100 comments: There are an awful lot of blogs out there which I read a lot but don't comment on often enough. So today I thought I'd break that tradition and interact properly. My target is to comment on 100 different blogs by the end of the day (inbetween 'working at home' because of the tube strike) and I'm only allowing myself to comment on blogs updated in the last 24 48 hours, which will be a challenge. I'll link to each blog that I comment on, just so you can see how I'm progressing, but I wouldn't bother reading the comments though. Mike, you're first.
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101 Phew, I did wonder if I was going to get to 100 earlier on this morning, and in the end I hit 101. There were lots of other blogs I'd have liked to have commented on but they either failed my 48 hour rule or didn't have a comments system enabled. But it has been great to explore a whole range of blogs I've never read before. Highly recommended.
Gig of the Month: the Mull Historical Society at the ICA (last night)
Only three icons of any cultural importance have ever come out of the Scottish island of Mull - Tobermory the Womble, the children's TV programme Balamory and Colin MacIntyre. Colin's the singer of the Mull Historical Society, a refreshingly ordinary yet extraordinary guitar band, playing last night at the long white arty building up the top of the Mall. Support was provided by the astonishing Alice McLaughlin, a wild-eyed marionette who sang heartfelt jazz/soul ballads with breathtaking conviction. And then our Colin was on, showcasing his latest album This Is Hope as well as audience-pleasing favourites from previous singalong classics Loss and Us. The stage should have featured a 15 foot fibreglass dog in a wig (does any band have a better logo?) but alas it had been stolen earlier. Colin threw himself into the performance with innocent gusto, leaping round the stage, sweating buckets and managing somehow at one point not to topple headlong off the piano stool into the audience. The new songs suggest he's not lost his songwriting sparkle, but the older songs still won the night for me. Well worth beating the tube strike to see, and ten times more inspiring than that other anodyne concert held up the Mall recently.
Britain's newest National Park: the NewForest East End
Dot Cotton, the Urban Affairs Minister, today announced her decision that the East End is to become a National Park. The new East EndNational Park will be the smallest in the country, covering just 20 square kilometres. This remote Cockney wilderness lies to the east of the City and contains some hills topping almost ten metres in height. Most of the area is covered by concrete, and new planning regulations will restrict the amount of green open space in order to preserve this urban blight for future generations. Scenic streams of sewage flow beneath the streets, while air pollution levels above ground are amongst the most outstanding in the country.
The East End National Park offers significant opportunities for outdoor public recreation, fully in line with the natural resouces of this unique location. Visitors are welcome to attend and take part in one of the following local cultural events:
Knees Up Mother Brown: Join a gang of pre-teen street robbers beating up local pensioners outside the post office.
Don’t Dilly Dally On The Way: Keep walking, don't turn round, that could be a mugger behind you.
The Old Bull & Bush: Come drink at the local boozer named after Anglo-American relations.
Show Me The Way To Go Home: Social group meets every night at 11:30pm outside the local pub, then 15 minutes later in the local gutter.
On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep: Final resting place of the pile of inebriated drunkards found previously in the gutter.
Boiled Beef N’Carrots: Nothing they serve up round here any more, but you can get a nice curry instead.
Underneath The Arches: Where to come for all the best drug deals, please bring cash.
Roll Out The Barrel: Leave your barrel in the street next to the supermarket trolley, the rotting sofa and the binbag full of used hypodermics.
Get Me To The Church On Time: Hop on the new bendy bus to Bow, assuming one ever turns up.
Daisy Daisy: Ride a bicycle made for two down the Mile End Road, taking care not to fall beneath the wheels of one of those bendy buses.
Any Old Iron: Bare knuckle fighting takes place round the back of the pie and mash shop every Thursday night.
My Old Man’s A Dustman: That's his cover story anyway. In real life he's heavily involved in a secret life of gangland crime and kneecapping.
Me And My Shadow: Canary Wharf wrecks TV reception for half the residents in the area.
The Lambeth Walk: Take a historic stroll to another nearby borough, only to discover that conditions there are even worse.
Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner: That I love living here despite all of the above.
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I hate passwords. I know we have to have them but they're always so difficult to remember. I can remember a few passwords without any problem, but what I can't always do is remember which password goes with with login. I could write all my passwords down somewhere, but that would be dangerous. I could try using the same password for everything, but that would be even more dangerous. And they don't let you use the same password for everything - some sites are happy with only 4 letters, some require 8 and some demand mixed alphanumeric characters. Usually I rely on my browser remembering all of my passwords for me, which is great until one day I load up a webpage and discover that it's forgotten too. So sometimes I find myself staring at a blank log-in page wondering exactly which email address I used to set up the account and with which password, shut out until I eventually stumble across the correct combination.
People are generally rubbish at selecting passwords. Many choose the default word 'password' as their password, which must be the most hackable way into anyone's bank account. Names are popular too, either one's own or one's partner or one's pet, again eminently guessable (especially by one's partner or one's pet). Favourite football teams, place names, birthdays - all are nice and easy to remember but therefore just that bit too easy to crack. No, what you need is a password that's impossible to deduce, like jaJwutH2fap0w. Perfect, except that it's also nigh impossible to remember. You might want to scribble it on a post-it note and stick it to the front of your computer so that you won't forget it, except that neither will any passing snooper. And do take very special care typing in that long sequence of gibberish because you're only allowed three mistakes before the system locks you out completely.
If you do forget your password you may be asked to answer a secret question in order to proceed. To be honest these worry me even more than passwords. The secret question is generally something like 'What is your mother's maiden name?' which is a really good question because it's not something any online hacker is likely to know. No online hacker except your mother, that is. I do hope your mother hasn't been rifling through your bank account, your blog and that slightly dodgy website you use sometimes that's based in Amsterdam. And I do hope hope you didn't type your password into that box at the top of the post, otherwise it probably wasn't your mother checking out your online affairs, it was me...
The Olympic flame came to London yesterday for the first time since 1948. It rained, but that didn't extinguish the fire or dampen the watching public's enthusiasm. The Torch Relay organising committee had thoroughly enjoyed themselves putting together the programme for the day, including sections carrying the torch by taxi, riverboat, London bus, rowing eight and on horseback. But the main body of the journey was made up of 140 runners each running 400m, some famous, some worthy and some both. I decided to go and watch the torch arriving in my home borough of Tower Hamlets, just to see how my council tax was being spent, and then caught up with the flame again a few more times along the route.
Around 2pm I was part of a small crowd gathered on the slipway at the very foot of the Isle of Dogs. Teams of mercenaries from the twocompanies sponsoring the Torch Relay busied themselves amongst the spectators handing out numerous small flags for us to wave. A young lady from Samsung tried to thrust a blue flag into my hand, then seemed very hurt when I didn't want to be part of her evil marketing strategy. I turned down a pair of her giant blue inflatable icepops as well. The flame was late, although it was clear from the twirling acrobats hanging from the rigging of the Cutty Sark over the river that it had at least reached Greenwich. Fireworks heralded the launch of a fire-bearing riverboat whose captain showed off by spinning round several times in the middle of the Thames before heading straight towards us.
A grinning Kriss Akabusi disembarked from the boat and ran up the slipway holding the torch aloft, cheering almost as much as we were. And then he was gone, round the corner into Island Gardens where Tower Hamlets had 15 minutes of community entertainment laid on. Five lycra-clad girls performed gymnastics suspended from five coloured hoops, accompanied by ethnic drumming. It may have been symbolically blatant but at least it was cheap. Rather more of my council tax went up in smoke in the ensuing firework display, before various council dignitaries queued up for a lengthy photo opportunity with the flame. This eventually passed to one of the non-famous runners who set off through the crowds towards Docklands, preceded by police motorbikes, a bus full of torchbearers and more sponsored flag distributors.
I reached Canary Wharf in time to see the flame run past in the capable hands of top oarsman Matthew Pinsent. He set fire to a fountain in Cabot Square while a choir dressed in plastic raincoats sang Amazing Grace. Possibly too symbolic that one. Alas I was too slow getting to the Mile End Road to see the flame pass at its closest to the possible site of the Olympic Games in 2012, and to my house. I hope it doesn't rain like this in eight years time.
Never mind, my next chosen vantage point was City Hall where surely our Ken would put on a good show. I could see the flame crossing Tower Bridge, although I was rather too far away to see it was Gandalf carrying it. At City Hall I was prevented from entering the courtyard by a jobsworth security guard who demanded that I keep behind a line of bunting, despite the fact that half of London seemed to be standing on the other side. He was probably trying to keep me out of the path of the 93-year-old Sikh marathon runner who soon swept by. Thousands of Olympic-coloured balloons were released into the sky and the elderly athlete ran straight back down to the main road. The visit of the flame was all over and done in under a minute. Sorry, not impressed.
My final viewing attempt was along Oxford Street, a location where I seem to have spent far too much of my Saturday. I took up position behind the railings outside the exit from the tube station, surrounded by an ever increasing crowd of shoppers and eager families. The sponsored flag-givers were out in force again, as was the rain. We all got very wet waiting for the helicopters overhead to edge nearer, and for the snail's pace queue of ordinary buses to finally end. At last the proper torch-bearing London bus came along, but alas there was no sign of a flame on the open upper deck. Some spectators mumbled and cursed and prepared to slink away disheartened. But no, the torch was still on foot at this point, and there hidden directly behind a number 25 bendy bus came a smiling Roger Black. He stopped right beside me, as you can see, before dashing off to the other side of Oxford Circus where the flame finally ascended to its rightful place on the top deck of a red London icon.
Enough of fire-chasing. I was home in time to see the BBC pretending to show live what I'd just seen for real at Oxford Circus an hour earlier. And in time to see possibly the blandest pop concert ever to limp onto our TV screens, live from the Mall. Great idea, miserably executed. A handful of musical greats allowed to sing no more than two songs each and a bunch of pop wannabes lip-synching their latest hits to an audience too far away to even care. All that media hype for a televised concert lasting just 90 minutes, only half of which featured music, not even half of which was any good. I'm mighty glad I turned down the ticket that was offered to me, even if thosepresent saw rather more acts than appeared on air. But, despite the weather, I'm more than glad I caught the Olympic flame passing through town. And I hope I'll see it again, just up the road, in 2012. In blazing sunshine.
The 25 is one of London's busiest bus routes (absolutely jam-packed it is, even on a Sunday afternoon), following a pretty much arrow-straight route from Ilford to Oxford Circus (via my house). 'Busy and straight' are the perfect conditions for a takeover by huge 18m-long bendy buses so, as of dawn this morning, the huge 18m-long bendy buses have taken over. Overnight the Mile End Road has been hijacked by road-hogging articulated vehicles that can't manouevre particularly well. There's more space inside than on the old double deckers but there are now fewer seats. Passengers have a choice of three doors to board through but they have to buy a ticket before boarding or else they get kicked off. It's all a bit scary. I've been out for a Saturday morning ride on these new urban monsters, just to see how they and the travelling public are coping, and initial reports are not good.
