Garlands Of Flowers At St. Paul’s
Everybody was photographing these flowers at St. Paul’s.
Ignoramus in this area, as I am, I have no idea what type they are!
A Mistake On A London Bus
London buses are nearly always built with an entrance at the front and an exit in the middle. This post gives a good view of the two doors on the bus in the foreground.
I was on a 205 going from Kings Cross to Marylebone and sitting next to me at the back, were a couple from Sheffield, who wanted to go to the gardens at Regent’s Park.
The bus was a bit crowded and when it came time to get off,they walked right to the front door, before the driver, told them that you exit London buses from the middle.
The muddle in the middle of the bus as they returned, illustrated one reason, why buses should have an entrance and an exit.
This separation also makes it easy to load one baby buggy, as another is getting off and it tends to push the low life away from the driver.
I can’t for the life of me understand, why it isn’t compulsory for buses to have separate entrances and exits.
Strangely though, with New Buses for London, the drill now seems to be that you wait for everybody to get out at the entrance nearest you and then step in. People also tend to avoid getting on through the middle door and of course the conductor marshalls the passengers in busy times.
Legible London
Legible London is described like this on their web site.
Legible London is a pedestrian wayfinding system that’s helping people walk around the Capital.
It does mean that information posts like these are turning up everywhere.
I’ve noticed these signs for some time, but it is only now, they’ve started to appear near me.
When the whole of London is covered, who will need a map on a mobile phone?
North Of Piccadilly Circus
I don’t really know, that you should call that area north of Piccadilly Circus, between Regent Street and Shaftesbury Avenue, but I went there yesterday and a run-down set of streets has been transformed by pedestrianisation and some new construction.
Even Regent Street itself, seems better, with the Diamond Jubilee banners and refurbishment. I suppose this pedestrianisation follows on from the scheme done for the Olympics around the Circus itself.
Merrily We Roll Along
I came back from Walthamstow on Friday on one of Greater Anglia‘s ubiquitous Class 317 trains.
A Greater Anglia Class 317 Train
They may look to be scrapheap-ready trains from the 1980s, ripe for replacement with shiny new expensive trains. Incidentally, the train in the picture is one of the last ones built in 1987, so it’s a comparative youngster compared to some.
But underneath the tired paintwork and uncomfortable seating, there is a legendary Mark 3 coach struggling to get out. These coaches used in the InterCity 125 and in many other trains, were made as early as the 1970s and most are still running in 2013.
The Class 317 is closely related to the Class 455, some of which have been refurbished by South West Trains to a very high standard. I talked about them here.
It looks like these 317s are going to get their own version of the Class 455 refurbishment. it is reported here in Wikipedia. Work is ongoing to create a prototype with new and more efficient traction equipment and a new interior to test passenger reaction.
So yet again, it looks like more Mark 3 coaches will be emerging from their chrysalis. The Wikipedia article talks of increasing the life of the trains by twenty years. Not bad considering that many of them are over thirty years old now!
The InterCity 125 is well-known as a design classic of Kenneth Grange. But who’d have thought that the humble coaches in the middle, would still be having a laugh at everybody’s expense nearly fifty years after they were designed.
A Blue Plaque In Stepney
I found this blue plaque as I walked back to the Overground from the river.
A Blue Plaque In Stepney
Sir William Henry Perkin, FRS 4 July 1907) was an English chemist best known for his discovery, at the age of 18, of the first aniline dye, mauveine. So it is not just today, when people create something amazing before their twentieth birthday! But how many today do such work, when they were born into relatively humble circumstances?
He was certainly one of the world’s greatest chemists. He is even commemorated by the Americans with the Perkin Medal.
The Beach At Wapping
In the sun on Friday, I went for a walk by the river.
The Beach At Wapping
It was a surprising large and clean beach at Wapping.
Londoners Don’t Seem Bothered About Fire Station Closures
I find this story about public meetings on the closure of fire stations rather interesting. Here’s a paragraph.
Londoners have been turning up in single figures to meetings on Boris Johnson’s fire station closure plans which are costing more than £100,000 to stage.
A single resident attended events in Newham, Brent and Harrow while just two turned up in Barking & Dagenham and four in the City of London. Mr Johnson plans to axe 12 fire stations, 18 engines and 520 jobs to save £45 million from the fire service budget.
You can take several view on this from two extremes.
If you are a die-hard supporter of cuts and would vote for Boris at all costs, you probably wouldn’t go.
But I suspect, that it’s more down to the fact, that we rarely see a serious incident. I have only seen one this year and that appeared to be a fire in an empty building, which perhaps half a dozen appliances attended.
If only a few attended some of these meeting, it would seem that they weren’t even picketed by fire-fighters and their families.
So I suspect, that Londoners in general, aren’t particularly worried about the plans.
It Was Quiet Last Night
I went up to Trafalgar Square yesterday evening, as with 150,000 Germans supposedly in town, there might be something worth seeing.
It would appear that UEFA have chosen the wrong day for the Champions League final. It was a bit different to 2011, when Barcelona fans were everywhere, as this post shows.
Irving Sellar Does A Guy De Maupassant
Prufrock in the Sunday Times reported that Irving Sellar, who developed the Shard, has his own table in the restaurant on floor 32.
He must only be following the reasoning of Guy de Maupassant, who often ate lunch in the Eiffel Tower. Wikipedia says this.
Maupassant was but one of a fair number of 19th-century Parisians who did not care for the Eiffel Tower; indeed, he often ate lunch in the restaurant at its base, not out of any preference for the food, but because it was only there that he could avoid seeing its otherwise unavoidable profile.
So does Irvine Sellar feel like that about the monstrous Shard?
The Anonymous Widower 