A wander around Borough Market and Borough Yards

The skies are [finally] blue here in London and it's hot hot HOT. Hurrah!

People often say that the sun has come out but they forget that it's always up there burning ferociously, but usually covered by clouds. When it's as hot as this, it gets me thinking about the power of those clouds, wondering if there is a tog rating for cloud blankets as per duvets.

Anyway, enough about the weather. I went to Tate Modern on Monday afternoon and afterwards, as I wandered the backstreets heading towards London Bridge, I snapped a few pics, inc these two:

Whist I despise the Tate's modern extension to Gilbert Scott's elegant Bankside power station, I do rather like the graphic patchwork patterns that can be achieved by zooming in on it. Nearby there's a lovely glimpse of St Paul's through the trees. 

I crossed over Southwark Street and, as I went under the railway lines and looked left/east, I noticed that the patterns from the metalwork above were making shadows that echoed the Shard in the distance. The Shard dominates the area as shown by my second pic here where it looms over the beautiful old façade of a hop dealer's premises in Borough High Street...

My intention had been to head to London Bridge and catch a bus home to Holloway but as it was such a nice day with not so many people about I let myself go wandering. I headed into Borough Market which was mostly clear after a busy trading morning, meaning signage and imagery is easier to see.

And then an amble around the streets that surround the market. I've long been fascinated by this building that faces Southwark Cathedral and when I get a moment I will find out who/what BMT stands for, seen within its 1897 marker.

Adjacent to this building there are a couple of old bollards from the 1820s and some corner protectors of interest:

I walked to the riverside and noticed that the modern crane being used to redevelop a nearby building that is covered in scaffolding and white protective material echoed the masts on the replica of The Golden Hind. Again, nice patterns and colours:

I then stood and admired the view of the City of London across the River Thames – OK, let's be honest, I went in the pub and had a beer on the terrace and admired the view from there(!): 

This pic shows how many London landmarks are visible from this spot – a double decker red London bus on London Bridge is going past Adelaide House (the first reinforced concrete office block; an Art Deco era marvel that is currently undergoing internal renovation), then there's The Walkie Talkie, The Gherkin, 22 Bishopsgate, lots of other tall buildings that have names I can't remember right now, and a glimpse of Tower 42... all here surrounding what would have been one of the biggest buildings it its day, the Grade II* listed Fishmongers Hall, built 90 years before Adelaide House in the early 1830s.

By this time it was almost 6pm and the shadows cast by the sun were marvellous. I took few pics near The Clink Museum:

Plus a couple of myself near the newly developed Borough Yards, a clever repurposing of the arches beneath the railway lines:

There are some interesting things here. I specifically like the neon boards that resembles the signs that used to be outside cinemas, but here illustration the diverse range of trades and professions here throughout the many decades, and someone has highlighted that the bottom of the metal brackets look like faces:

Deckchairs are currently arranged in front of a large screen where the Olympics is being shown. Men's gymnastics is amazing. Here I bumped into some people I had chatted to at Tate Modern. How delightful. We chatted for quite a while and swapped contact details. 

I finally headed home. Walking towards London Bridge via Winchester Walk there was another lovely view, this time of the cathedral bathed in late afternoon sunshine (about 7.20pm).

What a lovely afternoon. 

Paralympics, August, London 2012.

I put a collection of relevant Paralympic pics together a while ago here.
But this post is not about anything London or sporty it's about logo design.
I have already written here about my disdain for that awful London 2012 logo with its lower case L for London and that redundant square in the middle, but enough of that... this is about the Paralympic logo; the Agitos.
For a few years now I have been collecting snaps of what I call lazy logo designs. And the Agitos fits into this mould...
It appears that there is a simple formula to creating a logo and anyone can do it – all you need to do is write the name of the company and then add a shape, reminiscent of the Nike swoosh, over, under or around the name using the negative space created by two overlapping ellipses. Genius! If you can't fathom the overlapping ellipse thing simply re-draw the shape as best you can, just like in the Agitos version.
Look around you; these things are everywhere.
Below is a screengrab of just a few of the ones I have on file.
The Agitos logo, takes this process further and just repeats the elliptical element, without words, to give, I assume, an impression of movement, agitos being the Latin for 'I move'. See how they've managed to squeeze it in beautifully with the other elements to form the Paralympic Games 2012 logo. Nice! Not.
I may have to give up my day job.

