diamond geezer

Grosvenor Square

2026-07-22T07:00:00.000+01:00

Grosvenor Square reopened on Monday after its eco-makeover.
I apologise for the delay in mentioning this.

It's quite a change. Previously Grosvenor Square was mostly substandard lawn with some trees around the edge and a handful of US-focused memorials. The memorials are still there but the lawn is now much smaller and surrounded on all sides by a fresh rim of meandering walkways, flowerbeds and shady benches. It's definitely an improvement, indeed somewhere you might now linger, and all because the landowner is looking to the future.

The landowner is the Grosvenor Estate, overseer of a longstanding property portfolio with the foresight to have owned Mayfair before all the filthy rich wanted to live there. They can thus easily afford to spend £25m transforming their longstanding property into a "world-leading climate-resilient garden'. If Grosvenor Square is to survive into the 22nd century it needs to be able to cope with rising temperatures, shifting habitats and the threat of urban flooding. Hence the redesign is all about biodiversity and climate resilience, not to mention the increased availability of coffee and cheesy focaccia.

I should have visited on Monday and reported yesterday.
Instead I waited a day and the news is now stale.

They've certainly been busy over the last year and a bit, especially around the perimeter. A wiggly path now weaves round the almost-edge of the square - I counted twenty bends altogether - past substantial flowerbeds and occasional points of recreational interest. A separate elliptical path has been laid to surround a central oval lawn, thereby offering a choice of loops (or perhaps an invitation to walk round twice). The real boost appears to be in benches, great swooshing things and slatted wooden crescents, providing dozens of fresh places to sit and relax/nibble/scroll. Additionally almost all of them are in decent shade because this is future-proofing done well.

A feature of the outer paths is a series of small dead-end lawns and clearings, I'd almost call them nodules, predominantly surrounded by flowers and low bedding plants. Don't think roses or anything old-fashionedly English, these are plants which (fortunately enough) can reasonably cope with a lack of rain. They claim to have planted 70,000 new plants altogether, also 80,000 bulbs so expect a surge of colour in the spring different to the current greeny-purple. A few of the beds include wooden stepping stones, which I'm not sure are for public use, and some particularly thin necks already include unwanted desire lines where lazy visitors have stomped through anyway.

Had I been trusted media I could have visited in advance of opening.
Instead you got nothing on Monday, sorry, only this belated site visit.

The chief memorial in Grosvenor Square is to Franklin D Roosevelt, his plinth seemingly jetwashed and pristine as befits a wartime hero. The fountains to either side also now gleam and provide yet another appealing place to sit, cleverly incorporated into the whole. A more recent memorial is the pergola erected on the eastern side to remember the 67 UK victims of the September 11 attack, their names inscribed on three bronze plaques and represented by one supporting oak trunk each. Again it's not new but feels better incorporated into the whole as a result of the perimeter ring.

If refreshment is your priority then yes there's a kiosk at one end of the Wheatsheaf Building, This is a new timber-fronted oval with a green roof, because the nature drive also stretches to an unseen upper surface. The hub belongs to the London Wildlife Trust who'll be welcoming school groups round the back and anyone who wants food and drink from the counter at the front. The brief menu includes a latte for £4.50, double ice cream for £6.50 and speck, brie and truffle honey focaccia for £8.95, all of which appear affordable for the local Mayfair clientele. Should you overdo it with the kombuchas a separate woody building on the other side of the Eagle Squadron monument hosts all the requisite toilets.

The official opening by the Mayor and the the Duke of Westminster was early last week.
The associated press release offered approved text and several images which I could have embraced.
My apologies for waiting to write my own words and take my own photos, all terribly late.

The redesign also includes a wetland area, for which read two small shallow ponds. At this stage in their evolution you can still see how they were created - a bit of liner with a gravel edge - but once the marginal plants grow further it'll look a lot more like a natural amphibious domain. A more impressive side effect of the overall transformation, specifically the recompaction of the soil, is that the square can absorb up to 1.4 million litres of stormwater should it ever seriously chuck it down again. Rain or shine, this transformation has its eye on enduring all potential future climates.

One benefit of a landlord with bottomless pockets is the presence of gardeners and other staff on site at all times. The litter picker from Ethos Services appeared to follow me around the site, at one point going up to a seated couple and offering to take their empty cups rather than trouble them with walking over to the bin. If you do come for a shady sitdown, don't think that every grassy compound is essentially private, or indeed quiet. Perhaps avoid sitting too near the two playground areas squished into the outer zone, these mostly for clambering, one of them diddy and the other capable of coping with a larger youthful influx.

Where I should have gone yesterday was Cockfosters for the new House of Secrets museum.
Yet again I failed to visit somewhere on day one, instead heading to an older attraction on its day two.
I'm forever behind the curve, sorry.

Apparently the project "embodies Grosvenor's belief that spaces thrive through thoughtful design, responsible land stewardship and a commitment to people and nature", but that's just corporate word salad. Instead just come and enjoy the creative upgrade next time you're in the area, because it's amazing what you can do with environmental ingenuity, 150,000 plants and three centuries of compound interest.

O is for Osidge

2026-07-21T07:00:00.000+01:00

LONDON A-Z
O is for Osidge

Osidge is a loosely-defined 1930s suburb in north London, marginally in Barnet. It started as one big house and is now thousands, sloping down to the Pymmes Brook in a generally overlooked manner. It's a product of the extended Piccadilly line, expanding to the west of Southgate station, and is often marked on maps some way from where it actually began. It's been home to a grocery magnate, a noted meteorologist and a kohl-eyed singer. And yes it rhymes with sausage, before anyone feels the need to ask.

Last year 28 small mosaics were hung around Southgate town centre as part of a heritage-focused Art Trail. The pair outside the former Halifax building society commemorate two local business dynasties, both consequential, whose estates were eventually sold for housing. The brewing Taylors and Walkers lived in a big house at Arnos Grove, beyond the scope of today's post, while Thomas Lipton lived at a smaller big house called Osidge. Thomas was born in the Gorbals in 1848 and after many overseas adventures grew his parents' Glasgow shop into a chain of grocers which expanded into a successful transatlantic trading empire. Americans still buy something they believe to be tea - hot or iced - under the longstanding Lipton brand.

Lipton moved to Osidge in 1892, already a millionaire, upgrading the Georgian house with a new billiard room and enlarging the stables. There'd been a large house here since Tudor times, the first owners charged with supplying wooden faggots for the burning of heretics. It's thought the name Osidge came from hawe's edge, Old English for woodland boundary, and has been recorded over the years as Huzeog, Hossegge, Huzeseg, Hwzeseg, Ousage, Ouzage, Owsage and Ussage. A later occupant was George Hadley, the first scientist to spot that tropical trade winds form a critical global circulation (now known as Hadley cells). Thomas Lipton lived here for almost 40 years, taking the title Baronet of Osidge, and took a keen interest in sport including five unsuccessful attempts to win the Americas Cup. But he died without issue, bequeathing his house to the Queen's Nursing Association whose used it as a home for retired nurses from 1935 to 2014. You can likely guess what happened next.

A Charming Collection Of Eleven Apartments Set Within A Historic Grade II Listed Mansion. Nestled Within 5 Acres of Picturesque Grounds. ALL SOLD

The original gates to Osidge are now the secure gateway to a luxury residential development called Sir Thomas Lipton, because rhyming with sausage is not a marketing plus. Some get apartments in the main building while others have merely paid to reside in a row of mews houses shoehorned outside. A sweep of trees blocks clear sight from Chase Side so if you want to see Lipton's long white veranda you need to peer over the fence round the corner in Oakdale. But I did manage to spy a distant blue roundel by the front door which turned out to be a Barnet council plaque, now off limits to nigh all local residents. The citation describes Sir Thomas as Philanthropist, Grocer and Yachtsman, so an intriguing mix of Lord Sainsbury, Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath.

The road out front for many years formed the boundary between Hertfordshire and Middlesex, with Osidge very marginally inside the former. The estates I intend to write about are therefore on the western side, formerly in the Home Counties, where the N14 postcode overlaps with the London borough of Barnet. The first post-Piccadilly houses were built across open fields, a slew of substantial semis steeping down from the ridgetop with excellent views towards Totteridge. They have bay windows, timber gables and crucially parking spaces for those willing to pave over their front gardens. 83 Osidge Lane isn't quite as aspirational as many homes in the avenues behind but is typical in that you can see it plainly slopes downhill.

It's also the first childhood home of Osidge's most famous recent resident who was Amy Winehouse. She relocated a few times before becoming famous but spent the majority of her life in Osidge and attended the local primary school which is of course Osidge Primary. This is a large Thirties establishment, two storeys of traditional brick, where Amy evolved from pretending to be Shirley from Wham to playing Rizzo in a production of Grease The Musical. The school's other musical heavyweights are Dan Gillespie-Sells from The Feeling and Rachel Stevens of S Club 7, not to mention fellow Jewish pupils Rob (Judge) Rinder and Punch editor Alan Coren. There are far less cosy places to grow up.

Amy's local shops, and the retail heart of the neighbourhood, are a pretty decent cluster called Hampden Square. The square's unusual in that the four sides face the centre on the diagonal, three of them long parades and the third a pub inevitably called The Osidge Arms. It's not clear such a coat of arms ever existed and the hospitality offer now leans significantly Turkish anyway. Of the shops at least a third are wellness-related (prioritising hair, physio, nails, massage and aesthetics), while a further contingent exemplify a steady drift from homewares and haberdashery to takeaways and independent restaurants. The former bridalwear shop, for example, recently metamorphosed into an opportunity to Step into the Wild West at Wrangler Burger Southgate.

About twenty years ago Hampden Square got a minor makeover with a new central roundabout and perked-up green wedges edged by very low stone walls. The benches aren't well frequented because sitting by a road junction doesn't always appeal, also they're poorly placed for the bus stops that serve to whisk residents of lower Osidge to not-quite-near-enough stations. Most local buses track further down Osidge Lane to cross the Pymmes Brook by the scout hut. The river's fairly minor here, the channel a couple of metres max as it tracks the greensward between two rows of opposing semis before ducking under the main road into Brunswick Park. Full marks to the 1930s planners who made the stream a prominent feature rather than hiding it away in a backalley culvert.

In 1989 there were official moves to shift the council boundary downhill to this stream, but local residents packed a meeting and successfully argued against on the basis it would divide communities historically linked to Barnet. Thus Osidge still nominally spreads up the shallower slope on the far side of the Pymmes Brook, perhaps as far as the double mini-roundabout. Arguably this area is more rightly called Brunswick Park and the name of the local primary school concurs, but the nextdoor book repository is most definitely Osidge Library. I managed to turn up on the one morning a week it's staffed so was able to gain entrance (this also the case on three afternoons before you assume Barnet's policy is uber-miserly).

I didn't delve inside too far for fear of interrupting a youthful gathering so I don't know if they have the latest Rob Rinder on the shelves, but I do wonder if Amy ever came to storytime.

Yet another Prime Minister

2026-07-20T07:00:00.000+01:00

As of noon today the UK will have had FIVE Prime Ministers in the last FOUR years.
We just can't hang onto them any more.

When I was 10, I'd lived through two Prime Ministers.
When I was 20, I'd lived through four Prime Ministers.
When I was 30, I'd lived through five Prime Ministers.
When I was 40, I'd lived through six Prime Ministers.
When I was 50, I'd lived through eight Prime Ministers.
It all seemed fairly measured.

When I was 60, I'd lived through thirteen Prime Ministers.
That's five extra in a decade, whereas my first five took three decades.

Today I hit fourteen.

How many UK Prime Ministers have you lived through?

*Age*	*Birthday*	*Number of Prime Ministers*
0	today	1	Burnham
0-2	5/7/2024 → 19/7/2026	2	Starmer, Burnham
2-3	25/10/2022 → 4/7/2024	3	Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
3	6/9/2022 → 24/10/2022	4	Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
3-7	24/7/2019 → 5/9/2022	5	Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
7-9	13/7/2016 → 23/7/2019	6	May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
10-16	11/5/2010 → 12/7/2016	7	Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
16-19	27/6/2007 → 10/5/2010	8	Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
19-29	2/5/1997 → 26/6/2007	9	Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
29-35	28/11/1990 → 1/5/1997	10	Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
35-47	4/5/1979 → 27/11/1990	11	Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
47-50	5/4/1976 → 3/5/1979	12	Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
50-52	4/3/1974 → 4/4/1976	13	Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
52-61	16/10/1964 → 3/3/1974	14	Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
61-62	19/10/1963 → 15/10/1964	15	Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
62-69	10/1/1957 → 18/10/1963	16	Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
69-71	7/4/1955 → 9/1/1957	17	Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
71-74	26/10/1951 → 6/4/1955	18	Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
74-86	10/5/1940 → 25/10/1951	19	Churchill, Attlee, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
86-89	28/5/1937 → 9/5/1940	20	Chamberlain, Churchill, Attlee, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
89-91	7/6/1935 → 27/5/1937	21	Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Attlee, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham
91+	before 6/6/1935	22+	MacDonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Attlee, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham

While we're here, 20th July is 57 years since the first Moon landing, so how many men have stood on the Moon in your lifetime?

*Age*	*Birthday*	*Number of Moonwalkers*
0-54	15/12/1972 → today	0	-
54	25/4/1972 → 14/12/1972	2	Cernan, Schmitt
54	3/8/1971 → 24/4/1972	4	Young, Duke, Cernan, Schmitt
54-55	7/2/1971 → 2/8/1971	6	Scott, Irwin, Young, Duke, Cernan, Schmitt
55-56	21/11/1969 → 6/2/1971	8	Shepard, Mitchell, Scott, Irwin, Young, Duke, Cernan, Schmitt
56	22/7/1969 → 20/11/1969	10	Conrad, Bean, Shepard, Mitchell, Scott, Irwin, Young, Duke, Cernan, Schmitt
57+	before 22/7/1969	12	Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, Shepard, Mitchell, Scott, Irwin, Young, Duke, Cernan, Schmitt

While we're here, how many times have England won the World Cup in your lifetime?

*Age*	*Birthday*	*Number of wins*
0	today	0
0-59	31/7/1966 → 19/7/2026	still 0, sorry
60+	before 31/7/1966	1

Busy month, July.

Humdrum transport news

2026-07-19T07:00:00.000+01:00

Humdrum transport news

You could be reading more interesting transport news today. This is not it.

🚇 A new Central line timetable starts on Monday. It recognises that the line is in a slightly better state than a few years ago when lots of trains were breaking down and they had to reduce the service a bit. It means they can now run 72 trains at peak times, previously 71. It's particularly good news offpeak between White City and Leytonstone which currently sees 21 trains an hour but next week this rises to 24. The same applies on Saturdays. On Sundays this central section will now get 21-22 trains per hour (boosted to 24 between 4.30pm and 6pm).

Passengers on the eastern branches won't see much change in frequency. However it's a different matter out west, sorry. The Ealing Broadway branch will be reduced to a regular 10 minute service all week. It's currently 8 trains an hour offpeak but will now be 6. Meanwhile the West Ruislip branch is being slimmed to 8 trains an hour off-peak, down from 9. There'll also be no more off-peak trains terminating at Northolt which'll thin out services on this branch still further. Essentially if you live in Ealing you'll probably notice longer waits for trains (and if you live anywhere else you probably won't).

❓ TfL haven't published the results of any FoI requests since 3rd July. I guess someone's on holiday.

🚌 A few Hertfordshire bus changes (from 30th August)
• Route 242 (Waltham Cross to Hatfield) will be halved in length to run from Waltham Cross to Potters Bar only. The 243 will still run from Potters Bar to Hatfield.
• Route 322 (Rickmansworth to Hemel Hempstead) is losing its Sunday service. I think that means the only buses you'll be able to catch in Croxley Green on Sundays will be the long distance 724/725.
• Route PB1, the circular route round Potters Bar, is being withdrawn. It's been operated by Uno for less than 18 months. Herts County Council are investigating a replacement service.

🚇 The Next Train Indicators at Bounds Green station have been replaced. They used to have three rows of information and now they have four, also they're easier to read. This is of course excellent. However it means I'll no longer be able to write my planned blogpost 'The passive aggressive Next Train Indicators of Bounds Green'. The bottom row was an almost never-ending stream of messages warning passengers to stand back and not to drop things on the track and to respect other passengers and to watch for suspicious people and the like, and one day I was going to stand there for half an hour and note down the lot. By replacing the electronic sign the miserable finger-wagging undertone appears to have vanished for good, which is also excellent but rids me of the opportunity to tut. No other tube station was ever this jobsworth, so hurrah that it no longer is.

🚆 The Liberty line will be suspended on the second, third and fourth weekends in January 2027. It's not yet clear if the fifth weekend will be affected, not until TfL next update their rolling six-month pdf of line closures. However the first weekend looks clear, should you have January Sale plans in the Emerson Park area.

🥔 It's great to see that TfL have approved use of a TfL roundel at Spud Stop inside Wood Green Shopping Centre.

🛫 The new draft London plan proposes that expansion at Heathrow and other airports should be refused unless no unacceptable environmental, transport, and congestion impacts are demonstrated. Also new heliports should be refused, except for the exclusive use of emergency services. The draft plan has entered a consultation phase and won't be signed off by Whitehall until 2028, but it's always useful to confirm Lord Khan of Tooting's position on the matter.

🎟️ The government is to trial extra-tall, extra-low, extra hard-to-push-through ticket gates at 18 stations nationwide. The two chosen stations in London are Elephant & Castle (Thameslink) and Gipsy Hill. Installation continues into 2028, but the side entrance at Gipsy Hill is due to get barriered later this year.

