Weather and portents for the week ahead. It will rain, but new orchards augur well
Weather
More rain fell on London yesterday (Sunday) than the previous month and a half combined. About 21mm came down, making it the year’s second wettest day after June 11. But don’t let the numbers fool you. That June day may have seen more rain, but yesterday was wetter. June’s wetness evaporated into the light midsummer air. Yesterday’s wetness seeped through skin, muscles and nerves and came to rest inside our bones themselves. It resides there now, in the deepest marrow of our thickest bones, and carries with it this certain knowledge: there will be no drying until the spring.
The forecast for the week of 24-29 September 2012:
- Monday – Wettest.
- Tuesday – Wetter.
- Wednesday – Wet.
- Thursday – Wettish.
- Friday – Wettisher.
The full BBC weather forecast is here.
Portents
New orchards are being planted across London as part of the London Orchard Project. In the dark ages orchards were considered hallowed ground, and any person who chopped down an apple tree was fined a cow as punishment. The planting of orchards in London must then be considered a good augury for the city’s future.
24 Sep 2012
Map showing London's air ambulance callouts by postcode. Now give them money
This is a map which shows the callouts London Air Ambulance has made in 2012, broken down by postcode. So far in 2012 my postcode has 2x “pedestrian vs car”, which tells me something. Have a look to see what’s going on where you live.
View London’s Air Ambulance – Mission data 2012 in a larger map
The air ambulance service is a charity and it needs your money and awareness. They are throwing a “wear red” day on 28th September (deets here) to raise awareness and that would be a great thing for you to do. And if red really doesn’t suit you or want to just cut to the chase you can donate online here and wear whatever the hell colour you want.
The charity gets bonus marks for having the following postal address:
London’s Air Ambulance, The Helipad, The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, E1 1BB.
19 Sep 2012
Annoying habits of Londoners #10: Being unable to order pub food unless it's a burger
Burgers have long been a popular option for the hungry pub-goer, and with good reason. They arrive fast, are predictable in nature, and can easily be rescued from disaster by the application of reassuringly familiar condiments. They are a worthy, perhaps even a necessary, part of any pub-diners portfolio.
But for many Londoners, especially the hip young trendsters of the Eastern fringe, the burger is no longer an occasional choice. It is the only choice. That means it is no choice at all.
There’s no need to look far for evidence of this trend. Maps and apps devoted to London’s burger scene proliferate like so many scattered sesame seeds. Evidence? The whole city is a smoking bun.
Following this trend to its logical conclusion, some pubs in Hackney (where else?) have dispensed with other food entirely. Not for them the fading laminate and unlikely juxtapositions of a traditional pub menu. Instead, The Sebright Arms and the Three Compasses have turned their whole kitchens over to gourmet burger grillers. In these pubs, it’s pretty much burger or nowt. You don’t want to make a choice? Don’t worry, they’re not about to let you.
This burger obsession could easily be dismissed as a craze. That would be to understate both its significance and its staying power.
Crazes begin capriciously and end abruptly. Burger-love, on the contrary, is firmly established and deeply rooted. It’s causes are these:
1. A hungry inner child
The twenty-something generation, exposed in its early years to relentless promotion of fast food burger brands, and in its later years to relentless denigration of the same, is a generation confused. It wants the Happy Meal without the heart disease. The pub burger answers this call. It’s a variation on a Big Mac, but made from organic heritage beef and bearing a £7 price tag. With such a meal, the inner child is both fed and reassured.
2. Rank cowardice
For the casual diner (and what other diner is there now?), a burger on a menu is a beacon of certainty in a shifting world. Popping in to this pub or that to meet this friend or that, adrift in places they only pretend to know, the diner welcomes a burger like a lost-lost friend.
Often, trends are novel only in their timing. The burger fetish is actually deeply conservative. It clings to what it knows. The hip young burger eaters of today are the Tory councillors of tomorrow.
3. A crippling lack of imagination
I know why you do it, because I know why I do it. To order a burger is to decide not to make a decision. It’s an abrogation of thought. I may not be certain that I want a burger, but I know for sure that I don’t not want one. So I’ll have the burger, because the burger is there to be had.
