london « Talking Bollocks

Posts Tagged ‘london

Jul

Dalston is losing skyline like a boxer loses teeth

Dalston Lane Terraces

I was up in London today and had a look around Dalston in Hackney. Busy busy busy, at least it was along Kingsland Road near Dalston Junction. Ridley Road market was busy too as is normal for a Saturday. Wow, the ripe peppers look good! And what do you know? They have finally opened Dalston Junction station again which now links Dalston to Canary Wharf. No wonder the property prices have shot up.

Just by Dalston Junction station they have built a new apartment complex named Dalston Square. Not really in keeping with the other buildings but it will pack in the people who work in Canary Wharf. It simultaneously amuses and irritates me that the façade along the front of Dalston Square has pictures of famous London sites presumably to suggest that Dalston Square is itself in the same league as the fabulous Gothic St. Pancras Station. A little further down Dalston Lane, before Queensbridge Road, there have always been some old shops. Music systems, Jerk chicken, various stuff which gave the area some character. It seems that the houses behind them, known as Dalston Lane Terraces, are Grade 2 listed and have been left empty and are becoming derelict. The council sold them but bought them back recently and now the squatters who occupy some of them have received court papers to try and get them out.

Dalston is losing buildings like a boxer loses teeth

The squatters say that they have been contributing to the community especially in the arts. They want to stay in the properties until renovation work commences and will allow access to surveyors. They are concerned that if they are thrown out then the buildings will rapidly degrade. They state that in the past squatters have been evicted from other buildings only for the council to render buildings uninhabitable by filling drains with concrete and removing cabling.

The squatters say that they are keen to talk to the council but that it has been difficult to “open a channel of communication” and they have now started a petition.

Given the way that buildings have been demolished to make way for Dalston Square and the huge gaps in the Dalston skyline where other buildings have been demolished it is understandable that one might think that the real motive for evicting the squatters is to demolish the buildings to build another high rise, faceless, well appointed bunch of rabbit hutches.

Check out http://dalstonlane.tumblr.com/ for more information.

Dalston! Paint it Black, Open Dalston, July 2009

On Dalston Terrace, Hackney Citizen, June 2009

Another “Dalston Opportunity site” burns down, Open Dalston, August 2008

Plans hatch to make or break Dalston, Hackney Citizen, July 2008

Spot the Difference in Dalston Lane, Open Dalston, September 2007

Jul

Fire in West London

By jonesxxx Leave a Comment

Categories: News and images
Tags: london, fire, airport, Heathrow, west london, burning, smoke, surrey, 9th July 2010

This is a picture taken about 2pm on Friday 9th July 2010 from Surrey overlooking west London. It seems that something is on fire. The rumour is that it’s a warehouse at Heathrow Airport.

Fire in west London

Jul

London House Prices

By jonesxxx Leave a Comment

Categories: london
Tags: london, property prices, house prices

housepricegraph

UK house prices seem far to high to me. Nestoria lists the average price of a one bedroom flat in Hackney in June 2010 was £226,000.

That’s ludicrous! Consider a working couple starting out. Maybe the guy is a bus driver and the girl works in a super market. How much would that bring in? I would have thought £30,000 tops. If a mortage lender would lends three times your salary that would make £90,000. How are they to get on the property ladder? The rental prices are high too so they’re stuffed.

The word is that, even though property prices have now started recover, we are in for another downturn. I hope that’s true. I keep an eye on a web site named www.housepricecrach.com but I found another good one recently. The web site housepricegraph.com has a chart showing London boroughs colour coded to show house price movements. It also has data on sales volumes.

Upmystreet.com is also good for checking out specific areas.