🚌 As of yesterday route 186 no longer directly serves Harrow bus station, with buses remaining on Station Road instead. The official advice is that passengers travelling between Harrow Bus Station and Northwick Park Hospital "should use bus routes 182, 223, 483, H9/H10 or H14 instead". However the H10 runs clockwise so takes 70 minutes to reach the hospital so don't take that, take the H9 which goes anti-clockwise and takes 10 minutes.

🚇 The Northern line's Morden extension opened on 13th September 1926. To celebrate the centenary TfL will be running two special events in conjunction with Open House (which this year conveniently runs 12th-20th September). On 12th September there'll be a Treasure Hunt with clue packs available at Morden station from 11am. Those who successfully reach Clapham South station by 3pm will win a prize. I bet it's a tote bag, it's always a tote bag. A week later on 19th September they're running 90-minute Morden extension station tours, nothing behind the scenes but bound to be good. Booking begins on 19th August.

🎨 Art on the Underground are to introduce a Spaghetti Map next week. It's not a tube map, it's an art leaflet aimed at inspiring arty kids to reflect on art at tube stations and do some arty creative scribbling. The launch has been designed to coincide with the start of the school summer holidays. The Spaghetti Map will be available at just ten stations - South Kensington, Battersea Power Station, Nine Elms, Westminster, St James' Park, Edgware Road, Tottenham Court Road, Whitechapel, Manor House, Arsenal and Blackhorse Road. If your kids would enjoy colouring roundels creatively then look out for a copy, but if it's anything like previous Art Maps it'll vanish vanishingly fast.

Nostalgia

2026-07-18T07:00:00.000+01:00

Slim Summer Saturday

The author Geoff Dyer has written a memoir of his 60s/70s childhood in Cheltenham, specifically what it was like to grow up in a working class suburb, go to an average primary school and be changed by a grammar school education. Born in 1958, Geoff was the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet metal worker, and although he's seven years older than me I still found his account extraordinarily evocative. It's called Homework and these are 100 of the things he mentioned, in no particular order and with none of Geoff's authorial flair.

Playing out with mates on wasteland, cap guns, grazed knees, never using the front room, creosote, the Football Pools, John West salmon sandwiches, barely-opened spirits in a drinks cabinet, snotty handkerchiefs, calling people mental, Aeros, packaged pastilles, skewering conkers, "got got got NEED!", Dinky cars, shallow footbaths at swimming pools, borrowing LPs, queuing to see the doctor, chain-smoking, bubblegum, Airfix kits, Green Shield stamps, Action Man's fuzzy hair, coal fires, Robinson Crusoe, walking into a film partway through, throwing fireworks, weekly comics, rubbing transfers with a biro, enormous cushiony headphones, Valiant comic, the class pencil sharpener, John Menzies, the rarity of a family photo, a Sunday afternoon drive, foolscap pad, knitted sweaters, British Bulldog, garden bonfires, apprenticeships, Vesta curry, making do, warm school milk, leatherette, Double Diamond, the clutch, ten-shilling note, box of logs, twine, relatives with a wartime story, red Cortina, pick your own, Corona bottles, sugar on cornflakes, doing a project, the 11-plus, arrival of the buff envelope, cap with badge, Brooke Bond tea cards, racer bikes, duffing up, ouija boards, china figurines, youth clubs, never drinking water at school, fatty sausages in batter, sewn-on badges, the Electricity Board, "fight fight FIGHT!", Wall's choc-ices, hole punches, stewed fruit, reel-to-reel, art on album covers, "hello 56704", Melody Maker, bell bottoms, driving gloves, Luxembourg 208, Athena poster of skeleton slumped on toilet, watching the TVs in Radio Rentals' window, hooded hairdrier, Sta-Prest, Arbroath nil Hamilton Academicals nil, party line, Cinzano, kung fu, orange patterned wallpaper, penpals, Skol, seven-pint tin, Saturday job, night-storage radiators, Brasso, pop posters, Berni Inn, postal orders, Waddington's Jig-Map, chicken-in-the-basket, turps.

Local government reorganisation update

2026-07-17T07:00:00.000+01:00

Local government reorganisation update
(because we now have fourteen more decisions)

In December 2024 the government announced that it intended to replace all England's two-tier systems with unitary authorities. There'd no longer be local councils AND county councils, just the one authority locally, mainly to save money. It was also suggested that the new authorities should have a population of at least half a million.

"New unitary councils must be the right size to achieve efficiencies, improve capacity and withstand financial shocks. For most areas this will mean creating councils with a population of 500,000 or more, but there may be exceptions to ensure new structures make sense for an area, including for devolution, and decisions will be on a case-by-case basis."

All affected councils were encouraged to come together to discuss what should replace them, then suggest proposals to the Secretary of State who would make the final decision. So let's see how that's going.

Surrey was settled first and will be replaced on 1st April 2027 by two new councils, West Surrey Council and East Surrey Council. Both will have populations exceeding half a million.

In March the government announced its decisions for four more counties:

• Essex will be divided into five unitary authorities based around the nuclei of Harlow, Colchester, Chelmsford, Basildon and Southend. Only North East Essex (around Colchester) will exceed the half million target.
• Suffolk will be split into three unitary authorities, currently with the non-catchy names Western Suffolk, Central and Eastern Suffolk and Ipswich and South Suffolk. Each will have a population close to 250,000.
• Norfolk will have three unitary authorities. One will be Greater Norwich, and the rest of the county will be divided into West Norfolk and East Norfolk. Populations will be approximately 300,000.
• Hampshire will become five unitary authorities, three of them based around Basingstoke, Portsmouth and Southampton. Four will have a population of around half a million while the Isle of Wight remains a much smaller special case.

I wrote about those five changes back in March so if you want further details, maps and links it's here.

Yesterday the government confirmed the futures of fourteen more counties. They are Derbyshire, Devon, East Sussex, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Final decisions on West Sussex, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough will follow once ministers have had more time to consider options.

Let's take a closer look at the three counties closest to London.

HERTFORDSHIRE will be moving to a four-authority model in 2028. This is surprising because a simple east-west split looked on the cards with each half having just over half a million people. Instead the government has plumped for four smaller quarters to allow for more local cohesion.

Northwest Hertfordshire: Dacorum + St Albans (population 310,000)
Southwest Hertfordshire: Three Rivers + Watford + Hertsmere (population 310,000)
Central Hertfordshire: Stevenage + most of Welwyn Hatfield + most of North Hertfordshire (population 320,000)
Eastern Hertfordshire: East Hertfordshire + Broxbourne + some of Welwyn Hatfield + some of North Hertfordshire (population 280,000)

The two western authorities are the most cohesive. One will comprise the three existing districts closest to London, creating an arc through Rickmansworth, Watford and Borehamwood with strong links to the capital. The other merges Hemel Hempstead with St Albans. Central Hertfordshire will follow the A1 corridor through Letchworth, Hitchin, Stevenage, Welwyn and Hatfield. The eastern slice includes the county town and will additionally absorb Royston to the north and Cuffley to the south. It has to be called Eastern Hertfordshire not East Hertfordshire to avoid confusion with the existing authority of the same name.

Changes take place on 1st April 2028, with a directly elected Mayor for Hertfordshire following "as soon as possible".

KENT will also move to a four-authority model, each with a population of approximately half a million people. One will be an estuary-side authority from Dartford to Medway. Another covers the historic tip of Kent including Canterbury, Dover and Thanet. Meanwhile Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone will fold into a well-to-do western authority. This leaves a peculiar stripe down the middle, seemingly the leftovers, an authority that'll collect the bins both at Dungeness and on the Isle of Sheppey.

North Kent: Dartford + Gravesham + Medway (population 530,000)
West Kent: Sevenoaks + Tonbridge & Malling + Tunbridge Wells + Maidstone (population 570,000)
Mid Kent: Swale + Ashford + Folkestone & Hythe (population 410,000)
East Kent: Canterbury + Thanet + Dover (population 420,000)

This wasn't one of the original options but was proposed by councillors in Dover, Swale and Thanet. Kent County Council had instead proposed a single unitary authority, essentially preserving themselves, and have been rightly thwarted. The precise names of the new authorities are not set in stone and could be changed.

EAST SUSSEX

Sussex has proved problematic, so much so that a decision on West Sussex is still in abeyance while ministers pick the least worst option. The government's already had to run an additional consultation for East Sussex, confirming a minor variation on what all sides wanted anyway. This'll see the existing unitary authority of Brighton and Hove expand slightly along the coast by taking over four neighbouring wards - three in Peacehaven, also Saltdean and Telscombe Cliffs. Everything else in East Sussex, i.e. the other five existing districts, becomes a mostly rural authority that might as well be called East Sussex.

Brighton & Hove: Brighton & Hove + four coastal wards (population 310,000)
East Sussex: Lewes + Wealden + Eastbourne + Rother + Hastings (population 540,000)

The two new districts will be of very different sizes but nothing in this government revamp is especially consistent, and the aspiration for 'a population of 500,000 or more' appears to have gone out the window.

Here's a quick summary of the other eleven announcements. You can read all the Secretary of State's letters to council leaders here.

• Derbyshire: Two new unitaries, Northern and Southern, one around Derby and one spanning Chesterfield and the Peak District.
• Devon: Four unitaries, three expanding out from Plymouth, Exeter and Torbay, the other the much larger remainder.
• Gloucestershire: One unitary, the simplest change yet.
• Lancashire: Four unitaries, notionally called North Lancashire, South Lancashire, Pennine Lancashire and Fylde Coast.
• Leicestershire: A much-enlarged city of Leicester, then everything else (known as Leicestershire & Rutland).
• Lincolnshire: Lincoln City (expanded from current limits) and 'Rural Lincolnshire'. No changes are proposed to the existing unitaries of N Lincs and NE Lincs.
• Nottinghamshire: Two unitaries, one in the southwest around Nottingham, then everything else. Nice map here.
• Oxfordshire: Three unitaries, a messy break-up forming Greater Oxford, Northern Oxfordshire and Ridgeway.
• Staffordshire: Two unitaries, North Staffordshire (around Stoke) and the un-catchy Southern and Mid-Staffordshire.
• Warwickshire: Two unitaries, North and South, snapping the existing county along a line between Rugby and Warwick.
• Worcestershire: Two unitaries, North and South, coalescing around Bromsgrove/Redditch and Worcester respectively.

There are a lot of furious local and county councillors out there today, all fuming that their option wasn't selected and their administrative realm is about to vanish. Some are convinced it's a political stitch-up by the Labour government, not an efficiency drive, while others are already plotting how to get back into power in shadow elections next May. Whatever, it's a profound change to local government across England and it's coming soon as two-tier local government inexorably fades away.

Crystal Palace Park

2026-07-16T07:00:00.000+01:00

Compared to your average greenspace Crystal Palace Park is extraordinarily recreationally diverse. There's the top bit where the exhibition centre was, the middle bit where the sports centre is and the lower bit where the dinosaurs are, not to mention woodland, lakes, a farm, visitor centre, cafe, museum, sphinxes, ornamental garden, maze and whopping great TV transmitter. But over the last year large parts of the park have been out of bounds while undergoing what some would call 'a major glow-up', or more accurately a long overdue restoration and makeover. And now it's finished, near enough. [10 photos]

These are the Italian terraces at the top of the park, part of the pleasure grounds opened when the Great Exhibition's huge glass hall was moved to Sydenham in 1852. But they've been poorly preserved since the palace burned down in 1936, with most of the classical statues decayed or lost, and more recently resembled an extensive split-level wasteland. The plan has thus been to make the terraces a much nicer place to linger and also to add something the Victorians never considered - step-free access.

For the upper connection they've gone right to the far end - so far that initially I didn't spot it - and added a gentle all-weather slope. This changes direction four times on the way down, and in an impressively practical move includes two stepping-stoned shortcuts to stop able-bodied visitors trampling desire lines through the flowerbeds. They could alternatively get down quicker via the adjacent original staircase, a broad flight whose stonework has been fully scrubbed or jetwashed, as indeed have all the other staircases further along. It all looks good.

The lower step-free connection is more cunning, having been squeezed into a thin gap where a disused staircase used to be. Again it's a zig zag but this time much more concentrated with seven narrow ramps within the confines of the balustrade itself. Handrails wend all the way up and there are also two central benches tucked back in the shrubbery, perhaps better for taking a rest than enjoying a view. This modern ascent looks very out of place but only close-up, thus is an ingenious solution to finally making the split level terraces accessible again.

On my visit two workmen were standing halfway up the ramp, by the sound of it doing some last-minute snagging, while two more of their colleagues worked the earth in front of the balustrade. The lower slope is all due to be prettily wildflowered, as some of the indentations further along already are. But at present the path ends in three further zigzags across open soil, weedy in places, and there is no way people are going to stick to the tarmac on the two hairpin bends. Expect rapid denudation as thousands of feet cut corners before any protective plants grow next summer.

The middle terrace doesn't look great yet either, not helped by the extremely dry weather we've been having lately. The designer's sketches show substantial areas of picnic-friendly lawn and a lot of wildflower meadow with grass paths weaving off to either side. It looks nothing like that yet, the entire terrace having been dug up over the last year to improve drainage and help prevent future subsidence. I turned up while a forklift truck was shuttling back and forth removing protective barriers so that visitors could finally wander in, and was only impressed by the barren expanse because I'd seen how much worse it looked at the height of the works.

The most impressive sight is perhaps the bust of Joseph Paxton, designer of 1851's Crystal Palace and the subsequent pleasure park, which was previously on a plinth down by the sports centre. He's since been spruced up with National Lottery money and now takes pride of place on the central terrace. It's a seriously outsized head for the location and thanks to the sideburns looks more than a little like Noddy Holder, but also in the perfect spot as he looks out across his creation. A rectangle on the front of the plinth appears to be awaiting a plaque, perhaps whenever the proper reopening takes place.

Further money has been spent doing up the Grand Centre Walk and also on a new Visitor Centre, more appealingly modern than before but not due to open until Saturday morning. But the biggest difference in the lower park relates to the famous dinosaurs and their lakeland surround where some long overdue rescue and repair has taken place. It's so good that initially I wondered why they'd replaced all the originals with modern facsimiles. But then I recognised the weird-eyed fish, the elongated croc and the lizard resting its claw on a treestump, and blimey I don't know what they've done to spruce up the outer surfaces but it's amazing.

Again it's not all finished, not quite, so I was treated to the sight of four hi-vis project staff sharing notes behind the megalosaurus like overkeen Jurassic Park employees. But it all looks seriously pristine at the moment, even down to beautifully arranged gravel at the lakeside and along a weaving path behind. The dinosaurs' island has recently been linked to the mainland via a crowdfunded bridge, providing access only for approved groups, but you do get a great view of the erroneous reptilian menagerie from the opposite bank. Throw in a new dinosaur-themed playground round the back, which is already getting heavy use, and it all looks unexpectedly impressive.

A good time to come and see the revamped park might be this Saturday and Sunday because the Crystal Palace Trust will be hosting a special reopening weekend. The Mayor of Bromley cuts the ribbon at 9.45am and then there'll be children's workshops, a streetfood market, outdoor theatre, hot air balloon ascents and a celebratory visit from the Pengenista Drummers. At the top of the park the Crystal Palace Museum will be open on both days, and we're also promised special illuminations round the dinosaur lake after 8pm each evening. Both the Dinosaurs and the Italian Terraces were previously on Historic England's At Risk Register and now they aren't, which sounds like an excellent reason to celebrate to me.

A history of sponsored tube station names

2026-07-15T07:00:00.000+01:00

This is Canary Wharf, sorry Kaneary Wharf, the latest in a long line of rebranded tube stations.

The name change was only supposed to be up for a few days but then England performed better than expected so it lingered until Sunday. As a reference to England captain Harry Kane it's a bit contrived, but no station name provided the same open goal that (Gareth) Southgate offered in 2018.

It's a lacklustre takeover, solely affecting the two enormous roundels in the middle of the platform, also two scruffy vinyls in the upper concourse designed to be seen by those coming down the escalators. "Minimal effort maximum exposure" is the general mantra these days, all the better to avoid people moaning about inaccessible navigation.

Another London station got a World Cup-related makeover last week and that's Bellingham, renamed by Thameslink as Jude Bellingham. But that was just a bit of fun whereas Kaneary Wharf is a sponsored takeover, not a patriotic cheer. The footwear company endorsed by Harry Kane has paid TfL a chunky fee to slap a pair of football boots on the roundels in an attempt to get additional publicity, and paid several hundred thousand pounds for the privilege.

I thought I'd dig back into the history of sponsored tube stations to see how we got from "I don’t think it’s right to sell off Tube stations" to "This activation is a great example of how TfL can work with brands". [a lot of the backstory is clickable]

It's often said that Arsenal football club were the first company to shoehorn their name onto the tube map. In 1932 legendary manager Herbert Chapman decided it would be excellent publicity for his club if Gillespie Road station were renamed, his timing perfect as the Piccadilly line was just being extended into the suburbs. Months of lobbying were eventually successful, the name initially being tweaked to Arsenal (Highbury Hill) and then in the 1960s to pure Arsenal. But Chapman never paid a penny for the change, agreeing instead to an option whereby old stocks of tickets would continue to be used until they ran out, hence I don't think we can truly call Arsenal a sponsored station.

