Russell Davies

snowday

It snowed in London today. Not a big deal in some places but we've not seen this much snow for 18 years.

Good things:

Schools closed. The building we live in has been resounding with the extra-special laughs of children playing when they should be at school. Squared by their joy with the snow. Most of them have never seen this much.

London's delighted. There are snowmen all over Central London. People have come out of their offices and made snowmen. How splendid is that? Try as we might we can't be all cynical and miserable about snow. Not all of us anyway. This is enhanced because there are so many people living here from countries that see even less snow than we do. There was a regular flow of people outside the flat last night taking pictures of each other in the snow. Lovely.

Bad things:

People complaining about the collapse of the infrastructure. What do they expect? It doesn't snow much in London, should we be spending lots of money on the assumption that it might?

There are no other bad things.

coups neatly executed

Yes, there's your Bond and your Bourne and your Harry Palmer. But if you really want action taken you need your Albert Campion.

talk about the As

This interview with Bill Drummond often pops into my mind. I like the strategies he tries out to deal with the musical abundance we live with these days, such as spending a year only listening to music beginning with B. I find that unless I trick myself into paying attention to music that I either just revert to tried and trusted favourites or let all sorts of new stuff drift by me an in ambient haze. Not really listening.

So I thought I'd try a 26 week experiment; listening to a new letter every week. Just to see what I notice. This is week A.

Projects for paying attention to attention. Those seem interesting now.

180

Being anxious middle-class parents we're always trying to find ways to trick Arthur into learning. Arithmetic has been a bit of a focus recently, school want him to be better at doing stuff in his head. There's not really a good way to practice that. If you throw random sums at him, or encourage him to count change or add-up number plates in the way you're supposed to (you know, 'make a game of it') he knows exactly what you're up to and refuses to play along.

Without really thinking about it I bought a dartboard on Saturday morning, just because it was cold and I knew we'd be stuck inside all day. And it turns out to be the perfect mental arithmetic tutor. Arthur loves darts (I think it's the magic combination of throwing, danger and the possibility of televisual fame). And he's doing maths in his head without even knowing he's learning. Ha! Next - the campaign for darts in schools.

open for business

advanced passenger trains of thought

Dave twittered this, the other day. Which got me wondering what the origin of the term was, what was the original thing with bells and whistles on it. Wondering aloud, that is, on twitter. Which led James to send me this link, which initially suggests it's a US train reference (as Meg had suspected) but then veers away at the last minute and plumps for:

"However, it’s more probable the slang sense of the term comes from that close musical relative of the calliope, the theatre organ. Extraordinary instruments such as the Mighty Wurlitzer augmented their basic repertoire by all sorts of sound effects to help the organist accompany silent films, among them car horns, sirens, and bird whistles. These effects were called toys, and organs often had toy counters with 20 or more noisemakers on them, including various bells and whistles."

A bit later in the day, however, another James was kind enough to consult some actual books - his OED and his Oxford Idiom Dictionary both of which suggest it originated "in allusion to the various bells and whistles of old fairground organs".

Which is right? Who knows?

A bit later, while deliciousing the worldwidewords link I realised I'd already tagged a couple of things with whistles. Including a lovely little post from the now sadly defunct MusicThing. Which led me to discover the parade of marvels you get when you type 'Acme Whistle' into ebay. I want all of them.

And it made me think of a thing I'd like to build. And I might actually be capable of doing. An instrument built only of bells and whistles. Anything else would be superfluous.

And then, a bit later, Dave twittered this:

I'm not saying this means anything much. Just that people are nice for sharing. And that when an idle thought gets sprayed round the web it can be more interesting than just keeping it in your head.

Anyway.

(And my silly headline has me fondly remembering the APT)

if you can't do it in powerpoint, it's not worth doing

A powerpoint sketch for my Lyddle End house. If Archigram had had powerpoint, maybe they'd have actually got something built.

you're going to be hearing a lot more about these

building sights

For some reason I've been paying more attention to building sites recently. Three in particular.

Noho Square has been of interest for a while because it's right next to our school and I walk past it almost every day. It's where the Middlesex Hospital used to be. It's been controversial, mostly because lots of the residents like to think they live in Fitzrovia rather than Noho. (Although we're embarrased by both and tend to say "just off the Euston Road".) We really paid attention when the demolition work started, because it really disrupted life at the school. And we were imagining what the subsequent building work was going to do. And then, just as the thing had been knocked down the credit crunch struck and the whole project ground to a halt.

I'm not quite clear who owns it now, and if anyone's got the money to develop it. Reports are confusing. But we're rather pleased that it's not dispruting the life of the school much. The joyful thing has been the way the lack of a hospital lets you see so much more of the sky. It's rather nice around there at the moment. And makes you realise, if you live your life in the middle of the city how deprived of long sight-lines you can be.

 

The shame that always strikes me though is what a waste this flat bit of nothingness is. Couldn't there be something better that could be done with it while the real estate people wait for the economy to get stupid again? It'd make a brilliant little park if you could quickly turf it over. Or stick some temporary astroturf on it or something. Someone needs to invent some sort of Temporary Playful Zone technology that can be deployed over bricks and rubble.

The other two sites are sort of related:

One's called Central St Giles. I walk past this a lot too. Again, I was excited for a while because the destruction of the previous thing opened up the sightlines to the back of Centrepoint - which has always been my favourite London building. (And which I keep writing about in the hope that I'll get an invite to become a member of Paramount)

St Giles and St Giles' Circus are the best sign-posted, least known places in London. There are roadsigns for St Giles' Circus all over Central London (at least I think there are, there used to be, but I don't drive enough to know any more) but if you ask most Londoners where St Giles' Circus is they won't know. I guess most people would call it Tottenham Court Road. The station below has usurped the identity of the land above.

I bet this'll get even more pronounced as Tottenham Court Road gets rebuilt and expands. (That's the other third one.) Seeing the Astoria shut and the shops close down along Oxford Street brings home how extensive it's going to be. I hope they don't close the snooker club.

Central St Giles is sort of interesting because it's a developer really flying in the face of psychogeography. That little bit of London seems to have a history of being a bit disastorous. It was once known The Rookery, and was one of Victorian London's worse slums. And the Centre Point bus station is a bit of a blight to this day.

Be nice to see if it really can breath new life into St Giles or if it'll just be more shops.

Anyway.

lyddle end admin

I've restarted the steady flow of tiny buildings into the postal system, so if you've not had yours yet, just hang on. Or, if you want to get your own, as Dom and gang have done, that'd be great. It's been a bit tricky to find overseas Hornby stores so participants outside the UK are going to get really small buildings in the post from me. I hope that'll be OK.

Obviously it's no longer realistic to expect everyone to be done by the end of January. So let's now say the deadline is the end of Feb. But, in the mean time, it'd be nice if everyone who's got a building would record it on flickr, perhaps write a note about their plans, or show their early thinking as Keiran has done. That we way can see who's playing and what progress is being made. Tag it lyddleend2050 and it should show up on the blog.

And, I think I should say that's it for new entrants. At least for buildings supplied by me. If you've emailled to date then you're in. After now, not so much. Though if you want to get your own then welcome aboard, hurrah.