The 25 starts its ten mile journey into civilisation just opposite the Oxfam shop on Ilford High Street. I hopped on through the rear door, just for the novelty value, and perched on a raised seat near the bendy bit in the middle. The bus smelt like the inside of a freshly purchased new car, deceptively spacious but still clean and gleaming. Hydraulics tilt the bus slightly towards the pavement at each stop to increase accessibility, the bell rings with a satisfying non-artificial ding, and none of the on-board Oyster card readers beside the second and third doors are yet functional. It was clear that our driver wasn't used to driving a 60 foot snake, so he edged gingerly round the narrow bends on the Ilford one-way system. "You've just got to keep thinking thin," he said to the bus company operative keeping a careful eye on him.
At the second stop outside Ilford Library a young Asian lady tried to board without having bought a ticket. The driver sent her back to the machine on the pavement and kindly waited while she tried desperately to stick a pound in. "It's only a machine, you only got to put money it!" said our driver, helpfully. Except this machine wasn't working properly and it took ages for her to extricate a small piece of paper from the slot at the bottom. By the time a second passenger had gone through the same rigmarole we were already running four minutes late. The driver learnt his lesson and whenever ticketless passengers tried to board later in the journey he sent them packing and drove off without them.
The bus chugged on through Manor Park and Forest Gate, slowly filling up with Saturday morning shoppers. Soon all the seats were taken and it was standing room only, although nobody seemed to want to stand on the bend in the middle for some reason. Passengers hadn't quite got the hang of being allowed to board through all three doors and so most queued up at the front door, only to squeeze on and discover that most of the remaining space was right down at the back. It's a long and difficult walk down a crowded aisle full of strap-hangers, eventually an impossible one, and as we approached Stratford the bus soon became front-heavy. It wasn't the most pleasant travelling experience for those forced to stand.
All this waiting around while passengers try to board isn't helping the buses to run regularly. The 25 is supposed to run every 6-8 minutes but instead these bendy buses appear to be bunching up with big long gaps inbetween. They seem to be running in pairs most of the time, the second emptier bus too cumbersome to overtake the first. At one stage I saw no buses passing the other way for about quarter of an hour, then six buses all within two minutes. The photo below shows four 25s queued up outside Bow Church, like a solid wall of red approaching the flyover. The front bus was packed, the second busy and the rear two almost empty. What a way to run a service.
Along the route a number of Transport for London employees were standing around in special red baseball caps handing out leaflets, generally at the least busy bus stops. One of them poked her head in to ask the driver if he'd tried out his ramp yet. He hadn't. In fact our only semi-disabled passenger had boarded at the rampless front door then struggled to hobble on crutches down the gangway, muttering "'kin assholes" under his breath. Given the speed that the swish new electric doors slam shut I wouldn't be surprised if these buses create more wheelchair-bound passengers than they transport. A ticket inspector climbed aboard along the Whitechapel Road, failing to find anyone who'd sneaked on without paying. It won't last.
We sped through the City, always deserted at weekends, until we were diverted off down an awkward sidestreet behind St Paul's to avoid major roadworks. Our driver took it slowly and thought thin. Down Oxford Street we joined the usual bus-jam, our now half-empty juggernaut taking up vastly unnecessary roadspace. The Olympic torch would be passing this way later in the afternoon, holding up the traffic even more. At Oxford Circus we followed the new 25 route left into Regent Street (because these lumbering buses aren't very good at turning right) before pulling to a final stop outside John Lewis. It felt a very long way from the Oxfam shop in Ilford, and a very long way from the horse-drawn omnibuses that used to drive into London down the Mile End Road 150 years ago. I took the tube home - I fancied a seat.
A brief history of public transport down the Mile End Road (extended to cover the three miles from Aldgate through Whitechapel to my house in Bow)
12th century: The main road from London to Essex passes over the newly built Bow Bridge.
14th century: Small villages grow up along the road, including Mile End and Bow. Nobody has yet invented public transport.
17th century: Stagecoaches depart from coaching inns in Aldgate, each heading out weekly to various destinations in East Anglia. "The Waggons from Chelmsford in Essex come on Wednesdays to the sign of the Blue Boar without Aldgate." 18th century: More stagecoaches run to lots more towns, more often. "Harwich coach, Sarazen's Head Aldgate, Tuesday, Friday." "Barking coach, Three Nuns Whitechapel, every Day." 1837: Charles Dickens was a regular visitor to the Bell Inn in Whitechapel, and it was from here that he sent Mr Pickwick off on a coach journey to Ipswich (poor bloke) in the Pickwick Papers. "And away went the coach up Whitechapel, to the admiration of the whole population of that pretty densely populated quarter. `Not a very nice neighbourhood, this, Sir,` said Sam, with a touch of the hat. `It is not indeed, Sam,` replied Mr. Pickwick, surveying the crowded and filthy street through which they were passing."
mid 19th century: The first horse-drawn omnibuses thread the streets of the capital, run by the London General Omnibus Association. Route 3 (green) runs to Bow and Stratford "from Oxford Street: Regent Street, Charing Cross, Strand, Fleet Street, Cheapside, Bank, Whitechapel. Each omnibus requires 8 to 10 horses to work it. To be readily distinguishable, vehicles are painted in conspicuous colours, and have upon each their destination, and the names of the more important streets in their route."
late 19th century: Horse-drawn trams arrive in London in 1870, and the second route to open runs between Aldgate and Stratford. The tramlines pass either side of Bow Church - photos here. "Colour, Blue. —Route— Whitechapel, Mile-end-rd, Bow, and Stratford-high-st. From Aldgate every 4 minutes from 6.40 a.m. to 12 midnight. From Stratford every 4 minutes from 6 am. to 11.5 p.m. Fares—to Bow Station, 2d. All the way, 3d. Outside, 2d. any distance."
1900-1930: Electric trams and motorbuses gradually replace horse-drawn transport. Bow Garage opens as a tramshed in 1908. Tram route 63 runs from Aldgate to Mile End, Bow, Stratford, Forest Gate and Ilford - photo here.
1931-1958: Trolleybuses and more motorbuses gradually replace trams. Bow Garage is converted to trolleybuses in 1938. Trolleybus route 663 runs from Aldgate to Mile End, Bow, Stratford, Forest Gate and Ilford - photos here. Other trolleybuses down the Mile End Road are the 661 and 695, and buses include the 10, 25, and 96 (withdrawn 1958).
1959: The last trolleybus down the Mile End Road runs on 4 August 1959, to be replaced by bus route 26 and additional Routemasters on route 25. Bow Garage is converted to motorbuses only.
1966: The 26 is withdrawn, leaving just the 10 and the 25, plus new nightbus N98 (Victoria to Ilford).
1988: The 10 is withdrawn, and the one remaining bus route down the Mile End Road (the 25) loses all its Routemasters. Bit grim.
25 June 2004: Today is the last day of double decker service down the Mile End Road, ending about 150 years of history.
26 June 2004: The arrival of the dreaded bendy buses on route 25. Report tomorrow.
A statement from the board of English Euphoria plc
Notice is hereby given of the suspension of shares in English Euphoria plc. The company's first quarter results were announced yesterday but failed to live up to expectations. An emergency meeting of the board took place in Lisbon but overall performance proved disappointing and penalties were imposed. The chairman missed a golden opportunity to reach his intended goal and the team failed to hit expected targets. Bankruptcy was announced at 10:29pm by company spokesman John Motson who announced to assembled shareholders that "English Euphoria expires" (he did, he really did). Reserve stocks of 'National Pride' have therefore been drained and your shares are now worthless. Sorry, but that's the risk you take playing on the global field.
Come on, what did you expect? There were 16 teams in the competition, of which there were always going to be 15 losers. The odds were never in our favour, even if we'd been good. Which we weren't, not enough of the time anyway. We were not robbed, we were rubbish. It's like this every time we get involved in a major tournament - hype, hope and disappointment. Adding another flag to the top of your car doesn't make the team play any better, it just clouds your better judgement. You're all a bunch of hopeless optimists, hanging onto your shares because you believed England would continue to do better. Which, ultimately, they were never going to do. Congratulations to 'Le Bob' for being the only pessimist to sell, and therefore the only shareholder to make a profit. The rest of you dry your eyes, you've got to walk away now, it's over. Come on, let's all enjoy Tim Henman's imminent Wimbledon triumph.
Welcome to Wayne's World! roonerama is the new number 1 online mag site for the world's new number 1 player. We have all the news, all the goss and all the biz on England's new megastar. Move over Becks cos Wayne is here and he is well boss. If not well fit.
WAYNE ROO-LES Soccer god Wayne was born in a manger in a shed in Liverpool which is near Bethlehem. That night three wise pundits came visiting and brought him gifts of top skill, magic boots and a cheeky grin. At school Wayne won the Croxteth Under 11s tournament single handed when all his teammates were struck down by the Ebola virus. He kicks like a mule, but more accurately. He is also kind to sick animals and has a pet girlfriend called Colleen.
ROO-BELLA Want to get that special Roo physique? Here's a genuine Roo recipe to help you to get in shape. Take one tube of Pringles and one pizza. Unpop the Pringles. Scatter liberally over the top of the pizza. Serve with lager and a side-helping of lard.
VICIOUS ROO-MOURS Wayne has signed a £1m contract to be the new face of Walls sausages. Residents of Beckham Close in Redditch have voted to rename their road Rooney Crescent. There are plans to introduce a new bank holiday on October 24th every year to celebrate Wayne's birthday. Wayne is the youngest player ever to be revered as a minor deity by the Chinese. Only 43 English babies were named Wayne last year, but next year that'll be 7506. In a recent survey more Britons believed in Wayne Rooney than believed in God. Wayne's favourite pizza topping is pepperoni and his favourite colour is blue. Wayne goes to the toilet several times a day and breathes air.
THE ROO BETS Evens Wayne to join Chelsea next season 2-1 Wayne to have Xmas number 1 record 5-1 Wayne to shag Posh Spice 25-1 Wayne to be revealed as Pele's secret lovechild 100-1 Wayne to live up to initial promise
IT'S WAYNE-ING AGAIN There's lots more top quality speculation and opportunistic froth where this came from. Why not sign up now for edition two of this top online mag? Quickly, in case England lose tonight, the tabloids lose interest and we go bankrupt.
fivelondonlinks • Classic Cafes - London's greatest vintage Formica caffs, for that perfect dining experience. Fab.
• Hackney Lookout - newish blog from the streets of a godforsaken London borough. Fab.
• alwaystouchout - a complete list of all London's impending transport projects. Fab.
• Honestly I'm Sober - beautifully redesigned blog, written by a Gooner too. Fab.
• Geofftech - new iPod owner, and holder of tube-station-visiting record. Fab.
Somewhere Big Brother: 27B Canonbury Square This is a picture of the very first Big Brother House, tucked away in the southeast corner of Canonbury Square. You're looking for the ground floor flat with the faint green disc to the right of the door - a tiny plaque to show where it really all began. This is also another Islington house lived in by Mr Blair, although in this case we're talking Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell. Sixty years ago Canonbury Square wasn't the prestigious address it is now, and when Orwell moved into this rundown apartment in 1945 he was inspired by its imposing shabbiness. It was here that he started to write his classic satire Nineteen Eighty Four, basing Winston Smith's home 'Victory Mansions' on this very flat. It all looks much more upmarket these days, but listen carefully outside and you can still hear the clocks striking thirteen.
