The fog

Nothing much to say, other than that one side effect of falling off my bike on Saturday is that I'm getting the tube to work. Which means I have been walking from Westminster tube... through the fog.. and past Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.

Spooky!


And below is another foggy photo, of Millbank Tower, but taken by Jane, not I. And looking, as is the wont of London artifacts these days, like something from the Mysterious Cities of Gold.


Music to watch fog by, by fog

Who makes the iDents?

I make the iDents!

I've posted once before about the Channel 4 ident with the helicopter flying around new buildings going up in the Dubai desert.

Well, outside Channel 4 HQ, near where I work, they have actually built one of those fours which materialise as you pass by, and then vanish again as the pieces fall out of alignment. It's got segments of athletic torsos printed on it, though I'm not sure what the significance of this is.

Anyway, here is my home made, phone made iDent:

(More frequent, shorter posts!)

By the way, John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan - great album!

Also:

Balls!

Why build a tower when you can build an arch

I was watching Michael Palin's New Europe on Saturday and noticed that Bucharest in Romania, as well as having the world's heaviest building, has a Marble arch type structure. Which got me thinking... Paris... London... Bucharest - these arches are everywhere!

Pyongyang - Arch of Triumph
Originally uploaded by p!ng.

After a bit of research, it turns out they really are. Wikipedia lists probably over 100 examples. The tradition began in ancient Rome to commemorate success in battle. The tradition was then resurrected - like so many other Roman traditions - during the renaissance. The largest in the world is in Pyongyang. Perhaps surprising they've saught to emulate such a western tradition, but they give the design an interesting Oriental flavour.

I wonder if any arches were ever built pre-emptively, so as to give the soldiers the opprtunity to march through it on their way back into the capital (that surely is the motivation - in thought if not in deed - behind building a symbolic or ceremonial march). Do soldiers who won the war the arch commemorates make a point of visiting it once in their lives to march through it with honour?

London has two such arches. Marble arch, obviously (which is also where the A5 - heading all the way up to North Wales - begins as Edgeware road), but also the Wellington Arch in Hyde Park. No others anywhere else in the UK.

To change the subject, i was going to blog about the recent Barclaycard/Oyster adverts, which feature reinventions of the London skyline, but Londonist beat me to it. The Battersea power station one in particular is pretty clever.

Battersea power stationary

How current do blogs have to be?

It depends what they're about I suppose.

In a world as slow moving as that of the London Skyline (barring the Broadgate Tower, which is glazing over at a rate of knotts) I could be forgiven for not following things up immediately. Today's post will be about possibly the slowest advancing development saga in London. If you recognise the Towers to the left, you'll know I mean Battersea Power Station.

The photo to the left dates from sometime in the autumn. I visited the power station with Tom and Karen as they had an exhibition of Chinese art there (including piles of rotting apples, a video of thousands of laughing chinese men, and a pormographic slideshow which an upper middle class family let their 5-ish year old child watch).

Part of the exhibition was a model of the planned Battersea developments. Karen Tom and myself all agree that they looked hideous. There's a real conflict around the power station and it's surroundings' redevelopment. No one wants to surround it with forgettable apartment blocks, as this is hardly befitting an iconic building. And yet, surrounding it with eyecatching developments is just garish. Like putting Bono in the same room as Fred Dibnah (You can buy a DVD of Fred's funeral here. You can't buy a DVD of Bono's though. He's not dead yet. But members of U2 are dying every day - please give kindly).

The Power station is a rare example of an old building on a monumental scale. I am generally in favour of putting big modern buildings around smaller old ones; they don't clash as they're not competing on the same level. A small building doesn't demand that you look at it awestruck, and a skyscraper doesn't demand that you look at the intricate stonework. At Battersea it's difficult to get the balance right. The power station is awe-inspiring, but also has the quaint atmosphere of older buildings - what do you put next to that.

I have an idea - how about a skyscraper?

I've been thinking about it, the length of this post, and the more I consider it the more it seems like a good idea. Smallish modern buildings will just look silly next to it. Something like the Shard of Glass wouldn't though. Putting a huge modern edifice there will perhaps concentrate visitors' eyes on the ancientness of the power station. And after all, the power station was once a n icon of modernity. Putting something similarly striking there would be wholly in keeping with the heritage of the site. Or maybe something a bit like the new Tate Modern extension. God knows what you'd put in it though. Some sort of people I suppose. Maybe freemasons.

Possibly not argued very convincingly, but picture the scene and I think you'll agree it's a good one. There will be puppies lolloping. Puppies!