May

Warsaw 2010

By jonesxxx Leave a Comment

Categories: Hotels, Social comment, Thoughts, Travel and images
Tags: World War 2, london, commercialism, Capitalism, hotel, Restaurants, bars, Adolf Hitler, Russians, Germany, Warsaw, Sheraton, Bolesława Prusa, Charles de Gaulle, statues, Nowy Swiat, Indian, pick strawberries, Eastern Europe, public transport, communist regime, Trams, Route Master, buses, Materialism, false individualism, choice

Warsaw

Last week I visited Warsaw, staying at the Sheraton on Bolesława Prusa. A good hotel with plenty of marble. One evening I took a short walk north past the Charles de Gaulle statue onto a street named Nowy Swiat. Here can be found many restaurants and bars, probably frequented by the wealthy along with ex-patriots. After an excellent Indian at the Bhuda restaurant I took coffee at the Cafe Colombia while listening to an elderly American explaining to a couple young Poles how he admired the Russians because they had launched a military attack on a Russian cargo ship which had been commandeered by Sudanese pirates. “They picked on the wrong country!” he exclaimed many times.

On the aeroplane I had chatted to a Pole who had picked strawberries in Kent one summer in his youth. Sleeping in tents they had travelled from farm to farm. Now he was a business man travelling throughout Europe but he thought that perhaps he had enjoyed strawberry picking more.

The Russians will discuss World War 2 at the drop of a hat and he told me that when Hitler’s attention turned from attacking the UK to invading Russia this had been because the Russians had been massing an army on Germany’s eastern border. Proof of this, he said, were the thousands of Russian troops taken prisoner in the first few months.

Rondo Charles de Gaulle

This had never occurred to me. Like many Brits my knowledge of Eastern Europe during World War 2 is scanty and I had been taught that Hitler was a bit unstable and had invaded Russia merely because he wanted to take over the world. Of course this is Rubbish. With Great Britain at bay Hitler had turned his attention to a pre-emptive strike which, he must have hoped, would disable Russia.

Walking back from Nowy Swiat as the light faded I thought that Warsaw is in fact a great place to live. The public transport seems excellent and the buildings, though often blocky, are interesting and nature seems hell bent on tacking back the city with trees and grass growing everywhere. Almost as ubiquitous as the grass are the statues. I remarked on this to a Pole and was told cynically that the Russians love their statues. I got the impression that the former communist regime would throw up a statue at every intersection and I guess that after a while they must have run out of anything relevant and started building monuments to every petty bureaucrat. No offence intended to Charles de Gaulle who I’m sure played a great part in the history of Nowy Swiat.

I liked the mixture of the old and the new. The modern trams contrasting with those from the old soviet era; though noisy and drafty they have charm from having been designed before the obsession with efficiency ironed out every crease of character. I was reminded of the old open backed Route Master buses in London and how they rattled and shook.

Tram

Warsaw appears to have embraced capitalism and commercialism for it’s promise of a better future. It seems a city with a destination firmly in mind. Though not yet as rampantly commercialised as London, in some ways it is more advanced with taxis having TV screens in the headrest to beam advertising at the helpless passenger.

Unlike London, Warsaw has not yet choked on the obsession with materialism and the false individualism of choice.

Once the old trams are gone they will be missed.

Dec

Grant us rest

By jonesxxx Leave a Comment

I was working in Denmark last week. Ryan Air from Stansted to Aarhus, missed the Monday flight as the parking zone was already full. Got the Tuesday flight and then straight into a meeting in Silkeborg. Friendly chap, your Dane. Very straightforward and honest, it seems to me. On Wednesday evening I went out to look at the stars after dinner and got chatting to a Dane who was having a smoke. We compared notes on Danish society and I pontificated that Britain has more private wealth whereas Denmark has more public wealth. He said “We (Danes) are happy when even the poor can get health care”. That seemed to me the mark of a civilised society. In Britain we seem only to be happy when we can get something for ourselves. Even then, we are not really happy.

Got back on Friday afternoon then up to London in the evening for a pre Christmas dinner with some work friends. The Imperial China in Lisle Street. Leicester Square very busy. As I rode the escalator down into the tube I looked at the hundreds of people squeezing their way around and it struck me that I was one of the few who were older than 40.

