipment. 30The second attempt was made by 39-year old Tenzing Norgay from Nepal and and 34-year old Edmund Hillary, a beekeeper from New Zealand. 31At 11:30am they became the first people ever to reach the summit, 32with Hillary getting to the top just a few steps ahead of Tenzing. 33They stayed at the summit for 15 minutes, 34leaving behind four flags as evidence of their success. 35News of the historic ascent reached Britain three days later, just in time for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
36Everest is best climbed in April or May before the monsoon begins. 37Since 1953 more than 1300 climbers have climbed to the summit, 38with ages ranging from sixteen to seventy. 39At least 100 people have perished trying to climb the mountain, 40most commonly by avalanches, falls in crevasses, cold, or the effects of thin air. 41The temperature can drop as low as –72°C at the summit. 42The record for most ascents belongs to Sherpa Ang Rita 43who, as of this week, has reached the summit an astonishing thirteen times. 44The first woman to climb Everest was Junko Tabei of Japan in 1975. 45The mountain has been ascended without oxygen (first in 1978) 46single-handed (first in 1980) 47and in less than 11 hours (earlier this week), 48and descended on skis (first in 1970) 49and by snowboard (first in 2001). 50Attempts by two teams of climbers to reach the summit on the 50th anniversary of the original ascent, however, had to be abandoned because of high winds.
OK, so I've done this post before, a couple of months ago, but you should read it again today. Read it here. Do not, under any circumstances, have heterosexual penetrative intercourse today without the use of contraception. Unprotected sex today will mean an unhappy and maladjusted life for your son or daughter in the future, and a lifetime of psychologists' bills to pay. Why? Just check the date exactly nine months from today. No child should ever have to suffer with a birthday like that. Please do not leap into bed today.
This has been another public service announcement. Thank you for listening.
I don't know whether you've noticed, because it's not exactly high profile in the media, but we're less than three days away from the last solar*eclipse* that you*will ever see in*this country*.
*That's the last eclipse of the sun you will ever see. Total lunar eclipses are rather more common. There was one a fortnight ago, for example, and the next total lunar eclipse visible from the UK is on November 9th this year. Common stuff.
*I'm not talking about partial eclipses here either. They're relatively common too. The next partial solar eclipse visible from the UK will be on the morning of October 3rd 2005, and then another less than six months later on March 29th 2006.
*I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you'll have died before the next total solar eclipse crosses the UK on September 23rd 2090. If you're under 13 years old and planning to live to the age of 100 with good eyesight then perhaps you'll see that one. But, realistically, for most of you, this Saturday is your last chance.
*That's mainland Britain. Sail off the northwest coast of Scotland to the limit of UK territorial waters on March 20th 2015 and you'll see a fine total eclipse of the sun. Stay on dry land, however, and there's 75 more years more to wait.
*I'm assuming you live in the UK of course. If you're in Antarctica (unlikely, I know) there's a total eclipse later this year on November 23rd. Parts of Africa, Turkey and Russia get a total eclipse on March 29th 2006, and one crosses the USA on August 21st 2017. In the UK though, after this week, you've missed out. For good.
An annular eclipse of the sun is visible from the north-west of Scotland at sunrise on Saturday morning, 31st May 2003. Inverness, Cape Wrath, the Hebrides, the Orkneys and the Shetlands should all get a good view. The eclipse is also visible from Iceland, parts of Greenland and across the surrounding Arctic Ocean. Reykjavik's probably the very best place to see it from, but it's probably a bit late to book a flight there now. It's very rare to have a solar eclipse in the middle of the night (think about it) but, because this is the Arctic during the summer, perfectly possible. The sun's disc won't be completely obscured because this is only an annular eclipse, and instead there'll be a very narrow ring of sunlight left around the edge. This happens because the Moon is slightly too far away in its orbit to cover the Sun completely. The annular eclipse will be very impressive of course, but it won't be the stunning spectacle of a total eclipse.
This solar eclipse is partial across most of northern Europe and northern Asia, including the UK. Over here you'll need to be up at sunrise to see it, which at this time of the year means just before 5am (Inverness 4:30am, London 4:51am). Obviously you won't be able to see the eclipse before sunrise. Look to the east (very carefully, because you could burn your retina out) and you should see the Moon obscuring most of the sun. (Or, if you're unlucky, you'll see clouds obscuring everything, which is what completely ruined our last total eclipse in Cornwall on August 11th 1999). Make sure you have a good view of the horizon, because the sun will (of course) be very low in the sky. This eclipse is only 69% complete in London, but 92% in York and 93% in Edinburgh. Full information on times and percentages here.
In London the partial eclipse is finished by 5:30am, and even across northern Scotland everything is all over by 5:45am. Just a few hours later this Saturday morning most of the country will then wake up, having missed everything. That's having missed the last solar*eclipse* that they*could ever have seen in*this country*. Don't be one of them. Go on, wake up early and go out and have a look. Or stay up really late on Friday night and watch it all before you go to bed. It'll be worth checking the weatherforecast first, of course, just in case it's wall-to-wall cloud. But, see you out there?
Sorry to disappoint the hordes of people arriving here from Google in search of (and I need to be very careful how I phrase this) pictures of a certain Big Brother housemate whose name starts with A with no clothes on. There are no such pictures here. You probably want something like this. Or why not just go and buy a copy of the Sun every day for the next 9 weeks? And a man-sized box of tissues.
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.
Today I'm celebrating the 16000th visitor to this site. Double 8000. I'm pleased to see that half of those 16000 visitors have come here via links on other blogs. So, who are my Big Bloggers? Here's my Top 20 linking blogs, by volume of visitors clicking here from there:
It's very tight at the top, but arseblogjust manages to hold off the temporarily mothballed swish cottage. There have been five new entries since the last time I compiled this Top 20, topped off by samizdata slamming straight in at number 3. The four other new entries are to be found at positions 12, 18, 19 and 20. Meanwhile, lurking just outside the Top 20, there's london calling, linkmachinego and besty's blog. Thanks to all twenty-plus of you.
Why not click off and see what some of my Big Bloggers have to say on their sites. Just don't forget to click back here again afterwards...
It's back. 64 days of meaningless addiction. Excellent.
Anouska*: She did an A level exam in Sociology last Wednesday. Started quiet, has got much louder.
Cameron: Living in the Orkneys must be very similar to being isolated in the BB house (only considerably more scenic).
Federico*: He's a waiter, and he's packed a pair of handcuffs in his suitcase. That's two blokes from Scotland then.
Gos: He's a chef. It would be impolite to say that he looks like a chef too, so I won't.
Jon*: Twin, and seems very sure of himself. That's two blokes from West London then.
Justine: Another twin. Seems overbearingly nice and polite at the moment. Barely registering.
Nush: What are the chances of having two contestants called Anushka? Has a manically emotional mother. Might win.
Ray: This year's cheeky chappie. I suspect you'll either love him or hate him. I'll give him four weeks.
Scott*: What's a normal bloke doing in BB4? Trying to find himself, by the sound of it.
Sissy: Scouse loudmouth and fashion graduate. She's not great, she grates. Needs evicting.
