It smashed through the railings, obviously, as you'd likely be able to guess even if you hadn't seen the large gap in the fence and the missing hedge. It must have failed to stop at the lights on Downs Road and carried on, either due to some kind of mechanical failure or because the driver fancied a giggle, and came to a halt in a few inches of water immediately in front of the fountain. Apparently it happened overnight, this being Tuesday morning, and I happened upon the unlikely scene about an hour before council operatives came along and winched the car out. Zero points to the clickbait news website who headlined their report on the incident 'Emergency Services Respond to Trapped Occupants' despite the picture beneath showing an empty unsubmerged car with two passenger doors wide open. It just goes to show that you can't beat proper on-the-spot reporting, and also that you never know what you're going to see when you walk around London.
Why is Hackney Walk being demolished?
Because it's empty, increasingly decrepit and was a bloody stupid idea in the first place, that's why. This is the hoped-for fashion nexus which Hackney council built on Morning Lane with post-riot funding, betting that a row of gold-panelled railway arches near a Burberry outlet could attract thousands of well-heeled punters in search of designer bargains. It could not. The pioneer brands in 2016 found they had more staff than customers, by 2020 only one store in the converted railway arches remained open and by 2022 even Nike had skedaddled from the bookend unit leaving everything vacant. Regeneration millions have rarely been more impressively wasted. Now in 2025 it seems the shutters have been screened off by a wall of wooden panels, labelled 'Caution Demolition - Keep Out', and behind the scenes workmen are hacking away to remove fittings, fascias and ex-luxury trappings. I understand the site is returning to the care of Network Rail spin-off the Arch Company and that yet more government funding (this time a levelling-up grant) is being directed to the area, hence the need to rip everything back to basics.
Best it seems that this golden eyesore is removed in the hope that eventually nobody remembers this embarrassingly expensive white elephant ever existed.
How many daffodils are there here?
I asked myself that question when I saw this splendid patch of daffodils in Millfields Park, Lower Clapton. They're the tiny type of daffodil, but still representative of the yellow nodders currently brightening parks, gardens and roadsides across the country. Enumerating them all separately would have been silly so I started by tallying the number of flowers in a representative sample of clumps. I checked 20 clumps in total, some of which had as few as 1 or 2 buds open and the best of which had 13, 14 and 16. Altogether 140 daffodil stalks were in bloom, suggesting an average of 7 flowers per plant. Conveniently the municipal gardeners had planted them in distinct rows, 12 in all, with approximately 30 plants in each line, which suggests 360 plants altogether. Assume 7 flowers each and that makes 12x30x7 in total, i.e. this is a photo of approximately 2500 daffodils. No wonder they look lovely. The entire park has four or five patches like this so that'd be more like 10000 altogether. I hesitate to try to scale this up but there might well be a million daffodils in bloom across the borough of Hackney, maybe 30 million across London and 100s of millions across the country. Hurrah for spring's floral multitudes.
What's wrong with Cherry Jaffa Cakes?
This billboard can be found on Lea Bridge Road not far from Lea Bridge station. I had to read it twice. I Want To Eat Jaffa Cakes With You, it said, But Not The Cherry Flavoured Ones. That's odd, I thought. It looked like an advert but it couldn't be an advert for Jaffa Cakes because even if McVities were being ironic they wouldn't have said that. The important bit turned out to be what it says in small white letters in the bottom right-hand corner which is 'Real Hackney Dave'. Initially I wondered if it was a Valentine's Day message that'd been up too long, but it's not because it turns out Real Hackney Dave is a local artist. He used to be big in advertising but since retiring has got into screen printing big time and is particularly keen on large slogans and slapping words across found images and ephemera. I can't find this particular artwork in his online gallery or shop, but he has put up a glittery piece called 'I Want To Eat Biscuits With You' on Threads. Jaffa Cakes famously aren't biscuits according to UK tax law. Also McVities don't seem to be making cherry Jaffa Cakes at present, only Raspberry, Cola Bottle and Original, so the correct slogan on the poster really ought to be But Not The Cola Bottle Flavoured Ones.
The major roadworks at the Bow Roundabout are so nearly complete. We have a reshaped roundabout, we have resurfaced roads, we have repainted lines and we have a new contraflow lane under the flyover.
What we don't have yet are newly-functioning traffic lights. They're all in place and have been for weeks, most subtly repositioned, but remain covered by orange hoods while the temporary lights do all the work instead. It does sometimes feel as if the lads dealing with the traffic lights have had more work to do than the lads drilling, spreading and repaving, and every time I think they must have finished tweaking the electrics a new hole opens up sprouting lengths of orange cable.
The resurfacing works that were meant to take four nights eventually took six, this because the condition of the road surface at the end of Stratford High Street turned out to be much worse than expected. An army of hot machines turned up and a lot of overnight traffic was deflected elsewhere. The end of the former contraflow lane was the last to be flattened and redrawn.
But full resurfacing is now complete, including three marked lanes in a couple of places where there used to be two, which ought to smooth any increased traffic flow when the Silvertown Tunnel opens in a month's time. It means the roundabout is ready to be used in its new configuration just as soon as someone's brave enough to take the cones away, which they haven't yet so lengthy queues continue to filter in single file from all four arms. I spotted all six affected bus routes stuck in a jam past Bus Stop M the other day.
Annoyingly local residents have just been sent a letter saying further work replacing Bow Bridge's expansion joints is due to take place tonight and tomorrow, closing the High Street eastbound between 9am and 5am. Eastbound works will be carried out using lane closures so should be minimally disruptive. But the day everything goes back to normal still isn't clear, with the yellow signs by the road saying 8th March, the workmen's signs saying 9th March and the official online roadworks portal now suggesting, sigh, 15th March.
I'll bring you a full report on the reconfigured roundabout when someone finally takes the covers off the traffic lights and takes the cones away, which should be next week, so there's something to look forward to.
What's London's largest square?
Not a residential quadrangle called Something Square because we've covered that.
I mean actual square as in geometric shape.
I reckon it's this.
It's 16½ miles along each side and it's the largest square you can fit inside the boundary of Greater London. Top left is near Mill Hill East, top right is Hainault Country Park, bottom right is near Knockholt station and bottom left is North Cheam. The centre of the square is in New Cross. The square has an area of about 275 square miles which is 45% of the area of Greater London. It'd be bigger were it not for those annoying indentations in the boundary around Worcester Park (SW) and Woodford (NE).
And you're right, it's not really the largest square you can fit inside Greater London, only the largest where the sides run north/south and east/west. Twist your square and you can do a lot better.