I’m not pointing fingers. We’re all of us to blame. The reliance on burgers to solve the problem of feeling hungry in a pub is a collective failure of imagination on the part of a whole generation. The pubs have responded to this in the the only way they know how: with a collective failure of imagination of their own. This results in burgers, and nothing else. Amongst the diversity of the city, a monoculture thrives. We aren’t eating the burgers. The burgers are eating us.
Image – A burger, by Simon Doggett on Flickr under Creative Commons
See also:
The secret shame of London’s fried chicken shops
Previous annoying habits of Londoners, including applauding at the cinema and keeping spreadsheets of their dates, can be read here.
18 Sep 2012
City history: 16th century booze holder goes on show at Museum of London Docklands
This jug for booze can be seen at the Museum of London Docklands from 17-26 September.
Not being an expert on 16th century booze, I can do no better than quote the Museum of London press release:
“This tankard holds three pints. Was it used to carry beer from the barrel to the table or, was this someone’s personal beer mug? The only other items that are contemporary and similar in appearance come from the Mary Rose, although the Mary Rose examples carry 8 pints. In this period ship building in the Ratcliff area was well established. A link between these drinking vessels and ships is clearly emerging. Perhaps these containers were designed to guarantee minimal spillage on rocky boats.”
Sailors. I knew it.
“On the base of the tankard the initials RH are inscribed. It is not known whether these are the initials of the owner, the maker or perhaps even the ship.The preservation of this object is astonishing and was made possible by it having lain buried in the muddy depths of the Thames.
Ah, booze. Bringing people together over 500 years. You might think you can’t understand these Londoners from far back in the past, but then you realise they wanted a pint just as much as you.
More details at the Museum of London Docklands website.
17 Sep 2012
Weather and portents for the week ahead. What is an equinox anyway?
Weather
In the week of 17-21 Sep 2012, an unaccustomed stillness will settle on the city. Clouds will float but never threaten. The sun will flit but never burn. We have entered seasonal purgatory. No waiting room could be more serene.
- Monday – Light cloud, light sun.
- Tuesday – Light cloud, light sun.
- Wednesday – Light cloud, light sun.
- Thursday – Light cloud, light sun.
- Friday – Light cloud, light sun, light rain.
The full BBC weather forecast is here.
Portents
The discovery of a skeleton in Leicestershire which may be that of Richard III bodes ill for any Plantagenets in London. Folk superstition holds that when a body is exhumed from its place of burial, a relative of the exhumed is doomed to die.
Seasonal notes
The autumn equinox occurs on Saturday, 22 September. At the equinox, day and night are of equal length. Light and darkness are in perfect balance. Enjoy it, citizens. For on the following day, the darkening begins.
17 Sep 2012
Westfield East has more visitors than London's top 10 museums and galleries combined
This methodologically suspect chart isn’t really making a serious point except that A LOT of people like to spend their leisure time shopping at Westfield Stratford. It’s getting an average of 800,000 visitors a week. That’s more than the number of people who go to the British Museum, National Gallery, Tate Modern, Natural History Museum, Science Museum, V&A, Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, National Portrait Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral combined.
Apples and pears you might say. But I don’t think it’s a useless comparison. The point is that people really love to shop, and in particular they really love to shop at Westfield. No-one’s forcing them. That’s something to pick the bones out of.
Question: What, if anything, does it say about us all and the messed up times in which we live?
NB the chart was amended after publication after the original underestimated the number of football watchers. Thanks to James in the comments for raising that.
Standard – Westfield Stratford City draws record 47m visitors in first year
Figures for Westfield West from its opening year in 2009
Figures for visitor attractions from ALVA for 2011
Figures for Premier League attendance from 2011/12
See also:
City Sketch: Westfield Stratford’s opening day
14 Sep 2012
Weather and portents for the week ahead
Weather
It has not rained for 10 days now. The earth in the city parks is as grey and hard as stone. Joggers would rather run on tarmac, it’s easier on their knees. Leaves, sucked dry, droop downwards – as if eager to begin their autumn fall. But the wind is rising. The city’s thirst will soon be slaked.
- Monday – Clouds build. With the night comes rain.
- Tuesday – The wet earth exhales in relief, bringing cooler temperatures.