Steph: It's her birthday next week. I bet C4 are more likely to select you if you have a birthday in May, June or July.
Tania: Clothes, nails, shopping, labels, fags, yah, darling, ciao. Ciao, hopefully.
*Up for eviction next Friday. Anouska must go.
Matrix Reloaded Plot: very deep, but not very broad
Religious symbolism: very messianic
Effects: very very special indeed
Keanu: very neo-classic
Chocolate cake: very desirable, can I have a slice?
Method of passing a Friday afternoon: very adequate
Every day I get to stare at a blank white rectangle on my computer screen. Every day I stare at that rectangle and wonder how best to fill it. At my disposal are the 26 letters on my keyboard (plus numbers, punctuation and the space bar) which I can arrange in a variety of different orders, some of which might even make sense. Along with the text I could chuck in some weblinks, I could even throw in some pictures, but the space is all mine to fill in any way I choose.
I could...
... write something fantastic and original that will be linked to by websites around the world.
... write something mediocre and ordinary about my life that doesn't even raise one comment.
... write something that gives me personal blog satisfaction.
... copy a chunk of witty text off someone else's site in the hope that everyone thinks I wrote it.
... republish something I wrote on here six months ago in the hope that nobody notices it's a repeat.
... list a lot of other websites that've come up with something much more interesting than anything I could think of.
... write fifteen paragraphs that take all evening to compose.
... write just two lines and then go out and get a life.
... write something with a spelling or grammatical mistake that that people will delight in picking me up on.
... write a load of gibberish khyygrwsvj8gb grcvrdo kjkiuyb 5b'ngrvi9x merely by hitting keys at random.
... write something controversial that ends up getting lots of derogatory comments.
... write something controversial merely to try to get lots of comments, derogatory or otherwise.
... write something cathartic that I've never told anyone else before.
... write something that breaks a confidence, spills a secret and loses a friend.
... write something that causes me to lose me my job. (In fact, if I'd written the wrong thing on here last week I could easily have lost my job and ended up pilloried on the TV news. I didn't, of course.)
... just fill the space by writing something about writing something (although I'd never do that, of course, because it would be cheap and easy).
In short, a blog is a blank canvas ready and waiting each day to be filled by creative content. The only limits here are time and imagination. I reckon the best blogs are those where you never quite know what someone is going to post next, but you know that whatever it is it'll be worth reading. They're the blogs I go back and read to time and time again, anyway. And I like writing my blog because I never quite know what I'm going to write next either.
There you go, that's another daily white rectangle filled. I wonder what I'm going to write tomorrow...
Glamorgan Dragons. Since when have county cricket clubs had stupid names? Yorkshire Phoenix. I suspect I'm extremely late (like years late) in noticing this, but who on earth had the ridiculous idea of giving cricket clubs daft nicknames. Lancashire Lightning. Makes them sound like third rate American football teams. Northamptonshire Steelbacks. The extended names don't seem to be particularly well promoted either, which suggests the county sides are rightly embarrassed by them. Gloucestershire Gladiators. There must be some overpaid PR company out there laughing their socks off. Somerset Sabres. Whatever happened to the demure, upright, traditional, very British game of cricket? Essex Eagles. Shot down in flames. Kent Spitfires.
I have to confess that I consider cricket to be the most useless, pointless sport in the entire world. Two teams go and stand in a field for up to five days. Three people position themselves right in the middle of the field and run around occasionally. One team stands and watches, just in case a small ball is ever hit in their direction. If it is, they throw it back. Every five minutes or so they walk to the opposite side of the field, merely to walk back again five minutes later. The second team just sits at the edge of the field and watches everyone else until it's their turn to go into the middle and be watched themselves. When one of the people in the middle makes a mistake they have to walk to the edge of the field and start watching again. When enough people on both sides have made enough mistakes the game is over, except that this is England so it's probably started raining by then and the game is therefore a draw.
I don't care that cricket may be a magnificent game of skill and tactics. I don't care that cricket is a traditional part of the English summer, except perhaps in the same way that wasps, hayfever and hosepipe bans are a traditional part of the English summer. I don't care that a cricketer won I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here and may have made the sport popular again. I'm not impressed by any game that takes days to play but whose 'highlights' can be edited to just 30 seconds for the evening news. I was delighted when the BBC lost the rights to show cricket recently, because it meant there's now a fair chance of switching on BBC2 in the summer and there being a programme on that's actually worth watching, not just a lot of interminable standing around, soporific commentary and polite applause.
You're right, I was rubbish at the game when I was at school. However, cricket was a game I was never ashamed to be rubbish at. Oh look, I've dropped the ball again. Ah well, who cares? I'll just stand here in the outfield getting a suntan until it's my turn to sit on the boundary and get a suntan over there instead. I don't dislike cricket because I was rubbish at it. I dislike cricket because it's boring.
These 'new' county cricket team names, they've got it all wrong. Names like Hawks, Sharks and Lightning suggest a fast-moving exciting game of cut-throat danger. Nothing could be further from the truth. What the counties really need are new, more appropriate names. Middlesex Tortoises. Sussex Sloths. Lancashire Lethargy. Middlesex Monotony. Glamorgan Drag-Ons. Actually, looks like they've got the last one right already...
(...or CNPS as afficionados call it) is an extremely simple game. The aim of CNPS is to spot every number on the conventional old-style UK car number plate, in order, from 1 to 999. Simple. Easy. Addictive. You have been warned.
The official rules of CPNS are here, on the Richard Herring website. They're well worth a read. Richard's been playing the game for six months, and so far he's got as far as 120. Here's a report explaining how he started, and here's a report from six weeks down the line, still struggling to find number 16.
I must confess that I've played this game too. I started at Christmas 1995 by spotting a 1, then spent an entire two-hour car journey completely failing to spot a 2. "Surely," I thought, "Surely it can't be that difficult to spot a 2." And I was hooked.
The numbers from 1-20 are always the hardest to spot because for the last twenty years they've only been issued on personalised number plates. In fact it's the numbers from 10-20 that are the hardest to spot because they're the personalised numberplate numbers that nobody really wants. After 20 it gets easier, but not much easier.
On average, you should spot each numberplate number approximately once in every thousand(ish) plates. Things rarely work out averagely though, so sometimes you spot the next number within minutes of the last, while at other times you may suffer from week after frustrating week of desperate non-appearance. Even worse, you keep on spotting the number after the one you really want, just when you don't need it, then lose sight of it completely as soon as you do finally need it. Go read Richard's stuff - he's been there. Overall the game should require sight of about 10002 = one million cars to complete. It's definitely not a commitment to be undertaken lightly.
It took me almost four years to progress from that initial 1 to my final 999 (which was on an F-reg Landrover on the A14 just north of Ipswich, if you care). I'm glad I finished before I moved to London, because I see far fewer cars now on my daily Underground commute. I'm also glad I finished before they brought in this new numberplate numbering system. Sure, 01, 02, 03... may be a much easier start, but the rest of the game is going to get a whole lot harder as three-digit-number plates become a thing of the past.