Let's start instead in February 2006 when the internet was suddenly agog at the concept of The Sponsored Tube Map. This was compiled by blog reader Paul (Hi Paul!) and replaced the name of every tube station with a sponsored alternative. Top class puns included Seven-up Sisters, Harpiccadilly circus, Sarson's Green, Aldigate, Perriervale, NatWestminster, iPoddington and Heinz Park Corner. How the blogosphere laughed. Paul had actually been inspired by a post I wrote a month earlier but I'd hate you to think any of this is my fault. Alas once the map went viral TfL got terribly litigigious and it had to be taken down.

On the July 2007 tube map the name of North Greenwich station changed to "North Greenwich for the O2". This wasn't direct sponsorship but acknowledged that O2 had bought the naming rights to the Millennium Dome, and remained on the tube map until May 2013.

In 2011 Australian wine company Oxford Landing gave it a go. They spent months negotiating with TfL to replace every sign at Oxford Circus to say Oxford Landing instead, also to flood the station with adverts. They say TfL were interested but insisted on a ten-year term with an eight-figure pricetag, citing roundel-related copyright reasons. TfL have confirmed that informal talks took place but denied the wine maker would have been allowed to re-brand everything, this because revenue-raising "does not extend to selling the names of our stations."

TfL signed their first name-related deal in 2012, not for a station but for an entirely new mode of transport. Emirates sponsored the Dangleway to the tune of £36m including a chance to name not just the service but also the terminals at each end. Emirates North Greenwich and Emirates Royal Docks were unnecessary mouthfuls but deemed acceptable for the cash they raised. A door had been opened.

In 2013 the Conservatives on the Greater London Assembly published a report called 'Untapped Resource: Bearing Down On Fares Through Sponsorship'. They claimed the vast majority of the public were in favour of bearing down on fares by selling off naming rights to stations, bus routes, even entire tube lines. They recommended long-term deals (because they're more valuable) and location specific changes (e.g. 'Knightsbridge, home of Harrods' or 'Virgin Euston'), particularly with respect to forthcoming extensions. In response TfL took the moral high ground and ruled it out.

Graeme Craig, TfL’s commercial development director, said: "This report is well-intentioned but I don’t think it’s right to sell off Tube stations to someone waving a cheque book and offering a bad pun. A Tube map is to show people where a station is and renaming would bring about confusion, especially among the 30 million visitors on the network every year. The mayor has in the past ruled out the renaming of stations, largely due to the cost of changing the thousands of signs and maps across the network."

In April 2015 TfL embraced their first sponsored station as Canada Water became Buxton Water on the day of the London Marathon. Every roundel on the Jubilee line and Overground platforms was renamed, tiny bottles of water were dished out in the ticket hall and a regular announcement namechecked the sponsor five times in less than thirty seconds. Nestle stumped up £110,000 for the one-day switcheroo, which TfL claimed was "part of its wider commercial plans to generate £3.4bn in non-fare revenue over the next decade". Buxton Water made a 0.003% contribution to that goal.

And on it went...

• January 2017: Amazon Web Services spent a perhaps excessive £390,000 for the right to "temporarily change internal signage referring to the station name at Westminster Underground Station to “Webminster”, to be visible during operational hours on Thursday 12th January only." This included 43 roundels, 29 line diagrams, 6 wayfinding entrance signs and 60 platform frieze illuminated panels. The general public were duly underwhelmed.

• July 2018: In an extremely memorable takeover Southgate station was renamed Gareth Southgate following England's World Cup almost-triumph. Eight roundels on each platform got the special treatment, and because this was a zone 4 station the price of a 48-hour takeover was only £80,000. What far fewer people remember is that the campaign was sponsored by Visa, so not much credit there.

• October 2019: Disney paid £105,000 for a week of activation activities at King's Cross St Pancras. This included the right to stick a bar across every roundel saying "Lion King's Cross".

• January 2020: In one of the most creative rebrands, Piccadilly Circus was renamed Picard-dilly Circus to promote a new Star Trek-themed TV series. Amazon Prime paid £250,000 for two days, which as well as including 24 platform roundels also covered the right for "up to 6 promotional staff to roam the station and interact with TfL customers".
• October 2020: O2 paid £400,000 for a three week campaign to promote new 4G connections on the Jubilee line. Seven stations each got a couple of rebranded roundels and a 2m square activation space in the ticket hall. They were lucky to get in just before Boris ordered a second lockdown, but I still suspect customer footfall was inefficiently low.
• November 2020: In possibly the best rebranding yet, four roundels outside Oxford Circus station were replaced by colourful symbols to promote the launch of the PlayStation 5. Sony paid £280,000 for two days, for which they also got to add "30 vinyl based symbol installations" at Oxford Circus station, also one snazzy roundel each at Lancaster Gate, Mile End, Seven Sisters and West Ham. Passengerwise it was a disaster because lockdown was back in place, but the visual image went uber-viral and probably paid for itself several times over.

• January 2022: the BBC paid £135,000 so that four roundels at Green Park station could be changed to Green Planet for two days.

• September 2023: This proved one step too far. Bond Street station got a full blue makeover, both out front and on the platforms, as it became Burberry Street for the duration of London Fashion Week. Passengers complained that the name was unfamiliar and misleading and made wayfinding too difficult. Given the £200,000 deal involved 80 roundels, 132 platform friezes and 30 line diagrams you can see their point. TfL apologised afterwards and have never rebranded an entire station since, indeed this may be the over-reach that finally killed off the idea.

• January 2024: Samsung forked out an incredible £830,000 to promote their new 'Circle to Search' phone feature over a 30-day period. Rather than changing roundels a circular tube map was created and this was permitted to be displayed at "up to 8 large scale locations throughout Kings Cross Underground Station and "up to 10 locations where the London Underground Map is currently located". The map was produced in-house, hence a sponsor-free version was later shared via an FoI request.
• July 2024: Samsung again, this time plugging their new Fold phone by renaming Old Street as Fold Street. They paid £250,000 for a one-week campaign including a bespoke Fold-themed Old Street roundel and a lot of vinyls round the Old Street roundabout. The peripheral location didn't aid public recognition, the brand ambassadors looked well bored and I suspect this campaign misfired somewhat.

• July 2025: TfL announced it was seeking "the first ever sponsor of the Waterloo & City line". The name of the line wouldn't change but a successful partner would get to rebrand platforms, trains, moquette and the travelator surround, weekends excepted.
• September 2025: Charing Cross became Haring Cross for two days for vodka-related reasons, raising £210,000. According to the PR company the brief was to "Create cultural cut-through with a disruptive moment to amplify the partnership between Absolut Vodka and Keith Haring" and the campaign achieved 122M+ Earned Reach. I wrote "nothing sounds so interesting as a tube station pop-up you never saw, thereby avoiding the underwhelm of seeing it in person."

• January 2026: Heineken spent £375,000 to rebrand eight Bakerloo line stations for three weeks. They were advertising an alcohol-free lager, hence the use of 0.0 in all collateral from Bakerl0.0 to Oxf0.0rd Circus. The contract specifically restricted the takeover to 50% of all Bakerloo line platform roundels and 50% of named Bakerloo line platform friezes.
• February 2026: Six roundels at Tottenham Court Road and Covent Garden stations were reworked to show the Guinness Harp as a promotion for a new brewery attraction. Eight line diagrams were also given a black background to represent a frothing pint. Guinness paid £255,000 for this four day takeover which, crucially, never changed the name of the station
• March 2026: Warburtons spent £260,000 to add four crumpet roundels to the northbound Jubilee line platform at Baker Street station. No money was wasted southbound, or indeed anywhere else, thus renaming the station Bakers Street caused an absolute minimum of disruption. I was wholly unimpressed by the delivery, concluding "it doesn't matter how lacklustre the actual activation is, it's all about the write-up elsewhere".
• March 2026: New Balance trainers paid £200,000 for a three-day campaign at Waterloo station, plus an additional £150,000 of advertising spending. For this they got rights to "a limited number" of themed platform roundels (specifically 18%), also cobranding on 50% of Bakerloo line platform friezes, also ads on all Bakerloo line diagrams.
• July 2026: Kaneary Wharf, duration and cost to be confirmed.

As you can see, the implementation of sponsored rebrandings appears to have ramped up recently with six activations over the last twelve months. Over one million pounds has been raised in this way since the start of the year, which might sound a lot but is barely 0.01% of TfL's budget. Reassuringly takeovers are no longer allowed to cover the whole of a station, it's all about the maximum impact a creative change can deliver. But it does reflect a shift in policy from 2013 with TfL now happy to encourage brand-led experiences of limited duration, publicly focusing on the fact they make passengers smile, not that they're commercial advertising.

Emma Strain, customer director at TfL, said: “We are always keen to work with brands to create new experiences for the millions of people who travel on our network. Through well-planned, creative activations like these, we can help companies reach people as they travel across London. Any activations on our network are fully assessed to ensure that they do not impact our services, staff or customers, and the additional revenue raised is invested into London’s transport network to provide further improvements across the capital.”

We have thus far dodged the prostitution of 'Burger King's Cross' or 'Knightsbridge, home of Harrods' as permanent station names, but TfL are now much happier to offload tube stations to someone waving the modern equivalent of a cheque book and offering a bad pun. I'm not convinced it helps.

Petty France

2026-07-14T07:00:00.000+01:00

🇫🇷 C'est le 14 juillet, la fête nationale 🇫🇷
So I've been to a central London street named France.

Petty France is a short street just south of St James's Park. Its name comes from a small settlement of French traders that grew up on the edge of in Westminster in the 16th century. One end was for woolstaplers (i.e. traders in wool) and called "Petty Calais", and the other end for French merchants who sailed over to buy which became known as "Petty France". Its strategic semi-rural location, roughly halfway between Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, would eventually make Petty France an attractive place to live. During the French Revolutionary War residents voted to change the name, aghast at its connections, and in the precise opposite of what might happen today chose to rename it in honour of the Duke of York. The road retained the name York Street until approximately 100 years ago when its original name was restored.

The eastern end of Petty France is the mini-roundabout at the foot of Queen Anne's Gate, just outside a busy tube station. The famous building on the left is the historic headquarters of London Underground, Charles Holden's groundbreaking nine-storey cruciform office block, which was constructed on top of St James's Park station in the late 1920s. It was called 55 Broadway because the main entrance opens onto a brief stretch of road of that name, whereas had the door been a few feet to the left it might instead have been known as 100 Petty France. Given it doesn't officially open onto today's street I shall instead cross the street to number 102.

The hulking concrete of 102 Petty France is admired by lovers of Brutalist architecture and virtually nobody else. It was built by Basil Spence on the site of a former mansion block and completed 50 years ago. Originally it was intended to be a commercial office development but the Home Office needed space so they moved in instead, staying until 2005 when they departed to a purpose-built building in Marsham Street. This was perfect timing for the Ministry of Justice, founded in 2007, so a new tranche of civil servants moved in and this is now David Lammy's administrative domain.

It's very much an bureaucratic fortress with a perimeter of concrete blocks and sturdy bollards, also CCTV cameras pointing every which way and more. I suspect they got exceptionally suspicious when I started taking photos, indeed this is now an intensely surveilled street. The building's only assuaging feature is a series of justice-related quotations in the lower windows, from John Locke and the 1689 English Bill of Rights to Francis Bacon and (obviously) Magna Carta. It may look incongruously tall but it has the same number of floors as the block it replaced - Queen Anne's Mansions - which at 14 storeys was once the loftiest residential building in Britain. The most famous person to rent a flat there was probably Sir Edward Elgar who stayed for six months in 1910 while trying to write his Violin Concerto.

Even Queen Anne's Mansions was controversial, not least because it replaced the home of one of Britain's greatest poets. That'd be John Milton who moved into a 'pretty Garden-house on Petty-France' in 1651 when he was Secretary for Foreign Tongues in Cromwell's administration. His rear garden would have opened directly onto St James's Park and was also terribly convenient for Parliament. John was alas going blind around this time, thus when it came to writing Paradise Lost it all had to be dictated and that particular challenge started here. Later occupants of number 19 include philosopher Jeremy Bentham, founder of University College London, and the libertarian essayist William Hazlitt, both drawn here by Milton's previous presence. Demolition of this revered property came in 1873, also the felling of a tall tree planted by Milton himself, and somehow this makes the Ministry of Justice's current tenure all the more uncomfortable.

The whole of the rest of the north side of Petty France is occupied by an even more repellent official building - Wellington Barracks. A military garrison opened here in 1833 facing onto St James's Park, ideally situated for London ceremonial, with the addition of interlocking concrete buildings out back in 1979. This required the demolition of all the existing buildings fronting Petty France, replaced by a very thick wall, an accommodation block and the entrance to a large area of parking. Armed soldiers oversee the raising of the barrier at all times, just in case, so this is an even worse place than the MoJ to be taking photos. Looking up towards the soldiers' tiny rooms everyone has the same utilitarian curtains and some display the flags of the occupant's army company, proudly proclaiming "look, I'm in the Coldstream Guards".

The other side of Petty France is if anything drabber, at least at the eastern end. Albany House is an L-shaped office block built just north of the tube platforms in 1972 and currently to let. Its sole redeeming features are two anthropomorphic bronzes either side of the main entrance, a twisted holey pair called Man and Woman by Willi Soukop (who was a tutor of Elisabeth Frink). A more significant government office block lingers up the road at number 70 - Clive House - which for 50 years was London's regional UK Passport Office. Until 2002 you might have found yourself dashing here for an emergency replacement and waiting in an accursed queue, before that particular service moved to Eccleston Square. Clive House was recently offloaded by the Civil Service as part of a consolidation/savings programme, and there are plans for the Ministry of Justice's building to follow suit, not yet in train.

Thankfully some older buildings survive in the remaining quarter of the street. The Adam and Eve on the corner of Palmer Street has been serving beer for over 300 years, although the existing building dates to 1881. These days it focuses on the passing tourist trade, plugging Pub Food and Fish & Chips in the windows, although a few more hanging baskets wouldn't go amiss. Those outside the Buckingham Arms are gloriously colourful and attract considerably more tourist interest, indeed I had to apologise to a florally-obsessed Japanese couple for getting in their way. The beer's good, CAMRA says, but the current pub manifestation is only from 1898. Petty France's sole listed building is a few doors down, roughly opposite the barracks' entrance, a small 17th century hint of how this street would once have looked.

Tourist coaches often park up Tothill Street, the other side of the tube station, their cargoes snaking off towards the Palace behind a flag-holding guide. Other visitors rouse from their hotel beds and need somewhere that serves sparse luxury patisserie, so two outlets called Royal Quarter oblige. Employees of the Crown Prosecution Service and Office for Budget Responsibility can instead buy nicotine pouches and Red Bull at Portlands Express convenience store, while military types whip out their IDs to gain admittance at the barracks' back door. It's all tourists, civil servants and soldiers down Petty France these days, and no sign of anything French whatsoever.

Canada 1976

2026-07-13T07:00:00.000+01:00

Fifty years ago today I flew to Canada. I know because I kept a diary of the trip and here's the cover.

It was the best, biggest and longest holiday my family ever went on, also totally out of the ordinary for the era. Most families still holidayed in the UK, indeed when I got back to school in the autumn only two of my class had been abroad that summer. It was doable because we weren't paying for accommodation, we were staying with my Mum's penfriend who she'd been at school with in the 1940s, at least until her sudden emigration to Canada. I was now about the same age they'd been, i.e. 11 years old, and my parents were keen to make this one-off transatlantic holiday before I'd have to pay full adult fare. Somehow they wangled me out of my last week at primary school - it'd never be permitted today - and so began an amazing three weeks in and around the province of Ontario.

13th July 1976 (London → Toronto)

We got up early ready to head off to Heathrow by taxi, it being too risky to leave the connection to the 724 coach. My brother and I didn't have to worry about the packing because Mum always chose our clothes, also we were still on a parental passport. It was my first visit to Terminal 3 having never flown long-haul before and I was very much looking forward to our flight in a Boeing 747. Unfortunately when we got to Gate 3 there was no Jumbo, only a VC10, a plane so old that it'd soon be reaching the end of its working life. The switch may well have been the reason for BA619's delayed take-off, our departure being precisely 1 hour and 12 minutes late which I know because I was being particularly anal about recording everything in my diary. Honestly, all the clues to how the blog might turn out were already there.

I failed to write down what time we took off but I do know they gave us an in-flight snack at 11.00am, that Manchester and Carlisle passed underneath at 11.05am and 11.20am respectively, and that we touched down at Prestwick airport at 11.40am. Here there was an issue with "a false bomb scare" which I seem to have taken completely in my stride but may have given my parents the heebeegeebees, the result of which was another lengthy delay while we waited for the extra passengers to board. It was 1.05pm by the time we took off and 2pm by the time lunch was served somewhere over the Atlantic. I'd love to know what that lunch was but sadly this is where I stopped recording everything in such granular detail. All I know is that the mid-morning snack had included cream cheese and a danish pastry, and that my insular 1970s palate was thrilled by the novelty of a cosmopolitan sugar rush.

One thing British Airways gave young long-haul fliers in those days was membership of their Junior Jet Club. A special brown envelope was delivered by the stewardess, inside which were a pristine blue membership book and a pin badge with wings. On the inside page was a greeting from Captain Leo Budd, one of BA's Concorde pilots, the supersonic wonder which had made its maiden passenger flight six months earlier. The next pages had 50 spaces to record flights made, the idea being that the captain of your flight would sign it and record the number of miles travelled, in this case 3557. All you had to do to receive "a special mileage certificate" was to get that total up to 25,000, the equivalent of seven transatlantic flights, which needless to say never happened.