Somewhere retail: Camden Passage I've spent far too much of my life being dragged round antique shops. Dank musty emporia stacked high with useless objects, the sort of stuff your gran used to have before she threw it all away in favour of something modern that actually worked. Rusty metal picture frames, wooden tables with deep authentic scratches, a selection of hideous porcelain voodoo dolls, all for sale at vastly inflated prices. If you have a penchant for antique shops then there's no greater concentration anywhere in the country than in Camden Passage, a maze of narrow lanes off Upper Street. Just don't go on a Sunday like I did because they're (almost) all closed. Upper Street itself is full of more modern boutiques selling equally overpriced must-have items, interspersed with a frighteningly large number of places to eat and drink. Halfway up you'll also find legendary estate agent Hotblack Desiato, the name used by local resident Douglas Adams for the lead singer of rock band Disaster Area in the HitchHiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
by tube: Angel
Somewhere sporty: Highbury Few major sporting stadia are tucked away in the middle of respectable suburbia quite like this, but Arsenal's home ground lurks almost unnoticed amongst the quiet residential streets of Highbury. That is until you turn into Avenell Road and see the huge Art Deco facade of the EastStand looming up over the local neighbourhood. Forget Old Trafford, Anfield and other lesser arenas, this is the true field of dreams. Well I think so anyway. It did feel strange to stand here on a crowd-free non-match day with the streets deserted, although that may have been the fault of the drenching rainstorm playing out overhead at the time. Alas in a couple of years it'll always be this quiet round here as a brand new Arsenal Stadium is due to open just over the railway at Ashburton Grove. I'm sure it'll be state-of-the-art, but the thought of new housing going up around the old pitch feels somehow sacrilegious. Seaman Street, Wenger Way, Rice Road and Double Drive anyone? I'm sure you can come up with better.
by tube: Arsenal
Somewhere random: Zoffany Road This final photograph shows the ultimate London address. Oh yes. Turn to the very end of the index at the back of the London A-Z and there you'll find Zoffany Road, a tiny residential street nestling deep in Upper Holloway, N19. It's not even 100 yards long, containing six trees, two streetlamps, one new car, 21 old cars, and one abandoned brown armchair decaying quietly on the pavement. The north side of the road is taken up by the concrete playground of a centre for children with special needs. It's hideous on the outside but no doubt inspirational on the inside, and the site has recently been rescued from evil property developers. On the opposite side of the road you'll find a single terrace of eight identical and very ordinary houses. The residents do normal things like getting in their cars and driving to the shops or popping out in the middle of a thunderstorm to drop bulging binbags outside their front door. Wonderfully average. Unlike the other eight places I visited on my random day out, this is where the real residents of Islington live.
by tube: Archway
So, yesterday I ended up in northeast London in the randomly selected borough of Islington. I could have ended up somewhere a lot worse, I guess. I gave myself an hour to research the borough on the internet, then spent the afternoon wandering around. And yes, I did get very wet in the process. There was so much to see that I'm splitting my report in half - first part today, the rest tomorrow.
Somewhere special: London Architecture Biennale London has some fantastic architecture, and this week the streets of Clerkenwell are hosting the very first celebration of London's architectural fantasticness. It's all part of Architecture Week 2004, a national excuse to go out and look at nice buildings. Pictured right is the Farmiloes building, until 5 years ago the headquarters of a Victorian lead & glass merchants but currently headquarters to the ridiculously-named Biennale exhibition. Inside I found a fascinating mix of old and new, including an atmospheric 'collection of splendid artworks' in the company's dark cluttered offices, and details of redevelopment plans for a number of new capital projects. Enough to keep me busy while the rain beat down on the grassy road outside (there's not normally turf in the street but on Saturday they drove a herd of cows down here - it's that sort of festival). There are still another seven days for you to catch the exhibition or one of the many Clerkenwell events, and I'd recommend a visit if you're in the area.
by tube: Farringdon/Barbican
Somewhere famous: 1 Richmond Crescent Somewhere infamous: 25 Noel Road Here are two three-storey Islington townhouses each with a very different history. The first is tucked away in a leafy corner of Barnsbury, a prime residential location and once home to our current Prime Minister. Tony Blair moved here with his family back in 1992 when he was a mere shadow Home Secretary, and the Granita restaurant where he thrashed out ambitious leadership plans with Gordon Brown was just down the road. Five years later Tony moved into Downing Street and sold up here making a tidy profit. The house today looks quiet and spacious, although there isn't a plaque on the front because Mr Blair isn't dead yet. Merely wounded. There is a plaque on the second floor of the other house because its most famous occupant is very dead indeed. Joe Orton and his boyfriend Kenneth Halliwell moved here in 1959 and kept themselves busy by defacing the books in the local library. Joe became a really famous playwright in the mid 60s ('Loot', 'Entertaining Mr Sloane', etc) but his success merely caused Halliwell to get jealous and depressed. One morning in August 1967 Ken smashed Joe's skull open with a hammer, like you do, before taking an overdose himself. Joe had kept a candid diary which was later turned into a highly readable book - Prick Up Your Ears - the film of which was shot in this very flat.
by tube: Angel
Somewhere historic: CanonburyTower Canonbury Tower was built by William Bolton, a 16th century nutter who believed the world was going to flood and stocked his new tower with enough food to last him two months just in case. I suspect he may have been five centuries too early. In 1616 Sir Francis Bacon moved in, a genius who was definitely Lord Chancellor, probably had a legitimate claim to the throne and possibly wrote the entire works of Shakespeare. Or probably not. Other famous authors to have lodged here include the Irishman Oliver Goldsmith and the American Washington Irving (he wrote Rip Van Winkle, don't you know). 1952 saw the setting-up in the grounds of the Tower Theatre, the only fully licensed non-professional theatre in London, but they moved out last year and the building looks rather rundown already. The main tower building is home today to a Masonic Research Centre and the grassy lawn outside was home yesterday to a rather damp-looking garden party. Hope they rolled their trousers up.
by tube: Highbury & Islington
Somewhere pretty: London Metropolitan UniversityGraduateCentre The Holloway road is a grim grey artery filled with traffic pollution and lined by non-descript retail outlets. It comes as quite a shock, therefore, to see this startling spiky silver building looming up halfway along the northern side. This is the latest project for architectural megastar Daniel Libeskind, designer of the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, and recent winner of the competition to redesign the World Trade Center site in New York. His 3-month-old Graduate Centre for the London Metropolitan University may not be terribly big on the inside but it's having a great impact on the neighbourhood outside. Anything has to be better than the faceless concrete towers of the original main university buildings, which hopefully nobody will ever notice again now that there's far something better to stare at.
by tube: Holloway Road
Tomorrow: somewhere Big Brother, somewhere retail, somewhere sporty (bet you can guess where) and somewhere random
Random borough: It's been three months since I last took a random trip to one of London's 33 boroughs, and a very pleasant day out it was too. I've nothing special planned to do today so I thought it was time I dipped into my jamjar full of folded slips of paper again and picked out another one. Could be anywhere - north, south, east or west, or maybe somewhere in the middle - who knows? Just won't be Merton, because that's the borough I ended up in last time. I'm going to visit some of my randomly-chosen borough's most interesting places, assuming it has any. I'm going to try to visit somewhere famous, somewhere historic, somewhere pretty, somewhere retail, somewhere sporty and somewhere random. And then I'll come back tomorrow and tell you all about it. Ulp, let's see where I'm going this time...
The diamond geezer textmap of Great Britain (London textmap available here)
W I C K
H I G H
L A N D
I N V E R N E S S
F O A B E R D E E N
R T W I L L I A M
G R A M P I A N
A R G D U N D E E
Y L L P E R T H
G L A E D I N
S G O W B U R G H
B O R D E N E W C
R S A S T L E
L A K E S D U R
B L A C K H A M
P O O L Y O R K
L I V L E E D S
R H Y L M A N L I N C
C H E S T E R D E R B Y N O R
A B E R Y B I R L E F O L K
S W Y T H M I N G I C S S U F
S W A N S E A H A M C A M E S S
C A R D F F O X F O R D E X
B R I S T L O N D O N
D E V O N D O H A M P K E N T
C O R N W R S E T S U S S E X
A L L
Loyd Grossman was down my way yesterday evening. He was reopening the Bow Arts Trust, a huge studio space for 90 local artists carved out of an old nunnery. Yes, nunnery. We have proper history round where I live, remember? The front of the studio building used to be a drab slab of rundown Victorian brickwork. Not any more. A precisely constructed array of jet black planks has given the front of the building a striking new look, while a series of glowing fluorescent tubes now dangle over the lane down the side. Just a few thousand pounds of carefully placed design work has given a real lift to the street on which I live.
The Bow Arts Trust throws its doors open for one weekend every June for an 'Open Studios' event. We local residents were specially invited to last night's 'Private View', mainly so we didn't complain too loudly about the racket a guitar band was going to make in the courtyard until midnight. I missed seeing Loyd open proceedings in the Nunnery gallery, which was probably just as well, but I took the opportunity to look round the premises all the same. There were artists tucked into every cranny of that old building, lurking behind plasterboard partitions and hidden up rickety staircases in attic rooms. A swarm of Hoxtonites swept through the exhibition like locusts, fags and lager in hand, devouring each installation with faint praise.
I was able to see what entry-level modern art looks like, from sculpture to photography to drawing to glasswork to stonemasonry to mysterious twirly plastic phallic objects drooping from the wall. And paintings too, lots of them, some beautiful, some bland, some clever, some featureless, some inspiring, some slapdash, some devotional, and some so dull that even I could have painted them. Wish I had actually, there was an £850 price tag on one of the really poor ones. But I was impressed by much that I saw. Joseph Joy's portraits had an appealing simplicity and Anniken Amundsen's textile jellyfish floated my boat. Praise too for Mark Brogan's physical installations and Jonty Lees' turntable spirals. I was very much taken by DannyCuming's bold graphic art and Zoe Marsden's contoured cartography. And I was enthralled by Tanya Millard's photographic montage showing every London bus from 1 to 100 arranged in ten rows of ten (photo here), but then I would be wouldn't I?
The relaunch of the Bow Arts Trust heralds the beginning of the development of an 'arts hub' round where I live, apparently. Bow Church is already floodlit and hosts the occasional arty show. And now, I kid you not, there are plans to restore the dilapidated Victorian public toilets on the traffic island outside the church and open them up as an exhibition space. Those toilets have been chained up for years, the original "terrazzo floors, glazed tiles and carved architraves" decaying slowly beneath the pavement. Soon there could be a Turner-nominated artist installing a mini-gallery among the urinals. I look forward to attending the opening night. And so close to my house too - imagine the convenience.
I suspect you fall into one of these three categories. Do please tell me which.