If you're interested in playing (go on, it's not as sad as it sounds) you can sign up here on the CNPS website. Compete against other players and try to get on the leaderboard. It's more interesting and addictive than it sounds, honest. Just don't expect to finish any time soon.
As Richard says: As a CNP Spotter you must abide by the CNPS code. "I promise to do my best at spotting numbers consecutively, to do my duty no matter how boring and to never, ever cheat in the game or lie about where I’ve got up to, because I will only be cheating myself in the end." Say this out loud before you start and at any point when you feel you are tempted to cheat or stop playing because the game is rubbish.
Sunday, May 18, year of one's reign 51 One was woken up by the arrival of the newspapers. It appears that Edward has been embarassing us in public again. Decided to wear that really awful shade of bright peach today, just to annoy Phillip. One of one's corgis was sick on the footman's shoes - how one laughed.
Next election minus 760 days Rang George. He was out. Rang Gordon, then put the phone down when he answered ha ha. Invented a new way of shortening hospital waiting lists. Threw darts at Clare Short's resignation letter again.
Day 1Created light. Saw that it was good. Decided it should travel really really fast. Day 2Created heaven. Saw that it was good. The neighbours sound a bit loud though. Day 3Created land and sea. Saw that it was good. There are some really pretty beaches where the two meet. Day 4Created the stars and planets. Saw that it was good. Later in the afternoon invented astronomy. Day 5Created fish and birds. Saw that it was good. Hid a few dinosaur fossils in the ground to confuse future scientists. Day 6Created loads of animals. Saw that it was good. Also created a couple of humans. Decided to give them free will. Day 7Took the day off after a hard week. Beginning to wonder if the 'human' project wasn't a big mistake.
I can't claim to have found anyone that famous who writes a blog, but I was delighted to discover (via A Blog's Life) that Richard Herring is now writing one. Richard was half of comedy duo Lee and Herring who did the excellent Fist of Fun on BBC2 back in the 90s. He really was famous back then, in the right circles, honest. He has a wicked and withering sense of humour, and continues to perform stand-up comedy around the country. If you're still scratching your head wondering who he is, never mind, just rejoice in the fact that Richard is writing his daily thoughts online and they're an excellent read. His page (called Warming Up) isn't organised quite like a normal blog because there's a separate page each day, but it's definitely worth the time and effort to explore his archive. I can heartily recommend Richard's thoughts on ageing, babies, sweets and Consecutive Number Plate Spotting for a start. But more on CNPS tomorrow...
So, at last, the Government is backing a bid for the 2012Olympics 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 importanttransportlinks 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.
A few months ago we were up for the treble.
Two months ago we messed up in Europe.
A fortnight ago we screwed up the Premiership.
I hope we don't FaC up this afternoon...
1) Survival: For a large proportion of the population of the world, there is no spare time in which to get bored. In the developing world many people spend all their waking hours living hand to mouth merely to survive1. They may be out working in the fields all day long, returning exhausted to their partner2 only at nightfall. They work far harder than you or I to ensure that their families3 are provided daily with meagre rations and basic shelter. They rely on friends4 living in the same village for childcare support, the pooling of talents and for help when the harvest fails. They've never even heard of the internet5, not that they have any hope of even affording a computer, let alone plugging it in and connecting to a non-existent telephone network. They work6 not for job satisfaction nor for the money a job brings but because they have to. They can never afford the luxury of seeing any of their animals as pets7, because one day that goat is going to be lunch. They don't have a TV8, and to be honest the TV companies don't mind because these people could never afford any of the products advertised in the commercial breaks anyway. They treat their house9 as a shelter, not as an artistic canvas. Their gardens9 are tended with great effort and care, growing vegetables as a staple part of the family's diet, and not ornamental flowers to decorate the dining table. There may not be anywhere nearby that sells alcohol10, but they can knock together a homebrew based on local produce that'll knock your head off.
These people may never have heard of Peter Gabriel or Blur, but the tribal village music11 they make is so good that Peter Gabriel and Blur have heard of them. They exercise12 each day through necessity not choice, and their athletic prowess often puts better-fed nations to shame. Their gossip13 is only about people who live within walking distance, which is far more interesting than speculating about J-Lo and Eminem anyway. Their books14 are verbal, with legends and stories passed down from generation to generation. They live hundreds or even thousands of miles from the nearest mobile phone15 transmitter, but the ancient art of conversation works just as well when you actually talk to everyone you know during the course of a day anyway. Their culture16 is far older than ours, although our multinational commercial culture probably has designs on replacing theirs one day in the near future. These people never go on holiday17, but who'd want to when you already live somewhere that the rest of the world longs to visit on vacation anyway. They have no need of world news18, because they already know all the news that is important in their world. They cook their food19 merely to stay alive, not to impress those eating it with culinary flair and use of exotic ingredients. And they're always learning20 practical and useful things every day, just nothing you could test in a written examination.
Not all of the developing world lives the way I've described above, of course, but billions of people worldwide are forced to work from dawn to dusk merely to support themselves and their families. Boredom just doesn't even enter the equation. Just remember how fortunate you are to have the technology, the literacy and the time to be able to read this page. And please spare a thought (orevensomecash) for those less fortunate.
2) Partner: There is no better way of filling time than to share your life with the partner of your choice. Somebody who's always there. Somebody who's snuggled right up close to you in the early hours, somebody to discuss the newspapers with over breakfast, somebody who can hold the stepladder while you paint the ceiling the colour of their choice, somebody to sit next to on public transport without the risk of some unstable nutter sitting next to you instead, somebody to ring up from the supermarket to ask whether they prefer vanilla or strawberry, somebody to try not to be late home for, somebody to disappear into the bedroom with for an hour of filling time, somebody to bounce your thoughts off without wasting them all, somebody to hold onto during the sad part of tonight's TV drama, and somebody to climb into bed with at the end of the day with a sleepy glint in their eye. Sure it can take a long time to hunt down that perfect partner in the first place, but that's nothing compared to the lifetime of shared experience and mutual support if you make the right choice.
3) Family: It's all too easy to turn a partner into a family. All it takes is two minutes of unprotected sex, planned or otherwise, and hey presto nine months later your life is changed forever. The two of you used to have a social life, going out to meet friends, holidaying abroad when the fancy took you, waking up at ten on a Sunday morning but staying in bed til noon, that sort of thing. Then suddenly you get to take four kilograms of screaming flesh home from the hospital and your life is never your own again. You used to enjoy dining out, now your offspring is dining on you. You used to have disposable income, now you merely have disposable nappies. You used to go out four times a week, now you can only go out if the babysitter's available. You used to be able to sleep through the night, now you're forever woken up by something that can't. Never mind, babies do eventually grow up and leave home, but not before they've learnt how to throw spectacular tantrums, developed an expensive ballet habit, coerced you into doing all their homework for them, spent a couple of years sulking in their bedrooms experimenting with hairdye and acne cream, and trebled your car insurance. Just make sure that, by the time your youngest child finally moves out of the family home and your life returns to normal, you haven't forgotten what normal used to be more than two decades ago. And don't forget to explain to your offspring the importance of contraception, although children often don't realise how heartfelt your warning was until it's too late and the whole cycle has started again.