This square is 19 miles along each side. Top left is near Hadley Wood, top right is Emerson Park, bottom right is the hamlet of Horns Green and bottom left is Surbiton. The centre of the square is in Deptford. The square has an area of 357 square miles which is 59% of the area of Greater London. That means the majority of London lies inside this square, which is pretty good for a regular shape inside an irregular shape.
We can do better still with a rectangle.
This rectangle is 20 miles long and 18½ miles wide. It's very nearly the same square as last time but stretched a bit. Top left is near Monken Hadley, bottom left is Hampton Court and the other two corners are as before. The rectangle has an area of 375 square miles which is 62% of the area of Greater London. I was expecting a rectangle would be able to cover an even larger proportion but it turns out London's an awkward shape that's not quite conducive.
London's biggest triangle is even better.
It's longest side is 33 miles long, which isn't far off the longest line you can draw inside London. One end of that longest side is near Harefield Hospital, the other's at junction 28 on the M25. The triangle has an area of 405 square miles which is 67% of the area of Greater London. I find it amazing that you can draw a triangle that encompasses two thirds of the capital, given what a peculiar shape London is, but that lump down south beyond Coulsdon really helps to squeeze in as much land as possible.
I should say at this point that I haven't proven this is London's largest triangle, I've merely jiggled around with straight lines and tried to optimise the area inside. It might well be that a slightly different triangle gives a slightly bigger area, but I reckon ony slightly so 405 square miles is pretty much the largest you can get. Likewise that last rectangle might be beatable, as might that square, but so marginally I still reckon I've got the percentages right to the nearest whole number.
London's biggest circle is easier to be certain about.
Its diameter is just under 21 miles and its centre is reassuringly close to Piccadilly Circus. The circle has an area of 342 square miles which is 56% of the area of Greater London. Again that means we've enclosed more than half of the capital, which I was not expecting to be possible with a circle.
In summary
...circle 56%
...square 59%
...rectangle 62%
...triangle 67%
45 Squared 9) COMPRESSOR SQUARE, E16
Borough of Newham, 50m×30m
Here's a hypothetical square which was never built, except it's in the National Street Gazetteer so it officially exists. Locationwise it's in the Royal Docks immediately adjacent to Royal Albert station, which is renowned as the DLR station furthest away from anyone's home. But had plans gone ahead it would by now have been surrounded by a mass of highrise development, as pictured here in a complex hybrid planning application from 2014. The long building on the waterfront is Newham council's HQ which was already present, but the surrounding densely-packed blocks are part of a hilariously optimistic Anglo-Chinesevision championed by Mayor Boris Johnson which ultimately neverhappened. Compressor Square would have been where the red arrow is.
Eight new squares were planned along the 1 kilometre length of the ABP development, each surrounded by a canopy of trees in an attempt to replicate the smart residential townscapes of west London. In the end only one such square was built, one stop up the DLR at Beckton Park where a huddle of empty office blocks now forms a tumbleweed memorial to entrepreneurial hubris. But nothing up this western end ever got off the drawing board, let alone off the ground, so what's here is pretty much all grass right up to the Holiday Inn and Rowing Club Boathouse. The exception is a long redbrick building called Compressor House tucked below a bend in the DLR viaduct, which is the unlikely reason the adjacent piazza was due to be called Compressor Square.
Compressor House was built in 1914 as cold storage for cargo, one of a series of buildings set back behind a long chain of warehouses along the northern edge of Royal Albert Dock. Nigh all of those have gone but this smartbuilding was retained, complete with the original hoists, rails and winching machinery used to move produce internally, alas in an increasing state of disrepair. You may be surprised that to hear that the £1.725m needed for renovation was sourced from the last government's Levelling-Up Fund, because Newham somehow managed to claw a chunk of that. Their ultimate intention was to "bring the building back into active use for both financial and placemaking purposes" and that procurement process is now underway. So if you have a unique vision that supports digital innovation, community wealth building, good growth and UK Government funding outcomes you have until 24th March to submit an Expression of Interest, and hey presto your organisation could be leveraging Compressor House as early as September.
The refurbishment of Compressor House is nigh complete but still quarantined behind a ring of barriers erected by contractors MGL Projects. It looks very smart with its Port Of London Authority medallion above the main doors, and I can well imagine the Mayor walking in to open something culturally enthusing in six months time. Out front is a semi-formal array of trees surrounded by low shrubbery that looks like it may be semi-dead, and beyond that isn't the square the 2014 developers proposed but an access road threaded along the dockside in the 1990s. It has hardly any traffic and also a huge metal bar across the carriageway to ensure that no large vehicle accidentally proceeds and smashes into the DLR viaduct.
And beyond that is just a lot of gravel and grass. The grass stretches down to the dockside and is already dotted with daisies despite it only being early March. Around the edge are more seats and benches than might be deemed necessary, although staff from the neighbouring Newham council offices probably spill out in the summer and I suspect they get good use when there's a regatta. Instead I got to watch a couple of sturdy locals exercising an Alsatian, the kind that's too jumpy to be let off its lead so was instead forced to run round in circles while attempting to grab a plastic ring. Most of this area should have been flats, remember, offering DLR passengers a hemmed-in journey rather than a broad panorama across City Airport.
Intriguingly the emptyoffice blocks up near Beckton Park station are now destined to become student accommodation instead, not much of it affordable, because foreign parents are all too happy to pay over the odds for their offspring to live in converted open-plan hutches immediately adjacent to a roaring flightpath. The team in charge of that transformation look and sound insufferable, judging by their RAD website, but at least they're doing something to try to bring this dead stripe of dockside to life. Meanwhile the area in front of Compressor House remains a development hiatus, there being no current plans to contribute its potential to our capital's housing crisis. Compressor Square thus exists only as a virtual red line in the National Street Gazetteer designated 'Under construction', and the only body that could delete it is Newham Council's highways team who, amusingly, are based immediately nextdoor.
Yesterday TfL launched a consultation for the introduction of the next Superloop route, the SL11, which will run between North Greenwich and Abbey Wood via Woolwich. It's an express bus so it'll be great. It'll link up with existing transport connections and local centres so it'll be great. It'll improve travel in the long-term accessibility desert that is Thamesmead so it'll be great. So let's play devil's advocate and explain how it won't be great.
» The SL11 won't be a new bus route, it's a renumbering of the 472. The day the SL11 is born the 472 dies.
» It won't be the 472 exactly, it'll be the 472 with 25 stops missed out, so bad luck if you wanted any of those 25 stops.
» Because an express bus runs faster there'll be fewer vehicles on the route.
» The 472 currently operates with 16 vehicles so they'll probably cut that to 12 or 13, saving TfL a few million a year.