Did you see the football yesterday? I did. I left work early so I could see it all. I'm like that me, I just have to be watching. I bet the roads were really quiet at 5pm because everyone was either at home or down the pub. It was a match we really had to win, wasn't it, otherwise we'd be on our way home and that would be well sad. They're not the toughest team Switzerland, but even a weak team can beat you on an off day can't they? My heart was in my mouth when we kicked off. But oh dear we were playing like wusses to begin with. When Rooney got booked I nearly stormed off to my local shopping centre and threw a brick through the window, but I thought better of it. And then he scored! I was almost as excited as Wayne but I can't do a flying handstand like he can. And then he scored again! That boy's a record breakingly young genius, even if he has got a mighty hairy chest for an 18 year old. Suppose it was only fair Gerrard should get the third and that was it, a right thrashing for the Swiss. Gave me a right patriotic hard on that did. It may not have been a great game but it's the result that counts isn't it? Quarter finals here we come. Just so long as Croatia don't beat us on Monday. I think I need to get a few more crates of lager in.
Did you see Big Brother yesterday? I did. I was up really late watching it on E4 and I saw it all I did. I thought it was great how they kept Emma and Michelle in that 70s bedsit for nearly a week, they were going mad they were. And then they stuck them back into the house hidden under a table which was genius. Marco and Nadia shrieked didn't they but Jason and Victor were really pissed off to see them back you could tell. And then it all kicked off. I knew that dozy Emma wouldn't be able to keep her mouth shut for long. There was yelling and punching and screaming and all because of a pathetic food fight. They are so juvenile some of those housemates. That gang of immature little children needs a good kicking just to shut the bastards up. And then oh my god people started threatening to kill each other which is a crime and it got really nasty and they had to send the security guards in. It's calmed down a lot in there since but wow what great telly that was. Have you read that Ben Elton book 'Dead Famous'? I think it's all coming true. Producers were asking for trouble sticking 12 unstable nutters in the house this year in the first place if you ask me. Bet the advertisers are delighted though. Vanessa for the eviction tonight she's a cow.
dgTunes is now available in the UK. dgTunes is your new online music delivery service. dgTunes helps you to find new music that perfectly suits your style and mood. The dgTunes Music Store is open for you to spend money 24 hours a day. dgTunes tunes cost just 79p each, which means you can construct your own 17-track compilation CD for only £13.43. dgTunes tunes are encrypted to stop you copying them too many times, because that would be naughty. dgTunes tunes are small packets of digitised data with no sleeve notes, but who wants to read those anyway?
It’s never been easier to browse through and sample the inventory of an online music store. It's never been more convenient to download past classics and fresh talent to your hard drive. It's never been simpler to spend money on something which only a few weeks ago you were downloading illegally for free. It's never been more urgent that you prop up greedy record executives before all of them go bankrupt. The future of music has arrived, and it costs money again. Please sign up now before their vast bloated profit margins begin to suffer.
Instructions for use: Click on loudspeaker icon. Wait. Click again. Click a couple more times. Don't be surprised if nothing's happened yet because the launch of our new service really is jolly popular. Click again, more desperately now. This is progress, you know. And that's five clicks so far which is £3.95 you've spent already. Thankyou. Please don't worry if the download window hasn't opened yet. You probably bought this very same track on CD about ten years ago. You could even go and play it if only you could be bothered to walk across the room to your record collection. But we're counting on you not remembering that.
dgTunesOnline music directory (13 tracks now available) Kim Appleby - Don't Worry (79p)
Kajagoogoo - Big Apple (79p)
Appleton - Fantasy (79p)
Perez 'Prez' Prado - Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White (79p)
Gladys Knight and the Pips - Midnight Train To Georgia (79p)
Elvis Presley - Crying In The Chapple (79p)
Stranglers - Golden Delicious (79p)
Jucio Iglesias - Begin The Beguine (79p)
Billy Pippin - Day And Night (79p)
Buzzcox - Ever Fallen In Love (79p)
Bramley & Monica - The Boy Is Mine (79p)
Diana Ross - Upcider Down (79p)
Dave Edmunds - Girl Stalk (79p)
Also available: dgTunes Online Ringtone Store For those people who want to spend three times as much on a barely recognisable track with no lyrics, less than a quarter of the proper length and which you're only going to cut off after five seconds anyway because its polyphonic dischords are so tastelessly embarrassing.
If you want to write a successful book these days, one of the bandwagons you might want to jump on is the 'book of the year'. Pick a year, write about it. There's a book called 1979 (in which Rhona Cameron relates life growing up in a small Scottish fishing village). There's a book called 1968 (in which the world comes to terms with sex, drugs and social upheaval). There's a book called London 1945 (in which the capital struggles into peacetime austerity). Then there are books called 1812, 1759, 1603, 1421 and 1215. Not forgetting 1984 and 2001 of course. If you ever plan on becoming a top-selling author it sounds like you'd better pick your year now and start writing before the whole millennium gets snapped up.
However, one of the greatest works of modern fiction wasn't a 'book of the year' but a 'book of the day'. James Joyce's famous novel Ulysses was played out on the streets of Dublin exactly 100 years ago today on 16 June 1904. The story, such as it is, follows two upstanding citizens as they wander the streets of the city doing nothing much. Nevertheless an awful lot of nothing much happens. Not that you care, because this is one of the most impenetrable books ever written, combining erudite vocabulary with Greek myth and a frightening lack of punctuation. Admit it, it's one of those worthy books you have no plans ever to read. Never mind, now you can hold your own in scholarly conversation by using this handy bluffer's guide to one of the world's toughest novels.
1)Joyce's main characters in Ulysses are teacher Stephen Dedalus and salesman Leopold Bloom. Their paths cross infrequently during the novel, and they end up urinating together in Bloom's back garden.
2) The plot, such as it is, mirrors Homer's epic Odyssey. Which you've never read either.
3) You can read a brief summary of the plot of Ulysses here. However, knowing my readership, you'll prefer the cartoon version with stick men. You can also try reading the whole unabridged book here, but I bet you don't make it even a quarter of the way to the end of the first chapter.
4) Joyce set his book on 16 June 1904 because that was the day he went on his first date with Nora Barnacle, the hotel chambermaid who later became his wife.
5) The people of Dublin have celebrated Bloomsday every year since 16 June 1954. Any excuse for a drink. There are especially big celebrations this year. Further details about 16 June 2004 in a special one-day-only Bloomsday blog.
6) In Chapter 4 Bloom buys fresh offal for breakfast, dining on "grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine." Unfortunately this is the section of the story that tends to be recreated every Bloomsday. This and the drinking.
7) Chapter 10 is the only chapter not based on the Odyssey, containing 19 stories of Dubliners out walking after lunch. Joyce once said "I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book." 8) The final chapter is a 63-page punctuation-free monologue delivered by Bloom's wife Molly. It contains a few rude bits which helped to get the book censored in 1922 for "unmitigated filth and obscenity".
9) The book ends on page 933 with a famous 'Yes'. Like this... "and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." 10) The novel Ulysses has nothing at all to do with Ulysses31, a shallow Japanese cartoon series from your childhood featuring a blue alien girl called Yumi and a red robot called No-No. No.
Album of the month - Destroy Rock & Roll by Mylo: You might expect dance music from the Isle of Skye to be heavily violin-based, but no, not this outstanding electro boogie masterpiece from 24-year-old MylesMacInnes. Sometimes I buy an album on the basis of hearing one track once. In this case I heard one track once (thankyou 6music), listened to four more tracks on the band's official website and then rushed out and bought the album, but the principle is the same. It's sort of Royksopp with a smile, or an upbeat Air, or a more modern Moby, or Lemon Jelly without the quirks. Samples from acts as diverse as Prince, Kim Carnes, Scissor Sisters and Daft Punk are mixed with grooving synth beats to create one of the freshest sounds of the year. Well I reckon anyway. Convince yourself one way or the other by reading some reviews here, or sampling a few tracks here. Mercury nomination beckons, what do you reckon?
Once upon a time, when football was young and shorts were long, there was just one English Football League. Respectable Victorian gentlemen kicked leathery balls about and were generally jolly sportsmanlike. Additional divisions were added as the professional game became more popular, sensibly numbered Two, Three and Four. And so it stayed until 1992 when football got greedy. The top division broke away from the League to form the Premiership, financially breastfed by a multimillion pound Sky TV deal. And the remaining three divisions renumbered themselves, just so that they didn't feel too inferior. At the end of that season Blackpool found themselves promoted from Division Four to Division 'Two', while Darlington were relegated from Division Three to Division 'Three'. So much for continuity.
And it's happening again. Those corporate wannabes at the Football League have decided to rebrand and restructure, tempted by oodles of sponsorship from a well-known manufacturer of waistline-enhancing fizzy beverages. The current Division One will be renamed 'The Championship' ("reclaiming this name for our leading clubs will place a new enhanced emphasis on its status at the pinnacle of our competition"). The remaining divisions become League One (was Two (was Three)) and League Two (was Three (was Four)) and all of a sudden everyone is better than they used to be. Even the runt of Wimbledon FC, plummeting headlong from former heights, still manages to be playing in League One next season. So much for justice.
The trouble with modern football is that every team demands to be top despite the fact that not every team can be. Just ask Chelsea's recently sacked manager. Anything less than first class status is now seen as an abject failure and somehow the season is an empty sham. But never mind because the new league restructure has ensured that there are now three first divisions to be top of. Next season Doncaster Rovers and Grimsby Town will be amongst the over-inflated teams competing for the League One title, and a century-old tradition will be cheapened. So much for progress. (Oh, and the other trouble with modern football is the French, but we'd better not mention them this morning...)
Notice is hereby given of a share issue in the company known as English Euphoria plc. The company (hereafter known as The Company) is responsible for the accumulation, distribution and consumption of National Pride. When England thrives, The Company thrives. Our international exporters have already taken up positions in Portugal and their vast wealth of experience is expected to pay dividends. Experts anticipate that share prices will rise imminently due to the Feelgood Factor, although profits may fall rapidly if major losses are reported.
The subscription list will open at 9am on 13 June 2004 and will close at midnight on 4 July 2004 (or before that if the team does really badly). A total of 200 £1 shares are available. Each investor may apply for up to ten shares by placing an order in the comments box, and shares may later be sold in a similar manner. No investor may hold more than ten shares at any time. Any investor discovered attaching a flag to their own car may be found guilty of insider-trading and forced to surrender their full allocation. Apply now, and let's see who makes the best prophet.
Battlefield Europe: Sixty years ago today the first V1 rocket fell on London, landing less than a mile from my house. It was 4:25am on a Tuesday morning, exactly one week after D-Day, and nobody in Mile End was prepared for two thousand pounds of explosives to fall suddenly from the sky onto a row of sleeping houses. A new terrifying era of airborne bombardment had begun. 200 people were left homeless, 30 were seriously injured and 6 were killed, including teenage mother Ellen and her 8-month-old baby Tom. The flying bomb was Hitler's latest deadly weapon, fired from occupied France, aimed at London and dropping randomly from the sky onto an unsuspecting target. Another 2500 V1s would hit the capital that summer, with many more falling short across Kent, and hundreds of civilians would die. No world leaders are expected to gather by the railway bridge in Grove Road for a service of remembrance today, just a crowd of drunken football fans hoping that a very different French threat will be silenced.
BowRoadupdate: It's been four months now since the first blue wall appeared at Bow Road tube station as part of a major infrastructure regeneration project. Four months during which the station has been overrun with blue walls and safety notices, even if nobody yet appears to have done any actual redevelopment work. I thought you might like to see one of these legendary blue walls, given that I've been going on about them for so long. So here's one.