4) Friends: Nowadays most people take out personal insurance against getting bored. This insurance comes in the form a group of people we call 'friends'. Friends are like-minded souls who like to fill their time in the same sorts of ways that we do. They enjoy going to the same sorts of films that we do, going on the same sorts of holidays that we do, eating out at the same sorts of restaurants that we do and laughing at the same sorts of jokes that we do. They're not afraid to tell us that we really shouldn't have put that particular selection of clothes on this morning, or that we really shouldn't have said what we just said to someone else last night. If our Thursday night is looking particularly featureless they'll happily invite us along to share theirs instead. If we're ever in trouble, or feeling down, they're there for us just as we'd be there for them. Good friends are hard to find, but even harder to lose. Never underestimate their importance in the daily battle against boredom.
5) Internet: You need never be bored and alone with the internet. Go back ten years and your computer was merely a word processor that played games which crashed all the time. Now, thanks to the internet, your computer is a gateway to the world. Type the right combination of letters into that box at the top of the page and you can be transported virtually anywhere, find out almost anything about even your most obscure interest, download that musical masterpiece you never thought you'd hear again, read what other people are thinking, even tell other people what you're thinking and hope they're interested enough to read it. We used to rely on search engines to seek out original and interesting net content. Now it's quite possible to lose yourself wandering around in the blogosphere for hours, clicking from link to link. I'd like to suggest that blogs are the new search engines. Blogs save you, the reader, from all that tedious hassle of trying to think up what to search for in the first place. Instead you merely drop in on a favourite blogger and they've done all the thinking and searching for you. No wonder Google wanted to buy us all up, we're much more interesting, we're much more coherent, we have a better selection of links and we occasionally throw in some original content too.
6) Work: You may think that work is one of the more boring things in your life, but consider how much more boring life is for those without work. These people are trapped forever in a daytime desert, stuck in the limbo between Kilroy and Countdown, waiting for everyone else to get home from yet another day at work where they were actually doing something. This may be little comfort to those of us who've ever sat doodling desperately to stay awake during an interminable meeting, but our lives would be a whole lot more empty without any meetings to go to at all. However long our working hours may feel, most of us spend no more than 20% of the hours in a year actually at work. Choose your job carefully, if you can, and that 20% can sail by. Choose badly and, well, were you staring at the clock at quarter past three this afternoon, willing the second hand to spin round just that little bit faster? You should check the situations vacant more often - maybe it's time to escape from your vacantsituation.
7) Pets: If your life is empty, fill it with an animal. A cute ickle puppy maybe, just so long as you don't mind it growing into something enormous that demands to take you for walks when you'd rather stay in and watch the television. A titchy tiny kitten perhaps, just so long as you don't mind the ungrateful beast buggering off out of the house all day when its older, returning at night only to eat foul-smelling food and fill the litter tray. A chubby-cheeked hamster in a cage maybe, just so long as you don't mind it waking up in the middle of the night and squeaking round its wheel for hours, only to drop dead after a few weeks well before you've got your money's worth out of it. A tank full of swishy shiny silver fish perhaps, just so long as none of them ever realise the pointlessness of their existence during the 23 hours 58 minutes a day that you're not watching them. Or just go the whole hog and turn your entire house into a farm, just so long as you don't mind living with the smell, the hair, and a mop and bucket.
8) TV & film: From John Logie Baird to Big Brother 4, and from the Lumière Brothers to Matrix Reloaded, it's hard to underestimate the importance of these two rectangular screens in the battle against daily boredom. In just the last 25 years television has gone from a daytime desert to hundreds of digital television channels available on demand. You don't even have to watch any of these channels properly, you can just spend half an hour flicking through them all on your remote, only to find when you complete the loop that a new set of programmes has begun and you can flick round them all again. No great loss, because most of the programmes are repeats anyway, either from 25 years ago or from 3, 6, 9 and 12 hours ago instead. As for films, we recycle these even more than we do TV programmes. We go to the cinema to watch an endless series of remakes and sequels, then six months later we buy them all on DVD to watch over and over again at home, despite the fact we know the entire plot backwards by the fifth run-through and can recite the special feature director's commentary word-for-word by the tenth. We may complain about all the repeats on television, but it seems we're more than happy to repeat our films.
9) House & garden: I live in a rented furnished non-ground-floor flat. In London this may be expensive, but the great advantage is that I don't have to spend any of my time pretending I'm taking part in Changing Rooms or Ground Force. I don't look at the magnolia walls in my living room and decide that I must have some primary colours on the west-facing wall, new curtains, brushed-chrome light fittings and a new dining table. I don't have a garden with hundreds of plants requiring my attention, a lawn to mow and a raft of decking waiting to be installed. In fact, my house and garden place virtually no demands at all on my time, leaving me to spend my weekends as I choose. Meanwhile the rest of you homeowners get to wander from department store to DIY hypermarket instead, and then spend most of your remaining daylight hours attempting to prevent the plants in your garden from growing the way they're naturally programmed to. I know all this mini-empire building makes you feel better, and your lives would feel somehow incomplete if you didn't spend each weekend grouting and hoeing, but at least I get a weekend.
10) Alcohol: It's amazing how much time people are willing to spend sipping fermented plant juice. "Just the one drink for me please". They leave their own house, wander down to a building that looks suspiciously like someone else's house, and then stand around pouring huge amounts of liquid into their mouth. "And another one, why not?" Filling the bladder is a great way of filling time, even if a large proportion of that time does tend to be spent merely emptying the bladder in readiness for the next refuelling. "Go on, I'll have a double" Somehow copious amounts of alcohol never feel quite such a good idea the following morning as they did the previous night, but that rarely stops people going back for more. Regularly. "A pint of the usual thanks" Alcohol - it shortens your day, but it shortens your life too*. "Cheers!" * See also cigarettes, caffeine, cannabis, tranquilisers, and whatever that small white tablet is that degrades your short-term memory.
11) Music: Silence is boring. That's why so many of us choose to fill our silence with music. It beats listening to nextdoor's baby crying, or the endless throb of cars humming down the street outside. Music can be used to fill the background space of the day, flooding the world with melody, rhythm and raw emotion. It's almost certainly impossible to get two people to agree on exactly whatmusicisbrilliant and whatmusicisnot. However, it is possible to collect all the music you think is brilliant, or at least to try to, and then spend hours cataloguing it, rearranging it, reviewing it and revelling in it. A quick look at my record collection reveals that I've got roughly 24 hours of music downloaded on my computer, roughly 2 weeks of CDs arranged meticulously in alphabetical order, and nearly a month's worth of cassettes back from the days when the music was great even if the recording quality wasn't. And when the music starts, I never wanna stop, it's gonna drive me crazy. Music, makes the people, come together.