I moved to London in 1986 and I think in those days the consumerist revolution had not yet swept across Britain. London was not so crowded and the infrastructure had not been modernised. On my first Saturday in London, I hopped on an old Routemaster bus and keenly remember the excitement as this post war icon rattled and shook it’s way down Threadneedle Street.

In those days London was like a massive playground for me. Something weird and interesting around every corner. Boozers, museums, markets. Oxford Street at Christmas, thousands of books at Foyle’s, the 100 club for a late drink. I loved to stand on the corner of Oxford Street and Charring Cross Road and watch the people. Dalston was a place I felt at home. – “But that’s all shove be’ind me – long ago an’ fur away, An’ there ain’t no ‘busses runnin’ from the Bank to Mandalay”….. Hmm… perhaps that doesn’t quite work but the sentiment is the same.

Arrived in Brighton about 1am and walking briskly down the hill I found myself drinking Guinness in the Quadrant. Late licensing laws are, at least, one change for the better.

On Saturday night I watched Talking Heads on BBC2. This is a series of monologues written by Alan Bennet and this one was Thora Hird playing Violet in Waiting for the Telegram. This was extremely good. Violet is an elderly woman in an old people’s home. She has been told that soon she will be receiving a telegram from the Queen. Her mind drifts back to the days when a telegram meant the death of a young man in the first world war She’s had a stroke and can’t remember words. Talking to a male nurse she gets a bit sad and says: “Don’t get yourself …..Like when you don’t come home, back, khaki and poppies”. It’s her birthday and she says:”They kept saying that a few more years and I’ll be getting the……” and she forgets the word……..”lad comes on a bike, folks stood at the door weeping…. – Telegram!”

On Desert Island Discs this morning Baroness Scotland selected Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu. I’ve heard this before but never figured out what it was. With troops in Afghanistan and the economy in recession, and not withstanding my devout agnosticism, the words seem very appropriate as we come up to Christmas.

Kind Jesus,
Who takes away the sins of the world,
Grant them rest.

Lamb of God,
Who takes away the sins of the world,
Grant them rest
Everlasting.

Nov

Is Hastings an option?

By jonesxxx Leave a Comment

Yesterday I drove over to Hastings stopping off at Bexhill on the way. The gossip in Brighton is often that Hastings is an option. A sort of cross between how Brighton is supposed to be and a fall back position. Brightonians argue through the ideas that Brighton has become too expensive, trendy, busy, full of tourists….(take your pick) and that Hastings may be an option.

War Cafe

Hastings has excellent architecture, lots of interesting passages and back streets and, indeed, it seems that the alternative set may be moving in if one judges alternative by cowboy hats, chopper trikes, idiosyncratic shops and sartorial inelegance – not that I decry such inelegance; on occasion I admire it.

We ate in a nice little restaurant which was perhaps a tad too expensive. (£18 for a steak – in Hastings?! With my reputation?!) though the fish was good value and the ambiance excellent. Later we had coffee in a quaint though ghastly little sea front cafe which appeared to have been decorated by some kind of second world was appreciation society. Churchill and Union Jacks everywhere.

approaching Ditchling Beacon

As we drove back Ditchling Beacon looked very impressive on the horizon.

Any discussion regarding relocating to Hastings usually ends with the observation that there is no work there and the rail and road connections are not good. That, then, usually is the end of the matter. However, perhaps there is another reason. On arriving back in Brighton we drove down Grand Avenue and the city felt busy and switched on. It was dark and the lights beckoned us to the pubs. To be sure, Hastings, is a nice little town but it is just that. A little town. One gets the feeling that after frequenting the gaggle of little shops and pubs downtown for a year or so one might feel a little constricted. It lacks the anonymity of a city. As Brighton does to some extend compared to London. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it is, perhaps, difficult when one is not used to it.

Of course, this is not the end of the debate. With me, it is rather like my yen to emigrate to America or move back to London. A constant theme which will, most likely, rattle around my head until the day I die.

