Topic: Happy New Year

"Christmas at Covent Garden"


To start the new year, some completely unnecessary facts about London... but there interesting anyway...(is that slightly contradictory?)

1. More than 300 languages are spoken in this lovely town
2. The first traffic lights in the world were installed near House of Commons in 1868
3. More than one third of Greater London are parks, woods, gardens or other nice green areas (it is in fact the greenest urban agglomeration on planet earth with more than 1 million inhabitants...)
4. The City of London is actually rather small: 2.6 km2 and 9200 residents (but over 360'000 "city workers". Myself, I'm a resident of the Borough of Southwark (Mayor: Bob Skelly, Population: 269'200 (31st largest "city" of the UK) of which 53% white British and 13.3% black African. I belong to the 9% other white...)
5. The shortest postal address is "1 London". It's the former residence of the Duke of Wellington.
6. Brixton Market was the first market in the UK with electricity. You find the market on (surprise, surprise) Electric Avenue.
7. Notting Hill Carnival is the second largest carnival in the world (after Rio of course).
8. A fragrance called "Madeleine" was introduced at St James Park, Euston and Piccadilly tube station in an effort to make the tube smell better on 23rd March 2001. It was taken out of action on 24th March 2001 as it was making people feel sick...
9. The peak hour for tube suicides is 11am. (No idea why...)


And for today's lyrics:

And have you seen the old man
Outside the seaman's mission
His memory is fading,
With those medal ribbons he wears
And in our winter city,
the rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero
And a world that doesn't care

Streets of London - Ralph McTell

Topic: Discovering London - Part Three

Welocme to Borough Market, London's premier foodie haunt. Located at the southern end of London Bridge, is the capital’s oldest market, - and probably the loudest from the hundreds of trains rumbling daily overhead into London Bridge station. Shoppers come from all over London and beyond to stroll round the market and buy organic meat, cheese, fruit, vegetables and patisserie from enthusiastic and knowledgeable stallholders.
And here lies the problem. Although it is in itself quite charming, don't get me wrong, I try to be as organic as possible (which basically – as a human being - I am anyway…) and I love quality food, houmous and (yes, here you get it…) good fresh bread as much as any decent human being - despite, poor old Jamie Oliver who has lost the battle against fast food as children preferred the spaghetti bolognese in cans more than his own hand made ones…) but misusing the word "organic" in front of each of these items leading to an inflationary effect on prices… well, ASDA here I come.

And second, as it is promoted primarily as a tourist destination (at least on Saturdays you hear every language except English) and therefore even boosts a German Wursttheke, it has exactly that: a lot of tourists. Switzerland has Morgarten and St. Jakob as battlefields. London has Oxford Circus on a Saturday afternoon and Borough Market. The place is quite terrifying; if you ever want to prepare for a ski season in Switzerland, here’s your training camp. Weapons of choice (and literally weapons of tourist mass destruction include backpacks the size you use for a Mount Everest expedition, umbrellas (the super size family version) and bodybuilder elbows. I went once. And to be honest – yepp – I will go again. It’s, despite the above horror stories, quite a nice place - and close to where I live. But there are plenty of other markets in this city… 


But Borough Market is under threat. Government finally gave the go-ahead to Network Rail to widen the railway viaducts into London Bridge to ease bottlenecks on commuter services after a 10 year planning battle. Modern times, here we come...
Local residents and businesses fear that the proposed works will destroy buildings in the Georgian and Victorian streets round the market and threaten the market itself. And if it goes ahead, this area of labyrinth style streets, small shops, bars and restaurants will, at best, be a building site for years.

But you get quite good spiced hot cider…

For today's lyrics - another battle (and in honor of a reunited band, that just recently gave their comeback at the Millenium Dome):

I hear the horses' thunder
Down in the valley blow,
I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon,
Waiting for the eastern glow.

The Battle of Evermore - Led Zeppelin

Topic: News of the week - Morons...

Well, it's seems, being gay sometimes has it's advantages... at least you don't have children and therefore do not apply for Child Benefits...

Private details of EVERY family in Britain 'lost' by taxman in major security blunder

Seeing is believing...otherwise it's difficult to believe... Have fun watching THIS... (It may take a while loading, but it's worth it...)

The Chancellor was rocked by a new crisis this evening over the loss of confidential bank details of virtually every family in Britain.