Annoyingly I didn't get a JJC Pack on the flight out, only on the way back on 6th August. This meant I'd already missed out on 3557 logged miles, indeed actually 3621 because a flight via Prestwick is 64 miles longer. 11 year old me had already learned that AirMiles were a scam. My log book had been signed with a squiggle and underneath it said P.P. CAPTAIN, which I thought was extra special until my parents explained that meant the captain hadn't signed it. We weren't made of money so I never got my mileage certificate, indeed it turned out I wouldn't fly with British Airways again until 2001, and the Junior Jet Club was disbanded in 1984. Perhaps unsurprisingly my JJC badge is still attached to its original card.

Anyway, back on my outbound flight the novelty of flying over an ocean soon wore off. Also a VC10 wasn't as much fun as a 747 with its multi-channel inflight entertainment system, so I hope I took a good book. We spotted Canada almost four hours after leaving Prestwick, likely Goose Bay, which was my very first sighting of another continent. Landing at Toronto didn't seem to worry me, I was too busy checking my watch and noting it was 2.15pm local time, then bemoaning how long it took them to attach the steps. Such was 'security' in those days that Mum's penfriend was waving to us as we disembarked the plane. Before long we were following her to Car Park 6 before driving back to the suburb of Oshawa (and also I assume hugging and embracing after all those missed years but I never recorded that bit).

14th July 1976

I was still writing my diary comprehensively at this point, as you can see.

I had my first experience of product placement in a television programme (Rocketship 7) and was distinctly unimpressed. Later we went to the shops and I went in my first drug store, which looked suspiciously like a chemist. In the afternoon we went to the Ontario Centre, which I assume was a shopping mall but I didn't write down enough clues to be able to confirm this 50 years later. I disliked the moany woman in the InfoCentre but liked Coles, a bookshop. I felt patronised when a waitress gave me a colouring book. After supper we "went down to the Creek where we made a bridge", I assume Pringle Creek but I don't think anybody called it that at the time.

15th July 1976

And after that, annoyingly, I just wrote notes. My intention was to write it all up in proper sentences but I never did so all I have now in my diary is a list of words that no longer make proper sense. I deduce from "Turnstile. Cinesphere, Roof. Forum. Boats." that we went to Ontario Place, a recreational island off Toronto, also that it was brilliant because I left myself three blank pages to write a full account. 16th July is even worse, it just says "Help. Footsteps. Smoke. Pancakes. Tire. Haircut. Sprinkler. Doctor. Pack." And on 17th July we drove off on a week-long campervan tour round Lake Ontario, including my first ever visit to the USA, but I wrote about that last week so won't go over it again.

Some further highlights...

25th July: Camp Sumac. Dairy Queen Peanut Butter Sundae.
26th July: Science Centre (we totally loved the Ontario Science Centre)
27th July: Bo Peep.
28th July: Lake Simcoe. Eildon Hall.
29th July: Pickering Nuclear Power Station (alas no tours today)
30th July: Science Centre (again)
31st July: Parade. Pouring rain.
1st August: Cgugqg (I have absolutely no idea)
2nd August: Holiday. Fireworks.
3rd August: Centreville. Ponderosa Steak House.
4th August: Go Train. CN Tower (the world's tallest free standing tower had only been open for five weeks and the queue was 1½ hours long) (I wrote only three words - fantastic, windy, scared)
5th August: Planetarium. Check-in. BA600. Bye.
6th August: (back to drought-stricken England)

It's thus not quite as memorable as I'd like it to have been. But wow, what a holiday!

Chislehurst Bear Trail

2026-07-12T07:00:00.000+01:00

A Nice Walk: Chislehurst Bear Trail (3 miles)

Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, chunky sculptures, ursine whimsy, suburban-adjacent, wildlife-abundant, shady interludes, refreshment opportunities midway, mostly off-piste, a bit of a stroll, won't take long. So here's a walk round Chislehurst that's both wooden and woody, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same. [map] [leaflet]

The Bear Trail started as a single carved log in 2013, re-envisioned over lockdown as three dozen cheery bears scattered around the environs of Chislehurst. All were carved by Bedfordshire sculptor Will Lee in his workshop near Ivinghoe using sustainable oak, cedar and redwood. The trail was organised by the Chislehurst Society who initially promoted it heavily, raising money for two local defibrillators, but less strongly of late so good luck finding a map or leaflet. Each bear also has a QR code but this now leads to a page saying 'file not found', suggesting it only takes five years for a great idea to erode.

The original leaflet had a hand-drawn map, full walking directions and a single 12km circuit. The current pdfs instead show two big loops, red and blue, but with nigh no background information and an over-focus on using What 3 Words. I used the former leaflet because it's vastly superior, despite no longer being hosted on the Chislehurst Society website. I also chose to walk just a third of the main loop because it had well over half of the sculptures, stopping at Edgebury just before a 2-mile-long bear desert.

Start: Elmstead Woods station

Elmstead Woods is arguably London's prettiest station thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the local gardening team. The two outer platforms are pleasant enough with memorial rosebeds, arty pillars, hidden compost heaps, shrubby tubs, a fairy garden and even a steam train called Steve. But the horticultural masterwork is on the central island between the waiting room and the tunnel, a patch of platform transformed into an intricate garden with raised beds and bee-magnets. And there waiting to greet you is Gardening Bear with spade and secateurs at the ready, surrounded (because it's summer) by a blaze of floral glory.

The next raised bed is wilder, this on the footprint of a former Permanent Way hut and attracting many a butterfly with its buddleia. Then heavens there's an actual lily pond tucked between platforms 2 and 3, this because it's amazing how much you can jazz up a black plastic liner, beside which Fishing Bear has been snaffling wooden prey with his paw. The adjacent patch of lavender is at its peak at present - I lost count of the bumblebees. Then come two shady benches ideal for waiting in a heatwave, one of which involves a little climb and the other overseen by a bear named Emma. It's phenomenal what they've done here on two hours of hard graft every Tuesday morning, as the certificates round the ticket office attest. Throw in a second-hand book corner that feels larger than some Bromley libraries and Elmstead Woods station is always worth dropping by simply for an appreciative look.

After leaving the station it was almost a mile before I saw my next bear, this after a hike up Elmstead Lane and down Cow Path. The latter is a long thin remnant from more rural days, a narrow stripe of brambly all-weather woodland preserved between encroaching cul-de-sacs. Cow Path starts with a pawprint post to confirm you're on the right track, its entrances adorned with multiple signs barring bikes and motorbikes but not cattle. And it ends with a furry wooden carnivore staring up at the sky bearing a carved message, hence its name is Welcome to Walden Rec Bear.

The next two bears are small and hidden in trees on the edge of Walden Wood so hard to spot. It took me three attempts before I found one high in the gnarled branches of an oak and the second I confess defeated me, my only failure on this 18-bear orienteering challenge. Cow Path weaves on from wood to rec to wood to rec, as I would have known if I'd ever managed to tick off the entire Green Chain Walk but this flailing Chislehurst tendril had eluded me. And it's on entering Whyte's Woodland that I finally reached that very first bear sculpture, carved in 2013 from the trunk of an oak tree felled by lightning. I had to wait 30 minutes before a mother and her small child stopped sitting/clambering on it, so I hope you appreciate the effort.

It's the Boating Bears, two of them facing each other in a tiny rowing boat and another two seemingly sitting on teensy rafts or inflatable rings. The fifth may just be sitting beside a fish, it's hard to be sure because Will Lee was just making the best of a fallen log, not attempting to be physically consistent. Ahead in Chislehurst Rec I found an extra bear that's not in the original leaflet - Baloo the Scout Bear, complete with green uniform and an armful of badges - this because the 5th Chislehurst Troop are based close by. The Friends of Chislehurst Recreation Grounds are the voluntary overseers of this chain of green spaces, their latest battle trying to keep the Roost cafe open, but otherwise what an excellent job they're doing.

Cow Path ends at the top of bustling bijou Chislehurst High Street, right beside the library which is good because there's another bear outside. He's called Darwin not because the great naturalist had connections to Chislehurst but because living in Bromley was sufficient. There are no maps or leaflets in the library, I checked. The other bear in the High Street is in the window of an estate agents, seemingly the only business persuadable to participate, and is no longer clutching his original SOLD board. To find the next you have to disappear down Church Passage where Lord of the Manor Bear stands guard outside the Old Chapel. This looks more 1990s than genuinely Old, having been blandly converted, and is home to a) The Chislehurst Society b) a second bear propped up in the side window. Twelve down, half a dozen to go.

Time for the second dull road walk, this time quarter of a mile up Belmont Lane to Edgebury. It's time to explore Belmont Open Space, five acres of dippy grass and woodland threaded through by the diminutive Kemnal Stream. I'd been before but only ever spotted one bear, the obvious one by the footbridge sitting on a book of fairy tales - naturally Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I'd missed Oak Tree Bear because he's tiny and several branchesworth off the ground, also Football Bear because he's inside the playground and I'm a bit old to be creeping in there. My favourite pair of bears were in a secluded glade at the foot of the slope, one beside a bench and a second reclining on a log opposite, briefly joined by a red admiral bringing a burst of colour.

This is where I capitulated rather than slog on to Scadbury Park for scant reward, hence I also missed out on Commuter Bear and Ticket Collector Bear at the ultimate destination of Chislehurst station. But if you've never been to Kemnal and Foxbury before then it's worth dipping deeper into this remote valley before heading off, even given the lack of bears, because it's full-on WTF round here. Obviously the Chislehurst Bear Trail is aimed at families with kids, not old men from the era of Winnie-the-Pooh and Rupert, but don't let that put you off an ursine exploration. It's really an excellent opportunity to explore somewhere new, the hunt for whimsical carvings simply an enticing extra, so why not grin and bear it?

SSS 11 July

2026-07-11T07:00:00.000+01:00

Saturdays are the least-read days on the blog, summer Saturdays especially, so I'll be winding things down on Saturdays over the height of the season. Readers with an annual subscription can apply for a 2% refund in the usual place.

Slim Summer Saturday

(there were five posts yesterday, so no need to miss out)

Five posts

2026-07-10T07:00:00.000+01:00

Today, five posts.

I'm one of millions who take a daily aspirin tablet, medically advised. Mine come in packets of 100 and at the start of the year that packet cost £1.99.

I went to the pharmacy yesterday to buy some more but they weren't on the shelf behind the desk any more. Staff went hunting and came back with a box costing £3.60.... but there were only 28 tablets in it. "How much?!" I asked, "for how few?!" They apologised because there's been a shortage, abruptly raising prices. They checked locally and this was genuinely the best price available.

To do the maths...
• Previously 100 tablets cost £1.99, i.e. 2p each
• Now 28 tablets cost £3.60, so 13p each
• That's a 6-fold increase in six months! (technically a rise of 540%)
At these prices a year's-worth of aspirin would cost £47 (previously £8)

The reason is significant product shortages. According to the news back in January, "the UK is witnessing a country-wide shortage of aspirin, with pharmacies being unable to meet demand and prices being at an all-time high. Manufacturing delays are being cited as a primary source for these delays, with pharmacists having to ration stock." Meh.

How I solved this problem: I went to Boots where a box of 100 aspirin still costs £2.10. That's corporate buying power for you.
How I intend to solve this problem: I can ask my doctor to prescribe the aspirin so I'll get it for free. (this wasn't a sensible option 10 years ago because the prescription fee was much higher than paying for a box of aspirin)

comments pedantry

Count Binface, intergalactic space warrior, could pull off an astonishing triumph in the forthcoming Clacton by-election. Betting companies currently only give him odds of 5 to 1 to win, but should he perform well the subsequent humiliation for Nigel Farage could conceivably change the course of UK politics.

But what's Count Binface's record in previous elections?

2017 Maidenhead (General Election): 7th place with 0.4% of the votes against Theresa May (as Lord Buckethead)
2019 Uxbridge and South Ruislip (General Election): 7th place with 0.1% of the votes against Boris Johnson
2021 London (Mayoral Election): 9th place with 1.0% of the votes against Sadiq Khan
2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip (by-election): 7th place with 0.6% of the votes against Steve Tuckwell
2024 London (Mayoral Election): 11th place with 1.0% of the votes against Sadiq Khan
2024 Richmond and Northallerton (General Election): 6th place with 0.6% of the votes against Rishi Sunak
2026 Makerfield (by-election): 7th place with 0.2% of the votes against Andy Burnham

Count Binface's highest vote is 24,775 against Sadiq in 2021, his lowest is 69 against Boris in 2019.
His highest percentage share is 0.98% against Sadiq in 2024, his lowest is 0.14% against Boris in 2019.
His highest placing is 6th against Rishi in 2024, his lowest is 11th against Sadiq in 2024.

His highest placing is likely to become 1st or 2nd in Clacton in 2026, and maybe then the hand dryer in the gents' urinals at the Crown & Treaty pub in Uxbridge will be moved to a more sensible position.

comments

It's that time of year when the ONS reveals the most popular baby names. They do however continue to divide the data into two lists, one for boys and one for girls, so what happens if you combine the two?

The top 20 baby names in England and Wales, 2025
Muhammad, Noah, Leo, Luca, Arthur, Oliver, George, Oscar, Theodore, Freddie, Archie, Theo, Olivia, Henry, Lily, Amelia, Jude, Arlo, Isla, Alfie

There are 16 boys' names in that list and only four girls' names. The top 10 are all boys. The top girls' name is Olivia with a count of 2386, twelve behind the 12th boys' name which is Theo. This suggests that when parents are naming girls they use a wider variety of names than when naming boys.

The top boys' name, Muhammad, was given to more than twice as many babies as Olivia. The ONS confirms that there were 585,396 live births in England and Wales in 2025. Of these 1.0% were named Muhammad and 0.4% were named Olivia.

comments

Here are some well known Underground superlatives.

Longest escalator: Angel (27.4m vertical rise)
Shortest escalator: Stratford (4.11m vertical rise)
Deepest lift shaft: Hampstead (55.2m)
Longest tunnel: East Finchley to Morden (27.8km)
Longest direct journey: West Ruislip to Epping (54.9km)
Shortest distance between stations: Leicester Square to Covent Garden (260m)

But all of these are on hot sweaty sticky deep tube lines.
Nobody wants to be doing that in this weather.
So what happens if you restrict the records to the four air-conditioned lines?

Longest escalator: Sloane Square (7.77m vertical rise)
Shortest escalator: Westminster (5.99m vertical rise)
Deepest lift shaft: Moorgate (6.3m)
Longest tunnel: Sloane Square to Aldgate? (7.0km)
Longest direct journey: Chesham to Aldgate (47.7km)
Shortest distance between stations: Monument to Cannon Street (340m)

The Elizabeth line is not an Underground line, obv.

comments

The Prime Minister has hinted that there might be a bank holiday if England win the World Cup. Sir Keir said "On the question of a bank holiday, I think I don't want to jinx it, but ask me again if we get to the final." According to the BBC it's understood the extra bank holiday would be on the Friday following England's win - 24 July.

A normal citizen might have thought "oh excellent, I hope that happens!" or "damn, that'll mess up my plans for 24th July". What I thought, obviously, is "ooh, would that be the first ever bank holiday in July?"

I thought a bit more and no, we had a bank holiday for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on 29th July 1981. But it would be only the second time there's been a bank holiday in July.

Then I wondered "Are there any months that have never had a bank holiday?" which is a better question. I knocked up a spreadsheet listing all the bank holidays from 1871 to 2026, and yes there are two such months.

There have been 1049 bank holidays altogether and this is how they pan out by month.

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Count 53 0 68 246 163 47 1 154 3 0 1 313

% 5% 0% 6% 23% 16% 4% 0.1% 15% 0.3% 0% 0.1% 30%

The two bank-holiday free months are February and October. It's never ever happened.
July only has one - the 1981 Royal Wedding.
November only has one - the 1973 Royal Wedding.
September only has three - the 'August' bank holiday in 1968 and 1969, also the Queen's funeral in 2022.

December has had the most bank holidays, 30% of the entire total.
April and May have had 39% of all bank holidays between them.
More than two-thirds of English bank holidays have been in April, May or December.

England would of course have to win three more games to change any of this, so best not get your hopes up.

The Harlesden Walk of Music

2026-07-09T07:00:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday last week, which was World Reggae Day, the Harlesden Walk of Music was launched.

Twelve special stones have been scattered in and around the High Street, all celebrating music giants with a connection to the area. Bob Marley doesn't get a mention because he merely spent a year living in Neasden, two miles distant.

The project was created by community group Harlesden Bassline in partnership with Brent Council and used £70,000 of funding from the government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund. The stones were embedded in the pavement a few months ago, but only on 1st July did the great and good gather to celebrate the fact you can now walk all over them.

It's not just singers and bands, the commemorative discs also pay homage to record producers and record shops based in the local area. The very first stone in the trail commemorates Sonny Roberts and can be found outside his former record shop near Willesden Junction station.... now occupied by a Brazilian butcher.

Orbitone Records opened in 1970 and was the UK's first black-owned record shop to cater for Caribbean and African music. As well as selling to the local immigrant community its fame spread more widely, with DJ's John Peel and Gary Crowley often dropping by to browse. In 1984 Sonny even produced a chart hit, that being Hot Hot Hot by Arrow, from a recording studio in Kilburn since replaced by a block of flats. The business did so well that Sonny moved to larger premises at 78 Craven Park Road before retiring to Jamaica with his wife in 1997. You get absolutely none of this backstory from the plaque, alas, only the fact that Sonny Roberts was a TRAILBLAZER.