» The SL11 will run non-stop for 2 miles from Charlton to Woolwich, so anyone needing a stop inbetween won't be able to use it any more.
» If you live, say, near the Thames Barrier, you're going down from 20 buses an hour locally to just 12.
» It won't stop in Woolwich town centre because that eastbound loop's being scrapped in favour of speed.
» But it won't be express for the 2 miles from Plumstead to Thamesmead, it'll stop in all the current places.
» If you want to go from Plumstead to Abbey Wood, existing direct non-express buses will be much quicker.
» Technically the SL11 will serve Thamesmead East, but it you don't live near the only stop it won't be of much use.
» There's already a Superloop bus between Thamesmead and Abbey Wood, the SL3, so who needs another?
» ...and the SL3 does Thamesmead to Abbey Wood quicker, in two stops, whereas the SL11 will do it in three.
» The 180 mirrors the 472 for five miles from North Greenwich to Plumstead, but many people will now only be able to use the slower route.
» Those forced to switch to the 180 will enjoy only six buses an hour, whereas they currently enjoy a combined 14.
» We could have had this years ago, it's effectively Ken Livingstone's Greenwich Waterfront Transit, but Boris scrapped that in 2008.
» Superloop routes used to be numbered sequentially in a clockwise direction, but they've given up on that idea now.
» It won't link with the new SL4 through the Silvertown Tunnel because that's locally useless.
» The Superloop looks less like a loop with every new addition.
» The 472 needs to continue as a night bus, so now there'll be an extra N472 tile clogging up dozens of bus stops.
» TfL have £23m of government funding specifically for bus priority lanes on this new route, so expect years of roadworks.
» It goes nowhere near where 98% of Londoners live, so who cares?
A lot of these negatives have a counter "ah but", and it's a consultation so stops may change, and obviously it's good news but don't think it's all good news for everyone.
Are repairs underway at Bow Road's gentlemen's conveniences?
Immediately beneath the Gladstone statue in the middle of Bow Road is a pair of Victorian public conveniences, long mothballed and alas long fallen into decay. The Gents is the most prominent, surrounded at street level by a crescent of decorativeiron railings and formerly accessed down two curved stairwells behind further ornate gates. These toilets were built in 1899 by Poplar Board of Works and Grade II listed by English Heritage in 2008 for being "attractively designed", "relatively intact" and of "group value as part of a significant historic townscape". I doubt they're so intact now after years of rainwater leached down, plus the railings got partly smashed recently and a damaged bollard was shoved precariously into the gap, indeed the whole thing has been in urgent existential need of repair for some time. Looks like it may finally be happening.
Yesterday morning workmen turned up in the sunshine and started sealing off the structure behind a wooden screen. The railings vanished within hours, followed by a completely separate structure for the skylight, both now safely ensconced behind the bluest of blue walls. It looks like an unlikely roadside artwork at the moment, all squat and vibrant, but I doubt it'll be long before our local taggers and flyposters get to work. It also looks serious, like someone might be about to spend money on this subterranean treasure at last, but it's not clear whether that'd be for a proper overhaul, a light repair job or merely protective quarantine.
These Gents conveniences have only been open for six hours so far this century, back in June 2012 when an arts company took them over for a quirky installation called Listed Loo. They spent many collective hours scrubbing it out, clearing the litter from the stairwells, removing the graffiti and then adding their own quirky touches including hundreds of apples piled up in one cubicle and a tree in soil in another. It was quite frankly baffling but also wonderful, mostly for the opportunity to finally step inside this historic municipal amenity where so many gentlemen have found relief over the years.
It was seriously evocative to discover a spacious skylit triangular chamber whose roof I'd walked over on multiple occasions and to admire the veneer cubicle doors, the russet marble urinals and the central green pillar supporting the roof. Oh to have such facilities available anywhere in Tower Hamlets today. I fear it looks far far worse down there now and that the public may never see inside again, but I'm delighted that someone's finally turned up to make sure Bow Road's listed loo doesn't get even worse.
Are bakeries the new church?
Once pretty much all you could do on a Sunday morning was go to church, then heading out on recreational day trips was added to the list and eventually John Major allowed people to go shopping. But more recently Sunday mornings have become more about communal nibbling, especially amongst younger folk, especially if it's somewhere that's been recommended but they've never been. You could call it brunch, although that tends to conjure up visions of eggs or avocado as part of a proper plateful and it doesn't have to be that substantial. It could just be pastries and coffee, especially if they're artisan pastries, especially if you saw them on TikTok, which might help explain this ridiculous queue moving at glacial speed I saw on a backstreet in Islington.
This is Pophams on Prebend Street, an innovative viennoiserie that opened in a derelict chemist's shop in October 2017. In the mornings they specialise in crisp flaky pastries, be that a Honey & Smoked Salt bun, a Seasonal Custard Danish or a Marmite, Schlossberger & Spring Onion swirl, not forgetting their signature Bacon & Maple. I'm sure they're damned good but I'm not sure they're worth making a pilgrimage across town to join the back of a line of millennials 40 strong, edging forwards towards an understaffed counter to order a few carbs and a locally-sourced coffee before grabbing a bench seat and snapping an appreciativevideo to share on social media. As a one-off why not, but there are many folk whose Sunday morning mantra is always where can we meet up and eat - anywhere on trend will do - and who probably end up having most of their conversation in the queue.
There are tons of things you could be doing on a Sunday morning, and how fascinating that for so many people bakeries are the new church.
Is this London's newest boundary stone?
This is a boundary stone on Leytonstone Road, a few minutes walk north from Maryland station. It's plonked in the pavement roughly opposite the end of Borthwick Road although it's been here a lot longer than that particular residential sidestreet. The letters on it say WHP because this was once the edge of West Ham Parish, an ancient subdivision that stretched four miles south from here to the Thames, and the earliest year inscribed here is 1775 suggesting it was installed exactly 250 years ago. 1850 and 1864 also get a mention.
I know this because a council plaque on the wall confirms it as a West Ham boundary stone, and also that the 1864 marking is to confirm this was boundary point number 31. The intriguing phrase is that it "no longer marks any boundary", when a quick look at a map will confirm it still sits on the dividing line between the boroughs of Newham and Waltham Forest. Maybe they mean it's been shifted slightly since so it's no longer in precisely the right place, but if not it's incredibly close so this feels like an over-pedantic niggle. Anyway, you'll have deduced by now that a 250-year old boundary stone can't possibly be London's newest so I draw your attention instead to a nearby paving slab which has the words "borough boundary" chiselled into the kerb.
