Happy New Year... and a positive resolution

Whoosh!  Is it just me, or did 2014 fly by very quickly indeed?

Happy New Year from some of my favourite ghostsigns

Hovis, Haig, Dunphy, Supper, Brymay, Pring, Dowell's, Harper, Sally, Gillette, Girling and Daren

2014 wasn't that good a year for me for many reasons. And I let myself get irked by too many extraneous things – people on buses, walking blindly out of shops, talking utter rubbish, littering, being rude, insensitive, selfish or self-obsessed etc. Not to mention the phone companies and the banks.

And, as you know if you have read my rants about The Pointy Thing, the Garden Bridge and the Dubaiification of London, I have been becoming very worn down by the huge architectural changes that are happening in London leaving almost no area untouched by an 'iconic' lump of glass.
There are some very rich people with the ability to hold a pen and sign their name who are changing great swathes of London in the sweep of an arm. I don't see the extent of this kind of architectural rape happening in, say, Rome, Madrid or Brussels, and it saddens me.

But I must rise above these ugly towers; I have to stop getting so agitated.
So here is my plan for 2015... 
From now on, I resolve to [try to!] write only about the things that please me. After all, it was the little details that got me started with this blog, and that's what it says on the mast head.
I apologise if a few gripes slip in occasionally, but I will try to make them succinct or witty, or both.

One more thing.... 
People have written to me saying that they are having a problem leaving comments on here. Hence why I get so few.
I have fixed the problem now – please try again – it's nice to know you are out there ;-)

All the best for a positive and prosperous year,
Jane

How to make a cup of tea

We are awash with branded coffee shops offering all sorts of different types from skinny latte decaf to double espresso. Yet the staff in these shops, who have managed to master the complexity of the barista machine, seem to lack simple tea-making know-how.
Often I have have purchased a much-needed cuppa only to lift the lid and discover a pale milky concoction with a teabag festering at the bottom; the tea having been made by adding the milk (often way too much of it for my liking) almost immediately after the hot water, therefore making the tea-brewing process redundant. It's barely possible to get more tea flavour out of a bag once the milk has been added. You wouldn't add milk into a teapot, so why put it in the cup?
And for this service they charge at least £1.50. It's so disappointing. And a rip off to boot!
To make tea – add boiling water to tea bag, let it rest/brew or squish the bag a bit, and then add milk if so desired. Satisfyingly simple!

Tea-related things in London

Review of this year's Thames' Festival – a washout in many respects

This year The Mayor's Thames Festival took place over 10 days, rather than one glorious fun-packed weekend as in the past. The rationale was to spread out the events along the river to include places further up- and down-stream.
But I think this backfired. The event (I can't really use the word 'festival') was, to my mind a wash out, and not just because of the weather.
I can understand that many attractions at the Thames Festival have, in the past  had little to do with the River, but they get people out and animated and interested in places and things they might never have noticed or engaged with before. 

Happier times pre-2013

This year there was no fireworks and no parade. I believe that cutting these two key events may be the main reason for the poor turnout. To make it worse, if you visited the event site for information one of the first things you would have seen, high up on the home page, was that there would be no fireworks or parade, and the admission that funds were tight. 

How very stupid!  The home page should be bigging up the good things not enhancing the negatives!! Why advertise what you don't have? Who is really going to scroll down further after reading that?! 
There is a quote on the site from Adrian Evans, the Festival Director, and he says, 
"By shedding the restriction of a weekend and broadening its geographical horizons, combined with a fantastic and wide-ranging programme of events, the festival will inspire people to re-connect with London’s greatest natural asset in new and surprising ways".
Inspire? how? Surprising?  Well yes. Surprising in the sense that there was nothing to see.

Because to remove practically everything that had been attracting people year on year was a really REALLY silly move. 
Huge leaps in marketing and promo in the past 4 years meant that the festival had become something to mark in your diary. The parade and fireworks were spectacular and kept people at the other attractions long into the final day. A win-win for all. 

This year there were walks and talks about the Thames. A great idea, but most of these were pre-book events. But there was barely anything that you could just show up and take part in as in previous years, such as the feast on Southwark Bridge, or the fire garden outside the Tate, nor were there any dancers or colourful characters walking about. 

I was in London for both weekends this year trading at the We Make London Markets, first at Bernie Spain's Gardens and then More London Riverside. Only a handful of visitors to my stall at either location had any notion that there was a festival on at all. 

Compared to previous years (I have going for 15 years now; 12 as a visitor and 3 as a trader) the event was a shadow of its former self. There were no signage or banners along the Southbank so people who wandered into the zone had no idea that the market and the music stage at Bernie Spain's Gardens were for the event and not just  an every-weekend occurrence. Festival? Where? Last year there were site-specific information points and tents where you could pickup colourful information-packed programmes. 