12) Sport: Organised sport must be one of the most brilliant means ever devised to keep civilisation occupied and busy. It works like this. First, invent some sports. This probably means devising a few simple instructions to explain how to move a ball around in an interesting way. It helps if these sports involve a large number of big teams for long periods of time, because then lots of people can be involved. Make sure that everyone involved spends lots of time practising and exercising, just to keep them permanently exhausted and off the streets. Then organise these sports into leagues, tournaments and competitions at various levels, so that as many people as possible believe that sport is important and has a purpose. Encourage people to identify with one of the better teams in the higher leagues, so that they can talk endlessly to other fans about past performance, future hopes and meaningless statistics. Hold an enormous global competition every four years, encouraging rampant nationalism and sporting pride. And then smile, because you have society subjugated and under control without anyone even realising.
13) Gossip: "Did she?" "She didn't?" "She did!" When you have nothing to say, talk about nothing. People always find the minutiae of other people's lives fascinating, especially when those other people are trying to keep their lives a secret. We live in a tabloid culture where the trivial is important and the important is trivial. Fifty years ago we could only gossip about our immediate friends and neighbours. Now we live in the global village we're more likely to know who Robbie Williams snogged last night than the name of the family in the house next door. Some people fill their days by talking for hours about people they will never meet but feel they know intimately from the pages of Heat, the gossip bible. Of course, the rest of us are above such immature behaviour. However, I bet Popbitch is already in your favourites list...
14) Books: Books are one of humanity's greatest inventions, a simple concept that has lasted for centuries and will survive for many more. Portable knowledge, and the words are still there when you turn back five pages. No technology can beat that. When the world you're living in is getting you down, escape into another world with a good book. Hogwarts perhaps, or Mordor, or Gormenghast, or somewhere through the back of the wardrobe. If I'm reading a good book I usually immerse myself in it completely and devour it in 24 hours or less, which is an excellent way of filling time. Recommended to me lately: American Psycho, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Bleeding London. That could be the rest of the week gone, then.
15) Mobile phones: You can never be bored with a mobile phone in your pocket. (Not unless you've got a prehistoric featureless model, so many commiserations to all my American readers). If you're ever sat on a train bored out of your skull you can ring someone up and tell them you're sat on a train bored out of your skull. If you're ever stuck for hours in a tedious meeting you can text someone sitting on the other side of the table and make rude comments about your boss without your boss noticing. If you're ever standing waiting in a slow-moving queue you can casually play through your entire library of ringtones and watch the rest of the queue melt away. If you're ever early for a doctor's appointment you can always pass the time away playing a mini video game that would have looked substandard on a Commodore PET in 1979. And if all else fails and the boredom appears insurmountable, just set your phone to vibrate, shove the phone down your pocket and ask someone else to ring you up.
16) Culture: For some people, culture is merely that stuff you find in yoghurt. However, for a whole group of people out there, culture is the hub of one's social life. These people divide into culture (active) and culture (passive). The active crowd can be found treading the boards with the amateur dramatic society (that's three months of one's social life gobbled up), or locked away in an attic with the watercolours (that's three months of anti-social life gobbled up instead). The passive crowd are more likely to be tuned into Radio 3 or BBC4, or wandering unnaturally slowly round the Tate Modern with thoughtful looks on their faces. Some can even be found lapping up an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Ah, sorry, did I say culture? Apologies.
17) Travel: If life is boring where you are, why not go and see what life is like somewhere else instead? Holidays are great for filling time. First people spend hours dreaming about where they'd like to go, then they spend even longer surfing the internet trying to find the cheapest way to get there. Unfortunately the cheapest way to get there is often the longest, so they get to spend hours trapped in the departure lounge from hell. And then, for some reason I've never quite understood, they lie on a beach staring at a towel for a fortnight, which to my mind is more boring than almost any other human activity ever invented. Still, it's the perfect opportunity to dream about where they want to spend their next holiday...
18) News: Even when there's nothing happening in your life, there's always plenty happening in someone else's. News exists not only to keep us in touch with the global world around us, but also to remind us that sometimes a boring life is a good life. We don't mind sitting at home reading the paper, just so long as our lives never resemble the disaster in the headlines, or the injustice on the inside pages. The news is great for filling time and staving off boredom because it's always changing and always different (Middle Eastern invasion campaigns excepted). Even if you're a couple who've run out of anything else to say to each other, there's always the news to talk about. And then you can argue about who does the crossword.
19) Food: We all need to eat. However, some of us spend longer preparing what we eat than others. You can buy convenience foods down the supermarket, slam them in the microwave and serve them up in minutes, or else you can take all day to construct an exotic culinary masterpiece from the finest ingredients. For those that follow in the steps of St Delia, meals should always take at least ten times as long to prepare as they do to eat. Even better to grow some of the ingredients yourself, then you can waste even longer digging holes, battling greenfly, coaxing vegetables out of the ground, steaming them over the Aga, then watching in despair as the children push them all to the side of the plate wasted and uneaten. Me, I prefer faster food - well, less than three months in the preparation anyway.
20) Further education: It's Adult Learning week, so I thought I'd start with this one. Many people find lifelong learning gives them the opportunity to develop untapped abilities, and fills a good few hours of their spare time too. It's not all evening classes down at the community centre any more either. Now you can buy a complete pottery kit down the local craft shop and download instructions on how to use it off the internet, which saves all of that unpleasant mixing with other people and drinking nasty instant coffee out of plastic cups. Pick a course, unleash a hidden talent, stay sharp.
Boredom(noun) the state of being bored by something tedious [syn: {ennui}, {tedium}]
How do you fill your time? There really is an awful lot of time in our lives needing to be filled - that's 24 hours daily, 10 thousand minutes weekly, and over 30 million seconds each year. Some people could fill their days many times over, never finding enough hours to get everything done. They wake up, the day passes in a blur of hyperactivity, and hey presto it's time to go to bed again. Lucky them. For other people each day is a potential avalanche of boredom. A featureless morning stretches out into an interminable afternoon, leading perhaps to a non-descript evening, this prescription to be repeated daily. Unlucky them. Most of us usually lie somewhere inbetween those two extremes, the odd seemingly-endless bout of clock-watching balanced out by physical activity and mental stimulation. We get bored sometimes, but we cope.
The human race treats boredom much as it would any other medical condition - it throws huge sums of money at the problem to try to make it go away. Multinational industries thrive on our need to repel boredom, forever attempting to convince us that inactivity is a socially unacceptable state of mind. Many people now grow up unable to cope with genuine boredom, becoming restless and impatient after only a few minutes of enforced silence. Our attention span is diminishing with each generation.
Over the years, people have found many different ways to avoid boredom, many different ways to fill their time. Over the next few days I'm going to list 20 of the most successful methods people use to keep boredom at bay. The list will reflect society's top time-fillers, and not necessarily my own. Maybe the list will be useful next time you're staring at a hole in your life and wondering how to fill it. Or maybe you use a lot of these methods yourself already, in which case you almost certainly won't have time to read any of it. Lucky you.
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 BeigelBake 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 PetticoatLane 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 LondonMosque). 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 yellowbridge 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.
Clue 2: most of you own a modern device that can decode this message
1st to solve the message: Pat from A Blog's Life. Again! Congratulations Pat.