It is the curse of those who have travelled and lived in different places to always feel dissatisfied as everywhere will lack something from somewhere else. A city will feel too big or a village too small. Africa will feel too foreign while England too mundane. Many years ago I attended The Isle of Man TT motorbike racing and we did some pubbing with the locals. They told us that The Island full of retired ex-pats who the locals term “When I’s” because they preface most statements by the words “When I” - As in “When I was in Bahrain” or “When I was in Aden”.

A friend is about to go to AntArctica to live for a few months. When he returns, will he yearn for the interminable bitter cold? Perhaps not but he’s bound to miss something.

Aug

Buildings overlooking The Thames

By jonesxxx Leave a Comment

Categories: Architecture and Art
Tags: london, Architecture, The Tate, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, tourists, Notting Hill Carnival, Bridget Riley, Gilbert and George, The Thames, 60s architecture, buildings

I visited The Tate on Sunday. Well, I always think of it as The Tate though they call it Tate Britain now. The great things about Tate Modern is that it keep the tourists out of The Tate. Or perhaps it was quiet because the Notting Hill Carnival was taking place. They had a couple of good paintings by Bridget Riley and quiet a bit of Gilbert and George. I remember seeing Gilbert and George in the street when I lived in Hackney. Not a sign of Bridget Riley though.

After The Tate I had a quick walk along the river and noticed some buildings that most people would probably think of as the epitome of 60s awfulness. However, in their settings they looked quite good.

Thames Buildings

Feb

Snow in London

By jonesxxx Leave a Comment

Categories: Thoughts
Tags: snow in london, snow, winter wonderland, london, foreign mission, "Alpha Romeo 2.0 JTS"

Last night I drove up to London just after it started snowing. It took me about 3 hours rather than 1.5 to 2. The M25 was a blizzard, we were all crawling along completely unable to tell which lane we were in. Great fun.

Finally got to the hotel in Highbury about 10:30pm Sunday night. I’m doing a course in London this week and so staying up at the Foreign Mission which is located in a private road north of Highbury Corner. Aberdeen Park is a big wide road with few cars and as I turned in the snow was fresh and I slid around a bit before gliding to a gentle halt at the side of the road.

The mission was lovely and war as usual.

This morning I woke to find it had snowed even more overnight. AND IT HAD SETTLED. Which it rarely does in London. Emerging into daylight I was pleased to note that the great advantages of an Alpha Romeo GT 2.0 JTS is that it looks good before it snows and then after, when it’s covered in snow. This can’t be said for other cars that one could mention. – Note the courteous scraping of snow from the offside lower windscreen to allow easy viewing of my parking permit.

Alpha Romeo 2.0 JTS

I walked down to the tube and the train was jam packed. However, emerging at King’s Cross there was no traffic. No buses were running and it seemed that everyone had taken the day off work. So there were virtually no cars. There were very few people about. I walked through the streets and London had a fantastic winter wonderland feel to it. Very quiet, very few people or traffic. A few people throwing snow balls. Trees outlined with snow. Amazing. It’s the most snow we’ve had in London for 18 years. So say the BBC.

Bikes in snow

By lunch time we had heard that the congestion charge had was being waived for today. A lot of good to tell us now. I could have driven in and parked outside the office! On the way home on the tube I heard that “due to the conditions” the central line was closed.
Typical bloody England. Even trains protected by tunnels hidden safely deep underground get affected by snow. “The wrong sort fo snow” jokes going around.

Still snowing when I got back to the Mission and with luck we’ll get a ton more.

Of course being a cynic I full acknowledge that by Friday London will be a ghastly mess with driving rain and dirt caked sludge covering every surface. Hospitals without power, the army on the streets and Gordon bloody Brown assuring us that his government will do “everything that can be done”. – Like what Gordon – “All alternatives are being examined” – Like what Gordon – “We will do whatever is necessary” – Yeh, but like what Gordon?

But in the mean time it’s quite nice.