Anyway, the reason for raking all this up now is that the This is Hertfordshire website of all places announced that Rafael Vinoly, of Walkie Talkie fame, will from now on be in charge of the redevelopment as the old plans have fallen through.

'His brief will include designing a completely new master plan for the site, effectively taking development there back to square one. The previous master plan took three years to create and was followed by a decade of inaction.'

So perhaps a huge modern tower isn't out of the question. Although, it has to be said, even here the Walkie Talkie would look like an over-sized shopping trolley wrapped in cling film.

The official website says 'This site is currently under construction', which is more than can be said for the real world site. Fingers crosse dsomething will happen soon though, or the power station itself may fall into such a bad state that it will be demolished entirely.

From Portobello to docklands

Some people will have been reading this blog feeling distinctly miffed. I do of course refer to those who live outside the City of London, by which I mean 'the square mile' which constitutes the old city, now the financial district. Only around 9,200 people live in the City, represented on the council by the 'Chief Commoner'. The population was 208,000 in 1700, but dropped steadily until reaching a minimum of 4,234 in 1971. The population roughly halved in the second world war! Anyway, this means most people in Lonon don't live in the City, and therefore qualify for a good miffery due to my ignoring where they live.

It's true that I have focused almost exclusively on the City, being that I live pretty close to it (25mins walk) but, for a couple of completely distinct reasons, I have branched out this week.

Since last March, when I took part in Shoot Shoreditch, organised by bunch-of-wankers-with-a-really-good-idea Shoot Experience (so good they're now doing overseas franchises), I have been on their mailing list, which lets me know of upcoming photographic treasurehunts. There was a free one in Portobello this weekend, and as Laura lives near there I thought we could do it... and we did. The photo at the top of this post (Island Records graffiti) is my favourite out of the entries we submitted, but the one relevant to the london skyline theme of this blog is Trellick Tower (right).

It's 98m tall, so is just below the arbitrary threshold I set for inclusion in the blog, but what the hell - it's distinctive enough to make the grade I think. Skyscrapernews, ever a source of interesting facts, reveals that 'the walkways between the service shaft and main tower every two floors are based on the dimensions of train carriages to make the users of them feel more comfortable and familiar with their surroundings.' Brilliant rationale, and thoroughly needed as I doubt many people in the seventies would have had much experience of walking down corridors by themselves, what with schools, hospitals and office buildings of any type not having being invented yet. And being in a train hundreds of feet up in the air would have been a completely normal, everyday sort of experience.

As illustrated by the strategic placement of a 'woof!' in the photo, a possible further inspiration could be a dog. In particular, Odie from Garfield. The resemblance, I think you'll agree, is really quite striking.

Also, I was about to suggest that the tower's architect Erno Goldfinger (a friend of Ian Fleming's, and the inspiration for the Bond villain) may have stood in the Docklands area all those years ago, peering out to the South West, and seen the buildings to the left, and thought they'd look good rolled into one. But, as it turns out, Guy's hospital (the one on the right) at least, was built after Trellick Tower.

It wasn't a good theory anyway.

The second reason for the diversification of the geographical areas covered by the blog is that I have now bought a bike-lock, so when cycling down to Docklands I can leave the bike and wander around on foot to examine how construction is progressing.

More on that later.

Rocked and rolled

I wrote a few days ago how the Lewis Media Centre at Millbank Tower were to play host to this year's battle of the bands. I included in the post this picture , ironically mocking the Centre's severely un-rocking image (unless you count a 3m tall portrait of Jeremy Paxman as rocking... which I suppose some people might. If I'm honest I'm one of those people. I call him Jeremy "The Axeman" Paxman. That's probably also what his wife calls him in bed, and I'm not sure I want to follow this train of thought any further... or do I?...)

Turns out I underestimated the event. Not only was godfather of filth Gareth Gates present, but he also made the aforementioned hand gesture.

"Some people [me?] doubted the event would succeed – from the complexities of the itinerary to ensuring all those rockers (and journalists) could be in one room at the same time without all hell breaking loose."

The battle was a journalists only contest, which brings to mind Father Ted's all priests look-alike competition (youtube video). If I was in a band of journalists we would be called 'on the record'. One of the entries went by the moniker 'the spin band', so I'm glad to see somebody followed the journalistic theme. They didn't win though. There was tough competition... from Soulscream, no less.

Rock and Roll

It's that time of year again - the annual battle of the bands shebang. And where are the biggest, baddest meanest sons of bitches with geetars made out of the bones of small children gathering this year to shake their devilish - yet tuneful - fists at the good book?