Alistair Darling had to make an emergency statement to the Commons revealing that records of 7.2 million bank accounts of all parents or guardians who claim child benefits had gone missing. MPs gasped when he revealed that the names, addresses, bank numbers and National Insurance numbers of all those affected had been on two computer discs which had been lost.
A total of 25 million people's names are on the discs, potentially leaving them all at risk of identity fraud.

Some comments I found:

"Another disater brought to you - the taxpaying public - by New Labour, the Masters of Disaster, the unchallenged champions of Unforeseen Consequence and the Great Lie. A party in a brewery springs to mind."

"Why do I bother shredding bank statements etc. when these clowns give the information away in bulk."

Topic: Discovering London - Part Two

This Time: Alexandra Palace - Harringey N22 7AY London

Built in 1873 as the "People's Palace", burnt down 16 days later and reopened in 1875. It is today used for venues of all sorts. But instead of great blabla, just some poetic moments in my blog. And if you read my blog properly (which - no doubt - you definitively do...) you remember parts of it:

The Pooters walked to Watney Lodge

One Sunday morning hot and still

Where public footpaths used to dodge

Round elms and oaks to Muswell Hill.

That burning buttercuppy day

The local dogs were curled in sleep,

The writhing trunks of flowery May

Were polished by the sides of sheep.

And only footsteps in a lane

And birdsong broke the silence round

And chuffs of the Great Northern train

For Alexandra Palace bound

The Watney Lodge I seem to see

Is gabled gothic hard and red,

With here a monkey puzzle tree

And there a round geranium bed.

Each mansion, each new-planted pine,

Each short and ostentatious drive

Meant Morning Prayer and beef and wine

And Queen Victoria alive.

John Betjeman - Diary of a Nobody



Palace with a view...


And for today's lyrics:
So, anyway
There I was
Just sitting on your porch
Drinking in
The sweetest decline
The sweetest decline
Sober mind

Beth Orton - Sweetest Decline

Topic: Addicted

From Wikipedia (the "if you need to know something don't look further"-website):

"An addiction is a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences to the individuals health, mental state or social life. The term is often reserved for drug addictions but it is sometimes applied to other compulsions, such as problem gambling, compulsive overeating, and hyperreligiosity ."

In my case, it's coffee. At least Monday to Friday during working hours. And I'm so addicted, that I even drink this horrible brew on the left, that calls itself coffee. It's actually a disgrace and it should be forbidden to use that name. But hey! The "I brew something that should be coffee but never ever tastes like it"-machine in our office produces this chemical substance for free and four or five Starbucks coffees are definitively a greater harm to my bank account than this brew to my health.

Isn't it amazing? Today was the first flight of the Airbus 380, the biggest passenger jet ever. Humans can produce amazing things. Unfortunately that doesn't count for coffee machines...

For today's lyrics:

So give me coffee and TV
Peacefully
I've seen so much, I'm going blind
And I'm brain-dead virtually

Coffee and TV - Blur

Topic: OiOiOi Lads...what was that???

WellWell, that was not the perfect weekend for the English folks here... Everyone here - The BBC, ITV, The Sun, The Mirror, the upper class daily paper The Times and so on - hoped and thought on Friday, that this weekend there will be complete victory. And probably the breweries hoped it most as they counted on at least 30 Million Pints being sold... Well...uhmmm... it has rather been a complete disaster...

"Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful, from each foreign stroke:
As the loud blast that tears the skies,
Serves but to root thy native oak.

Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves; Britons never, never, never will be slaves."

James Thomson (1700 - 1748)

For today's lyrics (as a small piece of comfort):

I see, you need a trial of fire - a coward would wisely walk away
Help them, help us buy your time - Hideouts get discovered
I think you’ll find, everybody loves a loser
So you’ll be fine, you won’t be lonely long

Morcheeba - Everybody Loves A Loser

Topic: News of the week

The BBC-News of the week:

Two visitors to the Tate Modern have fallen into the hole which forms the centrepiece of the new installation in the Turbine Hall. Colombian artist Salcedo said the work - on display to the public until April next year - symbolised racial hatred and division in society. "I always try to relate my work to tragedy," she said.

I think that this art does not only symbolise division in society, but also the division into the 99.9% intelligent people and the 0.1% stupid enough to fall into an artificial crack. To be honest - for me - tooo much beer is the only explanation...