This is the shorter blue wall on the eastbound platform. It's fairly typical of the five blue walls on the platforms, blocking off half the previous width for waiting passengers. Above the wall there's a long metal grille, with a silvery sheet hanging down behind and a couple of green cylindrical loudspeakers spaced out along the top. And across the front of the wall there's a whole array of 'essential' safety notices. From left to right...
• We apologise for any inconvenience caused (I suspect they should be apologising for the lack of work) • Tube map (this map opens up after 10pm so that a giant 'Station closed' sign can be displayed to passing trains) • No smoking (not that you've been allowed to smoke on the underground for the last 15 years anyway) • Storage licence (permission to erect a hoarding here until March next year, signed by somebody official) • Poster (it's a London Underground poster, presumably because nobody else wanted to buy the space) • Fire Point (just in case you can't spot the big red fire extinguisher underneath) • Bow Road (it's about half the size of the original station name roundel behind the wall) • ← Way Out (just in case you can't spot the stairs ten yards to the left) • ← Bow Church DLR Station (what they don't tell you is how long a walk it is) • Safety helmets and safety footwear must be worn (I've never seen a single person on the platform complying with this instruction) • two small white stickers awaiting two more signs to be affixed over the top, namely... • Fire exit - keep clear
• No unauthorised persons allowed past this point
• Caution: Site Entrance (optimistic usage of the word 'site' there)
One day, honest, I'll come back and show you how lovely the newly refurbished station looks. In the meantime, catch up on the daily Health and Safety update in the comments box.
1) Clear your social diary until July 5th.
2) Stick a 99p flag to the side of your car. Well classy.
3) What do you mean you haven't got a car? Unpatriotic scum!
4) Empty the vegetables out of your fridge and fill it with lager.
5) Bleach your youngest child's face and smear a red cross across it.
6) Buy some high-class red and white clothing from your local market.
7) Develop a sudden interest in countries you can't locate on a map.
8) Stick another flag on your car. Double the pride.
9) Head to the barbers and ask for the latest Beckham.
10) Fill in one of your ten free wallcharts with fantasy results.
(This list is sponsored by Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, McDonalds and rampant obesity)
11) Slob around the streets in your fcuk cap and XXL England jersey.
12) Buy some soppy romantic DVDs for the wife to watch.
13) Drive down to Sainsburys to refill the fridge with lager.
14) Still space for another flag on your Renault/BMW/Volvo.
15) Hide three weeks' supply of crisps down the side of the sofa.
16) Cut a cross-shaped hole out of the back of your t-shirt and go get sunburnt.
17) Laugh at an Irishman, mock a Welshman and stick two fingers up at a Scot.
18) Go chant in the face of a foreigner. Eng-ger-land! Eng-ger-land!
19) Get your tats out, get your tats out, get your tats out for the Boys.
20) I think there's some football to watch too...
Voting used to be so simple. You walked down the road to your local school or community centre, drew a cross on a piece of paper and stuck it in a box. Except that plummeting electoral turnout suggests that some people didn't find voting easy at all. Maybe it was the 200 yard walk down the road to the polling station that put them off. Never mind, the government has taken the opportunity to trial lots of new ways to vote, like walking 200 yards down to the postbox instead. Except that the Royal Mail has proved to be far less reliable than a big tin box with a hole in it, so not all of those postal ballot forms have arrived in time. Today I'm offering the disenfranchised a special online voting service. Just select your chosen candidates below and then press the 'Vote now' button. Might save you a walk.
European Elections(select one)Local Elections(select one)Elections for London Mayor(select two)(Polling hours: 7am to 10pm)
Things to do in London • Last Friday, a (very) full report on Bow's Routemaster farewell on Matt's London Bus Page.
• After work this evening, any commuters fancy going dancing?
• Next month, stalk your mobile prey on the streets of East London, with water pistols.
• Any time, listen to the gossip on the tube.
• Tomorrow, vote.
In March last year I was wandering home through Southwark late at night, as you do, when I noticed a film crew busy outside Borough Market. Giant lamps illuminated the street while a crowd of hangers on were busy milling around outside the Market Porter pub. Strange, I thought, I wonder what they're filming? I should have checked here a few days later. But I know now. They were filming three seconds of the latest Harry Potter movie. It's the three seconds just before Harry enters the Leaky Cauldron and just after he steps off the purple triple-decker Routemaster (oh and Matt, there are two Titans in the film too a few seconds earlier). All that effort for just a tiny slice of celluloid magic.
I remain one of the few people on the planet never to have read a Harry Potter book. That means you have two books left to read, but I still have four films left to watch. Yesterday I went to watch the third, having very carefully selected a schoolday afternoon on the hottest day of the year to ensure 2½ hours of child-free air conditioning. Good choice.
I may not have read the books but I can spot a pattern. Chaos at Privet Drive. Visit to Secret London. Ride on Train. New teachers. Threat. Christmas. Quidditch. Evil beasts. Injured friend. Discovery of Secret Passage. Revelation. Magic. Happy Ending. The latest film may follow the formula precisely but thankfully it was very watchable. The outstanding special effects made me believe completely in J K Rowling's bewitching Famous Five world, and even Hermione gets a decent look-in this time. The plot sails along, with a time travel twist in the last hour rather better than Star Trek usually manages. And I'm looking forward to the next one already. I wonder where they're filming it...
06:19 There hasn't been a Transit of Venus for 121½ years.
06:20 Hang on, yes there has.
06:21 Just for once the sky above London is blue and virtually cloudless. Perfect.
06:25 Breakfast TV is showing live pictures with a tiny bite taken out of the left-hand edge of the Sun.
06:32 More than half of Venus is now visible on the solar disc...
06:40 ..and now all of Venus is on board. No sign of the notorious 'black drop effect' (a blurry edge where the shadow of Venus merges with the edge of the Sun)
06:50 Venus is well on its way on this rarest of journeys, with just over five hours until it reaches the opposite edge of the Sun.
07:25 My first attempt to view the transit. I'm off outside with the special viewing glasses I got for the 1999 solar eclipse.
07:50 No luck. A perfect view of the Sun, but my naked eye couldn't quite make out a tiny Venus-sized spot. I tried to convince myself that the Sun was slightly darker in the bottom left corner but I saw nothing conclusive. I do look very fetching in luminous orange cardboard spectacles though (and please don't try this without).
08:25 My second attempt to view the transit. I'm off outside with the two bits of cardboard to try to make a pinhole camera.
08:40 No good at all. Can't focus the image.
08:45 The BBC are reporting live from the Greenwich observatory. Various D-list celebrities (including the legendary Jon Tickle) are viewing the transit using some rather more impressive kit.
09:00 My third attempt to view the transit. I'm off outside with a pair of binoculars (one eyepiece blocked off) and a piece of card to project the image onto.
09:10 No good either. I did manage to project a circle of light onto the card but I suspect the dots I saw were specks of dust on the lens, not a passing planet.
09:22 Exactly halfway through now.
09:30 I tried my solar glasses again and... success! There's a little black spot on the Sun today. It's very small but it's most definitely there, just up from the bottom and slightly to the right. Absolutely insignificant, and absolutely fantastic.
10:10 I'm heading off to Greenwich to see what I can see from there...
11:15Greenwich Observatory is heaving with people, telescopes and TV crews. Amateur astronomers have gathered in the courtyard to view the transit using a variety of instruments, and the public are queueing up to take a look through the various eyepieces. There are free solar specs for all, and classes of children on very special school trips are gawping heavenward. Adam Hart-Davis is pre-recording chunks of tonight's TV programme from a fenced-off area by the car park.
11:30 I look into a proper telescope and see a perfect black circle silhouetted against the surface of the Sun. Wow.
11:55 I'm now looking into my third telescope, the Flamsteed Society's special 'Coronado'. Venus is very close to the edge of the solar disc, its image appearing inverted to the top left of the eyepiece. To the left right I can also see a giant orange flare burning off the side of the Sun.
12:04 Venus touches the edge of the Sun - third contact. I'm watching the planet's wobbly shadow projected inside a special cardboard box called a Solarscope. And the photo to the right is my contribution to international astronomy.
12:16 My last look into a telescope, with Venus now just a tiny semi-circular bite out of the edge of the Sun.
12:21 Watch the shadow disappear on the Solarscope. Is it still there? I think so.
12:23 No, it's gone. A cheer goes up from the assembled astronomers.
12:24 And that was it, the transit is over. Viewing conditions could hardly have been better, and it's been a memorable experience for all present and everyone else watching around the world. View some pictures of the transit of Venus here. Your next chance to see one will be on 6 June 2012, but from the UK you'll only see the final moments low in the sky just before dawn. Today's shadow play, I have to say, was a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.
They occur at intervals of eight years, a small section of individual life; but alternating with intervals of more than a century, during which whole generations pass away, thrones crumble, and dynasties change. (Thomas Milner)
1631: Before the 17th century nobody had ever seen a transit of Venus, because nobody had ever thought to look. The German astronomer Johannes Kepler was the first man to work out the exact shape of planetary orbits (in 1627), and hence the first to predict that Venus would cross the Sun on 6th December 1631. Unfortunately it was night-time in Europe, nobody elsewhere knew anything about it and Kepler died in 1630. So nobody saw anything.
1639: A 20-year old Liverpudlian astronomer called JeremiahHorrocks made a careful study of Kepler's tables and worked out, with only a month to go, that another transit of Venus was due on 24th November 1639. He set up a projecting telescope in his house in MuchHoole, near Preston. It was a cloudy, wintry Sunday and Jeremiah had to attend church twice during the day. However at 3:15pm the clouds finally broke and he was allowed half an hour of uninterrupted viewing before sunset. Horrocks was the first man ever to see this astronomical phenomenon, and used his observations to calculate that the Sun was far bigger and far further away than any scientist had ever imagined. Alas he died the following winter, a young genius extinguished. You can read his notes from the day here, read a full biography here and visit his local church here.
1761: Astronomers planned to use accurate measurements of the 1761 transit from different points on the globe to calculate the exact distance from the Earth to the Sun. English and French observers sailed on long perilous voyages to chosen viewing points across the world, not helped by the two countries being at war at the time. However it proved very difficult to determine the exact time that Venus crossed the edge of the Sun (due to the 'Black drop' effect) so the final calculations turned out to be less than conclusive.
1769: The Royal Society sent Captain James Cook on an antipodean voyage to observe the 1769 transit from the newly-discovered island of Tahiti. At least that was the cover story - the Endeavour was also on an secret mission to discover a 'Continent or Land of great extent' (which turned out to be the eastern coast of Australia). Cook built a fort in Matavai Bay to protect his expedition from the natives, establishing an observatory in preparation for the transit. He successfully (if inaccurately) recorded his observations, but it was two eventful years before he could return this information to London.
1874: Science had moved on over the previous century, with the invention of photography to record events with greater accuracy and the telegraph to send data across the world faster than any ship. Astronomers journeyed to far-flung locations to record the 1874 transit, including Hawaii, New Zealand and Vladivostok. When all the results were compiled the distance to the Sun was calculated to be 92,885,000 miles - not bad, but still not as accurate as scientists would have liked.