It was meant to be more about the river this year. I understand that there were a few boaty things happening in and around St Katharine Docks, but as regards the Central London stretch of river I saw nothing happening on the river over the first weekend and I was there from 10am until 10pm both days. 
On the evening of Saturday 14th at approx 8pm night, after a very quiet day at the Scoop with no music or entertainment at all, all day, we were suddenly blasted by a honking cacophony coming from some boats circling about in the Pool of London. Billed as a Ships' Opera, his deafening art-fart went on for much too long. It certainly wasn't singing. 

On Sunday 15th there was some lovely proper singing from choirs in the Scoop. There were lots of people enjoying the music. But they evaporated when the singing stopped. I am pretty sure the crowd was made up of the choirs' friends and family. By 5pm on Sunday afternoon there was barely anyone around at all and the market packed up at 6pm. The festival finished with a whimper rather than a bang.  

I noticed some some volunteers canvassing feedback about the event on badly designed A4 sheets. Half of the questions were about age, ethnic group, where you came from, why you were there etc. One question asked how much you expected to spend during the day and what proportion of that you would have spent had you not come to the festival. What a dippy question. I wrote 57%. 

Another asked "How did you hear about the event?" and followed that with "would you come again?". I would be interested to see the feedback on that last question alone. Because if I was a tourist visiting London and it was my first time at the Thames Festival I certainly wouldn't be going home and telling my friends what a must-see event it was!
So, I urge you... if you went there this year and you were as disappointed as I was, then please please write to the organisers and let them know what you think... because if we all sit tight and say nothing it won't be improved upon for next year.

No no no...

No spitting in Enfield!!!!
It's disgusting.
I have been accidentally phlobbed on too many times, mostly by idiots not looking as they exited shops.   They seem to have some idea that it's better out than in. Spreading germs doesn't even cross these people's minds.
Can we please now extend this to no violent expectoration of a single nostril (particularly gross), no chewing gum and fag butt throwing and no dog poo bag disposal?  I really don't get this dog poo in plastic bag thing. Biodegradable waste matter is being preserved in plastic for our ancestors to deal with. Not nice. And what about cat poo? No one is coming round to my garden to clear up the stinky shit left behind by felines. It it not pleasant when gardening to happen upon something soft and pungent.

Which reminds me that there are lots more things I would like to outlaw...


As per the pic bottom left "Commit No Nuisances". Specifically...
No heavy perfume wearers on public transport.
No non-collapsible pushchairs on buses – recently I witnessed a lady, obviously just returning form a holiday with two suitcases and 3 bags of supermarket shopping, moving them all when a woman got on the bus with an EMPTY collapsible pushchair and commadeered the space. Grr.
No standing on toilets. That means the seats too. Also, if you really do have to hover, no dripping on the seats – if you do drip, clear it up.
No carrying of umbrellas without being in possession of a BPB (Brolly Proficiency Badge) where you will be taught the many aspects of brolly etiquette such as learning to judge width restrictions and the eye height of other pavement users.
No walking out of shops without looking to see if there is anyone coming along. Do these people drive cars?!
No ranting on and on.

That pointy thing called the Shard

Those of you who have read some of my previous posts will be aware that I am not a fan of that monstrous glass building at London Bridge. I think it's bullying "look at me; I'm really big!" architecture with no flair or design.
With all the empty office space available in Central London I am concerned about all the new build. The Dubaiification of London. And I am fed up with all the unnecessary competition between cities around the world to have the tallest "iconic" building. In most cases the measured height is, to me rather daft as it includes the aerials on the top. If I wear a stovepipe hat does that mean I am 6ft 2?!
A couple of weeks ago there was an article in The Times (Saturday July 6th) reporting that the Shard is failing in its attempt to sell the space within it. The Times reports that the 25 floors of office space are as empty as they were 12 months ago with only 10% being leased. The location is being cited as a reason; London Bridge is not The City, where other big buildings with silly names situtaed in the Square Mile are managing to sell their space.
The article goes on to quote Irvine Sellar, the Shard's developer, who seems to be cherry-picking his tenants. He cites this as a reason for the empty floors and rationalises, "...we are taking our time... we don't want to fill the Shard up with accountants or lawyers". He goes on, "...we are going to have asset managers, energy companies, lawyers and many more. We want a broad mix".
I very much doubt that is the reason at all. Location probably does play a part, but I think the lack of uptake is mostly down to the fantastically high maintenance charges; the window cleaning alone is estimated at £150,000 a year, plus rates on the empty offices need to be paid for before they are leased, and electricity has to be block-purchased in advance. Cleaning and security for the building could cost as much as £9million a year once it is fully let.
So, they must have thought long and hard about how to bring in big dosh for  little outlay.... hmmm... let's think... Yes! viewing platforms. Incidentally, I don't like the word "platforms" in this instance. Bad word. Why not galleries, floors or levels?
They call it "The View" and on Saturday 13th July I went to see it for myself. My very generous friend paid £24.99 each for four of us. TWENTY FIVE QUID!!! That's the pre-booking price. If you buy your ticket on the day it goes up to £29.99.
OK here goes... hold on to your hat... this is what you get for £25...