2nd to solve the message: Tony, from the comments box, just three minutes after Pat.
3rd to solve the message: Luca, from Bitful.
TV:Wanted(Channel 4, 1996-7) Take two teams of two contestants and leave them for a week to run around inside the biggest game show studio in the country - namely the whole country itself. Then, for one hour a week, get them to hide in a phonebox live on national television. It was the recipe for one of the most original television programmes of the 90s, and sorely missed. Which 10km x 10km gridsquare would the Runners be hiding in this week? Would the Trackers hunt them down before the end of the show? The show ran for two series and attracted a cult following, which sadly wasn't large enough to save it for a third. At which point Channel 4 rather gave up on the blockbuster game show (see also Treasure Hunt, Don't Forget Your Toothbrush) until the current rather ill-advised Boys And Girls. Wanted - fondly remembered, sadly forgotten.
Music:Now That's What I Call Music(1983-now) Can it really be 20 years since someone first had the bright idea of sticking all your favourite current singles onto one album once every four months? Apparently it can. Way back on the very first NOW in 1983 you could treat yourself to chart-toppers from Phil Collins, Kajagoogoo and Culture Club, classics from Heaven 17, Human League and Howard Jones, and the unexpectedly wonderful Men Without Hats and Will Powers. The first album was the only one without a number, and the first to feature the NOW sunglassed-pig (disappeared thankfully after NOW 5 in July 1985). The three-circled NOW logo lasted from NOW 3 to NOW 17, while the current 3-D style logo kicked in with NOW 20 at Christmas 1991. We're now up to a mammoth NOW 54, although the current 42-track selection appears rather weak. Scooter, a couple of Timberlakes, DJ Sammy and no fewer than nine tracks from Pop Idol type TV nobodies. NOW just doesn't seem to be NOW any more, but it was THEN.
Things to look forward to in the second half of May
Saturday 17th May:FA Cup Final - Arsenal v Southampton. Last chance for some silverware this season. Six one again?
Monday 19th May: Donnie Darko - the best film of 2003 is available on DVD (and old-fangled videotape)
Wednesday 21st May:Matrix Reloaded - the blockbuster movie, destined to be a top selling DVD just in time for Christmas.
Friday 23rd May:Big Brother 4 - the King of reality programming returns. I'll be an addict again, I know it.
Saturday 24th May:The Museum in Docklands - opens at West India Quay by Canary Wharf.
Saturday 24th May:Eurovision in Latvia - You either hate it or you're 100% hooked on the music, spectacle and trivia.
Monday 26th May:Yet another bank holiday - excellent.
Friday 30th May:Evoke-2 is released - the very latest portable digital radio, and top of my gadget shopping list.
Saturday 31st May:Annular solar eclipse - visible from Iceland and North West Scotland, just.
Have I missed anything?
Here's another coded message for you to try to solve. It's rather different to yesterday's!
Again, solutions by email please, not in the comments box.
I'll give you a clue tomorrow should nobody have solved it by then.
Well done to Pat of the excellent A Blog's Life for being the first person to crack yesterday's coded message. Solution here tomorrow. The logo on Pat's blog is part of a rearranged computer keyboard, so I'm not surprised that she's good at this sort of code breaking. Head over to A Blog's Life today and you'll find a mini cryptic crossword to solve. Bletchley Park was full of people selected because they were good at cryptic crosswords, you know.
SEO FTQOTF DS ICOSAECOX KDPB JKOHQ ODAE VOOBOHM VZSE OWEZIZSQ JH VDPSZFO AJMO IPODBZHG DHM SEO EZQSJPX JN ODPCX AJFKTSZHG
Can you read this coded message? It's been encrypted using a far simpler code than Enigma.
Solutions by email please, not in the comments box. Well, not yet anyway.
Another coded message tomorrow.
May 8th marks the anniversary of the end of World War 2, or at least the European part of it. WW2 lasted for nearly six years, but it could have gone on a lot longer had it not been for Milton Keynes. Or, to be a little more accurate, had it not been for a country house and some Nissen huts just outside Milton Keynes filled with some of the brainiest brains in Britain. This was Bletchley Park, home to the Government Code and Cypher School - the centre of British code-breaking during the Second World War. 7000 men and women were chosen to carry out this top secret work, brilliant mathematicians and linguists drafted in to try work out what on earth Germany might be up to and so turn the tide of the war. Forget Test The Nation - this really was British Intelligence at its peak.
The German armed forces sent coded messages to each other using a fiendish machine called Enigma. The Enigma machine looked like a typewriter in a wooden box, with an electric current travelling from the keyboard through a set of rotors and a plugboard to light up the 'code' alphabet. You can find out how one worked here, and have a go at using one online here. I saw a real Enigma machine in operation last month and was surprised both how small it was and how devilishly simple the technology was. Even so, Enigma could write any message into code in over 150 million million million different ways. Not surprisingly the Germans believed that their codes were unbreakable and that their military secrets were safe. Wrong.
Hidden away at Bletchley Park, the cream of the UK's code-breakers were ready and waiting each morning to try to crack that day's code. There were little clues, like the fact that messages often started with a weather report, or the fact that Enigma never ever coded a given letter as itself. The code-breakers also used some impressive technology of their own, first a huge mechanical device called a Bombe, and then in 1943 a machine that was nearly the world's very first computer, called Colossus. Colossus was 5 metres long, 3 metres deep and 2.5 metres high, made from plugs, cables and valves, and worked using punched tape. Ten identical machines were built and, eventually, they were able to crack the German codes on a regular basis. One of the men behind the invention of Colossus was Alan Turing, a true genius and the father of modern computing.
Bletchley Park didn't win the war by itself, but the people there helped it to come to an end quicker than might have been expected otherwise. Convoys of ships containing urgent supplies could find the safest way across the North Atlantic because the Allies knew where the German U-boats were. Invaluable information about the size and location of German troops helped to ensure that the D-Day landings were a success. And the Germans never once believed that the Enigma code had been broken, even when the Allies managed to score yet another unlikely and improbable hit on one of their military positions.
So, let's hear it for Milton Keynes, the birthplace of computing (one of the reasons that you're able to read this page on your monitor 60 years later) and the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany (one of the other reasons that you're able to read this page on your monitor 60 years later).
The metric system was first introduced in France in the late 18th century. French scientists agreed to define the metre as "one ten-millionth part of a quarter of the earth's circumference" and then set out to find out exactly how long that was. It took many years for them to measure it accurately, presumably because it was nigh impossible to measure such a huge distance when they'd not yet defined a unit of length. The scientists then went on to define one litre as the volume of one-tenth-of-a-metre cubed, and one kilogram as the weight of one litre of water. All very nicely linked and logical, which is more than can be said for the motley assortment of ancient measurements that the metric system has replaced all around the world. Everywhere except America, that is, where they still insist on using Ye Olde English units based on the ever-so-easy-to-calculate 8, 12, 14 and 1760 times tables. Still, better to be mathematically hamstrung than to capitulate to the French, obviously.