It's closing time

Today is the last day of the London 2012 Olympics and tonight we get to watch the Closing Ceremony.
I'll leave it at that and just show a collection of images of places in London that have closed without any ceremonies at all. Some have since been demolished, and some have completely changed their identity, whilst others are still waiting to hear about their future.
You may well recognise some of them:

Purple and pink, polyester and plastic

I wrote a while back that I'd applied to be a London Ambassador during the Olympics. I'd originally understood this to mean something more akin to showing small groups of people around areas of London and thought I'd be under-qualified for it. But it turns out all it's just standing around in a nasty uniform being prepared to answer people's questions.
Whilst I am more than happy to do my bit the whole 'training' process has been tiresome and badly-managed. But I bit my tongue and bided my time.
And then the uniform arrived. Oh dear... 
It's certainly not what I'd call 'sustainable'... in fact it will be definitely be more of a legacy as almost every part of it is man-made. Here we are in an age of recycling and ecology and just looking at these clothes is bringing me out in a sweat. I can't even sleep in poly-cotton sheets, so this is going to be rather a trial for me.
The pink and purple tops are made from 100% polyester with a small irritating collar. When the Ambassadors were first on the streets they were sporting simple cotton T-shirts with white lettering on them. Why couldn't we have had those, or something similar? The matching cheap, thin, easily-creased fleece is lined in silver grey polyester, as is the '100% Nylon' rainproof hooded jacket.
We have been instructed that a hat must be worn during our tours of duty but the baseball cap looks very silly on me and I run the risk of being asked if you can get fries with that. So I will instead be sporting the straw trilby, which actually isn't bad, however, that too has polyester stiffening inside it. I wore it for 10 minutes so that my friends could laugh at me, and my hair was damp when I took it off.
Then there's the stiff black trousers containing 67% polyester. I assume the skirts are made using the same material. Luckily they now say we can wear our own plain black trousers (phew!) but why they couldn't have thought of that before they wasted all so much money making and distributing thousands of the things is beyond me. After all, who hasn't got a pair of black trousers or a black skirt?!
Plain black walking-style shoes or trainers finish off the ensemble. No open toes or sandals. No shorts.
Whoever designed this should be shot. I mean, polyester and dark trousers in July and August?! D'uh! Actually, that's a point... er... 'designed'?
All of this must be carted about in a matching pink and purple rucksack that isn't waterproof. So plastic everywhere else, but not for the bag!

Then there's the issue of where these things were manufactured. There appears to have been a great opportunity missed to produce things here in the UK. I can find no 'Made In' labels in the top, trilby, fleece or jacket, but cap and the bag say they were made in China.
And the branding, which looks ironed-on, varies from item to item. The typeface under the logos is that hideous new Olympics font (ech spit!*), but 'TEAM LONDON Ambassador', which is in Futura Regular on most items, is in Helvetica/Arial on the bag, and then a strangely squished version of Futura Light has been used on the cap with the letters A and M in a smaller size. What's that all about?!.
Bizarrely you can still apply to be an Ambassador as the relevant page is still live. I think this speaks volumes.
But hey...
Please do come and find me in Trafalgar Square between noon and 5.30pm every day 13–17th August. It's my birthday on the 15th and I will be needing a few drinks after perspiration and weight loss.
*I use 'font' here, as there only appears to be one weight of this revolting "typeface". I still cannot fathom why the 'o' is a complete circle and does not follow the same angular rules as the other letters. Perhaps, once the Games start, we might see it dancing about and becoming part of the Rings...? Oh I dunno.