• On arriving we were informed that there are no toilets on the viewing levels and were directed to the ones adjacent to the booking hall; an area that is awash with CGI on large screens and colourful technology. Opening the door to the Ladies we entered a service corridor with whitewashed breeze block walls. There were loose wires and duct-taped pipes. Inside it was obvious that this was usually used by staff or gym users as we saw lockers in there. A temporary sign on A4 copy paper apologised, explaining that new toilets are currently being built for Guest use. This building has been open to the public for almost a year now and they haven't made the toilets? Is £25 a reduced rate due to this? Or, will the price go up when the toilets are finally open? 
• So, why are there no toilets on or near the viewing levels? What happens if someone is taken short or feels dizzy/sick? Are people expected to get in the lift again, go all the way through the gift shop, past the booking desks and relieve themselves only to find that they (probably) aren't allowed back up again? I am sure there must be toilet facilities on the restaurant floors but viewing-only plebs aren't allowed to mix with high-paying foodies. 
• There is nowhere to sit on the viewing platforms. Not everyone is happy standing, or sitting on the floor. Many people, especially those who are tired, dizzy, disabled, old or infirm would benefit from some simple benches where they can rest for 5 minutes as in art galleries. There is ample space all around the inner wood-panelled wall where these could be added. I believe there are two reasons for their non-existence: 1) it stops people staying up there too long, and, 2) the Shard was never designed to have viewing platforms in the first instance or they would have designed it better. 
• So it ought to go without saying that there are no refreshment opportunities up there either.
• Why no glass floors? A huge opportunity has been missed here. Especially as the building is clad in glass. There are perfect places in recessed areas where glass-floored panels could have been included (such as in Auckland's Sky Tower in and many others). But, again, I think this is for the same reasons as the lack of seating.
• Don't look up because the ceilings of the viewing platforms are an ugly mess. There are hanging wires and pipes clad in silver foil with stickers on them, plus metal fixings and plates that I think ought not to be seen. It looks so out of place with the simplicity of the wooden floors and walls. 
• When we were there we commented how daft it was that the only way to identify the buildings in the distance was to use one of the computerised viewing machines. We wondered why they hadn't put information about the major landmarks onto the windows or on a rail in front of us. It wasn't until I got home and looked at my photos that I noticed that there is a legend there, but it is situated above everyone's heads!! How utterly daft. You have to step back from the glass to see it. Another afterthought?
• On the ground floor, on the way in between security checks and the lift you can have your photo taken against a simulated image of the Shard. As per The London DUNG-eon and all other rip-off tourist attractions of this kind, the prints are an extra charge. Did I mention the tickets for The View at Shard are £25?
• The lifts are rather disappointing. Considering they are being touted for their high speed you don't get a visual sense of this at all. You stand there in a dark blue box looking up at some computer generated whizzy lines on the ceiling. Couldn't they have filmed the journey to the top of the Shard from the roof of the lift and put that up on the ceiling so we had the feeling of heading skyward? This seems too obvious a trick to have missed.

To conclude, I believe due to their lack of facilities, the viewing platforms are an afterthought to the conceived design of the building. I think the developers really thought companies would have been snapping up the office space off-plan before the building was completed.
The exorbitant minimum ticket price of £24.99 for what is just a trip in two lifts with a view at the top and not a lot else, is to help with those cleaning bills.
Mind you, I suppose comparing time:money it does work out cheaper than a trip on the London Eye (£17.28 for half an hour) because you can stay up in the Shard as long as you want. I am not sure if you can take your own food and drink up there, but don't take too much because the toilets are 69/72 floors away (they include the landings on the stairs as two floors!)
Oh, one more thing that nags at me; the location is called London Bridge Quarter. A quarter of what? Does the Shard take up 25% of the whole of the whole London Bridge area? What are the other three quarters called? Answers here please.

"This article has been written to recognise the author's contribution to travel and tourism by Avis Car Hire on the A-List Awards 2013".

InMidTown continued...

Last Tuesday evening I went to an 'event' at the British Museum about the rebranding of the area that encompasses Holborn, St Giles and Bloomsbury. Well, dear readers, you probably know what I think about this as I have written about it before here and here. So I was hoping to be enlightened and find out about the proposals for the area. 