Maybe now is the time to replace the metric system with a new set of units of measurement more appropriate for the 21st century, and this time we really need to choose a system that the Americans might actually approve of. Here's a few suggestions:
Capacity - the latté Definition: the volume of coffee required to kickstart an American in the morning.
Prefixes: x1 tall; x2 grande, x3 venti
• average coffee consumption in the UK per day per head = 0.4 latté • average coffee consumption in Seattle per day per head = 6 ventilatté
• the capacity of one of those free samples of shampoo you sometimes find in magazines = 1 millilatté
• the amount of beer sold by one pub over a bank holiday weekend = 10 kilolatté
Length - the freedom Definition: the distance one tank can advance in one second
• the distance from Basra to Baghdad = 1 megafreedom
Mass - the donut Definition: one icing-topped ring of jam-packed dough (diameter 1 millifreedom)
• weight of one Hostess Twinkie = 0.75338 donut
• weight of one McDonald's gherkin = 1 centidonut
• weight of one donut addict = 5 kilodonut
Time - the hourglass Definition: the average time that Windows takes to respond to one mouse click.
• time taken to make one cup of coffee = 1 hrglass
• time taken to stare out of window and back at screen = 0.01 hrglass
• time taken for PC to crash losing all your work = 0.000001 hrglass
• total time wasted globally each day waiting for PCs to respond = 1 gigahrglass = 1 gates
For more on weights and measures, see my Miscellany page here
Update: There's been extensive discussion of this post and of the virtues (or otherwise) of the metric system over at Samizdata today. As a result I've been persuaded to change my definition of 'freedom' to be the distance a tank can advance in one second, not one minute. And now the maths works almost perfectly.
No doubt you'll have seen the huge new health warnings that now take up about 30% of a cigarette packet. The first batch of warning messages featured such catchy slogans as Smoking kills, Smokers die younger and Smoking causes cancer, chronic bronchitis and other chest diseases. So successful have these been that the Government is now considering bringing out a new set of 12 health warnings, depicted below. Smokers - why not try to collect the full set!
...is a very sexist title for a film (and indeed a comic series) that also features women, but there you go. It's not actually the official title of the film, which is X2, but if you start advertising a film called X2 you're going to get a lot of parents dragging their children along expecting them to be taught their two times table instead. Oh no, the movie is much more about division than multiplication.
In the world of the X-Men there's a growing group of mutants in our society who feel and act differently. They've learnt to band together in secret underground groups, occasionally breaking out to form pressure groups demanding action against prejudice and misguided legislation. Most discover they are different during adolescence, while some only come to terms with who and what they are after much soul-searching later in life. A young mutant needs to come out as different to his family, who may not take the news well and may even try to turn him over to the authorities. There are definitely more males than females within this particular genetic group, and when they fall in love it's always with one of their own. They tend to wear trendy figure-hugging clothes, some have a lot of facial hair or tattoos, while the older ones are often bald by choice. Sound familiar?
The film kicks off with a thrilling assault on the Oval Office at the White House. The plot, such as it is, centres around the need to put right the PR damage this attack has caused to the mutants' cause. Everyone gets a chance to show off their special power in the process, even if the story feels a threadbare method of linking these set pieces together. It's also easy to pick holes in the plot (look, one of you has the power to turn water into ice - why on earth should the collapse of a huge great dam be so difficult to stop?) but there's easily enough here to keep you entertained for two hours. The film's also stayed pretty much true to its comic book roots, and there's lots here to keep the fans happy before the inevitable release of X3. Marks out of ten? 2X2X2
Through some careful country-hopping I've managed to experience five bank holidays in the last 2½ weeks. That's Good Friday (UK, April 18), Easter Monday (UK, April 21), Queen's Day (NL, April 30), Labour Day (NL, May 1) and May Day (UK, May 5). If I carry on with some judicious travelling I could be in Lebanon for Martyrs' Day tomorrow, Israel for Independence Day on Wednesday, and half of Europe for Victory Day on Thursday and/or Friday. At this rate maybe I can avoid going back to work until at least next weekmonth year.
Apparently it's 25 years ago this weekend since the sending of the very first spam email. It was sent by a company called the Digital Equipment Corporation to promote their latest range of 'mini'computers. Their email was both badly written and unwanted by its recipients - in which case very little has changed in spamworld since 1978. It's good to hear that DEC have since been taken over by Compaq, so presumably the spam email didn't do them a lot of good in the end.
Spam is now estimated to account for up to 40% of global email traffic, up from 8% only two years ago. At this rate the world is going to be completely overrun by spam in the very near future, unless something can be done to stop it. Most of the world's email spam comes from the city of Boca Raton in Florida, and not from Nigeria as many people believe.
Here's a selection of spam (and Spam) related weblinks. And don't worry, none of these sites will send you unsolicited email.
• Here's some reflections on the 25th anniversary of email spam.
• Here's a spam timeline.
• Here's a site devoted to ridding the internet of spam.
• Here's a program designed to stop spam getting through. Maybe it'll work better for you than it has for me.
• Here's a top 10 of the most annoying spam of 2002, featuring sex, drugs and central African countries.
• Here's a site which collect fraudulent spam, including this rather brilliant email exchange with an unsuspecting Nigerian.
• Here's a fun inbox full of the sort of spam that sadly you never get sent.
• Here's some information about the real Spam, and you can even join the official Spam Fan Club.
• Here's the manufacturers of meaty SPAM getting annoyed at being associated with internet spam.
• Here's where to visit the official Spam museum (it's in Minnesota).
• Here's a page written by someone who collects anything and everything about Spam.
• Here's a lot of haiku about Spam. Oh tin of pink meat, I ponder what you may be: Snout or ear or feet? • Here's the script of the legendary Monty Python Spam sketch, and you can listen to the pink pork masterpiece as well.
I'd like to recommend The Word Spy, a fascinating website that collects recently coined words and phrases from the media. Each word is defined, discussed and examples are given of appropriate usage. The site is American so not all the words and phrases have made it this side of the Atlantic yet, but give them time. Here are ten of my favourites:
arachnerd (ah.RAK.nerd) n. A person that spends way too much time either surfing the Web or fussing with their home page.
geezer glut (GEE.zur glut) n. The large number of old people that will result as the baby boom generation ages.
grays on trays (GRAS.on.tras) n. Older adult snowboarders.
hand-me-up (HAND.me.up) n. A used object, especially an article of clothing, passed from a younger person to an older person.
hasbian (HAZ.bee.un) n. A former lesbian who is now in a heterosexual relationship.
Iraqnophobia (i.RAK.nuh.foh.bee.uh) n. An unusually strong fear of Iraq, especially its ability to manufacture and use biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.
jetiquette (JET.uh.kuht, -ket) n. The rules or norms that govern correct or polite behaviour while on board an aeroplane.
marmalade-dropper (MAR.muh.layd-draw.pur) n. Something that is extremely shocking or upsetting, particularly a newspaper headline or article.
sheeple (SHEE.pul) n. People who are meek, easily persuaded, and tend to follow the crowd.
wordrobe (WURD.rob) n. The words and phrases that comprise a person's vocabulary.
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.