The trail's opening celebration was held at the old Picture Palace, a Harlesden cinema opened in 1910 and closed not long afterwards. Brent council bought the building a few years ago and have transformed it into a community centre called the CAVA Centre of Excellence, a none too catchy name which stands for Community Asset Voice Alliance. As far as I can tell the site has no connection to any of the trailblazers but there are still three commemorative plaques in the pavement outside - General Levy, Janet Kay and Ruff Cutt UK.

General Levy worked with Sonny Roberts at Orbitone but is best known for his groundbreaking work in ragga, jungle and dancehall, including the 1994 hit Incredible with M-Beat (wicked, wicked, junglist massive!). Janet Kay was born in Willesden and very nearly had a number 1 with Silly Games in 1979. Seeing her plaque instantly triggered the exalted tune in my head, a little too high for me to hum along, and also made me realise she's now an MBE (since 2023, it turns out). Ruff Cutt is an NW10-based label with a more recent reggae pedigree, and all three of these recipients turned up for their stone's unveiling back in February.

I've already shown you eight of the twelve discs so as you can see I did a very good job of finding them. The Harlesden Walk of Music doesn't make this easy however, the map being well-hidden, a bit off-target and generally of inadequate resolution. If you want people to follow a trail best not flash a blurry image on Instagram or post it once on Facebook. The best map I found was tucked away as image number five on the crowdfunder page, and even then it wasn't 100% obvious which street some of the plaques were actually on. For example I spent far too long checking the pavement outside a wholesaler's rear entrance on Crownhill Road when I should instead have been round the front. The front was rather special though, being the double entrance to Hawkeye Enterprises Ltd.

The main shop is a Jamaican bakery, so serving up soft-style patties and molasses-stuffed bulla as well as bread, buns, cakes and puddings. The real interest is down the side passage which leads to a separate shop behind the bakery, but owned by the same family, which is a reggae-focused 'records and CDs store'. Amazingly it's only a year off its 50th anniversary although sadly shop manager Gerry Anderson died in 2022. Hawkeye still acts a focus for the community, as does Starlight Records across the street, these the last two surviving record stores in Harlesden. Both have a pavement plaque and both of these are more easily recognised than 2018's World Reggae Day contribution, a sapling called the Reggae Tree.

Some of those commemorated already had a blue plaque in the area - not from English Heritage but erected by appreciative local parties. One of these is for The Cimarons, the UK's first roots reggae band, who met for the first time in a youth club on Tavistock Road in 1967. Much of their early career was spent as session musicians at Willesden-based label Trojan Records, invariably reggae-based, although their biggest chart success was as backing group for Snoopy vs The Red Baron in 1973. The old plaque is locationally accurate but easily overlooked up a sideroad, whereas the new pavement slab is on the high street outside Harlesden Methodist Church with far more footfall.

Another existing plaque was for singer Dennis Brown, described by Bob Marley as "The Crown Prince of Reggae", who chose to live in Harlesden when he moved from Jamaica in the 1970s. The Harlesden Walk of Music doesn't expect you to hike up to 55 Hazeldean Road to see it, nor to visit Brownlow Road where Delroy Washington lived, so placing both their stones outside Harlesden Library saves everyone a lengthy walk.

Incidentally the library is currently hosting an exhibition of Brent Reggae Album Covers, about a dozen in total, on boards scattered between the bookshelves. It showcases cover shots of reggae albums that have been photographed in Brent since the 1960s, for example the Wembley back garden on the front of Dubbing in the Back Yard released by King Tubby and the Aggravators in 1982. The exhibition's on for five months to celebrate British Black Music Month (which lasts two months), so best ignore the temporal challenge and focus on the pin-sharp drilldown into musical nostalgia.

The northernmost stone celebrates another local record label, Jet Star Records, and can be found outside a hair salon at 78 Craven Park Road. Again you learn nothing about Jet Star by spotting it, any background information being hidden away on a non-obvious Harlesden Walk of Music online resource. On their social media presence they seem more interested in the impressive line-up of reggae stars and relatives who attended the launch event than in promoting the twelve stones themselves, or indeed telling you where to find them. But from what I saw those stones are already bringing moments of joy to central Harlesden as shoppers look down and remember, confirming reggae runs deep in NW10, and it's fabulous to see an area embracing and celebrating its cultural heritage in this way.

Limited transport news

2026-07-08T07:00:00.000+01:00

Limited transport news

Usually my transport round-ups cover all kinds of London transport but this time it's almost all buses, sorry.

💷 The Mayor has announced that bus fares will rise by 10p in November. He didn't phrase it like that, he called it a extended summer fare freeze, and lots of media outlets ran with this more positive spin. His initial decision to freeze fares temporarily was announced last December, funded by City Hall, and only now has he confirmed when that freeze will end. It means bus fares will rise from £1.75 to £1.85 on 1st November, a 5.7% increase which is double the rate of inflation. However bus fares haven't actually risen since March 2023, a hike forced by the government, so you could argue that climbing only 5.7% after 3½ years is a really good deal.

Here's a history of London bus fares over the last 20 years. I've assumed that Sadiq's latest rise is really introducing the 2027 increase four months early.

Cost of a London bus journey
*2006*	*2007*	*2008*	*2009*	*2010*	*2011*	*2012*	*2013*	*2014*	*2015*	*2016*
£0.80	£1.00	£0.90	£1.00	£1.20	£1.30	£1.35	£1.40	£1.45	£1.50	£1.50
*2017*	*2018*	*2019*	*2020*	*2021*	*2022*	*2023*	*2024*	*2025*	*2026*	*2027*
£1.50	£1.50	£1.50	£1.50	£1.55	£1.65	£1.75	£1.75	£1.75	£1.75	£1.85

The bottom row of the table is effectively Sadiq's record as Mayor of London. Since 2016 he's frozen fares seven times and overseen a 23% fare increase (from £1.50 to £1.85). Boris's tenure is on the row above, a 67% increase from 90p in 2008 to £1.50 in 2016. That's the difference between a Labour Mayor who believes in keeping fares down and a Conservative Mayor who believed in better reflecting cost pressures. You cast your vote, you take your choice.

🎾 For a fortnight in July London gets a new bus route numbered 840, its purpose to get you to the tennis at Wimbledon. Such are the crowds that the 493 gets diverted away from the grounds for two weeks, also no tube station is quite close enough if you're in high heels or carrying a hamper. Go-Ahead thus put on a special bus service from Wimbledon station to the Championships and employ a small armada of brand new double deckers to do repeated ferrying. Quite a queue builds up, sometimes stretching back as far as Greggs, and a staff member wanders down the line issuing tickets from a card reader. Cash is not accepted.

I'm not quite sure what the fare is, only that it's at least twice the normal London bus fare. The All England Club can only tell you last year's fares which were £4.00 single, £6.50 return. Go-Ahead only have the 2024 fares which were £4.00 single, £6.00 return, so it's gone up. South Western Railway reckon it's "£3.50 for a single ticket" so they're even more out of date. Such fares are unlikely to deter those who've forked out for Wimbledon tickets but it's quite steep for a six minute ride, indeed you could say it's a racket.

🚌 The results of three bus consultations were published last month, confirming that eleven bus routes will change on some as yet unannounced date.

Central London - through Islington and Westminster
• Route 38 currently runs from Clapton Pond to Victoria. In future it'll only run to Holborn, a 2-mile shortening.
• Route 19 currently runs from Finsbury Park to Battersea Bridge. In future it'll only run to Victoria, a 2-mile shortening.
• New route 10 will run from Newington Green to Battersea Bridge, taking up most of the slack along the lengthy section currently shared by routes 19 and 38.
I wrote about this in more detail in November, including a helpfully-simple graphic.

North London - through Tottenham and Seven Sisters
• Route 349 runs between Ponders End and Stamford Hill. It will be withdrawn.
• Route 279 will be diverted to Stamford Hill rather than Manor House to make up for the loss of the 349.
• Route 259 will be extended north to Ponders End to make up for the loss of the 349, but also cut back from King's Cross to Holloway.
I wrote about this in more detail in November, including a helpfully-simple graphic.

North London - through Meridian Water
• Route 192 will no longer pass through Meridian Water to Tottenham Hale, terminating instead at Picketts Lock.
• Route W8 will no longer terminate at Picketts Lock but pass through Meridian Water to end at Tottenham Hale.
• Route 476 will be extended from Northumberland Park into the new Meridian Water development.
• Route 341 will be cut back from Meridian Water to Northumberland Park.
• Route 444 will be diverted through the new Meridian Water development, along roads not yet built.

🚌 On Saturday the frequency of route 286 (Greenwich to Queen Mary's Hospital) is being cut from every 12 minutes to every 15. A small shave, but yet another incremental worsening of London's bus network.

🚌 Outer London, specifically outer Havering, is due to get a brand new bus route on 27th July. It's not a TfL route, it's existing Basildon route B1 which will be extended from Laindon to Harold Wood. It means south Essex residents will have a direct connection to the Elizabeth Line (and residents of Harold Wood can nip by bus to Taco Bell in Basildon). According to the B1 timetable double deckers will run every 20 minutes Monday to Saturday (first bus 6am, last bus 8pm) and every 30 minutes on Sundays. According to the service permit the bus will exit the capital via Cockabourne Bridge and Hall Lane, shadowing route 346, but won't stop anywhere other than the station.

🚌 One day I will ride all the numbered non-TfL buses that enter London, probably when I finally get a Freedom Pass. In the meantime let me make a provisional list.

Uxbridge-y: 3, 101, 102, 104, 458, 581, 583, M40, X74
Herts-bound: R1, R2, R17, 243, 328, 346, 614, 644
Essex-ing: 269, B1
Kent-ers: 3, 429, 477
Surrey-ward: E16, 409, 411, 420, 458, 461, 513, 514, 515, 714, 715
Heathrow-ish: A4, 5, 7, 8, 102, 442, 446, 555, 703, 704
(school buses, nightbuses and coaches not included)

🚡 And finally, is the Cable Car flogging yet another new thematic money-making experience? Of course it is. It's Engi-Bear's Football Adventure and it runs all summer long. I am not joking.

"Celebrate the summer of football 2026 at the London Cable Car with Engi-Bear's Football Adventure, a fun, family-friendly experience for children aged 5-15. This experience includes a return cable car journey alongside a passport activity booklet packed with fun tasks, including a flag hunt to spot flags across the London Cable Car terminals. After completing the adventure, head to the cafe in the Cable Car Experience at Greenwich Peninsula, where each child will receive a champions certificate and medal."

More flag-spotting than football, then. They're charging £10.50 per child which isn't too much of an upsell, given a round trip normally costs £6.75. But if all you're getting is an activity booklet, a certificate and a medal, likely cheaply produced, it's still an incremental earner. The price goes up to £19.50 if you choose the Ultimate option which also includes face-painting, specific dates only. I don't know if Engi-Bear turns up too, but if you're the poor employee who gets to wear the ridiculous yellow costume I pity you.

Note how carefully the marketing team HAVEN'T mentioned the World Cup or FIFA to avoid any trademark issues, they're simply piggybacking opportunistically on the general concept of football. The whiff of commercial desperation is increasingly evident, and as the Dangleway enters its fifteenth year I fear it'll only get desperater.

N is for Norwood Green

2026-07-07T07:00:00.000+01:00

LONDON A-Z
N is for Norwood Green

Not Upper Norwood, West Norwood or South Norwood, indeed nothing to do with the leftovers of the Great North Wood in south London. Instead Norwood Green is a hamlet-cum-suburb on the Ealing/Hounslow borders, not far from Heston Services, sandwiched between the Grand Union Canal and the M4. Officially it's part of Southall but has been a separate entity for centuries, thus has a few impressively old bits and also retains an impressively rural fringe. How had I never stopped off before?

The heart of Norwood Green is its village green, a 10-acre tree-lined triangle with houses facing all sides. It used to have a pond in one corner but that's now a playground which probably excites the local six year-olds more than a few ducks. Even at the start of the 19th century there were 40 "respectable villas" here, an ideal country bolthole for an upcoming merchant or distinguished gentleman. A particularly fine pair are The Grange and Friars Lawn on the northern edge, proper four-storey Georgian townhouses which truly stand out after you've schlepped here through more ordinary suburbia on the 120 bus. Friars Lawn was once owned by retail magnate Gordon Selfridge and later by actress Hayley Mills, and because it's on the market at the moment you can go for an impressive walkthrough with the agent, confirming that £1,695,000 goes a heck of a lot further in Norwood Green than Notting Hill.

Norwood Hall, which was designed by Sir John Soane, is larger and a tad older but also harder to spot behind the entrance to a large Sikh primary school. About a quarter of the population of Norwood Green are Sikh, not quite as high as in Southall proper but that's where the school's associated mega-temple is. I'd think twice about sending a child to the CofE primary opposite because their after-school activity is called the Kid's Club, so either only one child turns up or the staff don't understand how apostrophes work. I thought the pebbledash semis on the western side might be a little lowlier, but one had two white Rolls Royces outside with registration numbers R100LLS and R300LLS, strongly hinting at the existence of a third.

Turn up in mid-July and you'll often find a funfair on the Green, indeed at present it's half covered with whizzy rides, caravans and trailers. On the excitement front the spinny Vortex looked much scarier than the low-rise Runaway Train, with the Frankenstein-fronted Hell's Gate somewhere inbetween. The organisers are Bob Wilson's, not the Arsenal goalie but a Birmingham-based crew who do all the big events (Nottingham, Hull, Winter Wonderland) and also seem to have a regular penchant for Ealing. They've been so good at flyposting across the area that I suspect everyone in Southall knows they're here... free admission, no wristbands necessary, closing Sunday.

The oldest part of Norwood Green is a small village nucleus along Tentelow Lane. St Mary's is a flinty number with a squat tower, a 12th century arch and a few urn-topped graves overlooking the entrance. 'Do come in' said the chalkboard outside but I didn't because Revd Bookless was in the middle of celebrating her Sunday Service. Across the street is Southall's oldest pub, The Plough, a four-bay timber-framed building dating back to the early 17th century. For some reason a black door out front has been numbered '10' and a streetsign placed above saying 'Drowning Street', but then some pubs are deliberately quirkier than others. The other very old building hereabouts looks like the last in a run of small cottages but was originally the village Free School. A plaque confirms it was erected by Elisha Biscoe in 1767, before even the canal carved its way through.

Behind the pub's beer garden is Norwood Terrace, a row of 17 Victorian working-class cottages built for labourers at a nearby brickworks but now much more likely to be occupied by Ocado shoppers. Follow the footpath and you walk out into, wow, a huge wheatfield that like everything here feels a bit wrong for modern London zone 4. The National Exhibition Centre was nearly built here in the 1960s but thankfully went to Birmingham instead, preserving the rustic scene. As Heathrow-bound planes descended beyond the golden stalks I gambolled to the far side and climbed up to Osterley Lane, another delightful rural throwback. Turn right and this could be Betjeman's Middlesex, bar the skidmarks, but turn left and the lane curves abruptly across a six-lane motorway before halting at the (private) back entrance to Osterley House.

The engineers who built the M4 in the 1960s managed to find an almost-entirely undeveloped path when they drew their line from Brentford to Berkshire, bar half a street on the boundary of Heston and Norwood Green. Just south of the village all they severed was an old public right of way across a field but, being Britain, they were obliged to build a whopping great footbridge so future ramblers could continue to make the connection. To experience this benevolence I turned off the lane at an unsigned gate and followed an almost-overgrown path hemmed between two paddocks, two minutes longer than felt entirely comfortable. At the far end a long ramp climbed beside the hard shoulder, forewarned by what looked like an original sign warning locals not to cross on horseback. I stood for a few minutes above the roaring traffic on this bridge to almost-nowhere, not even well-enough aligned for a good dog-circuit, and reflected that outer London retains an almost infinite ability to surprise.

The other side of Norwood Green, by contrast, is built-up all the way to the canal. A separate village nucleus exists on the main road, once called Frogmore Green, and still self-evident when you spot the old village pump and and water trough amid a triangle of grass. There's even a Victorian terracotta police station, the signs outside misleading because it closed over a decade ago and is now flats. The shops here are proper tatty whereas the old pub is about to reopen as an even gaudier banqueting venue than it was before. Prior to going full Indian it used to be called The Wolf and gave its name to the road out front (Wolf Lane), the park round the back (Wolf Fields) and even the bridge over the Grand Union (Wolf Bridge). Amusingly the sole competing pub was The Lamb, this not yet fully devoured although it's had to evolve into a hybrid that's half traditional tavern, half spice restaurant.

Wolf Lane is now Norwood Road and offers a slightly elevated view of Southall's gold-topped gurdwara as it humps over the canal. This waterside zone is where the village once kept its industry, specifically Norwood Mill (now an industrial estate) and Norwood Vitriol Works (now a dead-end estate). It also once housed the local RSPCA cattery but that's recently been acquired by a luxury developer, no doubt with an eye on building canalside flats.

Precisely how far west Norwood Green stretches is moot - electorally almost as far as central Southall and educationally across the borough boundary, Norwood Green Primary being several streets into Hounslow. Victorian maps described a large area here very differently, a name which excitingly starts with an N so I can also bring you...