But all we got was a teaser film and a few people telling us how great the area is (yes, yes!) followed by the full 15 minute film which consisted of endless shots of Sainsbury's and way too many references to Crossrail, complete with animated graphics showing how a train travels in a tunnel underground even though the MidTown / Midtown / inMidtown area (I am still none the wiser) will not actually contain a Crossrail station.

It threw a lot of a balls into the air but didn't give any ideas or possible solutions for discussion. 

For instance, the film was so vague, contradictory and repetitive; it attempted to promote how great the area is, yet showed a graphic of a generic dirty kerb morphing into a grassed-over pedestrianised street with new shops, but there was no real explanation where this was intended to be (High Holborn?).

There was a lot about how the roads are congested and, hence, the public transport ought to be upgraded. Anyone who has sat on a southbound bus near Russell Square will attest to this. According to the talking heads within the film, tourists are confused/lost when they exit Holborn station and don't know how to find the British Museum. Has anyone thought about erecting some decent signage? It ain't rocket science! Banners banners banners!  

When the film finished we were invited to go out into the foyer and have a discussion about what we had seen over drinks and canapés. The canapés were the best thing about the evening. The red wine was good too. Chatting to other people, most of us agreed that the presentation was clearly aimed at businesses and investors, telling the uninitiated how this area in the middle of London is indeed in the middle and a great place to live, work and socialise. If idiot businessmen do not know the (Holborn) area is there in the first place, then it's evident that they can't really see much further than their noses. Or read a map. Perhaps they can't recognise a good opportunity unless it's got a Starbucks and a phone shop next door? Do we really want these people here? Are we dumbing down for them? Will this put up rents even further and force out those few small businesses who were (sort of) featured in the film? Nothing seems to have been thought through. Sigh. 

And I am confused as to why I was invited to attend, along with a few other bloggers, London writers and non-business types. I think they may have seen my earlier posts and were hoping to prove me wrong. 

One more thing...  the shape and size of Midtown has changed since my earlier postings; it has shrunk and now resembles a gecko hovering over New Oxford Street and part of High Holborn with its legs obliterating the British Museum and that Renzo Piano monstrosity which is home to big foreign companies such as NBC the owners of this blog. 

Are we about to get another homogenous makeover? Why does everything need to be glass and plastic these days? They ought to be promoting areas like nearby Lamb's Conduit Street and its adjacent Georgian streets. 

I'll stop now. Here's a more rational report of the evening. 

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.

I am on the London Grill

This went live on the 4th, so you may have seen it already... my replies to David Styles's questions on the Radio Taxis blog.
Ten "devilshly probing questions about London" and they don't take "Sorry Guv" for an answer.
I am in esteemed company... check out some of the other people who have been quizzed.
See my answers here.
David mentioned me in an interview he did for Londonist.

Small traders' livelihoods threatened – again

I have just read the latest post by The Gentle Author about rising rents in the Spitalfields area that are forcing small businesses to close down or move out of their long-held premises.
This saddens me. If big corporate chains continue to trample rough-shod over everything, it means we will end up with the same shops everywhere; not just in London, but worldwide. Every city will be the same, selling identical products shipped in from China or the far east. Why bother with specialist traders offering bespoke goods and services when you can just drive to the local plastic shopping city or get your must-have factory-made designer items delivered to your door?!
I have written about my concerns in this vein before in posts about Notting Hill, Lambs Conduit St, Hanway St and Charing Cross Road.
Are homogenous or empty high streets what we really need and want?
Support your local traders!!!!
Read the Gentle Author's article here.

Tarted up newsagent in Dean Street

There is a lot of fuss lately about how the renovation of a newsagent in Soho's Dean Street.

Am I the only one who thinks this was a bad idea?

I was walking past it on Saturday 5th and stopped dead in my tracks, horrified at how it is now a pastiche of its former self.

As shown right, for years it had faded flaky paint. It was old, and it looked old. You could clearly see that. But now the paint has been stripped off back to the wood – a process that the Georgians certainly couldn't be bothered with – and what we have now is an impression of how the shop might have looked on the day it first opened for business.

I agree the windows look better now they have been painted to match the shop (though they could have been even better if they had been replaced with smaller panes) but all the signs needed was a coating of clear varnish. Gone are the layers of history that gave its charm. Can you imagine the uproar if Berry Brothers & Rudd on St James's Street did the same thing and removed its thick dark green paint? There'd be an outrage!

Also in Soho, not far from Dean St, between Ed's Diner and The Spice of Life, I notice another Georgian(?) shop has been reclaimed. At the moment it is stripped down the wood. I will be watching to see what happens.