In the Lewis Media Centre, that's where.

It's at the base of Millbank Tower, and is where we have our quarterly (nee monthly) staff meetings (I do hope they'll have gor rid of the stench of sweat and cider vomit by the time we have our next one). It's an unlikely venue, what with the walls being festooned with large black and white posterised prints of Robin Day, Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr and other such BBC political journalistic illuminaries. But they've decked it out with a red carpet and - this is the best bit - .. those two lights either side of the doors are actually flaming torches.

Rock on!

Millbank Tower and MI6 security

Chintz is how today's post will start. I'll set the tone by mentioning that a shop down the road from me does massages for babies (I wonder if they finish them off?). This website is a mucho classy advert for the expensive pieces of real estate at St George Wharf (the horrible thing to the left of this paragraph. 'Horrible' puts it a bit strongly as the tiered effect is pleasing to the eye, but the colour and the space age penthouse roofs are like a deranged chess-set let loose on the horizon.)

Last night we went to a new pub across the river from work for Katie's welcome drinks. Disappointing turn out, but an upstairs bar worth visiting; decked out and lit like a ballroom. I left at about 10.30 and took my time walking back to Pimlico tube along the river and across Vauxhall Bridge.

It was then that I had my first brush with the authorities in the course of pursuing the truth behind London planning.

When taking these photos of the MI6 building I was approached by a security guard who asked what I was taking photos of, and why. I simply gave him the honest answer that I write a website documenting changes to the Lonodn skyline, and he seemed happy enough. A more rigourously trained security guard might have questioned me as to what changes to the skyline I had in mind with my ruthless, bomb-laden Terrorist mind (should "Bin Laden" change his name to "Bomb Laden"... for the sake of clarity?), but he was a trusting old soul.

I went a bit mad on the whole photographing brightly lit buildings thing. By the end of the walk I was even resorting to photographing dimly lit buildings. Next I'll be cutting the photos with rat poison and Heroin.

So that this post isn't a complete ramble (Like last night's drunken Icke-fest) I will talk a bit about Millbank Tower, where I work. It's much maligned; it's Andrew Marr's least favourite building (but he is a git, so don't take too much notice of what he says). People at work also tend to think it's ugly, but I'm not convinced.

The shape of the building is great, I feel. I've been looking for pictures on the web to illustrate, but no joy. I will have to use words instead: The tower's floorplan is the same shape as a squashed Chewitt. If you squeeze two opposite sides then the other two sides bulge outwards. Every time I notice the Tower's shape I think of squashed chewitts and I wonder if something along these lines was the inspiration for the architects.

The glazing is admittedly drab and depressing, but that can easily be fixed, as they're doing with the old London Stock Exchange

Here's a few Millbank facts I've gleaned:

• The Labour Party, contrary to popular perception, never occupied any space in the tower itself; the party rented two floors of the base at the south of the site.
• The Conservatives now plan to move in (I'm already planning how I can subtly piss David Cameron off in the lift.)
  
• The BBC ran an obituary when Labour left millbank, even though the'd only been there about 4 years!
• The tower inspires people to take photos with the camera held at strange angles. One photo inspred this comment: "I really regret not buying that bag when I saw it yonkage ago!" Quite!
• The arials and dishes on top of the Tower appeared in the "guesswhereLondon" Flickr challenge thing.
  

Upper Thames-side photos

Channel 5 is great. In the last 5 minutes I have heard the following two phrases:

Build the Bismarck

My mother is alive because she cannot be anything that is not alive because she is infinite consciousness that cannot be destroyed

The second is due to David Icke, consipracy idiot extraordinaire. I've solved the "should I link to explain who he is, thus boosting his Google ranking" dilemma by quoting the top result for "David Icke is an idiot" on a site which isn't weird and linking to the top result for "David Icke Wrong":

David Icke is an idiot. He genuinely believes in this annunaki crap. It's funny how these people all think George Dubya is a reptilian, when, with all due respect, he is quite the idiot. You would think evil aliens controlling the world are a bit more intelligent than him.

Fecking hell - he's now on the Llangollen railway. STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY HOME!!!! "He knows his stuff... he knows his stuff..." But what stuff, Mr. gormless spectator at his Brixton Academy gig???

Only when we know who we are can we know our own freedom

I'm not taking the Richard Farley tack of accusing him of trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. I just think he's a fecking idiot.

Icke lacks the finely honed analytical skills required to discriminate between credible and delusional sources

Glad to see Chanel 5 also still does dodgy late night chat dating girls in your area lines.

I suppose you want a photo, do you?

I work here