N is for North Hyde

The dull end of North Hyde is what used to be North Hyde Farm, a market garden whose orchards served the postwar population better as suburban avenues. Of far more interest is the former Ordnance Depot established canalside during the Napoleonic Wars, the hope being that gunpowder would be safer here than on the coast. The depot occupied a half-mile stripe at the northern end of Hounslow Heath, the entire complex surrounded by a rectangular perimeter of canal they called the Hanwell Loop. After decommissioning the site was purchased by Belgian Catholics who opened an orphanage, later replaced by a nunnery, then in the 1960s all this amazing backhistory was replaced by a linear wedge of drab council housing. They called it Convent Way, for hopefully obvious reasons, and it is very much looking its age.

Picture a lengthy strip of lowrise flats, since renamed after Olympic heroes, with a single tower block in the middle. A central shopping parade offers barely the basics, and one misguided local insists on putting out bowls of food so the surrounds are infested with pigeons. Unsurprisingly residents have voted in favour of full regeneration, the council's intention to double the number of flats by building taller blocks, but sequentially so nobody is forced to move away. Planning permission was granted in 2022 but as yet absolutely nothing has happened, the phase 1 car park still a cracked concrete pigeonfest, so if you want to see what challenging housing conditions look like then catch the H32 through North Hyde.

St Tube Map's day

2026-07-06T07:00:00.000+01:00

For those who celebrate, St Tube Map's day is here again!

It used to happen more than once a year but is now an annual changeover.
Here's the Great Switcheroo Ceremony at Liverpool Street yesterday.
The old map comes out and the new map goes in.

Sometimes a new tube map brings great changes like the addition of blobs, the appearance of trams or the naming of Overground lines. This time the tweaks are minor, especially on the map itself, but there have been presentational changes and some fool's decided to make the key even more complicated.

Change 1: new cover art

It's farewell to Map Projections by Agnes Denes and hello to Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish by Ellen Gallagher. Ellen is an American artist with biracial heritage who fished commercially before taking a fine arts degree in Boston and now exhibits internationally. What's unusual here is that TfL haven't commissioned this cover from scratch, the work's already appeared in a show at the Gagosian Gallery in Paris. It's one of three oil paintings on a maritime theme that Ellen exhibited in March, in real life measuring 116⅝ × 79½ inches, so you really are getting a work of art in your pocket.

The title comes from chapter 89 of Moby Dick which is also called Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish. Here Captain Ishmael explains the fundamental rules of the whaling industry, namely "A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it." In other words marked property is yours, unmarked property is anyone's, and the whole thing turns out to be an allegory for the slave trade. Nobody picking up the pretty red map is going to guess that. As yet Art on The Underground haven't published their usual word salad on the underlying meaning but the Gagosian described the work using the following top quality artbolx.

Built upon canvas-mounted sheets of ruled, gridded paper that are stained in a vibrant pink hue, then layered with brilliantly colored, thickly impastoed pigment and incised palladium leaf, each of the Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish paintings employs a material abundance from which Gallagher’s playful meditations emerge. She takes a sculptural approach to her process, often working paintings from multiple positions. Exploding their compositional grids into groupings of vibrant lines and biomorphic shapes, she melds Post-Minimalist abstraction with imagined ocean-floor topographies and phantasmal worlds.

Change 2: a new way to display the map

Time was when leaflet racks in stations held a variety of printed information. These days they only ever hold tube maps so someone's had the very sensible idea of making this extremely obvious.

The background on the leaflet rack is now bold blue with big letters saying POCKET TUBE MAP, as if TfL are suddenly proud to be giving the maps away. There are clues elsewhere as to why, chiefly three mentions of the Art on the Underground programme... "Putting art in the hands of Londoners for over 25 years". Many would describe Harry Beck's tube map design as art but it's the cover design being plugged here, not the increasingly convoluted interior.

Look carefully and there's another change, the appearance of the sponsor's name at the top of the poster. That's Reed the recruitment company who are the 2026 sponsor of TfL's flagship art programme, indeed this is the third year they've thrown dosh at Art on the Underground. The real prize for Reed is that they've managed to get their name onto the tube map itself - on the back at the bottom of the index (where ART ON THE UNDERGROUND is also written is slightly larger font size than before).

Change 3: a map update

• Colindale now has a step-free blob (because its lifts opened last Christmas)
• The IFS Cable Car is now the London Cable Car (and its terminals have lost their sponsorship)
I think that's it (for once it's barely worth publishing a new map)

Change 4: a wordier key

Alas someone's looked at the key and thought "Do you think perhaps we could show some more information on here?" Someone's done this a lot over recent years, adding the trams, adding stations you can walk between, adding Thameslink, and on the online map adding snowflakes if the line is air-conditioned.

In 2019 someone decided to add a special symbol for river piers you could walk to, placing them in a circle joined by a dotted line. The key then had two boat symbols, one in a circle and one not, both described as 'River services interchange'. But in 2026 someone has asked "to be even more helpful do you think we should describe the two boat symbols separately?" and now suddenly there are 18 words where previously there were three.

The new dividing line is 'less than 10 minutes walk to River services interchange' versus 'more than 10 minutes walk to River services interchange'. You're more likely to want to walk to the former, or be able to, is the underlying rationale. I hesitate to think how many people actually use the tube map to make a river connection, or are inspired to, but I bet it's a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of 1%. To save you checking, here are the 19 stations with a boat symbol and which version they've got.

Less than 10 minutes walk: Imperial Wharf, Battersea Power Station, Vauxhall, Westminster, Waterloo, Embankment, Blackfriars, London Bridge, Tower Hill, Tower Gateway, Cutty Sark, North Greenwich, Woolwich Arsenal, Barking Riverside
More than 10 minutes walk: Putney Bridge, Westferry, Canary Wharf, West Silvertown, Pontoon Dock

Only five stations are more than a 10 minute walk from a river pier, and they're the sole reason this wordy change has been introduced. So how far away are they really? I used TfL's Journey Planner to check, and here's what it said...

Putney Bridge: 7 minute walk to Putney Pier
Westferry: 7 minute walk to Canary Wharf Pier
Canary Wharf: 10 minute walk to Canary Wharf Pier
West Silvertown: 8 minute walk to Royal Wharf Pier
Pontoon Dock: 12 minute walk to Royal Wharf Pier

Ridiculously only one of these stations is actually more than 10 minutes away via TfL's own metric, and that's easily solved by alighting at West Silvertown instead of Pontoon Dock. The genuine edge case is Canary Wharf where the Journey Planner is incapable of distinguishing between DLR, Jubilee and Elizabeth line stations, so not fully accurate. My estimate is that Elizabeth line to river pier might in fact be 14 minutes, hence the use of an uncircled boat is genuine.

But do we really need a whole new symbol over-explained in the key on the off-chance that someone might alight a purple train at Canary Wharf and discover it's further than they thought to a boat? I'd argue not. What people really want to know is "what does the boat symbol mean?", not "how long might it take to walk there?"

Adding stuff to the tube map is always done with the intention of providing more information for the user, which seems laudable. But implementation invariably makes things more complicated or harder to follow, in the misguided belief that throwing everything onto the map somehow helps. This latest addition might help a few people a day at most. In the meantime it hinders everyone scanning down the key and trying to make sense of what the map shows... as do all the dotted lines linking stations to piers in the first place. Less is sometimes more, but on the tube map more is always more than necessary.

The only change that matters on the new tube map is that Colindale is now step-free, everything else is just extra noise.

Coughlans RIP

2026-07-05T07:00:00.000+01:00

Earlier this year, after mapping Wenzel's bakeries in North London, I wrote "I really should draw some Coughlans maps one day." Alas I'm too late, they ceased trading on Tuesday.

Coughlans were a family bakery chain based mostly in south London and Surrey. The founder was Jack Coughlan who opened a single shop in Thornton Heath way back in 1937, so they haven't quite reached their 90th anniversary. Here's the store in Wallington with its comfortingly brown frontage, but alas no queues for bread because the shelves are now empty.

Coughlans were a proper bakery pitched between the elite flakery of Gail's and the mass-produced churn of Greggs. They served up loaves and crusty rolls, also gingerbread men and eccles cakes. Yes you could walk out with a sourdough toastie and a Chocolate Lotus Biscoff Cupcake but alternatively a hot bacon roll and a slice of bread pudding, which was all bases covered. Coughlans were also proud of baking their own, indeed "At 2am this morning our bread was still flour" is not a sign you'll ever see in Pret. They always seemed well targeted for a shopping parade staple, serving both the comfortingly everyday and the sweetly forward-looking, but alas they couldn't hold back the march of economics.

News of closure came at the very end of June, announced by 3rd generation boss Sean Coughlan on social media. We've gone into immediate voluntary liquidation, he said, which isn't something he ever thought would happen. He explained that even up to the end of March all was well, indeed a recent burst of cash from new co-owner Romesh Ranganathan had provided a welcome boost. But on 1st April business rates went up, which when you have 31 stores dents profits, and all this on top of an increase in National Insurance contributions the previous year. He said various global conflicts had seen the fuel bill double, also the price of ingredients had gone "through the roof".

But what actually tipped the balance were our two recent heatwaves because when it gets too hot people don't come out for baked goods and takeaways. Sales during June's prolonged record-breaker were apparently 50% of normal, still with all the same overheads, so with daily turnover tumbling they decided to pull the plug. Sean said he was devastated and that he was hurting, but also that "business rates have absolutely smashed local retail". He didn't say out loud that the Chancellor had screwed his business but that was the subtext, a progressive measure imposed just as high streets were increasingly unable to cope.

There are indications that the closure was abrupt and not especially well-thought through. Staff were apparently informed of the closure via text message rather than any coordinated communication. The day after the closure the Wallington store still looked open apart from a sheet of paper in the window on which someone had used a faded black marker to write WE ARE CLOSING DOWN THANK YOU AND SORRY. The Addiscombe branch did at least have a proper "We are closing" notice but when I looked through the glass a tray of unsold pasties and sausage rolls was still uncovered on an otherwise stripped counter.

Nothing whatsoever has changed on the Coughlans website which still lists 31 open stores and urges you to consider buying vegan party platters. As for Instagram all is normal there too, the reel with which Sean announced the closure to the public having expired after 24 hours. Coughlans do come across as having been inept online, with just three Instagram posts in the last year and a single Meal Deal offer on their website which expired in September 2017. Facebook and Threads were updated more regularly but appear to have frozen a week before the closure, including several pleas to order iced lattes locally during the heatwave, which clearly didn't work.

Journalists at Inside Croydon have been doing some digging and wonder if something else has been going on. The latest annual accounts for Coughlans Bakeries show turnover increasing to £6.8 million and losses falling from £229,600 in 2024 to £98,800 in 2025, so the financial foundations appeared strong. There had also been a significant withdrawal of "tangible assets", down from £3,476,436 to £607,929, suggesting £2,868,507 had been transferred elsewhere. This change coincided with the directors setting up a new company called Smitham Lodge Estates Ltd which in its first year mysteriously acquired £5,617,500 of "investment property". The Coughlans have since claimed that "the separation of the property assets from the trading business was not something undertaken in anticipation of the current circumstances", but the fact remains that one of the two companies has been liquidated and the other hasn't.

Now it's too late, I have of course done the Coughlans map thing.
(London's in white and all the administrative districts bordering Greater London are grey)

The 31 bakeries are very much a south London and Surrey thing, so if you've never been south of Wimbledon you'll never have seen one. 12 of the bakeries are in London, the vast majority in the borough of Croydon plus two in Wallington and two on the western edge of Bromley. All the rest are in Surrey bar three in West Sussex (Horsham, Horsham, Crawley) and one in Kent (Westerham). From their first store in Thornton Heath Coughlans have generally only spread southwards. All the stores which opened in the last five years were outside London.

Coughlans isn't the only regional bakery chain to have succumbed to outside forces. In 2020 east London icons Percy Ingle threw in the towel, thwarted almost overnight by the pandemic. Northwest London continues to be covered by Wenzel's, seemingly going strong, but even though they've expanded elsewhere they've avoided Percy Ingle or Coughlans territory. Meanwhile southwest London is long past its budget bakery chain phase, preferring fancy artisan outlets instead.

It's always sad when a longstanding business closes, especially one that brought affordable pleasure to thousands. But I worry that what we're seeing in the capital is the slow extinguishing of what I'd call 'proper' bakeries doing ordinary stuff, increasingly edged out by expensive alternatives selling overpriced fruity croissants and Scandi treats to pastry fetishists with the wherewithal to pay for it. Younger Londoners wouldn't even know what a Chelsea bun was, let alone hanker for one, so won't even notice as the tradbakery clientele ages and the last sandwichmongers close their shutters for good. If Andy Burnham could bring just one great thing down from the north and install it in the capital, some decent bun shops would be excellent.

USA 250

2026-07-04T02:50:00.000+01:00

It's the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence.
The semiquincentennial of the United States of America.
To reflect the current President, I'm going to make it all about me.

I've been to the USA 25 times.
Let me tell you about all of them.

🇺🇸 1) 17th-22nd July 1976 (New York and Vermont)

I first went to America in the month of the bicentennial. I was 11 and had been given permission to miss my last week at primary school so the family could go on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. We spent most of it in Canada staying with my Mum's penfriend but one week was spent driving round Lake Ontario in their car and camper van, and it was amazing. We entered the USA via the Thousand Islands Border Crossing, where the dressing comes from, and spent the first night at the nearby KOA campsite. I still have the litterbag, as you can see.

For an interesting diversion we drove across the top of New York state to Vermont, finding a pitch in Burlington on the banks of Lake Champlain. We took the gondola to the top of Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in the state, and went to Stowe to see the ski lodge where the Von Trapp family lived. Unfortunately we were two years to early to buy an ice cream from the original Ben & Jerry's. The next day we headed into the Adirondacks and stopped at High Falls Gorge, where they tied a sign to our front bumper in the hope we'd drive around advertising them. I nabbed it and kept it instead. Five miles further on was Lake Placid, home to the 1932 Winter Olympics and pencilled in for 1980, where I looked through a window and saw the ice rink where Robin Cousins would win gold.

The long drive through the mountains continued, now heading southwest across New York state. I had my very first McDonald's meal and was excited by their special Olympic scratchcard offer where you won prizes if a US athlete won a medal at the Montreal Games (which had just begun across the border). Gold for a Big Mac, silver for fries and bronze for a Coke, not that we ever won. I also enjoyed playing pinball and pool at the five American campsites we stopped off at. Finally we headed west on Route 90 aiming for Niagara Falls where all the good stuff was on the Canadian side so we drove back across the border at the Whirlpool Bridge. Just before we crossed I got my fingers shut in a car door, yeeeeeeouch, and if I'd known any swear words I would have used them.

🇺🇸 2) 22nd July 1976 (Niagara Falls)

After some absolutely incredible stuff I can't write about because it happened in Canada, it was time for dinner. "Why don't we go to Howard Johnson's?" said Mum's penfriend, but that was an American brand so we'd have to go back across the river. Brandishing passports we headed for the Rainbow Bridge near the American Falls and wow, that was an unforgettable view upriver. The border guards on the US side nodded us through when we mentioned our visit was food-related rather than giving us the third degree. I can't remember what I had for dinner but it was probably fried, fatty and excessive. And barely two hours later we were back on the Rainbow Bridge where I stopped at the white line painted across the sidewalk and had an idea...

🇺🇸 3) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)

I jumped into Canada and then jumped back into the USA. And then I carried on.

🇺🇸 4) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 5) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 6) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 7) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 8) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 9) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)

I was probably getting some funny looks by this point but I didn't care. I'd realised that by hopping back and forth across the border I could tot up a ridiculous number of visits to America that would create an excellent anecdote for years to come. I was probably thinking secondary school at the time but it's continued to serve me well... at university, in at least one interview, over several beers in several pubs, upon meeting umpteen Americans for the first time, and of course today. And so I carried on.

🇺🇸 10) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 11) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 12) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 13) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 14) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 15) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 16) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 17) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 18) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 19) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)
🇺🇸 20) 22nd July 1976 (Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls)

Twenty seemed a reasonable place to stop, also my Mum hated standing on bridges and was probably getting the heebeegeebees from her son bouncing up and down 200 feet above a raging torrent. We spent the next fortnight doing excellent things in Canada instead, and my '20 visits to America' total was maintained until the millennium.

🇺🇸 21) 6th-13th August 2000 (Orlando, Florida)

Now aged 35, it was time for a 'big kid' trip to Walt Disney World Resort. I'd been to the downsized European version but why not do the real thing and do it properly with an Unlimited Magic Pass? Arriving at Orlando airport first class in a 747 and departing in a red Chrysler Convertible was the cherry on the cake. Throughout the week we ticked off the Magic Kingdom (for It's A Small World and the Main Street Electrical Parade), Epcot (with its Lake of Nations), Animal Kingdom (for the Kilimanjaro Safari) and Disney-MGM Studios (for Catastrophe Canyon), then switched brands to do Universal Studios. You are never too old.

At the end of the week we drove to the Kennedy Space Center, observed Space Shuttle launchpads and brushed up close to a Saturn V rocket, because America's about bold as well as brash. I remember we ate dreadfully throughout the trip (i.e. normal for America), including seven consecutive breakfasts of pancakes and sausage, so the vegetables they served in economy on the flight home were very welcome. If you want full details I blogged the lot (with dubious photos) in 2020, so that's all I need tell you here.

🇺🇸 22) 27th April - 4th May 2002 (New York)

Next came a week in the Big Apple with BestMate, barely six months after 9/11 so security had ramped up somewhat. We landed at JFK and took a yellow cab to our digs on Roosevelt Island, ending a very long day in a bar in the East Village. Over the forthcoming week we sat in Central Park, took the subway, crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and headed to the top of the Empire State Building. We also spiralled round the Guggenheim, dipped into the Whitney, stared at the Statue of Liberty from Pier 17 and stood on the Ground Zero Viewing Platform where the World Trade Center was being cleared away. We were really ticking all the boxes here.