I had to stand in the road behind a bus to get that shot, so I hope you appreciate the mild peril that went into obtaining it. This special slab was laid here in 2019 when Waltham Forest was the London Borough of Culture, and sits alongside a black totem topped with a saw-toothed factory-shaped sign containing the name of the borough and the local postcode. This was one of four sites chosen for the 'Welcome Sign' project, each marking a main gateway into the borough. The others can be found on Lea Bridge Road by the Ice Centre, on Forest Road approaching Woodford and outside the Ferry Boat Inn at Tottenham Hale.
As far as I can tell the Leytonstone Road totem is the only one of the four with a modern boundary stone in the kerb alongside, so my claim is that this is London's newest boundary stone until someone tells us otherwise.
Tuesday update: The Lea Bridge Road totem also has a boundary kerbstone, its wording half covered by dirt, but it's 60m away from the actual boundary so I'm going to say it doesn't count.
My last Annual Travelcard just expired, and I shall miss it.
I bought my first Annual Travelcard in 2001 when I moved to London. This is the easiest and cheapest way to commute without faffing at ticket machines every day, I thought, and I was right. That first Annual Travelcard cost me £896, i.e. the equivalent of £2.45 a day, and these days even an off-peak single journey into zone 1 costs more than that.
I decided to buy a z1-3 Travelcard even though technically I only needed z1-2. I live right on the edge of zone 2, I reasoned, and it would be stupid to have to pay extra every time I went to Stratford. I've stuck with a z1-3 Travelcard ever since because it gave me free rein around virtually all of inner London, and any excursions to the suburbs were cheap occasional add-ons.
My Annual Travelcard was a significant investment, paying a lump sum up front for travel I hadn't yet made. Not everyone can afford to do this, indeed it's another example of long-term savings made by well-off people while less flush folk pay more often and end up paying more overall.
I checked how much I've spent on Annual Travelcards since 2001 and it's a lot of money.
Cost of my annual z1-3 Travelcard
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
£896
£912
£924
£952
£1000
£1040
£1096
£1136
£1208
£1208
£1288
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2022
2023
2024
£1368
£1424
£1472
£1508
£1520
£1548
£1600
£1648
£1740
£1808
£1916
It really is a lot of money, it's £29,000. But for that I've been able to swan around London for the best part of quarter of a century so it's been well worth it.
I know it's been well worth it because I checked. When I was commuting five days a week all I had to do was make a couple of extra journeys in the evening or at the weekend and it had paid for itself. More recently I've not been commuting daily so I could have been losing money hand over fist, but I used a spreadsheet one year to see how much PAYG would have cost and my Annual Travelcard was still better value. However this is only because I am a serial user of London transport and travel all over the place on a ridiculously regular basis. Your average non-gadabout would indeed be out of pocket.
My Annual Travelcard has allowed me one-price travel across zones 1-3, which is effectively what a daily cap does. But a daily z1-3 cap costs £10 and I was paying a lot lot less than that to do exactly the same, indeed about half the price. This is why using PAYG gives me the heebeegeebees.
My last Annual Travelcard cost me £1916 which works out as £5.50 a day. That's a big sunk cost, so for example any day I stayed at home or spent in Norfolk was essentially £5.50 down the drain. But on most days that £5.50 was an utter bargain, merely the same as a return trip from zone 1 into zone 2, so every journey I made on top of that was effectively free.
My Annual Travelcard marked me out as one of a dwindling number of year-long ticket holders. According to a recent FoI request the number of Annual Travelcards issued in the last financial year was just 15,192, a pitiful total in a capital of nine million people, and down a massive 80% since 2018/19. Most Londoners have deduced that PAYG better suits their needs, especially anyone who sometimes works from home, so expect Annual Travelcard sales number to dwindle even further very soon.
My Annual Travelcard allowed me to pay last year's fares for this year's travel. This was brilliant, especially in any year after a significant fare rise. I really made the most of this by buying my last Annual Travelcard at the end of February just before fares rose at the start of March. That meant the Travelcard I was still using last week cost £1916 whereas a new one would have cost £2008, and today that price jumps again to £2100. PAYG users, by contrast, get shafted straight away.
Annual Travelcards give a saving of 13% compared with continuing use of Monthly Travelcards, i.e. you get 12 months travel for the price of 10½. Alternatively they give a 23% saving compared with continuing use of 7 Day Travelcards, meaning you get 52 weeks for the price of 40. That's a lot of extra free weeks, although if you have a full time job and take six weeks annual leave plus bank holidays and the occasional sickie it might not actually add up to a saving.
My Annual Travelcard came with a Gold Card for additional discount on National Rail fares. It was like having a Network Railcard but without paying for it, i.e. I got a third off all off-peak fares across southeast England. Even better a Network card only allowed cheaper fares after 10am whereas in 2015 Gold Cards became valid from 9.30am and I caught loads of earlier trains to Norfolk thanks to that.
My Gold Card, once applied to my Oyster, let me pay less on journeys in zones 4-6 too. All I had to pay was the extension fare from the edge of zone 3, and then I got one third off that off-peak too. Bow to West Drayton is normally £3.60, for example, but I only needed to pay the extra £1.90 from Hanwell and then they deducted 33% so the actual fare was only £1.25. Nobody on PAYG goes anywhere for as little as that.
My Annual Travelcard also allowed me to catch buses for free - that's all the TfL buses everywhere including the severely peripheral ones. It was technically possible for me to get to Dorking and back by bus for nothing, indeed I tried it once, and that's several miles outside London... as were Redhill, Bluewater, Watford and Slough.
The joy of buses being free is that I never needed to get the train to a zone 4 station and pay extra, I could get off at the edge of zone 3 and get the bus. I got seriously well practised at this eventually, using stations like Hendon, Leytonstone, Crystal Palace and Wimbledon as a jumping off point. With a bit of patience I could catch free buses even further, all the way to Uxbridge and Upminster if necessary, and because I have lots of free time that's generally what I did.
My Annual Travelcard also allowed me to catch trams for free, a perk you get with any Travelcard with z3, 4, 5 or 6 validity. That made a lot of south London readily accessible, or at least not quite as inaccessible it would have been, bringing even Coulsdon and Biggin Hill into practical reach. Indeed I've made so much use of buses and trams over the last year that I only gave TfL £12 on top of my initial £1916 outlay, that's how exceptional value my Annual Travelcard has been.
My Annual Travelcard encouraged short journeys in a way PAYG never does. I could hop on a train for one stop or a bus for two stops without affecting my daily fare, which was especially useful if I was trying to make a connection in a hurry. PAYG is particularly brutal if you keep switching between trains and buses, never quite getting the full benefit of either, whereas a Travelcard enables efficient multi-modal journeys and indeed allows you to take the lazy option without penalty.
