Day Fifty-Six - Belvedere Road, SE19

Just a slight diversion on the way home so I could go to Sainsbury's.

This house on Belvedere Road was reputedly built for a retired admiral, which explains the porthole-styled windows up top but I think he was being a bit hopeful if he thought he'd see the sea from here.

Of course today it's been converted into flats. Wonder how the top floor one works.

On the discman today: AM - Slapp Happy Casablanca Moon and most of Slapp Happy/Henry Cow Desperate Straights as the train was so delayed PM - finished off the Happy Cow and then King Crimson The Beat Club Bremen 1972

Day Fifty-Five - Hamlet Road, SE19

I was very confused this morning - had Mr Brown called a snap general election and I'd missed it?

Turns out (my new favourite phrase) that there's a council by-election in the Crystal Palace Ward of the London Borough of Bromley. Because of the weird local government topography of London, five different boroughs - Bromley, Croydon, Southwark, Lambeth and Lewisham - meet at what used to be a tree at the top of Anerley Hill, right at the heart of Crystal Palace/Upper Norwood. This means that the area is (a) divided between five different authorities, so there's no joined-up policy for the place, and (b) it's at the borders of all of them, so none of them pay it much attention anyway. And that although I live in the London Borough of Croydon, the station - which is ten minutes' walk away - is in Bromley. Which is why (a) I knew nothing about the by-election, and (b) I was so confused this morning.

On the discman today: AM - Jazkamer Balls the Size of Texas, Liver the Size of Brazil PM - Philip Jeck Stoke

Day Fifty-Four - Blackfriars Road, SE1

Waiting for Will Of Pub Guide fame outside Southwark tube station this evening - we were off drinking, just for a change - I caught this chap trotting for his bus. He caught it, you'll be pleased to know.

I was more interested in the old sign behind him, which is underneath the railway line from London Bridge to Waterloo East. On the other side it says "Blackfriars Station", which is very confusing as Blackfriars Station is on the other side of the river. Turns out that the original Blackfriars Station was actually here from 1864 to 1885 - part of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Confusingly, there never seems to have been a "Charing Cross Railway" as such - the nearest to that name was Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway, a forerunner of the Northern Line tube which goes nearby but which never had a Blackfriars Station (and the CC, E&H Railway never went south of the river anyway).

Well. Never before has waiting for Will led to such a revelation - and such a mystery.

On the discman today: AM -Various Artifacts of Australian Experimental Music 1930-1973 PM - Werner Dafeldecker / Michael Moser / Burkhard Stangl Markknochen Wälzt Eisscholle

Day Fifty-Three - Strand, WC2

No tubes from Strand station today, but that's not because of the strike - it's because it has been closed since 1994 (not to mention not having been called "Strand" since 1917). Given it's weird appendix-like relation to the Piccadilly Line I'm surprised it stayed open as long as it did - trains seemed to serve it about once a fortnight and by the time you'd gone down in the lift and waited an age you might as well have walked up Kingsway to Holborn.

I was walking up The Strand this morning as I was on my way to a meeting in the Gothic labyrinth that is the Royal Courts of Justice. In our meeting room I found a sign which summed up the place so well I had to take a picture (expressly forbidden by the security guard who frisked me) and you can see it here.

On the discman today: AM - Art Bears Live At The RIO Festival, Milan, 1 May 1979 PM - Werner Dafeldecker and Boris D Hegenbart Eis 9

Day Fifty-Two - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

Looks like they're starting the tube link then...

On the discman today: AM - Jack Bruce Things We Like (ugh) PM - Tony Oxley 4 Compositions For Sextet

Day Fifty-One - Petty France, SW1

Petty France - the road on which my office is situated - along with several other roads in the vicinity of Wellington Barracks was cordoned off to traffic today so that two posh boys and all their posh friends (except wicked stepmother) could remember their Mum, who (apparently) died in an accident ten years ago. It seems she wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, as shown by the fact that she didn't put her seatbelt on when her drunk chauffeur drove her and her lover at speed through Paris at night.

For some reason this requires concrete barriers to be put up all around somewhere which is always full of soldiers, many of them with guns. At least they didn't try to check my bag, else I might have been a bit annoyed.

