Thirty Thousand Streets

I highly recommend Thirty Thousand Streets – peculiar short stories based around the experiences of a young man living in London. They are written by Zeno Cosini and feature excellent illustrations by The Eyechild.

There are only two installments so far, though I'm led to believe that more are on the way. Just the thing for your next tea break.

thirtythousandstreets.blogspot.com

New London 2012 Brand

Oh dear. This is absolutely awful. And this video just makes things worse.

According to their news site: “The new Olympic emblem is based on the number 2012 - the year the Games take place and includes the Olympic Rings and the word London.”.

Yeah, we got that much. Now what's the rationale behind the mess you made out of it all ?

London Things

Having moved house, I have a new route to work that includes a 25 minute walk. I have the option of taking a tube for two stops instead but much prefer to walk. Here are a some of the things I passed on my way in today:

Buckingham Palace
The Ritz Hotel
A Rolls Royce showroom
A man sleeping in the doorway of New Bond Street jewelers
A man dressed as a pirate

Along with the bobby on the beat, the black taxis, the red telephone box, the pigeons and the icy drizzle it couldn't really be any more stereotypically London.

“Snow Chaos”

The word chaos is being used far too liberally. It should be reserved for actual chaos. Numerous large explosions, planes falling out of the sky (more than one), masked men riding round the city on motorbikes letting rip with machine guns – those situations might qualify. Chaos, for me, implies a lack of control coupled with mass confusion and perhaps even fear. Not “some snow”. In early February.

I know I’m usually the first to complain about particularly bad mornings on the tube network, and I accept that there may have been some delays today, but it certainly wasn’t chaos from where I was standing. Actually I got a lift to work and we drove from Clapham Common to Regent Street almost completely traffic-free in just under 30 minutes. In the rush hour. Some snowflakes fell onto the windscreen. Lord save us.

Yes, I accept that the situation will have been worse for others, especially those living outside of the cities. Maybe you even got stranded at home. But that's not chaos. OK, unless you live in the fantasy world of The Daily Mail. If we're not careful the word will lose its impact when we need it most.

Image taken from a BBC report showing the (complete lack of) travel chaos in London.

Zeno’s London

Read this.

SW4

SW4, originally uploaded by gridrunner.

The road I live on borders (like much of London) on a slightly run-down estate. And over the past two years the disrepair has started to creep closer and closer to my home. Large household items get dumped on the pavement where they just rot for months on end. Just a few doors away there's an overspilling heap including a broken bed frame and a washing machine. And increasingly the pavement is decorated in the morning with shattered chunks of safety glass.

Now, people shouldn't dump stuff on the streets anyway, but it would be nice if Lambeth Council cleared it up once in a while.

If I owned the flat I would probably care a lot more, but as it is I'm leaving the area pretty soon anyway. Me and Clapham are like "over".