I have been summoned for juryservice next month. Apparently I have been chosen at random, and not merely because I might want to miss work for an indeterminate period of time. Jury service is one of the great unbloggables, so forgive me if I go a little bit quieter halfway through June.
I should qualify that statement by saying that some aspects of air travel are justifiably highly rated, like the ability to fly across seas and oceans without the need to throw up in a boat, and the utterly fantastic views you get if you're lucky to have a window seat and it's not too cloudy. I flew back from Schiphol to London City Airport today and the views were excellent. The pilot even flew directly over my house, but that was really annoying because it meant I couldn't actually see it. However, the Dutch coast, the North Sea, even Essex, all looked almost magical from high above. And veering round Canary Wharf in a 40-seater Fokker is exactly the type of experience that most people would normally pay good money for in theme parks.
The aspect of air-travel that's over-rated is the time it takes to complete your journey. My actual flight from Amsterdam today took just under an hour, which was excellent. However, my journey from Amsterdam took a lot longer than an hour, and that's where the problem with air travel lies. Today's aircraft may well be able to speed you from one side of the Atlantic to the other in hours, or across the English Channel in minutes, but getting yourself through the airport is a different matter altogether.
• First there's the journey to the airport itself. Airports are never built anywhere near where you live, because if they were you'd never have agreed to buy a house anywhere nearby in the first place. Travelling to the airport therefore involves either a long train journey or three, or else a long drive so that you can park miles away from the terminal building and sit on a courtesy coach that meanders round all the car parks before eventually reaching its destination.
• It's important to arrive at your airport well in advance of the official flight time so that you have sufficient time to go through the official airport charade. At London City Airport this doesn't take too long but at most larger airports, like Schiphol, there are a lot more people around and everything takes much longer.
• You usually have to stand in line for ages to get your baggage checked in because there are never enough airline staff at the check-in desks. When you do finally reach the front of the queue they have to run you through the official pre-flight script just in case you're a guilt-ridden terrorist who's going to blow their cover by confessing to carrying nail-scissors on board in order to incite a hijacking.
• Then you get to queue again before you can pass through the electronic security gates, where something invariably beeps and you end up being frisked by the least glamorous of all the security guards.
• There's then an additional chance to queue so that someone foreign can laugh at your passport photo, followed by the interminable wait in the departure lounge. There's nothing here worth buying that you couldn't have bought while you were actually on holiday, so most people end up forking out for an overpriced coffee instead just to make the hours pass by faster.
• Eventually you'll be ushered through to your departure gate, which is merely another opportunity to sit down and wait but with a clearer view of the plane you haven't boarded yet.
• If you're really lucky there's a bus to catch out to your plane, which means yet another wait while the last passenger is dragged forcibly from the duty-free boutique.
• Then there's the extended wait on board the plane while the last passenger arrives, then the flight crew have to wait for clearance to take-off, and finally you all get taken on a fifteen minute taxiing tour of the airport before reaching the designated runway.
This entire checking-in and boarding process can take three hours or more, during which time you may have travelled no more than 500 yards. Only then comes the fast part of the journey, the flight itself. Miles are at last covered in minutes, which is the way air travel should be. However, you may experience a distinct sinking feeling on landing because there are still another 500 yards to cover from the plane to the arrivals hall. First there's the wait to be allowed to disembark from the plane, then the incredibly long walk down some endless corridors, then the interminable wait for your baggage to be the last one onto the carousel, and finally your random selection for a complete baggage search by the fat bloke in the Customs area. Even then you still face the long journey from the airport to the place in the country you're actually trying to get to, and that's tons more hours added to your journey.
I was lucky today because I managed to get from my hotel in Amsterdam to my front door in four hours flat. Sounds good, but 200 miles in 4 hours is a less-than-impressive average of 50 miles an hour. Never, ever, let it be said that air travel is fast. Safe, yes, but fast, never.
Orange is not a flattering colour. Orange clothing would come very high on a list of What Not To Wear. However, Orange is the official celebratory colour in the Netherlands in honour of the annual Queen's Day holiday. It's not actually Queen Beatrix's birthday on April 30th, but it is the birthday of her mother Juliana who abdicated on this day in 1980. No matter, the Dutch have seized on today as their annual opportunity to drink, celebrate, drink, party and drink. The national character is usually fairly serious but, for 24 short hours every year, the Dutch throw as good a party as any other nation. And then, after the hangover's lifted, they go back to being fairly serious again until the next Queen's Day comes round.
To prepare for Queen's Day you need to find something orange to wear. Anything orange will do. Dutch clothes shops do a brisk trade in anything of that colour in the run-up to April 30th for all those who like at least to try to look fashionable. No self-respecting Dutch teenager dares to venture out of the apartment on Queen's Day without orange comedy headgear, or some badly-sprayed orange hairdye, or both. Crowns are very popular, particularly this year the orange inflatable type. A lot of the locals also like to draw a bit of blue, white and red Dutch flag on their face, which then looks as if they've smeared Aquafresh toothpaste all over their cheeks and forgotten to wash it off. The streets all have to be orange too, bedecked by orange balloons and bunting, ready for the crowds to appear.
The orange crowds appear on the orange streets of Amsterdam early on the orange morning. They stream into town from the central station and spread out across the city until the whole of the capital is one giant party zone. The streets are lined with stalls selling drink, food, drink, party stuff, drink and yet more orange clothing for anyone who's come unprepared. It's like a giant street market, and everybody is out on the streets to experience the day. There's music playing all around the town, some live, and the lager flows freely all day from bars in the street. Local pubs charge people to use their toilet facilities, but the canals remain free for the bladdered who've lost their inhibitions.
Here are four things you don't see much in Amsterdam on Queen's Day:
• sober people • bicycles - which is good because you can walk around drunk without fear of getting knocked down.
• trams - ditto.
• pictures of the Queen - which is odd because the party is all in her honour.
Queen's Day is a great day to be in Amsterdam, not least because it's not your council taxes that have to fund the clean-up afterwards. Maybe the British Royal Family should instigate an annual Queen's Day bank holiday in the UK - it could only only improve their popularity and, based on the Dutch experience, everyone would really enjoy another day off.
What's on this weekend? A.V. Roe Centenary Sunday 12 July, 2pm
A replica triplane celebrates one hundred years since Britain's first ever flight on Walthamstow Marshes.
Finally, with just twenty minutes of the partial eclipse remaining, I caught sight of a deep red crescent through a gap in the clouds. At last. Less than half of the sun's disc was still eclipsed by this time, but the sight was pretty impressive, even if the photograph I managed to take wasn't. Ten seconds later the clouds were back in the way again and the eclipse continued unseen. Slowly the sun edged out of the moon's shadow, until just a tiny sliver was missing from the left hand side. At 5:30, just as the eclipse ended, the sun finally rose up above cloud level, ready to shine down for the rest of the day. Too late, it was all over. All over until 2090.
Eviction 1
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.
The local Olympics
A few months ago we were up for the treble.
Appendix: 2 additional ways to fill time and avoid boredom
20 top ways to fill time and avoid boredom (1)
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.
Queen's Day
