London has been awarded the dubious title of the ‘world’s slowest city’, and came runner up in the ‘most expensive city to drive in’ competition. According to TomTom, it took an average of 36 minutes to drive 10km in the centre of London last year, putting us way ahead of second place city, Bengaluru in India, where it takes just over 29 minutes. We’re also only second to Hong Kong when it comes to the ‘price of petrol, diesel and charging an electric vehicle’.
Johnson’s London Dictionary: Bus stop
BUS STOP (n.) Stagecoach halt used to summon a coach-and-four, traveller should caution against use of request halt as rider doth ignore passengers.
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
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You can ignore most expressions of art: nobody forces you into an art gallery; you can walk out of a play or cinema; and stop reading a book. But one art form is in your face, wherever you look – architecture.
The geek in me thoroughly enjoyed John Grindrod’s Concretopia a book about – well, concrete. This story was about buildings, both the big and famous like the Barbican and the small and every day like housing estates. The basic message of the book was that there was a great deal more that was positive and good about what was done after the war than was bad.
Grindrod has now been touring Britain applying his critical eye to post-1980 projects, again with his practised skill. When you read the late Queen Mother’s apparel described as: ‘snipping a ribbon… dressed in the manner of a Beatrix Potter hedgehog’, you can be assured that this isn’t a dry book about architecture.
The facts he reveals are alarming, during the boom in the 1980s for owner-occupier housing, less than five per cent of new builds were designed by an architect. Or amusing. The Terry Farrell-designed Embankment Place, owned by the Sultan of Brunei, who introduced stoning to death for adulterers and gays, had in its basement Heaven Club.
American Carla Picardi recalls in the 80s that cabbies wouldn’t take her to Canary Wharf where she was attempting to develop the area we know today. ‘For London cabbies, it was literally off the map: the docks did not form part of The Knowledge.’
Here I should record an interest, John recently subjected himself to CabbieBlog’s London Grill, and as a result, Faber & Faber sent me a copy. This is a large tome (apparently Grindrod discarded 50,000 words), the book would have been enhanced with more illustrations featuring the building being analysed, but that would have made it impractical for printing.
Grindrod’s highly readable style, more akin to a page-turning novel, makes this polemical work on something that touches us all, a pleasure to read.
London in Quotations: E. M. Forster
The Londoner seldom understands his city until it sweeps him, too, away from his moorings.
E. M. Forster (1879-1970), Howards End
London Trivia: Frozen Bacon
On 9 April 1626 Francis Bacon, English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author, died of pneumonia. He was the agent of his own demise having experimented at trying to freeze a chicken with snow. He argued that scientific knowledge must be based only upon inductive and careful observation of events. He caught a chill and was taken to the Highgate home of the Earl of Arundel and put into a damp bed. He would never get out of the bed alive.
On 9 April 1970 at the High Court in London a petition brought by Paul McCartney formerly wound up The Beatles
On 9 April 1976 then president of the Young Liberals, Peter Hain, was acquitted of bank robbery at the Old Bailey (£490 from Barclays bank)
The only London residence of William Blake that still remains is 17 South Molton Street where Blake lived on the first floor 1803-1812
On 9 April 1483 Edward IV died at Westminster, the crown passed to his son Edward V aged just twelve years old
On 9 April 1747 at Tower Hill Scottish clan chief Lord Simon Fraser Lovat was the last person in Britain to be executed by being beheaded
On 9 April 1914 the world’s first silent colour film, the sleezy sounding World, Flesh and the Devil was shown in London
The Old Mitre pub in Holborn contains a cherry tree trunk round which, it is claimed by the pub owners, Elizabeth I danced
West Ham United football club were originally founded in 1895 as Thames Ironworks Football Club and reformed in 1900 as West Ham United
Seventeen different bus routes pass through Trafalgar Square it makes the square one of the busiest crossroads for London traffic
In 1100s human lavatories walked the streets of London wearing large cloaks and a bucket. Customers used the bucket whilst hidden by the cloak
On 9 April 1787 a fencing match between Chevalier de St. Georges and Chavaliere d’Eton took place at Carlton House, both were 1st class fencers, d’Eton 20 years older and dressed as a woman won
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.
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