Essentially my Annual Travelcard allowed me to swan around London to my heart's content without worrying about how much it'd cost. This is not to be underestimated. Sure it was a huge price up front but after that I knew where I could go and how much it'd cost me, i.e. nothing extra, and that really encouraged me to travel and travel like a mad thing.
My Annual Travelcard also allowed me to pass in and out of ticket barriers to my heart's content without worrying if I was going to be slapped with an enormous penalty fare. I cannot begin to tell those of you with PAYG how good that feels. I wasn't forever thinking "should I have tapped out there?" or "oh god I hope I tapped in" or "have I been down here too long?" or "is it off-peak yet?" or "where's the pink reader?" or "will they bankrupt me if I enter the station for 60 seconds and then tap back out again?". I didn't need to know the minutiae of all the stupid penalising rules because with an Annual Travelcard there weren't any.
And my Annual Travelcard allowed me to travel at any time of the day, be it the height of the rush hour or the middle of the night. Peak times meant nothing to me so long as I stayed in zones 1-3, and peak travel was even better value. I shall miss that freedom.
My last Annual Travelcard just expired and I already miss it. I'm struggling to get used to paying for travel and indeed paying what feels over the odds, so have been travelling a lot less as a result. I really struggled with my last evening out at BestMate's, a two-stop journey to Plaistow and back, which suddenly cost me £3.60 rather than the zero I've been paying since 2001. Worse still today is fare rise day so when I go back this week it'll be £4, and no way is eight minutes on the District line worth that.
I've taken my final Gold Card out of my Oyster wallet where one's been a fixture for over twenty years. I've also removed the photocard because I won't need that again, and doing that made me really sad. The photo is of me in September 2001 when I was a chipper 36 year-old with a big grin, flawless skin, unfaded hair and thousands of London adventures ahead of me. Amazingly that frozen snapshot has been acceptable to ticket inspectors for 24 decaying years, but I now have to retire that idealised angel and face up to being a near-pensioner instead.
The reason I've bought my last Annual Travelcard is that I'm about to switch over to a 60+ Oyster instead, the Mayoral treat that gifts free travel to sexagenarians to the annoyance of everyone younger. It hasn't arrived yet, indeed expect to read a post about how blindingly incompetent the onboarding process is at a later date. But when it does I'll suddenly be able to go everywhere in zones 1-6 for free which'll be game-changingly better, but also nowhere before 9am which'll be annoyingly worse.
My last Annual Travelcard just expired, and I shall miss it.
20 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in February 2025
1) The oldest bus in service in London is the Uno 605, a vehicle introduced in 2007 and currently in use on route 383. However, this vehicle is due to be withdrawn from the fleet shortly. 2) On average TfL's income from ULEZ charges is about £375,000 per day. 3) As of 2024, 52% of all London’s roads have a 20mph speed limit. This can be further broken down as 52% of borough roads and 16% of the TfL Road Network. 4) The TfL Road Network comprises 4% of London's public roads but carries 29% of the traffic. The borough of Wandsworth has the most TfL-controlled roads (36km), Harrow has none. Barnet has the most major roads (109km) and Sutton the least (30km). Bromley has the most roads altogether (913km) but Hillingdon has the most traffic (followed by Havering and Enfield). 5) The noisy manhole cover on the northbound carriageway of Commercial Street at the junction with Fleur de Lis Street has had two utility notices issued, but as yet there is no date for a permanent repair. 6) There are 938 ticket machines at tube stations. These are of four different types. King's Cross St Pancras has the most (45) followed by Victoria (34), Liverpool Street (23), Paddington (22) and London Bridge/Heathrow T23 (18). Roding Valley is the only tube station with one ticket machine (the minimum otherwise is two). 7) Of all the Superloop routes, the SL7 has had the highest spend on vehicle vinyl wraps (£130,795.00) but also the lowest spend on stop/shelter branding (£16,861.43). 8) Customers who need to reset their multi-factor authentication are still unable to access their Contactless and Oyster accounts following the cyberattack in September. 9) A fox was seen on the Central line tracks at Oxford Circus on the evening of 19th January 2025. Traction current was turned off between 19.30 and 19.50 with train services suspended. The fox was unharmed and released in nearby Hanover Square Gardens. 10) Five existing electric vehicles from route 323 have been reassigned to the Silvertown Tunnel cycle shuttle service. Route 323 is currently being operated by Euro VI Diesel vehicles but will be back to using electric vehicles "as soon as is possible". 11) Toilets will be provided for bus drivers at both ends of the 129 and SL4 bus routes through the Silvertown Tunnel (but only at one end of the cycle shuttle because it's a short route). 12) During the last financial year 3,003,614 Oyster users and 13,087,477 Contactless users received an autofill refund payment after being charged for an incomplete journey. 13) Yes, heating is installed on buses on route 463, with the expectation that the saloon temperature be 17 degrees. 14) AI has not been used by TfL or their partners to develop the promotional materials seen around their network 15) If you'd like pdf copies of 38 tube maps issued between 1998 and 2009, this zip file has them all. 16) 295 penalty charges notices were issued on 25 December 2024 for vehicles being in a bus lane. Buses do not run on Christmas Day. No fines had been issued on any previous December 25th, even though the policy changed in 2020. 17) In 2021 TfL ran 14 advertising campaigns for cryptocurrencies, but last year just two. 18) There are now 794 Santander docking stations. The total was 330 when the bikes launched in 2010, 737 in 2015 and 784 in 2020. 19) At the end of 2024 a total of 10,364 customers had an active annual membership of Santander Cycles. That's 0.1% of London's population. 20) During 2024 TfL received 4207 FoI requests.
45 Squared 8) HALLIDAY SQUARE, UB2
Borough of Ealing, 70m×30m
I had high hopes for Halliday Square because it's surrounded by all sorts of intriguing historic stuff, specifically Ealing Hospital and the asylum that preceded it, many of whose Georgian buildings survive. Alas none of the good stuff is in Halliday Square itself, only nearby, nor was it built on the site of anything specifically interesting, not quite.
Halliday Square is a typically 1980s development, maybe 1990s, I haven't been able to determine which. It's a long thin quadrangle surrounded on all sides by three-storey townhouses, all terraced together so you can't walk round the back. The third storey is tucked away in the roof space which saved the original residents from having to fork out extra for a loft extension. Front doors open straight onto the street, are topped by an extremely slimline porch and are lit by a circular lamp. A couple of four-storey blocks of flats straddle the central alignment, also in two shades of brick, and when I said Halliday Square wasn't especially interesting I wasn't kidding.