Our last night was opening night for the new Spider-Man movie so we spent $10 to watch it at Loews on 42nd Street, returning to Roosevelt Island in the very cablecar Tobey Maguire had just bravely rescued. I made sure I bought lots of cinnamon TicTacs before the flight back, and BestMate grinned all the way home because he'd just met BestMate'sOtherHalf for the first time. I have no surviving photos from this trip which is a damned shame, but as trips to America go this was probably my most successful.

🇺🇸 23) 28th December 2002 - 4th January 2003 (San Francisco)

28th December was BestMate's 30th birthday and he was spending it in America, so damn right I was getting on a plane and flying 6000 miles to the West Coast to spend the evening dining and bar-hopping. I'd started blogging by now but trying to wangle a trip to an internet cafe meant my reportage was very limited. What you missed me writing about was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, climbing Twin Peaks, shopping in Abercrombie & Fitch, riding the cablecars, driving down crooked Lombard Street, walking through the giant redwoods and taking a tour of Alcatraz.

BestMate'sOtherHalf was in hospitality and managed to wangle us a table at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, recently voted the Best Restaurant in America. Owner Alice Waters served up local produce to a different set menu every evening so I was worried what we'd get, but thankfully 30th December's offering started with beetroot salad and continued with duck and lemon eclairs so was an excellent experience. America is many places with many traditions and many cuisines, which is why visiting several parts of the country helps to avoid a narrow-minded view.

🇺🇸 24) 7th-16th April 2004 (San Francisco)

By now BestMate was living in America so I needed another trip to San Francisco just to see him. In better news I stayed at his place where there was wi-fi so managed to blog this trip pretty much in real time. It's all there if you fancy, also 20 photos on Flickr, but let's just mention Golden Gate Park, the Legion of Honor, Coit Tower, Haight Ashbury, Napa Valley wineries, the Museum of Modern Art, an evening with Carol Channing, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Big Sur, the terrace at Nepenthe and pitchside seats at a Giants baseball game.

🇺🇸 25) 16th-24th April 2006 (San Francisco)

BestMate was still in America so I flew out again, this time with a rather shorter list of sights to see. The main reason for going mid-April was to attend the 100th anniversary commemoration of the great San Francisco earthquake, which meant being up at 5:12am and standing in the middle of Market Street while the Mayor gave a speech. If Gavin Newsom ever gets the Democrat nod, I might have seen a future President speaking.

The other highlight was walking down to Point Reyes Lighthouse, as seen in John Carpenter's film The Fog, which is still the furthest west I've ever been. Again my week away was blogged in real time rather than being written up properly later, so my reportage is a bit sparse. And on 24th April I took the offer of a jeep ride to the airport, queued along my final freeway, took my shoes off for a scowling security guard and boarded a Boeing home from gate 91. I haven't been back to America in the 20 years since, partly because BestMate returned to the UK shortly afterwards and partly because the USA's no longer such an appealing destination.

But hey, 25 visits across the country's 250 years isn't half bad, even if most of them were jumping across a line on a bridge in 1976. For me the bicentennial beats the semiquincentennial, which is simply an egotistical parade of one man's achievements, and I suspect a lot of Americans will be feeling like that today.

Unblogged June

2026-07-03T07:00:00.000+01:00

30 unblogged things I did in June

Mon 1: Unblogged May got fewer than 20 comments, by far the smallest response yet, so either I wrote about dull things or perhaps this feature has run its course after eight years.
Tue 2: The rain was so heavy that the Pearly King and Queen of Forest Gate had to shelter inside the entrance to Stratford station while lowering their umbrellas.

Wed 3: There's now a Bluesky account, @diamondgeezerblog.bsky.social, which announces every new blogpost I write (and nothing else). My thanks to the 228 people who've already followed it. (The Twitter version @diamondgzrblog has been up and running for ten years)
Thu 4: On my weekly visits to BestMate's sofa we've started watching Widow's Bay, the creepy maritime folkhorror series, because everyone else was recommending it (and now I will too).
Fri 5: Normally four pints of milk lasts me ten days, but my last couple of bottles have curdled after only a week and I worry Tesco have switched to using sour cows.

Sat 6: I wonder if anyone knows where this Greggs Clock is. (of course someone does, but who'll be first?)
Sun 7: The newest message on the DLR, aimed at preventing slips and falls, is "Always slow down and walk". I object to being asked to always slow down, because it suggests everyone's moving too fast all the time. If the lady in front of me on the steps at Shadwell had slowed down she'd never have left the station.
Mon 8: As the World Cup approaches, maybe 10-20% of news articles appearing on the Evening Standard website are about bets, betting deals and betting companies.
Tue 9: Walked the River Lea north to Ponders End, and just north of the North Circular a large snarly dog blocked the towpath. "He's only a puppy", said the narrowboat owner as two further hellhounds barked behind a broken fence. "Yeah right," I thought, and if BestMate hadn't been with me I would have turned round and gone back, sharpish.

Wed 10: It's been announced that Russell T Davies and Disney are walking away from Doctor Who and the 2026 Christmas special won't be happening. The BBC say they're committed to making more but need to put production out to tender, so I guess 2028/2029 at the earliest.
Thu 11: On the tram approaching Morden Road, three young black-clad passengers started looking shifty. "Be ready to get off!" said the eldest. A team of Revenue Inspectors were waiting to board so they hopped off, grinning, only to discover that half the team hadn't boarded and were waiting on the platform. With only one exit there was no escape and they had to surrender to a check, their intended fare-dodging completely thwarted. So there are ways to catch these people.
Fri 12: The wildflower meadow in front of Hampton Court is looking splendidly poppytastic at present.

Sat 13: There are days everything pivots and nothing is quite the same afterwards, and oh to be able to turn back time.
Sun 14: I couldn't blog about my visit to xxxxx xxxxxxx because I signed a disclaimer, but blimey it was big and I never knew that was filmed here.
Mon 15: If you get the right five trains, it turns out you can get from Ponders End to Coulsdon in one hour flat. (this is generally neither necessary nor useful)
Tue 16: I was amazed how many passengers at Wimbledon, Richmond and Kingston stations were dressed in top hats and morning dress (or fascinators and couture dresses) because it's the first day of Royal Ascot. I never realised SW London takes the event so seriously (NE London totally doesn't).

Wed 17: I've been listening to the Radio 4 midnight news for over thirty years, it being the best news summary of the day. So I can't believe the BBC plans to axe it as part of a first tranche of cost savings, indeed I can't imagine how this'll save any significant money whatsoever. Snippety news is no replacement for curated excellence.
Thu 18: I couldn't have told you where Makerfield was two months ago and suddenly it's pivotal to our national story. Thankfully one man does appear to be capable of keeping Reform at bay, but for how long?
Fri 19: That minute would have haunted me forever if I didn't keep a diary, allowing me to confirm later that the bad thing had already happened.
Sat 20: At least 30 each, if you're still counting.

Sun 21: There are now five digital advertising panels on the northbound platform at Leytonstone station, all the better to squeeze opportunistic revenue out of customers waiting to change trains.
Mon 22: Social media is so denuded/inconsequential/non-chronological/trivialised these days that nothing alerted me to the appearance of Sir Keir's lectern in Downing Street until his resignation speech was almost over. I miss knowing what's going on right now.
Tue 23: The last chunk of my final Christmas Toblerone has almost melted in the excess heat.
Wed 24: On the hottest day of the year, the Dangleway did the hilarious thing again.

Thu 25: City AM's glossy magazine is issued quarterly and I've picked up two editions this month. Both had nine pages about luxury watches and five articles about luxury travel, meanwhile 15% of the magazine was about fine dining. It's unashamedly aimed at rich readers but is still massively more readable than the weekly Evening Standard which simply simpers to the posh.
Fri 26: BBC4 started repeating editions of Top of the Pops chronologically in 2011, starting with 1976, and tonight they finally reached the year 2000. The standard of music has not improved (despite occasional flashes of millennial brilliance).
Sat 27: I've been keeping a graph of "the temperature in my living room first thing in the morning" since November 2020. Today's 28°C is a new record, beating the 27°C recorded on 19th July 2022 and 1st July 2025.

Sun 28: If you heard the new Radio 4 quiz, Your Number's Up, that was me applauding. The audience does a lot better at providing "The Wisdom of the Crowd" in the second episode.
Mon 29: Three of them were standing in, but this may be the first time five consecutive Radio 2 shows have been hosted by females (Tina Daheley/Clara Amfo/Alex Jones/Jo Whiley/Cerys Matthews).
Tue 30: Focusing on the positive, the train was quiet, the radio hasn't reset, the pork belly was very good value, Will was exceptionally professional, distances are impressive, it is Tuesday, the car park was free, they finally saw the bikers, the downstairs loo has been transformed, the Falklands are an option and Waitrose do very good chocolate biscuits.

Lingwood 37.7°C

2026-07-02T07:00:00.000+01:00

Last Friday set a new national record for June daily maximum temperature, according to the Met Office.

"A provisional high of 37.7°C was recorded at Lingwood, Strumpshaw Hill on 26 June, surpassing the previous record of 35.6°C set at Southampton in June 1976."

But where is Lingwood, how high is Strumpshaw Hill and where precisely is the record-breaking weather station? I was in the area yesterday so went to have a look.

Lingwood is a small Norfolk village about halfway between Norwich and Great Yarmouth. It has an old nucleus, a quarter mile square of suburban roads and a lot of surrounding fields. My brother drove me down and we had to wait at the level crossing while a Greater Anglia train approached the station.

The village green is north of the railway, the village hall is south and the Post Office used to be north but shifted south to the Spar supermarket in 2018. This would have been a great place to hide from the heat last Friday because they have a Wall's ice cream chiller just inside the front door, also the shop's fully air-conditioned so none of the Dairy Milk bars melted. I doubt that the Lingwood Chippy across the road did a roaring trade that day.

The temperature record wasn't set in the village proper but on the southern edge of the parish, very nearly in neighbouring Strumpshaw. We parked there in the car park at The Shoulder of Mutton, sadly too early to enjoy the Ukulele & Pimms Evening at the village hall. From there we cut through the churchyard, where the tall medieval tower looks out of scale because the nave was lowered in a Victorian restoration, then on down Buckenham Road.

Strumpshaw Hill is barely a protuberance but high for Norfolk with a 45m peak. The penultimate telegraph tower in the chain from London to Great Yarmouth was once located at the summit, close to a ten sided windmill that was demolished in 1916. Later the southeastern flank of the hill was excavated for gravel and then used until 1988 as a council tip, the waste in some places up to 20 metres deep. They've de-gassed and rewilded it since.

It's an extremely gentle ascent but you can't see much from the very top due to a surfeit of trees. However step out onto the rewilded tip and the open slope is now covered with a glorious sheen of heathland and wild flowers. All the vents poking up out of the subsoil must be doing their job because you're now free to wander, maybe even sit on a bench where dustcarts once dumped smelly refuse. Best avoid the prickly southern path overlooking the recycling centre if you're wearing shorts, my brother advises.

I have never seen so many butterflies in one place as I saw here, almost all of them peacocks, fluttering up in great numbers from the grasses, brambles and weaving paths. I'm not sure if this is normal or related to the heat or because early July is when the majority of chrysalises emerge. Strumpshaw Fen is renowned as the sole home of the UK's largest butterfly, the swallowtail, but that's a mile to the south and I've only ever seen two of them there, not literally hundreds.

The crossroads at the far corner of the tip is the highest point in the Norfolk Broads. Specifically you want the field of maize in the southeast corner, this the closest the National Park boundary gets to the top of Strumpshaw Hill. It's only 40m above sea level but there is an excellent view across the Yare valley including a distant windmill, the Cantley sugar beet refinery and the twin masts at Stoke Holy Cross. Every other UK National Park is considerably higher, the Cairngorms over 30 times so.

A short distance down Wood Lane is the entrance to Buckenham Wood, a stripe of ancient woodland purchased from a private owner just three years ago. The paths weave up and down due to gravel extraction and apparently the bluebell display is excellent, but that's long past. Instead a kaleidoscope of butterflies rose up into the air, the multitude again seemingly all peacocks, while a few continued to sun themselves on a nearby bench.

The reason for coming to Buckenham Woods was that the Met Office's incredibly accurate list of weather station locations states that Lingwood is at 52.61045°N, 1.48483°E, fractionally north of the treeline. It was here on Friday that they reckon hot air blowing from the west was perfectly cancelled out by a sea breeze creating calm conditions that allowed the temperature to soar. But we stood on the edge of an arable field and looked but could see no measuring equipment anywhere, only ripening wheat and distant hedgerows.

The only likely spot was Sunny Cottage, an isolated homestead by the wood's northern exit. The driveway exits into Strumpshaw parish whereas the cottage and its garden are very marginally in Lingwood. I would show you a photo of the rustic frontage but the owner was in his front garden talking to two visitors so snapping a shot would have been gauche.

Instead we followed the public footpath up the side of the back garden, which was entirely concealed behind a tall hedge until a brief gap at the far end near the owner's shed. And there at the bottom of the garden was a white louvred box - the Stevenson screen - at the appropriate height beside a row of runner beans. It was here that the record-breaking temperature of 37.7°C was set, a maximum so high that until 2003 it would have been the UK's highest ever temperature, not just for June. Mission accomplished.

We had suspicions that the visitors to the cottage were journalists and later they proved to be a team from ITV interviewing stationkeeper Ernest Hoyos. He's been recording the weather here and sending off his data every morning for over half a century - he says without a single day's break. The Met Office sent someone to check his Vaisala equipment on Monday, confirming all was working as it should, and a little further scrutiny should see the provisional record ratified as a national June maximum. The resulting three minute report is wonderful, including a charming interview and drone shots so you can see what Ernest's garden and surrounding environment look like from the air.

BBC Radio Norfolk came too but without a camera. I can't match them for quality but I hope I've brought you a flavour of the wider area which, last Friday, outsweated every other June day ever.

TfL FoI requests in June 2026

2026-07-01T07:00:00.000+01:00

30 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in June 2026

1) In the last 5 years no accidents have been recorded at Liverpool Street Station involving pushchairs being taken through ticket barriers.
2) During 2025 defibrillators were used on 50 occasions across the London Underground network. In each case the pads were required to be replaced.
3) Tube station poster withdrawal information: "We are moving away from posters with first & last times (with the exception of the Metropolitan line which is due to the frequencies on some parts of the line). They are being phased out and replaced with versions such as the attached, which directs customers to the online part of the website where comprehensive timetable information is available."
4) More people catch a southbound bus outside Hayes & Harlington station than catch a northbound bus (10% more, in fact).
5) Bus-related products licenced by TfL include The London Toy Company Bus Pull-along, Corgi New Routemaster Paddington set, Sun Star Models Routemaster, Bachmann EFE Road Leyland 'Seadog', London Sock Exchange socks, Uniqlo bags and Budgy Smuggler Bus Trunks.

6) The borough with the most roundabouts is Hillingdon with 99, followed by Bexley (63), Greenwich (53), Newham (52) and Brent and Enfield (50 each). The City of London has only one roundabout. Other boroughs with fewer than 10 roundabouts are Hackney (2), Islington (6), Camden and Hammersmith And Fulham (7 each) and Lambeth and Kensington And Chelsea (9 each).
7) All Elizabeth line stations have at least two ticket machines except Iver which has only one. Paddington has eight.
8) Thus far the Acoustic Rail Grinding Unit has been trialled in four locations: Epping → Debden (786m of Rail Defect Removal), West Ruislip → South Ruislip (1220m of Rail Defect Removal), Chalfont and Latimer → Chesham (4857m of Liner Rail Grinding), Hillingdon → Eastcote (1706m of Corrective Rail Grinding).
9) In January a planned safety review of bus stop bypasses was withdrawn. This is because some of the implementation dates of bus stop bypasses had been recorded incorrectly. No tenders have yet been issued for a replacement report. This will only happen after the database of bus stop bypasses has been reviewed.
10) The next tube map is due to 'go live' on 6th July 2026.

11) TfL do plan to reopen the stairs up to platform 1 at Notting Hill Gate, but as yet no maintenance has taken place as they are still trying to identify the source of the water ingress.
12) The electric buses on route 323 were requistioned to operate the Silvertown Cycle Shuttle in April last year. There are no plans for route 323 to revert to Zero Emission in the near future.
13) In September 2023 TfL adopted a staff policy which no longer allowed 5 working days to be compressed into 4 days with the same working hours. Individuals with pre-existing arrangements were unaffected.
14) Just to confirm, the Hopper hour is actually 62 minutes and the weekday peaks are actually 06:35-09:27 and 16:05-18:57.
15) TfL have been seeking a new vision for the London Cable Car. "The vision intends to see the LCC go from being a transport mode to one of London's must-do tourist attractions and, importantly, a commercialised leisure attraction." A preferred option has been outlined in a 44 page report, but alas so heavily redacted that it's impossible to guess how ghastly it will be.

