Previously Posted: Staying erect

21 December, 2024 Gibson Square 2 Comments

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Staying Erect (25.10.11)

Samuel Johnson’s friend James Boswell had an interesting experience on Westminster Bridge. He recalled: “I picked up a strong jolly young damsel and taking her under the arm I conducted her to Westminster Bridge, and there in amour complete did I engage up in this noble edifice. The whim of doing it there with the Thames rolling below us amused me much.”

Boswell might not have had trouble staying erect but for Big Ben it seems a case of erectile dysfunction. I have looked at it through one eye, aligned it with a lamppost, I’ve even tried viewing it upside down, but try as I might I just cannot see the list, but according to a report by London Underground, Big Ben is leaning to such an extent that the tilt can now be clocked with the naked eye. The 316 ft. tower on the north side of the Houses of Parliament correctly is called St. Stephen’s Tower but is known colloquially as Big Ben – the name given to the great bell that it houses, the clock is the largest four-faced chiming clock in the world and surmounts the tower which is founded on a 49 ft. square 9.8 ft. thick concrete raft sunk to a depth of 13 ft. below ground level.

You would have thought with foundations like that the tower would be stable but it is sinking unevenly into the ground, causing it to lean toward the northwest, and as a consequence, the movement has resulted in the formation of cracks in the walls and ceilings of parts of the House of Commons.

The engineers claim that if you stand on Parliament Square and look east, toward the river, you can see that the tower is not vertical. As with so many things, it’s the MPs that are to blame, the construction of their underground car park in the early 70s started it and an extension of the London Underground Jubilee Line didn’t help matters either. But what has accelerated the movement to 0.9mm per year was the digging of the deepest hole in Britain during the construction of the new Parliament Square tube station and the construction above it of Portcullis House, again building work for the benefit of our MPs.

If the tower continues its slide towards the river in about 4,000 years it will compete with the Leaning Tower of Pisa which lurches 12ft from the vertical. By then anyone who should feel the desire to follow James Boswell’s example of amorous exploits upon Westminster Bridge would be well advised to find an alternative hunting ground.

London in Quotations

London in Quotations: Margaret Drabble

Quote 16 December, 2024 Gibson Square 1 Comment

London, how could one ever be tired of it?

Margaret Drabble (b.1939)

London trivia

London Trivia: Carpenter opens theatre

15 December, 2024 Gibson Square 2 Comments

On 15 December 1720 John Potter, a carpenter advertised that: ‘At the New Theatre in the Haymarket, between Suffolk Street and James Street, which is now completely finished, will be acted French Comedies, as soon as the actors arrive from Paris . . .’ Musket. It was the third public theatre opened in the West End. The theatre cost £1,000 to build, with a further £500 expended on decorations, scenery and costumes.

On 15 December 1906 the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway, later known as the Piccadilly Line opened

Abingdon Street is named after Mary Abingdon who wrote the letter which led to uncovering the gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament in 1605

Bartholomew The Great nicknamed the ‘weeping church’ when cold/wet the stones become porous, an inscription reads unsluice your briny floods

George II was the last English king to be born abroad, the last to lead his troops into battle but died ingloriously sitting on the loo

When George IV first clapped eyes on Caroline of Brunswick, the woman he was expected to marry, he called his man to pour him a large brandy

In 1848 the group of artists known as the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood was founded at 7 Gower Street WC2 in 1848

Opening in 1956 at Old Compton Street Soho’s 2i’s Coffee Bar was Europe’s first rock’n’roll venue it featured Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele

In 1875 the first tennis match took place at Worple Road, two years later it was renamed the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club

The world’s longest continuous railway tunnel is the Northern Line: Morden to East Finchley totalling 17.3 miles, 24 stations and 3 junctions

Maxwell Knight head of MI5 from 1931 to 1961 and the original ‘M’ lived in a London flat with a brown bear called Bessie

According to the London Wildlife Trust there are 125 types of fish to be found in the Tidal Thames (the estuary mouth to Teddington Lock)

Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.

Previously Posted

Previously Posted: Worse face in the world

14 December, 2024 Gibson Square 2 Comments

Worst face in the world (21.10.11)

The 2012 Olympics have a lot to answer, being told we can’t travel to work next August, cabs banned from Olympic Priority “Zil” Lanes, and Lord Coe’s self-satisfied face on television every night of the week, but its biggest affront is about to be unleashed on Londoners in the next few weeks, namely the worst typeface in the world.

Soon every bus, taxi and billboard will be advertising the 2012 Olympics. Avenues of lampposts will have hanging from them banners written in a font called 2012 Headline, and as if to rub salt into the wound they will also be displayed in . . . French.

Every lamppost in the Capital looks to have hung from it what the International Olympic Committee call pageantry, and because French is the Olympics’ second language expect the “pageantry” to appear in England and French.

Why should we present ourselves in such a fashion? Thirty years ago London was regarded as a culinary desert offering only meat and two veg or fish and chips in most of its restaurants, now because of the brilliance of its chefs London can claim to have some of the finest restaurants in Europe. In the world of fashion – so they tell me – we have surpassed New York and Paris as the place to show the work of cutting-edge clothes designers.

So what have we given the world to advertise London’s Olympics and to place it yet again at the forefront of design? A font that looks like a group of primary schoolchildren designed it during a wet lunch break, but don’t take my word for it. As the world’s worst typeface Simon Garfield in his recent book Just My Type placed it at number one, despite some very strong competition. Simon Garfield claims that the public was so outraged by the London 2012 Olympic logo that the Games typeface will just go unnoticed. At the time of its unveiling some accused the logo of looking like a swastika, unfairly in my opinion, at least the swastika has symmetry, others rather bizarrely saw within its jagged shapes Lisa Simpson having sex.

Some might think that the choice of typeface is unimportant amid the enormity of London’s Olympics, but we identify companies, institutions and events by the advertising used to promote them. If amongst all the other crazy things that Transport for London does they one day should choose to “rebrand” our Underground by getting rid of the familiar roundel and Johnson’s typeface, petitions would be at every station in protest.

I know that the Olympics were started in Greece, but did we have to brand London’s contribution to the Olympic heritage with a typeface that wouldn’t look out of place above a dodgy kebab takeaway down the Mile End Road?