Torched yet untouched

I had a text conversation with a friend yesterday morning about how unmoved I am by the Olympic torch relay. Well, it's not even a relay is it?!
I was going to write a piece myself, but it seems I lit his blue touch paper as he has beaten me to it, echoing many of my thoughts.
Read it here.
Go Malcolm... go go go!!!
Read more of my thoughts about the Olympics in a previous post.

Clockwise from top left:
Chamber of Commerce, Cannon St (RIP), Crouch End Broadway, Westminster, Upper St, Clapham Common, Savile Row.

Run away and make money!

It's less than a year to the London Olympics. Nine months. Like a big noisy baby waiting to be born.

At the Thames Festival last month I was chatting to a couple from Americans from Atlanta and they told me it was AWFUL in their home city when the Olympics came the town. They were saddened at how much their city had changed post-event.

As you probably know from reading my occasional rants about the forthcoming Games and the associated homogenised and consumerist hell of Westfield shopping centre, I am not a fan of all this Olympics stuff. I am still convinced that the money could have be better spent.

If you too are dreading the invasion, and thinking of leaving the country until it all blows over, why not make some money out of it all and rent your home for the duration? If you live close to Stratford or any of the other Games sites you'll get some fabulous rental rates that will more than cover the cost of storage for your valuables. LO2010 is free to the first 50 who sign up using the code FREE11. And an iPad is up for grabs too!

Oh, and re that Olympic logo I hate... you know the one I mean, I am not going to show it or link to it here... don't you think the LO2012 logo and site looks way better?

Top: Trafalgar Square, South Tottenham, Kensington, Stamford Hill

Bottom: Wandsworth, Willesden, West Green

Paralympics tickets... only 5 days left to apply

Tickets for the Paralympic Games are on sale until 26th August.

There are 21 sports and the athletes who compete in them are truly amazing. This, coming from someone who lounged about in her dressing gown drinking endless cups of tea whilst watching The Great North Race on TV last Sunday!

But check out some of these paralympic sports – believe me, I am not making these up – the fastest marathon on Earth, wheelchair rugby, visually impaired javelin throwing and dwarf powerlifting, the latter being dwarves lifting weights, not people lifting dwarves. And wheelchair fencing also sounds rather weird to a pedant like me!

See the Channel 4 site for more info.

Top: Abbey Mills, Chatsworth Rd, Chiswell St, Dalston

Bottom: Leytonstone, Old Street, Shoreditch, London Eye

I want to be one of Eurostar's Olympic Pioneers because......

Eurostar, an official provider (provider?!) to the London 2012 Olympics have invited me and other bloggers to enter a competition where the prize is attendance at a special 'One Year To Go' event later this month.

We have been asked to write something with the title as above, so here goes....

How shoddy of Seb and the boys to contact me at this late stage – they ought to have invited me to this 'One Year To Go' event as a formality being London is mine – it's in the name 'Jane's London' – so, by default, everything to do with the London 2012 Olympics is mine too! For this reason I ought to have been involved with the design and management of the Olympic sites from the outset. It's no good showing me something that's almost finished. After all, I visited the Stratford site two years ago and didn't give very good feedback about it, so you'd think they'd be wanting to sweeten me up and convince me everything's going OK. I really, really do hope they have pulled their socks up since then.

Every garish option of that nasty logo still niggles me. It looks like the Saturday staff at KallKwik knocked out a few scribbles one afternoon with a limited set of felt tips, some coloured paper and dry transfer lettering from the local Poundshop. These ugly concoctions are splattered all over the place resembling poor graffiti complete with a hideous typeface, bad letter-spacing and a lower case L on London – yuck! We were told that the logo would 'come into its own' nearer 2012, but I am still waiting for that 'aaah-ha I see!' moment. I wish I could get graphic design jobs like that.

Seriously though, I really do want to see that the London Olympics turns out to be a big success. Not for just me, but for everyone; I need to be convinced that all this building and disruption for a one-off showcase event will be worth all the hassle; during the event and for decades afterwards. But from where I sit now, it all seems to me to be such a huge waste of money; money that could have been better spent on other things, especially in what was a neglected area of London. For instance, how does building another huge shopping centre there (Westfield) help the small businessman in the local area?