1882: This December transit was widely observed across Europe and North America but by now serious astronomers had given up on transit observations, realising they could never yield really useful results. Over a mere five occurrences these transits of Venus had shifted from events of astronomical importance to a sideshow with mere curiosity value. But that didn't stop Professor Robert Stawell Ball, the Patrick Moore of his day, from peering through the snow at an observatory in Dublin and looking forward wistfully to the sixth...
On Tuesday an astronomical event will happen which is so rare that nobody alive today has ever seen it. The planet Venus will spend the morning creeping across the disc of the Sun, for the first time since 1882. Full details of this once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon coming up. Today the science bit, tomorrow the history bit and on Tuesday the transit itself.
The science bit • A transit of Venus occurs only when Venus lies exactly in line between the Earth and the Sun. This should happen every 584 days, except that the orbits of the two planets are tilted slightly so a precise alignment is very rare (happens only 4 times every 243 years). You can view a visual explanation here and read a fairly comprehensible astronomical explanation here. • Transits occur in pairs, eight years apart. After 2004, the next transit will be in 2012. • These pairs occur alternately 105½ years and 121½ years apart. Before 2004 the last transit was in 1882. After 2012 the next transit will be in 2117. • Transits can only happen in June (around the 7th) or in December (around the 7th). The 2004/2012 pair are June transits, while the previous and next pairs are December transits. • Viewed from the Earth, the diameter of Venus is approximately 1/32nd of the diameter of the Sun. • It will take Venus six hours to cross the face of the Sun. First contact will occur around 6:20am BST and final contact around 12:23pm BST. You can watch a speeded-up animation here. • It has to be daylight to be able to view the transit. The whole 2004 event is therefore visible from Europe and most of Africa and Asia, but nothing at all is visible from the eastern Pacific. • Never look directly at the Sun, especially through a telescope or binoculars. Instead you could use a pinholeprojector or those goggles you bought for the 1999 eclipse, or just watch the whole thing online or on TV. • If it's cloudy you won't see a thing but, just for once, the weather forecast is fan-bloody-tastic. Six science-y transit weblinks:onetwothreefourfivesix.
D-Day+60: The rest of the media appear to be covering this anniversary admirably, and have been for the last month, so I won't say much. But I will say...
• Thank you.
• Here are somefineD-Daylinks.
• All this wartime nostalgia is a timely reminder of why voting on Thursday is so important, otherwise who knows what electoral scum you might let in.
Last Routemaster to Bow (Friday 4th June, 2315-0025)
Typical, you wait decades for the final number 8 Routemaster and then five come along at once. Late last night these five fine vehicles were lined up alongside Victoria station - three red buses, a green one and a white one. A surprisingly large crowd of enthusiasts had gathered to say their farewells and to take one last ride home (so it was just as well there were five buses available). The very last bus in the queue was RML 2760 (the very last Routemaster to be built), chugging away proudly with a Union Jack draped over the bonnet. This was the bus everyone wanted to be aboard, and the conductress had to hold the waiting mob of travellers at bay as if they were eager teenagers waiting to board a coach on a school trip.
I grabbed a window seat on the upper deck as the bus filled up with 'people who ride buses'. The bloke who sat next to me had NHS specs and the faint whiff of body odour, but I'd hate you to think everyone on board was like that. There were serial bus addicts who spent the journey testing each other out on which route ran where, there were friends who only seem to meet up on 'last runs', there were a couple of wives enjoying a double decker Friday night out with their menfolk and there were a few of the shy silent type who just sat and watched. Average age about 40, I would reckon, which is younger than I was expecting. Two blokes regaled us with bawdy songs and the odd lewd comment, a bit like being aboard a rugby club tour bus. One young afro-coiffed lad had even brought along a giant corkboard on which he had written 'Farewell No 8 Routemasters', but alas it was too big to hold up to the windows.
Ding ding. The last journey began. We set off through the illuminated streets of nighttime London, round Hyde Park Corner, up Piccadilly and through the backstreets of Mayfair. A man walked up the stairs carrying a film camera complete with giant furry microphone - the BBC were on board! He took a shot of the giant corkboard (so it wasn't entirely wasted) and pointed his camera in various people's faces (thankfully not mine). A journalist interviewed a few of the travellers, except they seemed more intent on discussing technical operational niceties rather than uttering the magic words "they're a London icon aren't they, we'll miss 'em".
Along Oxford Street the Friday night crowds waiting for their transport home were a bit cheesed off when our packed double decker sailed by without stopping. The bus was three-quarters of an hour late already and some of the on-board enthusiasts were grumbling that they were going to miss their last train home. "I wish they'd finished earlier," said one, oblivious to the irony of his statement. Some succumbed and alighted early to grab a final tube connection, allowing space for a handful of surprised Friday night revellers to take their seat aboard history. We sped past Centre Point, St Paul's and the Bank of England on this final express service to Bow. Just after midnight we passed Liverpool Street, the very last Routemaster to exit the City of London on a scheduled service. Some of us enjoyed the view, others enjoyed the upper deck social club and the BBC crew just slouched on the stairs. Bethnal Green, Roman Road, Bow Church, my house. End of the line.
Nobody wanted to be the first off the bus, mainly because the BBC cameraman was training his lens at all those filing down the stairs. The previous four buses had already disgorged their passengers and a crowd had gathered at the bottom of Fairfield Road to fire flashbulbs at the final double decker. There were still the last few yards into Bow Garage to be negotiated, and a traffic jam of vintage vehicles, current services, taxis and Smart cars had to be cleared from the narrow roadway before this could happen. The driver paused before turning into the garage so that the 200-strong crowd could attempt one last photograph. Only the crew and the BBC team were still on board as he finally disappeared inside the garage (moral: if you want to be part of history, get a job reporting it). The massed multitudes were eventually permitted a five minute photocall inside the garage - a giant shed filled by buses packed tight like loaves of bread in a baker's tray. The BBC were busy interviewing the driver and conductress, and grabbing more shots of us. I managed to capture one last decent photo, and then we were all sent back outside. Some of the old Routemasters were already heading out of the building on the way to their new owners. Slowly the crowd dispersed, ready to meet again in West London when the 7s lose their Routemasters next month.
This morning there are no crowds in Fairfield Road because there are no buses worth seeing. A steady stream of red boxy Tridents trickles out of Bow Garage every 7 minutes, and nobody's interested in the number 8 any more. It's just one more anonymous bus route traversing the capital, 40 years of historic Routemaster service lost overnight. It's hard to imagine anyone ever getting quite so worked up over these new buses. Having said that, the red boxy Tridents that go past my house on route 25 are due to be replaced by huge long bendy buses before the end of this month, and I shall certainly miss them when the only alternative is standing inside a characterless wheelchair-accessible box on wheels, packed in like cattle. But it's the Routemaster that will forever hold a special place in the heart of London. Ever had the feeling that progress is moving relentlessly in the wrong direction?
I've never had groupies massing outside my house before. There were scores of them yesterday, hanging around on the steps beside the takeaway, skulking outside Bow Church gates and lurking on the traffic island by the disused public conveniences. But they weren't here to see some famous celebrity, they were here to bid farewell to the Routemaster bus in east London. Yesterday was the very last day that these much-loved red workhorses were to be used on route 8 between Bow and Victoria. And what a show the local bus garage put on, with lots of extra old buses scheduled alongside the usual service. Enthusiasts came to ride, to photograph and just to experience this omnibus extravaganza. Some even bought commemorative t-shirts, mugs and yo-yos from the makeshift stall outside Bow Garage, but I resisted.
I stood at my local bus stop for over an hour waiting for a number 8 to come along. Actually loads of number 8s came along, just not the number 8 I was waiting for. The general travelling public hopped on the first bus that turned up (approx every 6 minutes), the assembled bus fans climbed on the first antique that turned up (approx every 20 minutes), but I hung on. The young conductor who'd checked my ticket earlier in the week wandered past on his way down to McDonalds for lunch. He'll probably be out of a job tomorrow. A traditional East End funeral dray crept past, which seemed kind of appropriate.
Finally I boarded RM1(pictured right) - the very first Routemaster to be built, exactly 50 years ago. It'll form the centrepiece of the Routemaster's Golden Jubilee celebrations in Finsbury Park next month, should you be tempted to attend. Three stops along the route, at an obscure request stop in Old Ford, a phalanx of 16 photographers were waiting to take our picture. A series of classic buses trundled past in the opposite direction, surprisingly full for a Friday afternoon (did everyone else take the day off work too?). There may be quicker ways to get to central London, but few ways are more fun. And there can't be many 50 year-old vehicles that could still earn a day's living in heavy London traffic, so it's all the sadder that these fine machines are being taken off the road for politically correct reasons. Make the most of the remaining Routemasters while you can, because one day they'll be confined to a twee heritage route for tourists, probably charging £9.50 a ticket. Yesterday that heritage came for a quid. Priceless.
Today is the very last day that Routemasters will run in east London. Tonight, just before midnight, the final route 8Routemaster will arrive home at Bow Garage, the end of a small red chunk of London's history.
Stagecoach have been running special old buses on route 8 all week (full details at the LondonBusPage), just to make up for the fact that from next week there will be no special buses running on the route at all. I took the opportunity to ride RT3871(pictured below) all the way from Bow to Victoria, just because I could. There were 10 of us waiting at the first bus stop, including two people with wheelie suitcases and a shellsuited couple with a pink baby in a giant three-wheeler pushchair. "I'm sorry, you'll have to wait for the next one," said the conductor as he left these five unfortunates and their oversized contraptions behind. It was, alas, a timely reminder of why these inaccessible Routemasters are finally being phased out.
I sat back in my comfortable non-plastic seat and enjoyed the view from the top deck. Ah the luxury of the Routemaster - blessed with wooden decking long before it became fashionable. The conductor soon bounded up the corner staircase to issue authentic paper tickets from the old wind-up machine slung round his neck. Passengers hopped on and off between stops, which may not have had the blessing of the Health and Safety Executive but it was certainly damned convenient. Other bus drivers, allocated the lesser job of driving some characterless new red cuboid, waved at our driver with unconcealed jealousy. Occasionally passers by (all male) would stop and look twice at our bus, registering that it looked slightly out of place in modern London. One smiling pensioner stood motionless clutching a copy of the Times behind his back, paying his last respects as we passed by.
I've made this journey many times before (see my Cube Routes feature, for example) but this occasion was different - the bus spotters were out in force. They were busy spotting my bus, so I kept myself busy spotting them. There was a bloke with a tripod photographing at the very first stop and another standing on some steps in Houndsditch with his camera at the ready. Two spotters had set up camp on a traffic island outside City Thameslink station and someone else was carefully positioned outside Sainsburys Local in Oxford Street with a giant swivelling lens. One passenger suddenly hopped off halfway down Old Bond Street to grab a couple of shots as we waited at traffic lights, and a keen snapper stepped out into the road as we sped round Hyde Park Corner. But the biggest welcome came as we pulled into Victoria Bus Station to be met by a posse of eight Routemaster paparazzi. The driver slowed down and posed for the cameras, like a slightly-surprised 60s pop star, before turning round and heading back to Bow (where I also spotted a film crew). And all this before the last day.