Many London squares have a pleasant lawn in the centre but here it's all about car parking, one space each, overshadowed by a line of trees that've got pretty tall by now. Ball games are not permitted, the number of parked cars making this both impractical and unsafe. The most recent community notice on the board in the middle of the square advertises a bike event in 2021, while the "Missing Kitten" poster has had its centre ripped out so only the peripheral sellotape remains. It'd all be really quiet were it not for the footpath that runs across the middle, conveniently located for a bus stop on the Uxbridge Road so a relatively busy thoroughfare. The only vaguely interesting thing here on Halliday Square is a road sign with a spelling mistake, having been written with only one L instead of two.
But step through to the south and a decent flank of rather splendid institutional buildings appears. This is the former Middlesex County Asylum, the first purpose-built asylum built in England following the Madhouse Act of 1828, laid out on 74 rural acres between the Uxbridge Road and the Grand Union Canal in the vicinity of HanwellLocks. It was also pioneeringly progressive thanks to its first Medical Superintendent Dr William Ellis who believed in the 'therapy of employment' and tried to make the asylum self-sufficient. The west wing of the panopticon originally housed over 1000 female patients, and two centuries on is now a gated development called Osterley Views, although for many the view is actually of the access road to Halliday Square.
The rest of the asylum still caters to mental patients but as St Bernard's Hospital, accessed through a particularly fine arched gatehouse near the aforementioned bus stop. This is administratively separate from the better known Ealing Hospital whose stark concrete stack was built in 1979 on the site of the asylum's playing field and running track. Meanwhile the open space to the west of the old hospital was redeveloped as the Windmill Park Estate, a slice of modern suburbia running down to the canal, of which Halliday Square is an outlying part. Its stand-out feature is a curved wall of flats bored through by an access road, watched over by a knobby obelisk marooned on a roundabout, where a Spar supermarket is the last remaining shop.
What we have here is a fascinating pre-Victorian asylum whose sprawling buildings have been multiply repurposed and its grounds sequentially sold off for development. But what I was supposed to be writing about is Halliday Square, which as far as I can tell merely squats on the site of an ornamental garden just inside the main entrance, and maybe a tennis court in the hospital's later years. Best merely walked-through, or skipped altogether.
During February 2003 on diamond geezer I kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a none-too thrilling daily feature called The Count. My 28-day tally chart may have been deathly dull to the rest of you, butI'vecontinuedtocountthosecategoriesagainevery, singleFebruarysince, purely to keep tabs on how my life is changing. Twenty-two years later I can confirm it's changed quite a lot and I have the data to prove it. Below are my counts for February 2025 accompanied by the previous statistics and some deep, meaningful pondering.
n.b. The month hasn't finished yet so all this year's totals are best guess estimates, but I'll come back and update/rewrite the post as February draws to a close.
Count 1 (Blog visitors): It's been the best February yet for people turning up to read what I've written, which is nice. What's more last year's total was much inflated by the hubbub over renaming the Overground lines whereas this year's record is a result of consistently higher daily performance. I'm now averaging 3400 visitors a day, or about 45 doubledeckerbusfuls, and that's just people who turn up in person rather than reading via the magic of RSS. One reason seems to be that Google have loosened the brakes and are sending a lot more search engine queries this way, for example more than 3000 people arrived because they wanted to know where the new Apprentice cafe was. Most likely it's a torrent of one-off readers but hopefully a few of them will decide to stay. It amazes me sometimes that anyone comes back when there's the risk of reading about roadworks in Bow, timetable posters in Chorleywood or art galleries in Hartlepool, which is hardly "must read" subject material for the average person in the street. But I do try to provide a varied diet where possible, rather than endless recycled press releases, because I believe there's still demand for original subject matter. As one of my regular three and a half thousand I assume you either keep coming back for the variety or can put up with the personally-irrelevant stuff inbetween. Total number of visits to this webpage in February 2025: 97446 (2004: 6917)...(2009: 26048)...(2014: 51727)...(2019: 69102) (2020: 66682) (2021: 65701) (2022: 69714) (2023: 77244) (2024: 93789)
Count 2 (Blog comments): There's nothing quite so unpredictable as comments. Some days this blog attracts hardly any, while other days the discussion catches fire and you add dozens. This month we've been averaging about 25 a day, which is alas lower than it's been over the last few years but still well above numbers in my first decade. For a blog in the 2020s I'd say it's also damned impressive. Most blogs either no longer allow feedback or have commenting zones resembling tumbleweed, but somehow you lot always seem to carry on talking, nipping in with a pertinent reference, a pedantic correction, a nostalgic nod, some schoolboy grandstanding or a bit of insider know-how. Admittedly it doesn't take much to set a few of you off, particularly if the topic is transport-related, and some days the gradient between sparkling and tedious can be steep. But one amazing statistic is that 260 different people have commented this month, chipping in when they have something relevant to say, and that variety is truly humbling. I also note that only ten people have left more than 10 comments so it really is a group effort. Thanks everyone, because it's you that helps to bring this page to life. Total number of comments on this webpage in February 2025: 764 (2004: 332)...(2009: 472)...(2014: 477)...(2019: 706) (2020: 702) (2021: 946) (2022: 850) (2023: 830) (2024: 861)
Count 3 (Blog content): The number of words in my posts has been edging up and now averages 1300 a day. That's not to be sniffed at, indeed it's the equivalent of writing seven novels a year and I wonder how many of you write that much on a regular basis. I often start out thinking "I doubt this'll be a long one" but by the end have written loads because I've uncovered more along the way. Equally I fear I often write too concisely, packing loads of facts and observations into a single sentence when I could have written an entire paragraph. It's always a balance between adding detail and avoiding burnout, between making sure you have enough to read and making sure I get enough sleep. At least London remains a broad enough canvas that there's always plenty more to write about, which remains an excellent way to keep myself occupied. Total number of words in diamond geezer in February 2025: 37049 (2004: 16214)...(2009: 20602)...(2014: 32283)...(2019: 33361) (2020: 29099) (2021: 32122) (2022: 33056) (2023: 34291) (2024: 38040)