This cleaned-up, pretend history brings to mind two horribly retouched wall advertisements in Covent Garden (here and here). I am all for preserving history but what is the point of retouching a defunct sign? Why not just leave it as is? As a reminder.

All this revamping and reclaiming London's history actually contradicts the rape of St Giles by plastics and Westminster's plans to renovate a section of the east side of Charing Cross Road that contains Gaby's. But more about that in a future post.

Oh dear.

Chat rooms or live gigs?

I go to see a fair bit of live music. I go to see the bands and hear the music, hopefully performed in a different way to the recored version. But I am getting more and more jaded by people around me who seem to be there just for a social get-together.

Let me explain...

Last week at Arcade Fire I'd paid £45 (+fees, which is another rant in itself!) to find that the sound was dreadful, the stage was too low to see the band and the 'live' visuals were out of sync, there was rubbish everywhere, there were portaloos but nowhere to wash your hands, and only weak over-priced lager on offer. To top that people were just standing around having conversations. Or they were jumping about wildly, flinging their arms about in a "look at me; I am at an outdoor gig!!!" kind of way. This particular extrovert behaviour is actually very rarely in effect at indoor gigs. Discuss.

Anyway, I wondered whether it might have been a better idea to have invited my friends round to my house for a crap drinks party the back garden with the band's music playing in the front room.

Then, last night I went to see Eels at Somerset House. This time I got better value for money (£27+fees) as the sound was great and I could see the band clearly – even the bar was well-organised. But in front of me were two young girls who talked though almost the whole thing. When they'd nattered and giggled and gossiped through three Eels' classics it was fairly evident to me that these girls didn't know any of the songs. So I poked one of them on the shoulder and pointed at the stage. Like rabbits in the headlights, they looked forwards, suddenly attentive, as if, up until then, they had no idea there was a band on at all. Two songs later a third girl joined them and they started gabbing again. Oh gawd. Why were they there? Why had they paid to stand and shout at each other when they could have gone to a café or pub and saved their throats (and my ears)?

Years ago, at a Flaming Lips gig, two girls were constantly nattering behind me. They'd started before the band came on stage. They were relentless. After about 30 mins I overheard one complain that the band had only played two songs. Er, she was wrong it, was three, but she'd totally missed the point of Wayne Coyne's charisma and charm, and she hadn't even noticed the large colourful balloons being batted about! A Flaming Lips gig is all about the experience. Silly little girl.

So my question is, what on earth are these people going to gigs for in the first place?! Why are they paying good money to go to gigs for a chat?

I should point out here that I am not some old fuddy-duddy who thinks people should stand silent at gigs – that's just daft – it's all about having a good time, though the flip side is people who stand at the back bar and complain that people are chatting... er move nearer the front, you plonker, this is a bar!

My problem is that the constant chatterers (and it's mainly young girls), who go to gigs by bands they don't know or care about, are ruining it for the rest of us who have gone to see and hear the performance. Not only that, there is a bigger crime – they are snapping up tickets that true fans would have paid good money for.

I believe a lot of people these days just want the 'badge' of having been somewhere or attended something. Perhaps this is why Glastonbury gets sold out so fast.

Oh, and then there are the couples who snog or gaze at each other through the whole set...

No trimmings at Alfie's in Bermondsey

I had my Christmas dinner this year with friends at Alfie's, the restaurant on the ground floor of the Bermondsey Square Hotel.

Well I say Christmas dinner, but that's not what was put in front of me, even though it was Christmas Day and it was my main meal of the day.

Hmmm... so what went wrong?

At £35.00 for 3 courses plus drinks etc and a 'discretionary service charge of 12.5%' call me a fool, but I was expecting something reasonably good. But what I got was tiny and tasteless.

My terrine starter was nice but then the main course was placed in front of me. I waited for side dishes or something but nothing came – that was all I was going to get – a few bits of pan fried turkey on a bed of cabbage with 3 or 4 strands of carrot and some one inch cubes of potato, all drenched in an over-powering gravy, served in a pasta bowl, yes, a pasta bowl...!

Where were the parsnips? The cranberry sauce? The proper roasties? It certainly did not fulfill the description on the menu as being "with all the trimmings". I ate it in about 7 mouthfuls in less than 5 minutes (nutritionists say the main meal of the day should take approx 20 mins to eat).

Then the pudding arrived. It was an unattractive individual blob of a thing about 6cm in diameter and 3cm tall. I cut it half. It was squishy and one tiny mouthful confirmed that it was barely cooked and watery. I don't recall any brandy sauce coming with it.

It was too much to take. I was so disappointed. I complained and got my main course removed from the bill and agreed to a little sticky toffee pudding as a replacement for the wet blobby thing. It was OK but it wasn't very sticky.