Only about ten or so route 8 Routemasters have survived until the last day of operation. A large proportion of the replacement red Trident double deckers have arrived early, diluting the service with impostors. But there's a final last show of strength from the old guard today, with no less then fifteen extra old buses plying between Bow and Victoria in addition to the usual service. I suspect most of the commuting public won't quite believe their eyes when some random ancient workhorse arrives at their bus stop, but I hope they'll enjoy the ride all the same. I wonder if there'll be any spare seats on tonight's very last Routemaster (leaving Victoria 22:45), riding the gauntlet of flashbulbs in advance of one final procession into Bow Garage. Report tomorrow.
Heard on the 8: "It's much better than the newer ones"
"This is what makes London London"
"Doesn't look past its sell by date to me"
"Stand off the platform please love"
You will, by now, have an opinion on Big Brother 5. Just answer the two simple questions below to locate your opinion in my patented BBgrid. Me, I'm A2.
Big Brother 5? A) love it B) indifferent to it C) hate it
This year's contestants? 1) love them 2) indifferent to them 3) hate them
I went to watch The Day After Tomorrow the day before yesterday. This is the big 'global warming end of the world' disaster film, the one that's supposed to jolt George Bush into taking climate change seriously. Fat chance, but probably still worth watching. Waiting outside in the foyer I thought the world was about to be overrun with popcorn instead ("Prime Minister, there's a Butterkist avalanche about to innundate Stratford") but that turned out to be the underage queue for Harry Potter nextdoor. Outside it had just started raining. I took this as a sign.
For the purposes of this film the whole global warming timescale is condensed into a fortnight, from first snowfall on New Delhi to the complete glaciation of the Northern hemisphere. You'd not realised that global warming meant an instant Ice Age, had you, but let's not allow good science to stand in the way of sensational special effects. And let's not focus on the billions of deaths across the globe either, oh no, let's focus on one dysfunctional family and a few associated hangers on and watch them survive. Hurrah for the American dream, for it will prevail, despite being responsible for most of the greenhouses gases in the first place.
I was reminded that all Hollywood disaster movies follow one very important geographical rule, which is that global catastrophes always hit either the western or the eastern seaboard of the United States (plus two other world capitals for thirty seconds each, just for the international dimension). The world has a land surface area of 60 million square miles but the swarm of killer tornadoes just happens to wreak havoc in the 470 square miles called Los Angeles. Where does the freak tidal wave hit? Why, New York City of course. And the eye of the North American killer ice storm may be only a couple of miles across but it just happens to pass directly over Manhatten Island during the last fifteen minutes of the film. Moral of the tale: if you insist on living in the USA, live in the middle.
20 things I've learnt about sex over the last couple of decades
1) Nothing ever prepares you for the first time...
2) ... not even the fact that the biology textbook always falls open at the same page.
3) The first time is always a ghastly mistake (I'm extrapolating this from a single occurrence, obviously)
4) The second time isn't much better.
5) It does get better eventually, but intermittently.
6) Some people need it regularly - they prefer quantity to quality.
7) Some people don't need it regularly - they prefer quality to quantity.
8) Both types of people should wash their sheets more often.
9) You always wish you were doing it more than you are.
10) Everyone else is doing it more than you are (this is of course only true for half of the population)
11) Sometimes you can wait for weeks/months/years only for it to last for seconds.
12) People who you'd like to do it with generally don't want to do it with you.
13) People who'd like to do it with you you'd generally not touch with a bargepole.
14) You only spot people you'd really like to do it with when it's impossible to make contact with them (eg at a funeral, on the opposite escalator, from the top of a bus, on the way into work)
15) Never do it without considering all the possible consequences.
16) Never do it in a single bed and stay the night - your spine will regret it.
17) There's nothing worse than waking up next to someone you realise you shouldn't have done it with.
18) There's nothing better than doing it then falling asleep in the arms of the one you love...
19) ... just so long as they're thinking the same thing.
20) You'll never forget the first time, but you'll never notice it's the last time.
How better to spend a bank holiday Monday than digging holes in the sand on a beach. Trust me, it beats standing in the B&Q queue, painting the bathroom or mowing the lawn. I spent my bank holiday Monday digging holes in the beach at Gorleston, a blue flag beach just south of Great Yarmouth on the East Norfolk coast. It's a proper traditional British beach with sand, ice cream and chips, but still with character and not too commercialised. I was there to perform uncle-ing duties with the smaller members of my family and to lap up the intermittent sunshine. Oh, and I was watching our fellow daytrippers as well...
Never stray more than fifty yards along the beach from the car park. Nobody else does, and you'd just feel lonely if you had the far flung sections of the beach all to yourself. Use a windbreak to protect unclad limbs from chronic goosepimpling and to stake out your territory so that other families don't stray too close. Bring a cheap ball game with you too, one of those fluorescent plastic frisbee-type games you can buy down the market for 99p, or from the shop on the promenade for £3.99. Don't forget to dig a large hole in front of your beach headquarters, initially with the intention of burying Dad in, but it's actually much more fun to watch passers-by accidentally falling into it just after you've packed up and left.
Wear as little as possible in order to show off your latest batch of tattoos to best effect. Don't bother with the suntan lotion, this isn't Malaga. At least one item of your clothing should be emblazoned with the flag of St George, preferably the item with the bulging elasticated waistband. Teenage males should dress as hip cool surfer dudes to impress their pink girlfriends, but should never shatter the illusion by going anywhere near the water.
Don't bring your own sandwiches because they'll become tainted by the sand which is on the beach. Instead join the lengthy queue for fried fat, reconstituted meat and barely cooked chips from the understaffed cafe on the seafront. It's mandatory to purchase an ice cream mid-way through the afternoon, usually at the same time that everyone else on the beach has decided to buy one. Expect that your favourite lolly will have sold out, but never mind because it's at least 30 years since you last enjoyed a Mini-Milk. Take the weight off your feet and play 10p-a-go automated bingo with the local pensioners, or waste pounds failing to grab the cuddly bear from the impossible glass box in the amusement arcade.
If all that sounds like too much effort, a popular alternative day out is to sit in your car in the car park and look out of the window at all the windswept holidaymakers whilst drinking soup and listening to the radio. But, quite frankly, you'd be missing out on all the fun.
Flaming June
A grinning Kriss Akabusi disembarked from the boat and ran up the slipway holding the torch aloft, cheering almost as much as we were. And then he was gone, round the corner into Island Gardens where Tower Hamlets had 15 minutes of community entertainment laid on. Five lycra-clad girls performed gymnastics suspended from five coloured hoops, accompanied by ethnic drumming. It may have been symbolically blatant but at least it was cheap. Rather more of my council tax went up in smoke in the ensuing firework display, before various council dignitaries queued up for a lengthy photo opportunity with the flame. This eventually passed to one of the non-famous runners who set off through the crowds towards Docklands, preceded by police motorbikes, a bus full of torchbearers and more sponsored flag distributors.
Never mind, my next chosen vantage point was City Hall where surely our Ken would put on a good show. I could see the flame crossing Tower Bridge, although I was rather too far away to see it was Gandalf carrying it. At City Hall I was prevented from entering the courtyard by a jobsworth security guard who demanded that I keep behind a line of bunting, despite the fact that half of London seemed to be standing on the other side. He was probably trying to keep me out of the path of the 93-year-old Sikh marathon runner who soon swept by. Thousands of Olympic-coloured balloons were released into the sky and the elderly athlete ran straight back down to the main road. The visit of the flame was all over and done in under a minute. Sorry, not impressed.
My final viewing attempt was along Oxford Street, a location where I seem to have spent far too much of my Saturday. I took up position behind the railings outside the exit from the tube station, surrounded by an ever increasing crowd of shoppers and eager families. The sponsored flag-givers were out in force again, as was the rain. We all got very wet waiting for the helicopters overhead to edge nearer, and for the snail's pace queue of ordinary buses to finally end. At last the proper torch-bearing London bus came along, but alas there was no sign of a flame on the open upper deck. Some spectators mumbled and cursed and prepared to slink away disheartened. But no, the torch was still on foot at this point, and there hidden directly behind a number 25 bendy bus came a smiling Roger Black. He stopped right beside me, as you can see, before dashing off to the other side of Oxford Circus where the flame finally ascended to its rightful place on the top deck of a red London icon.
A statement from the board of English Euphoria plc
roonerama
Euro 2004 quiz: It had to happen. Here are clues to the names of each of the 16 teams competing in Euro 2004. How many can you identify?
This is a picture of the very first Big Brother House, tucked away in the southeast corner of Canonbury Square. You're looking for the ground floor flat with the faint green disc to the right of the door - a tiny plaque to show where it really all began. This is also another Islington house lived in by Mr Blair, although in this case we're talking Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell. Sixty years ago Canonbury Square wasn't the prestigious address it is now, and when Orwell moved into this rundown apartment in 1945 he was inspired by its imposing shabbiness. It was here that he started to write his classic satire Nineteen Eighty Four, basing Winston Smith's home 'Victory Mansions' on this very flat. It all looks much more upmarket these days, but listen carefully outside and you can still hear the clocks striking thirteen.
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.Somewhere retail: Camden PassageI've spent far too much of my life being dragged round antique shops. Dank musty emporia stacked high with useless objects, the sort of stuff your gran used to have before she threw it all away in favour of something modern that actually worked. Rusty metal picture frames, wooden tables with deep authentic scratches, a selection of hideous porcelain voodoo dolls, all for sale at vastly inflated prices. If you have a penchant for antique shops then there's no greater concentration anywhere in the country than in Camden Passage, a maze of narrow lanes off Upper Street. Just don't go on a Sunday like I did because they're (almost) all closed. Upper Street itself is full of more modern boutiques selling equally overpriced must-have items, interspersed with a frighteningly large number of places to eat and drink. Halfway up you'll also find legendary estate agent Hotblack Desiato, the name used by local resident Douglas Adams for the lead singer of rock band Disaster Area in the HitchHiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
Few major sporting stadia are tucked away in the middle of respectable suburbia quite like this, but Arsenal's home ground lurks almost unnoticed amongst the quiet residential streets of Highbury. That is until you turn into Avenell Road and see the huge Art Deco facade of the East Stand looming up over the local neighbourhood. Forget Old Trafford, Anfield and other lesser arenas, this is the true field of dreams. Well I think so anyway. It did feel strange to stand here on a crowd-free non-match day with the streets deserted, although that may have been the fault of the drenching rainstorm playing out overhead at the time. Alas in a couple of years it'll always be this quiet round here as a brand new Arsenal Stadium is due to open just over the railway at Ashburton Grove. I'm sure it'll be state-of-the-art, but the thought of new housing going up around the old pitch feels somehow sacrilegious. Seaman Street, Wenger Way, Rice Road and Double Drive anyone? I'm sure you can come up with better.
