All work and no play

More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts.

If I repeat it enough it may just become a reality.

I've not been busy exactly, but writing the blog hasn't seemed like an attractive proposition somehow. It hasn't put in an appearance near near or at the top of the leader-board of my diverse lifestyle choice options.

Until, that is, I saw that they have now removed the scaffolding from Cornhill Exchange at Bank and replaced it with pinkness.

Worth noting, I thought.

If I don't leave a post about the Channel 4 offices in the next few days please leave me lots of abusive comments.

Think about it, think think about it

Two things

1. I was just on the bus reading the FREE paper over someone's shoulder. On four occasions they deliberately instigated a protective tilt. What's wrong with the world today? Think about it, think think about it.
2. Fight!
   
   Signs often say "witnesses needed... serious assault... sexual assualt... robbery... BLISTERS!"
   
   This one ways "Fight".
   

Oh blog - why art though veering from buildings?

Broadgate Tower - an icon of our age

It's been a while yet again since I last wrote. But the Broadgate Tower waits for no man. It's left me behind and is mingling with the stars and mythical creatures.

I do of course mean it's allstar appearance on tonight's Dragon's den.

I've never noticed it before, despite being an avid viewer. This means that either:

1. all the other episodes (bar tonight's, which was a recap episode, 3 months on) were filmed before the tower was tall enough/respectable looking enough to be featured as a cutaway shot or (even better) as a backdrop for Evan Harris' summation speech.
2. the Dragons have moved den!

Either way I know that as well as looking like it's filmed in an East End converted warehouse studio, it is actually filmed in such a place.

But despite its new glitzy lifestyle it still lacks two things.

1. Completion. It actually seems to be going backwards as yesterday, after the Arsenal Chelsea game, the builders had blocked bishopsgate street and were in the process of - or so it seemed - erecting a new crane!
2. A name. This, I admit, is all my fault. I have been remiss in not capitalising on the, albeit limited, momentum I had. I will make up for this by printing t-shirts and selling on lulu or cafepress, where you can also buy this most interesting calendar for 2008. I have seen the back of every page of the calendar and they were most white and clean, which is what you'd expect.
   
   The Gherkin has a name and is doing well for itself. They've just illuminated an entire floor bright red (it doesn't, alas, show up too well on the photo, but it is very eye-catching). Would that ever have happened to plain old 30 St Mary's Axe? I think not.

Why Y?

The masses have spoken, and this is what they say to capitalising this capital blog sa a result of the Willis Building - at least externally - being completed.

o = 0
n = 0
d = 1
o = 0
n = 0
k = 0
y = 5
l = 3
i = 4
n = 2
e = 0

So the Y it is.

To all those disappointed voters, here's what you could have won (and to all the winners congratulations on choosing, in my view, the most aesthetically pleasing variant, and to all those losers who voted "I" - for shame, for shame):

lonDon skyline
london skyLine
london skylIne
london skyliNe

Never mind though - Broadgate Tower looks to be nearly finished so there'll be plenty of opportunities for new capitals (and - I salivate! - the chance for me to make a branching diagram!!!)

One final thing which has surprised me, given that I haven't added to the blog for a month, is that I am now the number 1 google result for london skyline! There must be a lot of very disappointed web browsers coming here now. So, if you're one of them, please accept my heartfelt apologies.

Phew!

Nuff said*.

*Unless you're visually impaired or using a screen reader, in which case I should probably add that I've just writtne 50,000 words in a month and they, very roughly speaking, amount to a novel of some description.

A novel idea

Just a quick post to apologise in advance as there will be silence here for the rest of the month, for I am attempting to write a novel for national novel writing month.

Heres' a link to my novel page if you want to drop by to say hello or leave a few words of encouagement... actually - the nanowrimo site has no facility for doing that, so don't bother.

It's going quite well so far - 12,000 words, and a plot that's getting more and more fun to dream up - so hopefully will mean I persevere til the end of November... so, basically, goodbye for now.

London - a global city (2)

I very rarely ask my readers to immediately click on an image when they visit my blog, but today is an exception. So click! (but do please come back in a second or two to finish reading).

As promised, it is the second highlight of the Global cities exhibition at the Tate Modern over the summer. Part of a larger work, (bits of which can be read here and also here), it's more of an pictorially annotated essay than fine art, but is a thought-provoking work all the same. The second link is particularly thought provoking, about how planned architecture is a thing of the past - the public sector is now less influential in developing cities, there are no grand ideological theories of architecture as there are no public purses to patronise them. 'Architects no longer write manifestos. At most they write portraits of particular cities... an absence of a utopian drive is perhaps almost as serious as an overdose of it.'

I have always had an admiration for the architects of the 50's, 60's and 70's, who built - often but not always - buildings which, by today's (and probably most eras' standards) look horrific. The reason they built those modernist buildings was because they were constructing a new utopia for all. There's an urban myth that the architect of Peckham actually hanged herself when she saw how it had turned out. I don't know whether or not it's true, but there was certainly a lot of passion that went into the new architecture.

Letters!

I've just remembered my pledge to capitalise one letter of the header for every building that got completed.

The Willis Building is now complete, externally at least, so it's about time I capitalised on this (ho hum).

But which letter?

That's where YOU come in. Please vote below (I'm not letting you vote for the first letter of each word as that would detract from the statement).