Needless to say I shall not be going to eat at Alfie's again.

Here's another not so good review.

Oh, I almost forgot, the male and female signs on the toilet doors are horrible – they are bronze casts of a woman's bra and a pair of Y-fronts. Due to the colour of them and their crumpled-ness both items lead one to think that the hotel is promoting casual sex in the toilets or is renting the rooms by the hour!

Ah well... The streets in and around Bermondsey are littered with interesting gems... all of pics above are less than 10 mins walk from the restaurant.

Poison Apple

Season of goodwill and all that but here comes another rant...

I work on an AppleMac. Years ago Macs were only used as work tools by designers like me. But Apple had to pull it socks up and appeal to a wider market and now it seems everyone and his mother owns something with an i in front of it.

My latest gripe involves upgrades and unhelpful advice. Here goes:

I can't have an iTouch until I upgrade my Mac to 10.5 or higher. It seems I need to be running Snow Leopard. For those of you who are confused about that, you're not alone... read on...

After two hours of checking specs and forums on the web I was none the wiser as to which SL product I needed to buy so I booked a 'Genius' appointment at the Apple Store in Cov Gdn.

When I got there the place was packed – after all, it is just an internet cafe without the food and drink. There is no signage to say where the Genius Bar is; one has to keep asking. There is also no signage anywhere to say where anything else is either.

Two red-shirted numpties came up to me and asked if I had a one-to-one booked. Er. Yeah? Dunno? What? My name wasn't on the list. When I explained why I was there they looked me like I was the most stupid person in the world and and told me (d'uh!) that I had a 'technical' query, and then mentally patted themselves on the back for being so jolly and obsequious yet perversely condescending and patronising.

This did not put me in a good mood. And I had to wait ver 20 mins before I was seen. My grinning nerd, sorry, genius, said I needed Snow Leopard. It occurred to me at this point that he just assumed I knew what this was – Apple seems to think that we know about every Apple product they sell in advance, both in-store and on-line. It's not very helpful.

I explained my problem and my genius asked what system spec I was running. Had I not had the foresight to take with me every bit of info I could find he would not have been able to help me. Ooh dear reader, how further pissed off would I have been then?

But, good news – the diagnosis is that I only needed to spend £25 to upgrade my system. Phew!

So... as I'd only used 5 mins of my 20 I thought I'd quiz him about other things, and bloody glad I did because I needed some info about upgrading my iPhoto. (In order to create the montages for this site I have set up a lot of cross-referenced files for the 16,000+ images I have on file – I have hundreds of folders and sub-folder in there – a bootscraper pic may be filed in 'Bootscrapers', 'Bloomsbury' and, due to its cat shape, in 'Animals' too. It's an old package and is suffering with overload.)

BUT, get this... hold onto your seat... he told me when I upload Snow Leopard my old iPhoto won't work! And, furthermore, if I upload the new iPhoto (part of iLife, which contains 3 other things I don't need) it won't retain all my existing folders. Aaaargh! I almost self-combusted.

The genius gave me nothing in the way of advice how best to get around this but instead just looked at me as if to say, 'that's it, I am done... next!".

It's like throwing the whole contents of a metal filing cabinet into a skip.

Yes, I have the originals all backed-up chronologically but what an uphill struggle it's gonna be... once I get iLife, I will have to re-make my folders (see you all in February when I have finished) and then load SL, and then possibly get an iTouch. Or not.

Or I may just give up and go and live in a hut on a wi-fi-less beach somewhere...

What really annoys me about this is that Apple have made us all their puppets. Once hooked, we have no choice but to keep upgrading*. Hard to believe that not so long ago Mac-users were derided by PC users convinced, as these people were, that Macs would be phased out. But thanks to Mr Jobs, what was once a piece of kit that I used to do my job on is now a toy for the masses, complete with family and friends.

The i in iTouch, iMac, iPhone etc is obviously a reference to Steve Jobs, not us – there is no me or you in Apple; it's themMaster, themControl, themBoss.

Thoughts... I can't help but think that we are losing a lot here; where are we going with all this in the future? Backing-up to DVDs and CDs is all well and good but discs have a short shelf life, yet a vinyl record can still be played, a Box Brownie will still take pictures, 35mm film can be scanned to any size...

What would happen to my photos on Flickr and this blog should I drop down dead tomorrow?

And finally, it just occurred to me that I create these montages using Quark... don't get me started about that other bully, Adobe...

*until the next must-have system comes along...

UKCG urging their worshippers to go into debt

I just read this in today's Times...

It seems the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which occupies the old Astoria/Rainbow building in Finsbury Park, is encouraging its congregation not to pay their personal bills so that they will have more money to give to 'God'.