This final photograph shows the ultimate London address. Oh yes. Turn to the very end of the index at the back of the London A-Z and there you'll find Zoffany Road, a tiny residential street nestling deep in Upper Holloway, N19. It's not even 100 yards long, containing six trees, two streetlamps, one new car, 21 old cars, and one abandoned brown armchair decaying quietly on the pavement. The north side of the road is taken up by the concrete playground of a centre for children with special needs. It's hideous on the outside but no doubt inspirational on the inside, and the site has recently been rescued from evil property developers. On the opposite side of the road you'll find a single terrace of eight identical and very ordinary houses. The residents do normal things like getting in their cars and driving to the shops or popping out in the middle of a thunderstorm to drop bulging binbags outside their front door. Wonderfully average. Unlike the other eight places I visited on my random day out, this is where the real residents of Islington live.
London has some fantastic architecture, and this week the streets of Clerkenwell are hosting the very first celebration of London's architectural fantasticness. It's all part of Architecture Week 2004, a national excuse to go out and look at nice buildings. Pictured right is the Farmiloes building, until 5 years ago the headquarters of a Victorian lead & glass merchants but currently headquarters to the ridiculously-named Biennale exhibition. Inside I found a fascinating mix of old and new, including an atmospheric 'collection of splendid artworks' in the company's dark cluttered offices, and details of redevelopment plans for a number of new capital projects. Enough to keep me busy while the rain beat down on the grassy road outside (there's not normally turf in the street but on Saturday they drove a herd of cows down here - it's that sort of festival). There are still another seven days for you to catch the exhibition or one of the many Clerkenwell events, and I'd recommend a visit if you're in the area.
Here are two three-storey Islington townhouses each with a very different history. The first is tucked away in a leafy corner of Barnsbury, a prime residential location and once home to our current Prime Minister. Tony Blair moved here with his family back in 1992 when he was a mere shadow Home Secretary, and the Granita restaurant where he thrashed out ambitious leadership plans with Gordon Brown was just down the road. Five years later Tony moved into Downing Street and sold up here making a tidy profit. The house today looks quiet and spacious, although there isn't a plaque on the front because Mr Blair isn't dead yet. Merely wounded. There is a plaque on the second floor of the other house because its most famous occupant is very dead indeed. Joe Orton and his boyfriend Kenneth Halliwell moved here in 1959 and kept themselves busy by defacing the books in the local library. Joe became a really famous playwright in the mid 60s ('Loot', 'Entertaining Mr Sloane', etc) but his success merely caused Halliwell to get jealous and depressed. One morning in August 1967 Ken smashed Joe's skull open with a hammer, like you do, before taking an overdose himself. Joe had kept a candid diary which was later turned into a highly readable book - Prick Up Your Ears - the film of which was shot in this very flat.
Canonbury Tower was built by William Bolton, a 16th century nutter who believed the world was going to flood and stocked his new tower with enough food to last him two months just in case. I suspect he may have been five centuries too early. In 1616 Sir Francis Bacon moved in, a genius who was definitely Lord Chancellor, probably had a legitimate claim to the throne and possibly wrote the entire works of Shakespeare. Or probably not. Other famous authors to have lodged here include the Irishman Oliver Goldsmith and the American Washington Irving (he wrote Rip Van Winkle, don't you know). 1952 saw the setting-up in the grounds of the Tower Theatre, the only fully licensed non-professional theatre in London, but they moved out last year and the building looks rather rundown already. The main tower building is home today to a Masonic Research Centre and the grassy lawn outside was home yesterday to a rather damp-looking garden party. Hope they rolled their trousers up.
The Holloway road is a grim grey artery filled with traffic pollution and lined by non-descript retail outlets. It comes as quite a shock, therefore, to see this startling spiky silver building looming up halfway along the northern side. This is the latest project for architectural megastar Daniel Libeskind, designer of the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, and recent winner of the competition to redesign the World Trade Center site in New York. His 3-month-old Graduate Centre for the London Metropolitan University may not be terribly big on the inside but it's having a great impact on the neighbourhood outside. Anything has to be better than the faceless concrete towers of the original main university buildings, which hopefully nobody will ever notice again now that there's far something better to stare at.
Random borough: It's been three months since I last took a random trip to one of London's 33 boroughs, and a very pleasant day out it was too. I've nothing special planned to do today so I thought it was time I dipped into my jamjar full of folded slips of paper again and picked out another one. Could be anywhere - north, south, east or west, or maybe somewhere in the middle - who knows? Just won't be Merton, because that's the borough I ended up in last time. I'm going to visit some of my randomly-chosen borough's most interesting places, assuming it has any. I'm going to try to visit somewhere famous, somewhere historic, somewhere pretty, somewhere retail, somewhere sporty and somewhere random. And then I'll come back tomorrow and tell you all about it. Ulp, let's see where I'm going this time...
Loyd Grossman was down my way yesterday evening. He was reopening the Bow Arts Trust, a huge studio space for 90 local artists carved out of an old nunnery. Yes, nunnery. We have proper history round where I live, remember? The front of the studio building used to be a drab slab of rundown Victorian brickwork. Not any more. A precisely constructed array of jet black planks has given the front of the building a striking new look, while a series of glowing fluorescent tubes now dangle over the lane down the side. Just a few thousand pounds of carefully placed design work has given a real lift to the street on which I live.
Kim Appleby - Don't Worry (79p)
BB Selecta
Battlefield Europe: Sixty years ago today the first V1 rocket fell on London, landing less than a mile from my house. It was 4:25am on a Tuesday morning, exactly one week after D-Day, and nobody in Mile End was prepared for two thousand pounds of explosives to fall suddenly from the sky onto a row of sleeping houses. A new terrifying era of airborne bombardment had begun. 200 people were left homeless, 30 were seriously injured and 6 were killed, including teenage mother Ellen and her 8-month-old baby Tom. The flying bomb was Hitler's latest deadly weapon, fired from occupied France, aimed at London and dropping randomly from the sky onto an unsuspecting target. Another 2500 V1s would hit the capital that summer, with many more falling short across Kent, and hundreds of civilians would die. No world leaders are expected to gather by the railway bridge in Grove Road for a service of remembrance today, just a crowd of drunken football fans hoping that a very different French threat will be silenced.
Bow Road update: It's been four months now since the first blue wall appeared at Bow Road tube station as part of a major infrastructure regeneration project. Four months during which the station has been overrun with blue walls and safety notices, even if nobody yet appears to have done any actual redevelopment work. I thought you might like to see one of these legendary blue walls, given that I've been going on about them for so long. So here's one.
Transit of Venus: as it happens
06:40 ..and now all of Venus is on board. No sign of the notorious 'black drop effect' (a blurry edge where the shadow of Venus merges with the edge of the Sun)
09:10 No good either. I did manage to project a circle of light onto the card but I suspect the dots I saw were specks of dust on the lens, not a passing planet.
11:15 Greenwich Observatory is heaving with people, telescopes and TV crews. Amateur astronomers have gathered in the courtyard to view the transit using a variety of instruments, and the public are queueing up to take a look through the various eyepieces. There are free solar specs for all, and classes of children on very special school trips are gawping heavenward. Adam Hart-Davis is pre-recording chunks of tonight's TV programme from a fenced-off area by the car park.
12:04 Venus touches the edge of the Sun - third contact. I'm watching the planet's wobbly shadow projected inside a special cardboard box called a Solarscope. And the photo to the right is my contribution to international astronomy.
Nobody wanted to be the first off the bus, mainly because the BBC cameraman was training his lens at all those filing down the stairs. The previous four buses had already disgorged their passengers and a crowd had gathered at the bottom of Fairfield Road to fire flashbulbs at the final double decker. There were still the last few yards into Bow Garage to be negotiated, and a traffic jam of vintage vehicles, current services, taxis and Smart cars had to be cleared from the narrow roadway before this could happen. The driver paused before turning into the garage so that the 200-strong crowd could attempt one last photograph. Only the crew and the BBC team were still on board as he finally disappeared inside the garage (moral: if you want to be part of history, get a job reporting it). The massed multitudes were eventually permitted a five minute photocall inside the garage - a giant shed filled by buses packed tight like loaves of bread in a baker's tray. The BBC were busy interviewing the driver and conductress, and grabbing more shots of us. I managed to capture one last decent photo, and then we were all sent back outside. Some of the old Routemasters were already heading out of the building on the way to their new owners. Slowly the crowd dispersed, ready to meet again in West London when the 7s lose their Routemasters next month.
I stood at my local bus stop for over an hour waiting for a number 8 to come along. Actually loads of number 8s came along, just not the number 8 I was waiting for. The general travelling public hopped on the first bus that turned up (approx every 6 minutes), the assembled bus fans climbed on the first antique that turned up (approx every 20 minutes), but I hung on. The young conductor who'd checked my ticket earlier in the week wandered past on his way down to McDonalds for lunch. He'll probably be out of a job tomorrow. A traditional East End funeral dray crept past, which seemed kind of appropriate.
Finally I boarded RM1 (pictured right) - the very first Routemaster to be built, exactly 50 years ago. It'll form the centrepiece of the Routemaster's Golden Jubilee celebrations in Finsbury Park next month, should you be tempted to attend. Three stops along the route, at an obscure request stop in Old Ford, a phalanx of 16 photographers were waiting to take our picture. A series of classic buses trundled past in the opposite direction, surprisingly full for a Friday afternoon (did everyone else take the day off work too?). There may be quicker ways to get to central London, but few ways are more fun. And there can't be many 50 year-old vehicles that could still earn a day's living in heavy London traffic, so it's all the sadder that these fine machines are being taken off the road for politically correct reasons. Make the most of the remaining Routemasters while you can, because one day they'll be confined to a twee heritage route for tourists, probably charging £9.50 a ticket. Yesterday that heritage came for a quid. Priceless.
I sat back in my comfortable non-plastic seat and enjoyed the view from the top deck. Ah the luxury of the Routemaster - blessed with wooden decking long before it became fashionable. The conductor soon bounded up the corner staircase to issue authentic paper tickets from the old wind-up machine slung round his neck. Passengers hopped on and off between stops, which may not have had the blessing of the Health and Safety Executive but it was certainly damned convenient. Other bus drivers, allocated the lesser job of driving some characterless new red cuboid, waved at our driver with unconcealed jealousy. Occasionally passers by (all male) would stop and look twice at our bus, registering that it looked slightly out of place in modern London. One smiling pensioner stood motionless clutching a copy of the Times behind his back, paying his last respects as we passed by.
I've made this journey many times before (see my Cube Routes feature, for example) but this occasion was different - the bus spotters were out in force. They were busy spotting my bus, so I kept myself busy spotting them. There was a bloke with a tripod photographing at the very first stop and another standing on some steps in Houndsditch with his camera at the ready. Two spotters had set up camp on a traffic island outside City Thameslink station and someone else was carefully positioned outside Sainsburys Local in Oxford Street with a giant swivelling lens. One passenger suddenly hopped off halfway down Old Bond Street to grab a couple of shots as we waited at traffic lights, and a keen snapper stepped out into the road as we sped round Hyde Park Corner. But the biggest welcome came as we pulled into Victoria Bus Station to be met by a posse of eight Routemaster paparazzi. The driver slowed down and posed for the cameras, like a slightly-surprised 60s pop star, before turning round and heading back to Bow (where I also spotted a film crew). And all this before the last day.
You will, by now, have an opinion on Big Brother 5. Just answer the two simple questions below to locate your opinion in my patented BBgrid. Me, I'm A2.