I did not apply for tickets to any of the events as I think I will be able get a better view of the proceedings watching it all on TV from the comfort of my sofa. I don't understand why the Olympics cannnot be staged in the same place every time – Athens would have been the logical choice once it returned there.

Sport and the Olympic sites aside, I have applied to be a London Ambassador, which I really hope works out for me because sharing this great city with Olympic visitors will be a much better use of my time.

So, to conclude, as the owner of [Jane's] London, I'd like Eurostar, Boris and Mr Coe to assuage my concerns and convince me that work being carried out on the Olympic sites is all up to my high standards and that I have nothing at all to be concerned about.

London-wide pics relating to the Olympics:

Top: N7, W14, WC2, WC1

Middle: WC1, W1, EC2, EC1

Bottom: N1, NW1, W1, N7

Olympic Park tour

At 6.30pm on Thursday 21st May 2009 I boarded an official Olympic Park Tour bus for the inaugural London Bloggers tour of the site organised by Craig Beaumont of The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Ltd. Anyway, there were about 12 of us on the gaudy bus, covered as it was in colourful branding and logos designed by blind the children of people who work in Wolf Olins accounts department.


After a short film about plans for the site, followed by a rather crappy ‘quiz’ consisting of six questions no-one was really interested in or cared to guess, we were then in the capable hands of Morag, who was, despite the inner thighs of her unprofessional trousers, really competent and informative. As we were driven around the site she regaled us with information about the various things we passed, most of which just looked like a huge building site! We also saw lots of unwashed soil piled up in mounds waiting to be cleaned of arsenic and nasty chemicals. And I managed to spot a few lonely trees along the newly-cleaned River Lea.

There is only one building on the site that has survived to tell any story of the past and that’s the old Kings Yard Textile Mill. I find it really hard to believe that there really was nothing else worth saving or renovating. It’s all a bit sad. I did find it interesting to see the trestle framework for the construction of Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre, but large-scale areas of new build such as this, splattered with ‘iconic’ structures, are really not for me. I got off the bus at the end of the tour feeling a bit ‘so what?’.

There was much talk about things like sustainability, being eco/environmentally-friendly and how much can be, is being, and will be recycled, yet they handed out to us some wasteful promotional material. On boarding the bus we were all given a big nasty 16-page A5 fold-out leaflet that I could quite easily redesign as a 12-pager by losing all the unnecessary crap such as the superfluous 'facts' that during the games “over 260,000 loaves of bread expected to be consumed” (how big is a loaf of bread?) and “160,000 litres of milk expected to be consumed”. Who cares?! The leaflet also has a plan of the site on it that has got a lot of relevant information missing (Craig, please call me!). And towards the end of the tour we were all given plastic Oyster Card/ travel pass holder/ wallet things. Inside these wallets on one side are 3 ‘Did You Know?’ cards. Mine relate to cycling and paralympic boules and archery. Thanks. They look cheap and nasty. In the opposite pocket is a large leaflet, which concertinas and then folds, entitled ‘join in’. (Notice the lower case ‘j’ on join here, yet there are initial caps on the cards – where is Harry Hill when a decision needs to be made?) Anyway, I think all this printed bumpf and waffle is a waste of money and resources and it makes me wonder if it holds a mirror to the whole event...

After the tour some of us went to the King Edward pub. In contrast to the Olympic site the pub hasn’t changed much over the years; it’s still only two storeys high with etched glass, stained wood and tiled walls. We discussed the tour and how it was a shame that we never got an opportunity to get off the bloody bus to get some better photos (hence the reflections and dirty windows evident in a lot of our photographs). Ian suggested they should employ an open-top bus. Genius idea.

But I am glad I went. it was really good to put faces to some other blogger’s names. And a big thanks, as ever to M@ who has loaded up some good pictures, videos and links onto the Londonist site. I have only put a few of my own images on Flickr but if you’d like to see more then you should check out Onionbagblog, Diamond Geezer, Ian Visits and, if you want to do some further reading, there's always the official Olympic Park website.