UCKG say that only when people sacrifice all their worldly possessions will their financial prayers be answered. They even offer financial 'help' with this.

It saddens and angers me that this sort of thing is still going on, and less than a mile from my front door.

Read the articles here, though you have to subscribe to the Times site (I will attempt to upgrade this in due course). And here's a 'review' of the church.

The only positive thing I can say about all this is that having a church in residence has meant that the interior of the lovely old cinema has been kept relatively intact. You can wander in and have a look around – just be sure not part with any cash when you are there.

Holborn Midtown -update

Earlier this year I wrote a post about the silly idea to re-brand the historic Bloomsbury, Holborn and St Giles area as Midtown. See it here.

Well, sadly, 'they' are still continuing with this.

Andy Dangerfield latest piece follows up on his previous BBC article and I've been quoted in there!

Ikea Future Kitchen debate / The Surreal House

Having this blog means I get invited to things such as openings, events, seminars, etc. Most invites have nothing to do with anything on my blog and often it's evident that the person who emailed me has not even looked at the content but has just seen the 'London' in the title. But every now and then something good crops up, as it did when I accepted the was invite to the Ikea-sponsored Future Kitchen debate at the Barbican Centre last Thursday. Yes, I know this site isn’t about kitchens, but I was interested to hear what the interesting panel of eight had to say about how we might be cooking and cleaning and living in 2040.

It didn’t start well. The word ‘topline’ kept being used. As in “I want to topline to you…” i.e. the first thing on the bill. Oh dear, I thought, it’s gonna be Jargon City. Then Gerry Dufresne of Ikea told us that in the future we will have more individual needs and Ikea could help us with that. Begs the question how a multi-national company can give us our own individuality. And he boasted that some Ikea products are now half the price. So, were they over-priced in the past? Or is this down to supply and demand? If the latter, then where’s the individuality?!

But moving on… The panel discussed the various issues and I became really engaged in it all, though not necessarily in a positive way. I learned that the new designer trend of ‘upcycling’, making new products out of old ones, is expected to take off big time. They said people between the ages of 18 and 44 have developed a throwaway disposable attitude to consumables and aren’t genned up enough re recycling. What a sad state of affairs.

A recurring theme was that it should be our own individual responsibility to become more aware of the environment, our surroundings and our impact on the future. I wondered that if people today had been made already more aware of the issues then we wouldn’t be in such a mess now. The 'debate' was starting to make me feel I was at a middle class dinner party*.

The poorest areas of the planet are the areas suffering with the most waste and its repercussions. Out of sight; out of mind. The average man eating his fast food on the street really doesn’t give a shit about any of this. He just wants everything now and cheap cheap cheap. Hence the rise of the pound shops. There is too much waste and packaging. When I was a kid it was normal to take a bag with you to the shops; you didn’t come home with six plastic bags. Today's average shopper has come to expect plastic bags as some kind of divine right. I reckon supermarkets provide them because they know they will sell more produce if our bags aren’t a pre-specified size. The government needs to better educate people about the future implications of all this.

Managing our utilities sensibly was another point for discussion. Water will become scarcer so we must come up with ways of getting Joe Public to be aware of this and not waste it. The engaging eco-friendy and smiley Oliver Heath said he has pedal-operated taps in his house. Top idea! Why, in this country, are we cleaning all our water to drinking standards and then washing our dogs, cars and windows with it? And to better control and manage our use of gas and electricity, in 11 years' time, all household will have Smart Meters.

I loved a lot of what the cute and interesting Martin Raymond said. I liked his ideas for staying light-hearted, keeping the humour. Though I am still trying to work out what he meant by “the future will look like the past”, because it won’t… will Tescos implode? Will we have a return to unique little shops and women scrubbing doorsteps with rollers in their hair?!

A comment Martin made at the end rankled me; that we need to have vegetable ripening cabinets in our kitchens. No we don’t Martin; what we need are vegetables that don’t go off in less than a day – like tasteless bananas that go black, carrots that go bendy and potatoes that go soft and green. None of this would happen if fruit and veg wasn’t kept in huge refrigerated sheds prior to sale. It’s daft how, due to this, we have to now keep these items in the fridge. Again, when I was a kid, you bought your mis-shapen earth-covered potatoes from the greengrocer and then stored them in an open vegetable rack in the kitchen where they lasted for weeks. Oh, and they didn’t have sell-by dates on them either – we used our eyes and noses to work that out! Why do we ‘need’ to have every kind of fruit and veg all year round? Seasonal vegetables are the way forward. Again, more education is needed.