Salcedo added: "It represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred."

Well, for the two that fell into it, it was definitively an experience... the expression " he/she was so embarrassed that he/she wished the ground would open up and swallow him/her" gets a completely new meaning...

Oh and by the way - next headline - the car in which the jury of the Diana trial travelled around Paris ironically CRASHED...!!!! In front of the Ritz Hotel... If this is not British humour at its best, what is it then...

And for the lyrics of the week:

I'm falling down
And fifteen thousand people scream
They were all begging for your dreams
I'm falling down

Muse - Falling Down

Topic: World famous - Part Three

Nothing to do with London, but in remembrance to my favourite team at the World Cup, which unfortunately has been sent home. Now I just hope, that England kicks, crushes and humiliates the French in the semi-final...

New Zealand rugby team - All Blacks
Uploaded by Neocrisis62

Topic: World famous - Part Two

Greenwich Mean Time was adopted across the island of Great Britain by the Railway Clearing House in 1847, and by almost all railway companies by the following year - HA, again my beloved railways, which set the pace... In 1880, GMT was legally adopted throughout the island of Great Britain. Switzerland followed introduced GMT (+1) in 1894... Not so sure, if this would still be the case today...
And it's not only time, that starts and ends here. What would we climbers, mountaineers, hickers, GPS users, travelers, politicians and diplomats do without the good old East-West stuff. The good old USA, which at that time were still somehow diplomatic and really cared about the world ticking the same, called the "International Meridian Conference" in 1884, where it was decided "That the Conference proposes to the Governments here represented the adoption of the meridian passing through the centre of the transit instrument at the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude." Abstaining from voting was (surprise, surprise...) FRANCE! Their maps still showed for a long time the zero meridian going through Paris... Well, Santo Domingo said "No" - not that this would be important... Et voila: www.from0to180degreesandback.com
Oh and back to time. Did you know that UT1 is the principal form of Universal Time. UT1 is the same everywhere on Earth, and is proportional to the true rotation angle of the Earth with respect to a fixed frame of reference. The ratio of UT1 to mean sidereal time is defined to be 0.997269566329084 − 5.8684×10−11T + 5.9×10−15T², where T is the number of Julian centuries of 36525 days each that have elapsed since JD 2451545.0 (J2000). I didn't. And to be honest, i really don't care anyway...

and this is me, on 52° 28'40'' N and 0° 0'0'' W?/E?


It's now 22.51 (GMT) and time for the usual lyrics:

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Pink Floyd - Time


Greenwich Park on a grey London Autumn Day

Topic: Snapshot of the week - Part Two

UiUiUi, I have been pretty lazy that last couple of days and didn't write too much. Have been quite busy though. Not really with going out, but more having loooong working hours. But that should calm down. And as snapshot of the week, a "homage" to my current project manager. It's Ramadan time... Welcome to multicultural London. Not everyone seems to take the stuff serious though - and regarding "multikulti": another colleague did not come to work for two days two weeks ago as it was Jewish New Year. And yes, they can work together...:-))

Any news from my side? Not too much. Spend a very short "long" weekend back home. Didn't manage to see as many folks as I wanted, but had a lovely evening/night/early morning at the wedding of a good friend of mine. Dear Wedding-Couple if you happen to read this: Again all the best!!!

Oh, and yepp, discovered again, that I HATE Oxford Street on a Saturday and Sunday. Had a huge shopping list, as my flat could still, uhmmm, need some decoration. Great plans, zero outcome. Bought absolutely nothing, zero, niente, nada, rien! Simply too crowded the whole thing. Well then, saved some money and while writing this, doing some active Home-Shopping...And for any visitors to come, good news. The Christmas Shop at Selfridges has already open. I am waiting for the day, they start selling Easter Eggs before Christmas...

And as always, when I write something in here, the lyrics of the day. This time in remembrance of Oxford Street:

If you were there, beware
The serpent soul pinchers
Three hundred and fifty no thank yous and nobody flinches
Go on girl go on, give us something gruesome
We require your grief, the thugs help the thieves
As they're trying to rob the words from her gob and
Take the source of the innocents

Arctic Monkeys - If You Were There, Beware

Topic: Snapshot of the week - Part One

Think, this cinema has seen better days - kind of remined me of "Cinema Paradiso".

Hoxton Road - Hoxton, London E2