Count 4 (Hours out): On average I spend just under six hours a day out of the house, because if lockdown taught me anything it's to go out every day because you never know when that might no longer be possible. It used to be more like ten hours when I had an office to go to, but it's still a decent time to be out exploring. Have Travelcard, will travel. I also spend just over six hours a day asleep, so if you drew a pie chart of my time it would be 25% Sleep, 25% Out & About and 50% Indoors. My trip to Sunderland was the longest I spent out (15½ hrs) and the miserably wet day afterwards was the least (3½ hrs). Total number of hours spent out of the house in February 2025: 161 (2021: 96) (2022: 113) (2023: 164) (2024:150)
Count 5 (Nights out): I'm not an especially social person of an evening, as you can tell by the fact that this count only once surged into double figures. This February's trips have been no further than BestMate's sofa (where we watched Thursday night telly and put the world to rights), with no additional jaunts to pubs, restaurants, cinemas or the like. Admittedly I have met up with people during the daytime on a couple of occasions, but because this is a 'Nights out' count these bursts of sociability don't count. Don't worry it's all fine, and you'd never get a blog to read if I went out as often as I did in that heady February twenty-two years ago. The number of nights in February 2025 I went out and was vaguely sociable: 4 (2003: 21)...(2009: 7)...(2014: 6)...(2019: 4) (2020: 4) (2021: 0) (2022: 4) (2023: 4) (2024: 3)
Count 6 (Alcohol intake): For the purposes of this long-term count my definition of alcohol had always been a specific gassy bottle of German lager. I clung to Becks for familiarity and ease of ordering, plus the fact it doesn't give me hiccups, but it's become increasingly hard to source in recent years so now any bottle of lager will do. That said, 100% of this month's total has been the genuine stuff because my brother managed to source a dozen bottles as a Christmas present and BestMate surprised me the other week with a giant bottle. The fact my total's still only four should convince you I'm no alcoholic. Total number of bottles of lager I drank in February 2025: 4 (2003: 58)...(2009: 4)...(2014: 4)...(2018: 5) (2019: 0) (2020: 0) (2021: 3) (2022: 1) (2023: 3) (2024: 0)
Count 7 (Tea intake): Apart from one dodgy year when workplace kettle usage was banned, my monthly tea consumption has remained impressively consistent and almost always falls within a narrow range of 120-135. My mug total dropped a little after I left work because I was no longer desk-bound and kettle-proximate, and rose again during the pandemic for approximately the reverse reason. Things have now settled down, brown-liquid-wise, so I'm back to being a four-and-a-half cups a day man. Milk, no sugar, thanks. Total number of cups of tea I drank in February 2025: 126
(2004: 135)...(2009: 129)...(2014: 129)...(2019: 121) (2020: 122) (2021: 128) (2022: 132) (2023: 116) (2024: 123)
Count 8 (Trains used): This count's normally been pretty consistent too... always just over a hundred a month (unless the government decreed otherwise). Last year's total was ridiculously high because I was attempting to swipe my Travelcard at every single zone 1-3 station (tube, DLR, and National Rail), but this year I got that out of the way in January so February was more normal. For comparison the number of buses I've ridden this month is 130, an average of five a day, and the number of cars I've been a passenger in is 1. Total number of trains I travelled on in February 2025: 163
(2004: 109)...(2009: 103)...(2014: 129)...(2019: 135) (2020: 136) (2021: 0) (2022: 17) (2023: 141) (2024: 265)
Count 9 (Steps walked): For me a normal amount of walking is just under half a million steps a month, i.e. about seven miles daily. That's lower than the ten miles I managed during turbocharged lockdown roaming, but also higher than the four miles I was averaging when I had an office job. I still reckon fifteen thousand steps a day is a half-decent total, and thus far it does seem to have kept my waistline below 2019 levels, but on the downside the pair of trainers I bought last February may need replacing soon. Total number of steps I walked in February 2025: 427000 (2014: 255000)...(2019: 464000) (2020: 405000) (2021: 671000) (2022: 627000) (2023: 434000) (2024: 452000)
Count 10 (Mystery count): Sorry to disappoint you all, again, but the legendary diamond geezer Mystery Count continues to be nil. I know, I'm as unimpressed about the outcome as you are. Other Februaries when the Mystery Count was zero include 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2015, but you already knew about the last two of those. Apologies. Total number of times that the mystery event happened in February 2025: 0
(2003-2025: 0)
I did say I wouldn't be counting how many times I made an error on the blog this month but I was lying. I was indeed counting, I just didn't want you to think I was in case you got pernicketier than usual. It turns out the number of observed errors in February was 24, well down on the 33 reported in January so I'm counting that as a win.
And I did suggest that you might count something specific during February 2025, so do let us know if you did. Life's more interesting when you count it.
Sat 1:London Estates: Modernist Council Housing 1946–1981 is an absolutely gorgeous book, assuming you like full-colour photos of postwar flats from over 250 estates across London. I don't know how Thaddeus has managed to collect so many straight-on shots lit by the sun, often taken at height and with barely a person to be seen, but the end result is a perfect record of pre-'affordable' housing. Admittedly this slab of a book costs £26.95 but it is comprehensively covetable, plus I've just taken my copy back to the library so you might get lucky there. Sun 2: If you're ever looking for a leftover copy of The Standard, the right-leaning weekly paper which appears in hoppers on Thursday afternoons and is generally whisked away by Friday, there were loads of unread copies outside Grange Hill tube station this morning.
Mon 3: Here's an astonishing sign by the ticket gates at East Croydon station. Please don't tap in with Oyster or contactless between 6:00am and 6:02am, it says, or you'll be charged a maximum fare. The reason given is that "the gates reset at this time". I wonder what's special about East Croydon and how many earlybirds get caught out. It must be particularly annoying if you're trying to catch the 0601 to Cambridge, the 0602 to Caterham or the 0603 to Bedford. Tue 4: Scott Mills has settled into the Radio 2 Breakfast Show like a natural. He's in his second week now and it's cheery chatty stuff with deliberately upbeat tunes, easy to dip into and fit for a family audience. The Easiest Quiz On The Radio is genius. It's not for everyone but audience-wise it ticks all the right boxes. Wed 5: My latest daily word challenge time-sink is called Squaredle. It's a bit like Boggle, hunting for hidden words in a grid. You only need to find the well-known words but it's surprisingly hard. Thu 6: I went to Two Temple Place to see this year's exhibition which is Lives Less Ordinary, a visual celebration of working-class life. There were lots of great old photos and wry arty exhibits sourced from across the country, mostly post-war, which I thoroughly enjoyed. By contrast the audience wandering round were patently not working class, nor had ever been, so I enjoyed the contrast there even more. Until 20th April if you've not been yet.