On the discman today: AM and PM - Photek Modus Operandi

Day Fifty - Mowbray Road, SE19

Look at the first floor windows on these houses, not to mention the area around the doors. When does "settling" become "subsidence"? It reminds me of a line from Hancock's Half Hour:

(rough quote from memory)
Tony: Look at this place! Talk about subsidence! 23 Railway Cuttings!
Miss Pugh: So?
Tony: Ten years ago it was number 9!

On the discman today: AM - Ikue Mori with Marc Ribot and Robert Quine Painted Desert "We did it in two days, but on the second day I had clams for breakfast. ...We needed three days." Robert Quine PM - Morphine The Night

Day Forty-Nine - Tottenham Court Road, W1

Home via Goodge Street tonight as I met Louise for Italian food and The Simpsons Movie. While waiting for her (woman's prerogative to be late, etc) I noticed all these To Let signs above the station. Now, I'd like a Central London pad as much as anyone but directly above a tube station might be a bit too busy for me.

On the discman today: AM - Marc Ribot Saints

Day Forty-Eight - Maberley Road, SE19

I've walked past this van every day for years and often tutted about how dirty the front is. I've only just realised that it's an old BT van! I knew it was worth getting a pair of glasses...

(August Bank Holiday yesterday, hence no post)

On the discman today: AM - Michael Nesmith And The Hits Just Keep On Comin' PM - Michael Nesmith Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash

Day Forty-Seven - somewhere between Gipsy Hill and West Norwood

Ah, Sport magazine. Free every Friday morning from a smiley lady outside the station.

For a few years during the nineties there was a great general sport magazine called Total Sport (edited by Danny Kelly, apparently once married to Hazel O'Connor! I didn't know that) which covered a variety of sports in an in-depth, interesting and informative way. It failed because British magazine buyers apparently can't focus on more than one sport at a time, or at least won't part with money to do so. When Sport came along late last year I thought that we might have a successor to that late lamented mag. And free! My favourite price, as that attractive older woman in the Somerfield advert used to say.

How wrong I was. It's just an excuse to sell advertising like all the rest. Articles are short and facile and most are flogging something either implicitly or explicitly ("Preview Sport - brought to you by L'Oreal Paris Men Expert", "Mazda and The London Triathlon").

Best of all is the regular feature on the wife or girlfriend of a sports star - this week, Bec Cartwright, wife of Lleyton Hewitt and apparently ex-Home And Away (I wouldn't know, I'm a Neighbours man myself). I couldn't work out whether this was a sop to the ladies or an excuse to show a pretty lady in a bikini, and then I read the closing line of the first para:

"A nubile young thing with a tenuous link to sport who looks good in their pants? Bingo! Woof!! Etc!!!"

I think that should be the new name for the feature, actually - "A nubile young thing with a tenuous link to sport who looks good in their pants - brought to you by Flashermac Raincoats".

But perhaps the ultimate giveaway about the whole farrago is that the magazine took a one month summer break. Not enough sport in summer for them to cover? No, not enough commuters for them to inflict their advertising on during the traditional holiday season.

Back after the Bank Holiday with some carefree posts about kittens and fluffy things to counterbalance this week's heaviosity.

On the discman today: AM - Wire Chairs Missing PM - Wire 154

Day Forty-Six - Victoria Station, SW1

No escape from London Lite.

In the evening there are two free newspapers, thelondonpaper (owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International and therefore beyond the pale) and London Lite (owned by Associated Newspapers and therefore...are you spotting a pattern?). My beef with these papers isn't that they steal readers from proper papers - the only evening paper London has had since the eighties is the Evening Standard, which is awful and part of the Associated Newspapers empire anyway (and therefore...) - it's that the content is so trivial.

I got copies of both of them on the way home today - one from the floor on platform 9 at Victoria, the other from a seat on the train - and I was going to regale you with how awful their content was. On reflection that sounds pretty tedious, so I'll let you look at their websites (above) and judge for yourself. However, here's some comparisons between the two to give those of you who are two lazy to click an idea of what they contribute to the enlightenment of our citizens.

Pictures of Amy Winehouse

thelondonpaper: 2
London Lite: 0, but 2 of minor royals

Pictures of Lily Allen

thelondonpaper: 1
London Lite: 0, but an article about how Ava Leigh is going to "rob Lily of her dub crown".

Pictures of Peaches Geldof

thelondonpaper: 1
London Lite: 3

Pictures of two cute girls who have just got their GCSE results

thelondonpaper: 0 (but they have a story about how a "teenage gun victim" got two As in her BTECs)
London Lite: 1

Wisdom on the letters page

thelondonpaper: I say bring in a life-for-life law (death penalty) and put the fear back into yobs! Would you kill if you knew you would die for it?
London Lite: I am surprised by the number of female commuters in [the] evening. In my day they would be at home cooking their husband's dinner.

