i know there is at least one architect who reads this blog fairly regularly.
Perhaps someone can explain how they manage to construct offices entirely of clouds. Here is one such building on Euston Road. Is it all done with mirrors ?
as you may know, london was, until the 1980s, a small village in a giant pine forest on a mountain. In the 80s they removed the trees, flattened the mountain, and moved various historic buildings from across the UK in to the newly formed city of London.
They even extended this concept to the london underground where the various different lines were brought from different towns and villages. This is why each of the lines has its own individual characteristics, and why so few other towns in the UK have their own underground transport. One engineer on the project said “it’s like extracting varicose veins and putting them back in someone else’s legs, but much more rewarding”
The idea was that a concentration of ancient and interesting buildings in a small area would encourage tourism as well as providing a nice backdrop for those working in the city.
Unfortunately, with progress, nature was destroyed. The pine forest and mountain seem like a distant dream. People who lived in London village just 25 years ago still resent the destruction of their quiet hamlet.
These people protest silently once a year by placing pine trees in the street outside their houses thus hindering pedestrian access.
here are just a few i spotted this morning:
we took esther and kezia to london today. we were going to do the george w bush memorial walk, but it was chucking it down with rain, so we went to the Tate Modern instead. After much fun there we walked down the south bank to trafalgar square via westminster (so esther could see big ben).
fun on the bakerloo line:
I’ve mentioned the installation before, but here are some new pictures:
sleepy kezia (and blanket) and esther
kezia looking at the ceiling and jane looking cute:
esther took this photo of me unhelped (not bad for a 4 year old):
on the way back we saw Big Ben:
rather randomly i thought i saw battersea power station across hyde park this morning. it must have been there every day, but i’ve just never looked down the road at this angle before. you can just see it’s four jutting jutters through the trees and beyond the mist.
here is london’s newest landmark – the gherkin. i took this photo as it looked nice, but it also shows a little man in a box dangling off a very thin stick, cleaning the windows.
my nickname at university for no particular reason was ‘spoon chicken’. therefore i was delighted to be able to go to a restaurant called Spoon+. I went along with a VIP type and it came recommended by ‘the ladies of the office’. It is simply excellent, and definately worth a trip !
here is a picture of the table after we’d eaten our meal. i highly recommend the pigeon.
here is a building people like to complain about. i think it’s quite good. click the photo to see the whole thing. there’s safety in monotony.
click for big version
there’s a whole nother world underneath the streets of london. sometimes you catch a glimpse of it in every day life. the occasional open door at a train station revealing hidden passageways or funny funnel shaped buildings in random parts of the town acting as air vents for underground activities.
this evening i saw an open manhole cover with a little railing round it. i learnt over and took this photo down the hole. i zoomed in 3x and it still looked a long way down !
you can’t quite see because of the scale of the photo, but just above the water level is a passeway leading left to right across the picture where the workman had obviously gone down.
i did think about going down and having a look, but wasn’t sure if that was a great idea.
here is one of the government’s water-for-street-people-for-christmas street taps.
our old friend big ben
london eye (from an angle)
there are a variety of things you aren’t allowed to do in London’s royal parks. including your washing it appears. people shouldn’t be airing their dirty laundry in public in my opinion.
walking through london has its hazzards. traffic is the main one of course. people trying to sell you stuff comes a close second. have you joined CUP yet ? you should.
this chap tried to sell me a wet Big Issue. he offered a joke a drier alternative. i said i would give him £1 if i could take his photo to put on the website. so i did.
i had just bumped in to an old colleague so he gave him some cash for the joke. i won’t repeat the joke because
1) it’s not very good
2) you might want to buy the joke from him yourself despite point 1.
3) i didn’t buy the joke, my ex-colleauge did, so it’s not right that i pass it on
he hoped that the photo would bring us all luck. so good luck to you all !
you remember i told you about a hotel which was riddling (wriggling?) with cops and spooks last week cuz George was in town ?
well, it’s also the place where the psychelic slick was. and this morning, a load of multicoloured broken glass looking all twinkerly in the pouring rain:
interestingly they had a load of matresses in a skip outside the side entrance. perhaps George’s people asked them to be disposed of ? or maybe they were going to get some new ones anyway and waited until they had gone to get some new ones in. or maybe this was the only way of getting rid of the secret agents’ bed-bugs ?
the british museum is a great dry shortcut when it’s raining. it was drizzling today so i walked through. i always try and take a slightly different route through to see what i can see. Best of all it’s free and they don’t mind you taking photos.
today I saw the Rosetta Stone and some weird head thing.
there was also a map of London from the 1750s. Where i’m sitting now was just fields back then:
(click for big version)
The cool thing is that the George Bush Memorial walk was (mostly) possible back then too. perhaps some blogger from the 1750s proposed a similar walk for visiting dignatories making a state visit to the centre of the empire.
here is beauty in pollution. the colours were amazing
update: here’s one i found a few months later in the same spot.
here is a walk around London which might take a couple of hours (or longer if you want). Let’s assume George Bush arrives at Heathrow airport. He’ll wheel his bags through customs and head straight for the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station. It’s famous for being the most expensive train journey you can make for the distance in the UK.
i arrived 30 minutes early for a meeting this morning so had a look round the local church. was very nice (and old).
hoorah for london and oldness amongst fancy new stuff
look up when you wander round london. it’s fantastic (when it’s not raining) !
despite being 30 miles away i am able to tell what is happening on the streets of london thanks to my network of spies. here is an interesting picture sent by telco-john. he spotted some pavement eruption.
maybe it’s caused by some prisoners who are digging an escape tunnel ? perhaps the villains are hiding in the bins ?
or maybe it’s something to do with Goodge Street station and the trouble on the Northern Line. They’ll be a lot of pressure building up underground at the moment, it’s only natural it should have to release itself.
the best bit about this picture is that it shows that a couple of bins have wandered over to the eruption to investigate. bins care about the street – that’s why they are happy to accept all our rubbish.
after a meeting today i popped out for lunch with an ex-colleague. rather than fill our faces with unhealthy food (me) we decided to walk over to the Tate Modern and look at the new installation. It’s most excellent.
here is me
here is someone on the balcony
and here are some other people