- Wednesday – The seasons observe an uncertain truce.
- Thursday – A fickle day. Don’t trust it.
- Friday – The autumn wind sweeps summer far away.
The full BBC weather forecast is here.
Portents
There are no portents acting on the city’s inhabitants this week. Instead, your meaningless lives will be subject to the blind caprice of fate.
10 Sep 2012
Weather, portents and milestones for the week ahead. The saddest weather forecast of the year
Weather
A final burst of sunshine will illumine the shortening days. This is the week when windowsill tomatoes, noruished and neglected alike, will redden ripe for eating. This is the week when suntanned limbs will receive their final coat of varnish. This week, for the last time, summer wears its crown.
It’s the saddest forecast of the whole year. Every golden ray brings not heat, but the certain promise of winter’s coming chill. God damn this forecast to hell.
- Monday – Sun.
- Tuesday – Sun.
- Wednesday – Sun.
- Thursday – Sun.
- Friday – Sun.
The full BBC weather forecast is here.
Portents
By the French Revolutionary Calendar, we now enter the second half of the month of Fructidor, or in Thomas Carlyle’s proposed English equivalent: Fruitidor. The month is indelibly associated with the repressive coup of 1797, of which Wikipedia offers the following assesment:
“A formal bankruptcy of the state…crowned the misgovernment of this disastrous time.”
Happy Fruitidor to you all.
Milestones
The Great Fire of London did its worst on the 4th of September 1666. This week, as welcome rays of sunshine warm your eager skin, consider raising a glass in sombre memory of the hot horror of that September time, many years ago.
03 Sep 2012
Analysis of London's sewage reveals that ecstasy use here is relatively HIGH
A city’s sewage reveals traces of its citizens drug intake, and the details could give anybody interested in evidence-based drug policy some useful facts to work with. The scientific paper says:
“Raw sewage samples from 19 large European cities were collected by the participants of the study during a single week in March 2011 and analyzed for the urinary biomarkers of cocaine, amphetamine, ecstasy, methamphetamine and cannabis.”
What did we learn?
“High per capita ecstasy loads were measured in Dutch cities, as well as in Antwerp and London.”
As mashed as Antwerp!? Well well.
There’s more on this story at Science Daily. The paper is from The Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), and the abstract is here.
29 Aug 2012
Weather, portents and milestones for the week ahead. The moon waxes, blackberries are ripe
Weather
In the week of 27-31 Aug 2012, the mornings will be nondescript, and best avoided entirely. After lunch, we should expect regular variations on the theme of sun and rain, which will grant the week a pleasing meteorological unity even while the days appear fickle and inconstant. Viz:
- Monday – Rain in the afternoon.
- Tuesday – Sun in the afternoon.
- Wednesday – Rain and sun in the afternoon.
- Thursday – Sun and rain in the afternoon.
- Friday – Nondescript.
The full BBC weather forecast is here.
Portents
On Friday a full moon will rise. Folk tradition once held that to stare too long at the full moon caused lunacy. This belief was eroded by centuries of scientific progress which perhaps reached its symbolic apex when Neil Armstrong became the first earthling to set foot on the moon in 1969. Despite prolonged exposure to the lunar surface, he displayed no signs of erraticism in later life. He died this past weekend. As you catch sight of Friday’s rising moon, do raise a glass to the memory of this fine man.
Milestones
Monday is the August Bank Holiday. This innovation in worker’s welfare was initiated in the 1870s by John Lubbock, who was also one of the great figures of Victorian archaeology, a champion of evolution who carried Darwin’s coffin, and the inventor of the words Neolithic and Palaeolithic. The story goes that he desired bank holidays so that workers would have the opportunity to play and watch a bit of cricket. So as you enjoy this bank holiday free from the toils of accustomed labour, do raise a glass to the memory of this fine man.
Seasonal notes
Late August is a good time of year to pick and eat London’s wild blackberries, their drupelets now empurpled by the still-strong summer sun. Here are some ideas about how to do that.
27 Aug 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Nice map of London's fruit trees shows you where to pick free food
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- A unique collection of photos of Edwardian Londoners
- Punk brewery just as sexist and homophobic as the industry they rail against
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
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