16) £428,797.11 was spent installing netting across London Underground buildings between May 2025 and April 2026, including £104,847.46 to install netting at Northfields depot.
17) Bus drivers cannot talk to each other via their radios, they are only able to communicate with their specific route operator (or an emergency operator).
18) Five Central line trains have now been refurbished (up from two this time last year). It's expected that 6 further trains will enter service during this financial year, then 18 in 2027/28, 31 in 2028/29 and 25 in 2029/30.
19) Following discussions with the London Fire Brigade, community libraries have been reinstated at Acton Town, Cockfosters, Ealing Common, East Finchley, High Barnet, Kew Gardens, Kilburn, Northfields, Morden, Oakwood, Ravenscourt Park, Stamford Brook, Willesden Green and Woodside Park stations.
20) No DLR services are scheduled into Platform 3 at Mudchute in the current standard timetable, although it is occasionally used for during unusual/special service patterns (i.e. partial network closures).

21) A charge is levied on requests to close a bus stop as well as for bus diversions where highway works are taking place. The current charge is £256 for the first day of bus stop closure and £86 a day thereafter. The bus diversion charge is a minimum of £1422. Diversion charges combine bus stop charges with consumables.
22) Last year the KSI risk rate for cyclists (Killed or Seriously Injured) was 0.980 per million km collectively travelled. Cyclists are 200 times more likely to be seriously injured than killed.
23) TfL's total advertising estate is as follows: i) at bus shelters 8382 static panels, 843 digital and 204 scrolling. b) at stations 16,479 static panels, 961 digital, 78 scrolling, 41 landmarks, 778 gatelines and 11,520 static on lifts, stairs and escalators. c) on trains 123,632 carriage panels. d) roadside 170 sites.
24) TfL's northernmost dedicated toilet facility for bus drivers is at Waltham Cross bus station, the easternmost is at Bluewater bus station, the southernmost is at Coulsdon Cane Hill Drive and the westernmost is at Uxbridge Belmont Road.
25) Since 2020 only three passengers have been fined for causing noise-based annoyance on the railway, two of them for singing.

26) Around 26% of 60+ Oyster photocard holders fail to complete the address check each year and need to reapply (if they remain eligible).
27) TfL have de-looped two gyratories (Stockwell and Archway) and four roundabouts (Elephant & Castle, Highbury, Old Street and Westminster Bridge South) since 2007. Other authorities have de-looped Aldgate, Brixton Hill, Stratford, St Paul’s, Walthamstow, Whipps Cross and the Kender Street Triangle. Gyratories under future consideration include Greenwich Town Centre, Holborn, Ilford and Shepherd's Bush.
28) There has been no left turn off the A2 Falconwood slip road into Riefield Road since 1978.
29) Mobile coverage is now available in 58% of tube stations and 45% of tunnels (and is planned to reach 100% by the end of the year).
30) TfL estimate that there are half a million mice living across the London Underground network.

The oldest object you regularly use

2026-06-30T07:00:00.000+01:00

One of the memes circulating on social media at the moment is about the oldest object you regularly use.

I always like thinking about: what is the oldest object you regularly use, the oldest thing you're using in your normal everyday life. There's always such a range, people going "everything I own is younger than 3 years old, from when I lost literally everything I own due to Circumstances" to "I guess my 1790's dresser counts".

Hundreds of people offered suggestions.

» Grandma Pat's 1947 Pyrex primary bowl set.
» I rescued a 1965 black-iron frying pan from my parents' cellar.
» I just wore a 33-year-old t-shirt, does that count?
» I have a 41 year old Braun coffee grinder I use daily.
» I regularly use my great grandmother's cocktail glassware from the 50's.
» Maybe my violin, which is probably from the 1890s.
» I have hand towels my Nana gave me and I'm sure she had them for most of her adult life.

Being American, quite a few people said "my house is almost 100 years old", which fails because it's not an object.
Someone said "I’ve got a few ammonite fossils" but that doesn't count because the fossils aren't used.
Emily offered "my great grandfather's hand-drill" but that's not something that gets an outing regularly.

I've come up with half a dozen objects I use regularly that are old by my standards.
I've taken the view they should have been bought by me (or for me) when new.

On the left is my waste paper bin. I can date it to 1974 because that's the year I got a bedroom of my own for the first time. It needed a bin and I got this one, a thin tub I've thrown all kinds of rubbish into since. The garish pattern on the outside was to match the wallpaper in my new room, a screamingly 1970s design in purple and green. My brother got the brown and orange version of the wallpaper instead. I presume that after we sold the house in 1991 the new owners ripped down the geometric wallpaper and put up something more acceptable, or even painted over it. The wallpaper thus lives on solely as a slim wraparound, into which I occasionally chuck Kitkat wrappers, cashpoint receipts and expired socks... but not every day so maybe this doesn't count as properly regular use.

On the right is my Mr Men drinks mat. I can't give a precise date but I'd say roughly 1976, five years after Roger Hargreaves came up with the idea and two years after the Mr Men appeared on the TV. Again I got one and my brother got one, and I always went for Mr Happy because he smiled a lot (and because he appeared on the majority of merchandise). These days Mr Men drinks coasters are wooden with a cork underside, but mine was plastic all the way through. It used to be flat but 50 years of use has made it bobbly in the middle with a raised bump roughly approximating with Mr Happy's face. That's fine when I put a mug on it but somewhat dodgy when I rest a glass, so I was always very careful with my Mr Daydream glass tumbler in case that toppled over and spilt lemon squash all over my laptop. Alas that beloved glass smashed last month otherwise I'd have included it here, but I still rest every cup of tea on Mr Happy so he may well be my oldest object in regularly use.

On the left is my Splayd. It's a combination knife, fork and spoon in stainless steel and was made in 1978 by Viners of Sheffield. The V&A have one in their collection at South Ken (though not on display) and describe the squared end as "terminating in four prongs with deep, curved sides tapering towards the tip, the outer edges serving as a cutting edge". We liked them so much in our family we got four, most of which are still in my Dad's kitchen drawer but I've taken mine with me everywhere since. Admittedly it's better for mash than boiled potatoes, or for pasta rather than pie, but generally any meal that's soft and scoopable slips down much more easily with a Splayd. It's also allowed me to enjoy thousands of meals one-handed, especially TV dinners, and why they never caught on with the wider populace is beyond me.

On the right are my salt cellar and pepper grinder. They were purchased in Watford on 20th August 1983, either in Clements or in Timothy Whites, when my parents took me shopping to get ready for university. "You'll need this," they said, and they were correct. I no longer have the teatowels or the plastic bucket but I do have the transparent cruet set because it was impressively good quality. Thanks Mum, thanks Dad! The salt cellar doesn't get much use because I'm not one for white sprinklage, indeed in the past four decades I've only ever refilled it twice. But the pepper grinder has done sterling service spicing up potentially tens of thousands of meals, indeed it did its job on last night's chicken pie perfectly, and hopefully will continue to do so for many years to come.

On the left is my digital clock radio. It's from Boots, from the days when they did electricals, and the display does still work perfectly but doesn't photograph well. My best guess is that I bought it in 1987 when I moved into digs for my first job, although the Radio Museum reckons the CR7 model came out in 1988. The black plastic cube is tuned by turning an analogue dial on the side and does both medium wave and FM, the latter courtesy of a dangly black aerial. This clock has woken me up on the vast majority of my working days, usually to the Radio 1 breakfast show rather than the electronic beep, and only occasionally did I ever feel the need to hit snooze. More importantly its red digits are those I see in bed every night, including every time I've woken up and thought "is it morning yet?" and I hate to think how often that's been.

On the right is my digital watch. I bought it from H Samuel in Bedford on 16th February 1993 after my last digital watch broke, choosing this because I wanted a simple watch with big digits rather than overfussy features. I didn't realise at the time that the Casio A-158W would become a beloved classic, worn unironically by retro trendsetters decades later, and I always smile when I see one on someone else's wrist because mine's original. I've used this watch to track the most important moments of my life, also to catch I hate to think how many trains and buses, also to watch so many minutes and midnights tick round precisely. It has one dodgy button and every time the battery needs changing I worry it won't survive the switchover, but somehow it's still going strong. It's not the oldest object in my repertoire but it does get the most regular use for something that's lasted way beyond its expected lifespan, indeed as of this month I've been wearing it for exactly one-third of a century.

All things considered I think the oldest object I regularly use is my 50 year-old Mr Men drinks coaster. What's yours?

Cambridge South

2026-06-29T07:00:00.000+01:00

A new station opened yesterday, possibly the most significant since Crossrail.
It's CAMBRIDGE SOUTH and I have taken far too many photos of it. [42 photos]
(I actually took 255 but managed to narrow it down)

The station's two miles south of Cambridge city centre, a location formerly best reached by bike or guided busway. It serves the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, a cluster of scientific excellence, and also the lucky suburb of Trumpington. It balances out the new station at Cambridge North which opened in 2017, bringing much better connectivity to the city. It's in a really good place network-wise so is served by as many as four different train companies (Greater Anglia, Great Northern, Thameslink and Cross Country). It gets up to 20 trains an hour whereas previously they all sped straight through. It's a few months late because a contractor went bust. And it's also the very first station to be specifically Great-British-Railways-branded, not that I could entirely tell.

What we have here are four platforms - one central island and two either side. They're long because some trains go as far as the south coast, and they're covered at one end and not at the other because it'd be too expensive to do the lot. Architecturally the most interesting thing is that the canopy swooshes up at the northern end, which is both pretty and allows a blanket of solar panels to be placed on the downward slope. A green roof has also been created, a tad anaemic at present but some less stifling weather might boost the station's eco-credentials even further.

The platforms are well lit, repeatedly loudspeakered and heavily surveilled. They have signage using Rail Alphabet 2, the official GBR font, also pushbutton customer interfaces including disruptions and times of next trains. The platforms are spacious enough that even if 50 rail enthusiasts turn up on opening day to make a fuss of being here, everyone can reasonably spread out. And they're liberally scattered with a variety of yellow-edged quadrilaterals, these the ramps that staff bring into play if step-free access is required. The challenge here is the wide variety of different rolling stock stopping here, a consequence of four operators serving the station, hence the choice of ramp has to match whatever's arriving next.

The best place for an overview is the open footbridge at the south end of the station, provided to prevent very long walks if a train suddenly has to arrive on an unscheduled platform. From up there you get a fine view of the boxy Biomedical Campus on one side and a large undeveloped meadow on the other, because this is very much the edge of the developed city. Intriguingly the footbridge only links platforms 2 and 3 to platform 4, either for reasons of cost or for some other operational reason involving headroom. Having listened in on a few excitable adolescents talking at their phones, I expect every single YouTube video churned out yesterday will mention the fact that "the footbridge doesn't connect to platform 1".

The station has two entrances, one facing the Biomedical Campus and the other facing a lot of grass, which is less busy. Connecting the two is a covered overbridge with the biggest 'oooh' quotient, required if your train's not departing from the closest platform. Twisty metal staircases connect top to bottom, also pairs of lifts because just one wouldn't be sufficient to cope with future demand. The stairs are bold orange and wind round beneath a gridlike wooden canopy so are impressively photogenic, from all sorts of angles. They also host what I presume is Cambridge South's main artwork, a long poetic phrase (AND RISE AND FORM AND BOND AND HOLD... and 44 more ANDs) which because it's on the outside of the staircase is only visible on the way into the station and easily missed on the way out.

Great British Railways branding seems to be mostly restricted to pairs of adverts on the sides of stairs and platforms. No ticket office has been provided, only several blue ticket machines, also these dispense bogroll barcodes rather than card because GBR isn't here to bring back the good old days. Demand for caffeinated beverages was met yesterday by a gourmet coffee truck, which may or may not be permanent, but there are also free GBR-branded water dispensers inside the gateline. And if you arrived early enough yesterday they were dishing out attractively designed Cambridge South tote bags and double-arrowed pin badges. I note that the date on the badge was 'June 2026' rather than a specific day because openings only ever get 100% confirmed at the last minute.

That's the station, but what's eminently more interesting is the location it serves. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus is an extraordinary collection of very modern-looking buildings inside which near miracles are carried out daily. The vibrant blue oval is Papworth Hospital, the acclaimed cardiovascular hub whose staff and patients relocated here in 2019. Some of them can be found taking a break outside by a small pond near the helipad. The spiky glass fortress, from above resembling a triangular doughnut, is the global research and development facility for pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Behind all this is Addenbrookes Hospital - equally important but far less attractive - and beyond a mix of building sites, multi-storey car parks and empty plots awaiting a reason for development. It's not yet clear if the slew of buses that feed in to keep 23,000 jobs ticking over will still be needed now the station's open.

The other side of the station is incredibly different, it's all meadow. Cambridge City Council bought these arable fields over a decade ago and have rewilded them, thus you can wander almost freely across 80 acres of grassland (bar the drainage pond that's fenced off as a bird reserve). Amazingly none of this is pencilled in for development, the jagged roofs of Trumpington's new Clay Farm estate stopping dead at the far edge. I'm not sure how attractive it'd be in winter but at midsummer the long grass was alive with colourful flowers and a skylark shot up into the sky to offer season's greetings in warbling song. I explored the other local sights (Byron's Pool, Grantchester Meadows, Jeffrey Archer!) on a visit in 2019, and can confirm that yes it is hugely easier to get here now they've built an excellent new station in the vicinity. Whether you're in Birmingham, Brighton or Broxbourne you now have direct rail services to Cambridge South, and one day you may be glad of that connection.

» 42 photos in and around Cambridge South station on Flickr

Ealing rebrands

2026-06-28T07:00:00.000+01:00

The London borough of Ealing has updated its logo.

It used to be this tree with a black stripe, and had been since the 1990s.

The most recent tweak had been the addition of the council's web address.
That would have looked really cutting edge in 2002.
It looks less cutting-edge now.

More serious issues were identified.

• The council no longer had a licence to use the font.
• The font was not deemed to be fully accessible.
• The shade of green also failed accessibility tests.
• The shade of green did not match the council's new corporate green unveiled last year.

Fundamentally the old logo failed to meet the national Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, a legal requirement.
So it had to go.

The usual grumble at this point is that updating a municipal logo is an unnecessary waste of money.
The task was thus delegated to the council’s design team because they're already paid for.
Obviously the usual grumblers grumbled anyway.

Several potential logos were produced.
The shortlisted designs were tested by an external accessibility panel.
Other local government design experts took a look.
A final option was selected and developed.
And eventually the council's cabinet said yes.

Here's what they agreed to.
What do you think it represents?

It's a tree, if you weren't certain.
The tree is a link to the former logo, which itself is a reference to the oak tree on the borough's coat of arms.
In developerspeak it "reflects the previous council brand".

The tree is formed of seven curves and there's a reason for that.

"The tree has 7 components, reflecting the 7 towns that comprise the borough."

The seven towns that make up Ealing are Acton, Ealing, Greenford, Hanwell, Northolt, Perivale and Southall.
They have very different populations, and the curves are all different lengths.

But as well as a tree you're also supposed to see something else, a fingerprint.

"The distinctive ‘fingerprint’ shape reflects that, while the council supports those distinct 7 towns and their communities, it also believes in respecting the diverse individuality of each of the people it serves and the council’s obligations to them."

It's a brave move to think that people will see a fingerprint and think human diversity.
A lot of grumblers have instead seen police, crime and the surveillance state.

"The title London Borough of Ealing, rather the previous marque’s Ealing, reflects the whole borough rather than one town. So it is a logo for the area as much as for the organisation."

A lot of London boroughs are named after one town rather than the broader extent.
Harrow's another, ditto Barnet, Croydon, Wandsworth, Enfield, Hackney and Camden.
This is an attempt by the borough to say 'hey we're not just Ealing', and I bet hardly any residents notice.

The grumblers' biggest grumble is that the changeover will be unnecessarily expensive.
The council are thus only introducing it as and when necessary, also online.

It doesn't cost to replace the logo on websites and digital products so the fingerprint tree is there already.
But they're not ripping out street signs, repainting bin lorries or replacing all the boards in parks.
They'll only get the new logo when they need to be replaced, i.e. no additional costs will be incurred.

Merton and Harrow took a similar approach when they updated their logos in 2023.
Out and about in Merton you generally only see the new logo on posters and banners, not street furniture.
In Harrow a scattering of replacement streetsigns have the posh new logo, but not many yet.
Harrow did splurge out on big new purple signs at entrances to the borough, but that's about it.

I did however find the new Ealing logo in place in the one place you might expect, on Ealing Broadway outside the town hall.

The council offices have two slabby signs out front, so new that the display space is still empty.
Both have the fingerprint tree up top, also the words London Borough of Ealing in the two official fonts, Nunito regular and Montserrat extra bold.
Any passing shopper might notice and wonder what the strange splodge is.
They might also spot the previous logo immediately behind on a poster about cost of living support, because that hasn't changed.

It's going to be a long time before this new logo is everywhere, or even in quite a lot of places.
The old logo will linger on thousands of bins and hundreds of streetsigns across the borough for decades.
But keep your eyes open and you might spot it soon, or eventually, and maybe not even grumble.

» Reminds me of the Spotify logo.
» The Old Logo Was So Much Better.
» This is just corpo reductive.
» And what did that cost us?
» You have felled a great oak.
» It’s giving shigella in a petri dish.
» How is this a priority right now????
» How can some squiggles in the vague, possible shape of a tree be more accessible than, er, an actual tree???
» Literally looks like a fingerprint. Just awful.
» Passes the "doesn't look like a bum hole" test. So props for that.
» Anything but filling in the potholes.
» That's it, I'm moving to Hounslow.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Count	53	0	68	246	163	47	1	154	3	0	1	313
%	5%	0%	6%	23%	16%	4%	0.1%	15%	0.3%	0%	0.1%	30%