Fri 7: Oh good, the probability of an asteroid hitting us in 2032 has increased to 2.3%. Given all the Trump stuff this may be just as well. Sat 8: I always read the obituaries in case they include someone I know and today I turned the page and it finally happened. I knew him well, indeed he was one of my very first line managers, and yes I knew that particularly brilliant fact about his later career but I hadn't realised the full depth of the early stuff. I wish we'd spent more Friday lunchtimes down the pub. Sun 9: It got the fewest comments of any post I've written this month, but it'll bring thousands of visitors to the blog via search engines so what do you lot know? Mon 10: I don't know who's editorially in charge of the BBC News At One but they are relentlessly obsessed by interviewing the campaigning relatives of dead people. Every single hour long broadcast seems to include a lengthy segment where someone remembers a loved one and explains why they've started a campaign in their honour or why the law needs to change. Today's programme had three such segments (we need to bring the tech companies to account, I want one of these in every school, what happened to my sister must never happen again), and I've got to the stage now where I fast forward through. This stuff has its place and is often very worthy, but when it appears so relentlessly it's really quite cloying - I'm here to watch the News, not the One Show.
Tue 11: Stickers aimed at people with suicidal feelings have appeared at the end of several DLR platforms. They're nicely designed, especially the cat, but it's perhaps optimistic to hope that everyone in this terrible situation will be able to use a QR code. At least the actual website's named underneath (dlrcares.co.uk... a sadly splendid resource). Wed 12: My new passport arrived today, exactly a week after I applied for it (and just five days after they received my old one). That's fast service, but that's February for you. I've signed it in black biro (and I hate the photo). Thu 13: I paid for my last prescription today because next time it needs renewing I'll be old enough to get it for free. "Do you want the receipt?" asked the pharmacist, and handed it over with a smile when I explained why I did. Fri 14: A nightmare situation... my hand got mucky so I dashed home, only to find my taps running dry so I couldn't wash the muck off. Thankfully they were running again in the morning but that was an uncomfortable night. Sat 15: Today was the last day of the The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe at Honeywood Museum in Carshalton so you're too late to see the diorama in the billiard room, but what a great idea by the Hello Club to use weekly craft sessions for the over 50s to create a communal artwork everyone can feel part of.
Sun 16: The tide was really low in the Thames this morning, so from Fulham railway bridge you could see a huge stripe of riverbed on the Wandsworth side, plus a brave couple going for a promenade along a central sandy ridge. Mon 17: It's London Theatre Week, which of course lasts 14 days, so I've myself booked a £20 seat at an iconic show. More of that next month. Tue 18: You'll remember I told you 'Kennington' was missing from all the tube maps in Elizabeth line trains. Well it's back because all the maps have been reprinted and replaced, and I just wanted to tell TfL yes I had noticed. Wed 19: It's amazing how ineffectual the emergency services are in TV soaps. After the Queen Vic exploded they took ages to arrive, failed to break through a thin door into a pub and then left a casualty with crushed legs to chat with his fiancée rather than treating his critical injuries. Disbelief has rarely been so suspended. Thu 20: I received a message on Flickr from an Algerian astonished to see his father's poetry on a plaque by the Millennium Dome. "This man is my father and I would love to see this place in real life so I am contacting you to know if you remember the spot where the poem was located. I'm visiting London next week and this would be amazing. I heard a lot about my father's writings but never had the chance to really read anything as he was mostly a journalist for Algerian newspapers and those tend to be rare today." I was able to tell him that this was one of eight granite discs depicting poetry from the countries along the Greenwich meridian, and where it was located in a hotel car park, and I hope very very much he found it.
Fri 21: I went to the library hoping to take out Gary Stevenson's bestselling new book, The Trading Game. You've likely seen his shaved head staring out from posters on many a tube platform. Alas I don't think there's a single unreserved copy left in the system. However on my way home I spotted Gary cycling past Mile End station so I'm counting that as a win. Sat 22: My train journey home from Hartlepool was significantly delayed by an 'incident' at Stevenage which had closed the East Coast Main Line since the middle of the afternoon. Thankfully we arrived just as things were reopening, but we were still train number five in the queue and ground to a lengthy halt. I thought I'd be in line for a 50% refund but no, the delay somehow contrived to be only 56 minutes and that doesn't count. Nigh all the inconvenience, none of the reward. Sun 23: You may remember I said that you can apply for a 60+ Oyster card two weeks before your 60th birthday. It turns out this isn't true because I tried and you can't. I rang up the helpline to enquire and was told no, it's actually 10 days before not 14 because they changed it. They also said a lot of people ask about this, so perhaps whoever's in charge of the TfL website could amend it so future 59 year-olds don't have to phone the helpline too. Mon 24: Oh good, the probability of an asteroid hitting us in 2032 has decreased to 0.004%. Apparently its chance of hitting the Moon is still 1.7% though, so watch for fireworks.
Tue 25: I'd long been obsessed by May'sConfectionery in Greenford, a throwback sweet shop that's been mothballed for over a decade with jars of bonbons on dusty shelves and faded Cadbury Snack and Freddo Caramel boxes in the window. When I went back in November I noted it had finally been converted to a fresh retail unit and that's now been filled by A.K. Food and Wine, a gleaming minimart specialising in smokables and drinkables. The entire postwar history of the high street could be probably summarised by the before and after, but Mr May would be absolutely appalled that the new lot have written CONFECTIONARY above the window. Wed 26: To update my post on TfL scrapping timetable posters on the outer reaches of the Metropolitan line, I can confirm that stations now have proper up-to-date timetable posters again. They're all dated 13.1.25 at the bottom, the date of the latest timetable change, although they definitely weren't in place three weeks ago. Thu 27: I saw some rare uddery mammatus clouds over Hackney Wick yesterday. They're especially pretty at sunset. Fri 28: Today is the 50th anniversary of the Moorgate tube crash in which 43 people died. Radio 4 has just broadcast a two-part audio drama about the disaster written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran (of Birds of a Feather/Goodnight Sweetheart fame). Laurence was sent to Moorgate that day as part of his job as a journalist, only to discover that his father had been in the second carriage and was one of the dead. Unsurprisingly the drama is very well written.
Finally, let's see how my annual counts are going...
• Number of London boroughs visited: all 33 (at least four times each)
• Number of London bus routes ridden: 216 (39%)
• Number of Z1-3 stations used: all (plus I've now added all the tram stops)
• Number of Z4-6 stations used: 0
During February 2003 on diamond geezer I kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a none-too thrilling daily feature called The Count. My 28-day tally chart may have been deathly dull to the rest of you, but I've continued to count those categories again every, single February since, purely to keep tabs on how my life is changing. Twenty-two years later I can confirm it's changed quite a lot and I have the data to prove it. Below are my counts for February 2025 accompanied by the previous statistics and some deep, meaningful pondering.