The panel went on to discuss the future of communal living and neo-villaging, no less. But if you refer to this piece I wrote about the Isle of Dogs, it’s gonna be very difficult now to just introduce a community vibe where it’s been absent for so long. And Charlie Luxton, eco architect, said that in the future we will be able to design our kitchen and change it later. Well,what have we been doing all these years? And how is ripping out and changing things, as and when we get fed up with the colour or finish of the doors, an eco-friendly thing to do?

And finally, to the organisers of the event, I suggest it’s not a good idea for the girls who walk round with the mikes for the (all too short) Q&A session to wear stilettos!

*Jasmine Birtles assumes that every house on a suburban street has its own lawnmower. Really?

After the discussion I drank lots of red wine and scoffed lots of Ikea-style canapés inc mini hot dogs, and I chatted to some nice people, including Martin, Jon & Stu and Grahame, and had a quick peek around the Surreal House exhibition, which was really good – I must go back before it finishes on 12^th September – and after another drink at Mary's lovely Barbican flat, I went home with the bag of mini Daim bars from my Ikea goodie bag.

All-in-all an excellent and thought-provoking evening. Thanks Cakegroup.

Football crazy; football mad

My life is already, through no choice of my won, dictated by football; living 5 mins from Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, yet not caring a jot whether they win or lose, I always have to check the fixtures list or the signs at the bottom of my street to see if my visitors can park outside my home without getting a parking ticket.

Due to the traffic disruption it can be a bit frustrating trying to use the bus or tube just before or straight after a match. During these times hoardes of "fully grown" men dressed as overgrown toddlers in three-quarter length trousers, bumper boots, multi-coloured logo'd polyester T-shirts and hardly any hair, fill the streets and pubs and chant rhymes. Ah bless 'em.

Have you noticed that sports news, at the end of the 'real' news on the TV, is really only football news? I fail to see why there even has to be a sports section within the news at all. Surely if people want sports news, sorry, football news, they can tune in to a sports channel? After all we don't get an arts news section on there, for instance.

And now the World Cup is upon us. Oh deep joy.

Actually, what am I saying? I don't mind the World Cup at all. To ignore the World Cup would be daft. It's like not being interested in horse racing and having a bet on The Grand National. Likewise athletics and The Olympics, and tennis and Wimbledon.

So I will be watching some of the matches wearing my stylish cotton T-shirt with 3 lions on it.

C'mon England!!!

World, cup, foot, balls, team

Boots, players, matches, posts, marks

Half, 3 lions, boot scraper

Passing, dribbling, crossed, tackle, stadium

(locations upon application)

Brick Lane gates

Yet another stupid plan has been hatched... this time erect some gates at either end of Brick Lane apparently designed to echo the shape of a Muslim headscarf.

Oh gawd, no!

The media seems to be worried about which cultures and religious groups are going to be offended or excluded, but I think the real issues are that these modern metal monstrosities are unnecessary, a waste of money (£2million!) and, more to the point, very ugly and unsympathetic to the surroundings!

Pics all from in and around Brick Lane

Top: graffiti; modern coal hole outside school in Brick Lane; Mighty Mo graffiti on the bridge; ghost sign for Bernards/Lewis.

Middle: Huguenot window shutter fixing; old Sclater Street sign; Huguenot door knocker; Sweetoof graffiti.

Bottom: old Shoreditch station; Frying Pan pub sign (now an indian restaurant!); ripped posters; Huguenot boot scraper.

Holborn Midtown

Have you heard that there is a campaign to re-brand what is basically the Holborn area as 'Midtown'?

Egh?! What nonsense.

Estate agents have already been using the word for some time now – the idea might have made some sense if London already had districts called Uptown (girl) and Downtown (Things will be great when you're...).

The area affected resembles a bishop's hat (ironically it encompasses the Mitre pub which is in Cambridgeshire, EC1 and is designated by drawing a line up from Embankment to Trafalgar Square, then up to Kings Cross, down to St.Paul's ending up again at the Thames, i.e all of WC2, most of WC1 and bits of EC1 and EC4.

The reason given for this is that out-of-towners find this area of London to be a bit of a confusing no-man's-land and they can't cope with villagey names such as Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell and St. Giles. Bless em.

I am not alone; I really hope this idea is dropped just like when they tried to re-name Fitzrovia 'NoHo'. Oh no no no.

P.S. I have been quoted here.

Top row: Trafalgar Square, Little Italy, Bloomsbury, Blackfriars, Kings Cross.

2nd row: Cambridgeshire, St Brides/Fleet Street, Aldwych, Seven Dials, Covent Garden.
3rd row: St Giles, Strand, Bloomsbury, Lincoln's Inn, Russell Sqaure
4th row: Covent Garden, Somerset House, Smithfield, Temple, Paternoster Square

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.