Examples from the stalker column

thelondonpaper: On 19 August, 1pm, you were the dark brunette wearing a dark top and short skirt. You walked towards Harrow on the Hill and boarded the same Metropolitan line train to Baker Street. You have the best legs in Harrow".
London Lite: alas, doesn't have one. Yet.

On the discman today: AM - This Heat Live 80/81 PM - Wire Pink Flag

Day Forty-Five - Victoria Street, SW1

It's Day Three of I Hate Free Newspapers Week and my bile is suffering from a midweek dip. For now, rejoice in how the five o'clock mass of commuters give this London Lite hawker a wide berth.

On an unrelated note, why won't it stop raining?

On the discman today: AM - This Heat Made Available PM - This Heat Repeat

Day Forty-Four - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

And here's another thing about free newspapers (as part of I Hate Free Newspapers Week): because they're free, people have no sense of ownership about them. If you've forked out 40-70p for a paper you tend to take it with you, but if you've taken it in the same way you would a advertising flyer (hmmm...) you treat it in a different way. This means people just leave them wherever they fall, be it the seat of the train or somewhere on the station, where it gets blown about and eventually lies sodden, waiting for a late-running commuter to slip on as they dash for their train.

I'll admit it can be handy that the papers are left on trains, especially tubes, if you need something to focus on to stay awake during your journey home when too drunk to read something proper, but the amount of extra rubbish they generate is a real nuisance. And the publishers aren't going to try too hard to get them cleared up as they rely on the fact that each copy of the paper is read by more than one person to sell their advertising space for higher rates.

Tomorrow I think I'll have something to say about the content of the freebies. Hold on to your hats...

On the discman today: AM - This Heat This Heat PM - This Heat Deceit

Day Forty-Three - Crystal Palace Station, SE19

This week is I Hate Free Newspapers Week here at Commuted to Life.

I was buying a cup of tea from the chap in the kiosk at Crystal Palace station this morning, and I asked him why his usual table of newspapers wasn't there. After telling me that actually they'd been missing for a few weeks (I thought doing this blog would make me more observant...) he said that the installation of the bins for the free Metro paper earlier this year had caused his newspaper sales to go down from £125 a day to £35 a day, and that what with the small profit he made out of that anyway and the £30 a week he had to pay to get them delivered in the first place, it was no longer worth his while to offer newspapers for sale. "People coming through here in the morning are in a hurry, " he said, "and they just want to grab something. If it's free they'll just take it. Same thing's happened at Streatham Hill and Penge East".

This incensed me. Metro, part of the Daily Mail/Associated Newpapers stable, let's not forget, is a forgettable, trite newspaper, chewing-gum for the eyes if you will. And because of their ability to get their bins into every railway station in London (thanks, yet again, John Major for privatising the railways in the pursuit of mammon over integrated infrastructure) it leads to more than one negative consequence:

a) the livelihood of the independent kiosk owner is threatened, leading to the possibility of him closing down. Apart from the effect on him, that would mean that the users of the station would be denied his other services, such as a cup of tea for 70p and a friendly chat of a morning. No doubt if/when he goes, Southern Railway will offer his pitch to one of the coffee chains, leading to sullen service and the two-quid latte being the only options.

b) making quality papers less available, dumbing down the entire populace. From the last few years of commuting I know that it was actually the quality papers that sold out most quickly at the kiosk. Convenience leads to no choice but to read people-hating trivia tripe.

Yes, I know people can buy proper papers from newsagents near the station. Yes, I know they can bring a book. But as the kiosk guy said, most people are in a hurry in the morning. By usurping the choice of papers at the station with the monolithic moronity of Metro, the only winners are the odious Associated Newspapers and those that take their shilling.

And I shall be ranting about the evening freebies over the next few days too, don't you worry.

On the discman today: AM and PM - Kevin Drumm Sheer Hellish Miasma

Day Forty-Two - Maberley Road, SE19

Upper Norwood Tardis.

(London Loo Co, please come and pick this up as it's been here for as long as I can remember.)

On the discman today: AM and PM - Simon Dupree and the Big Sound Part of my Past: the Simon Dupree and the Big Sound Anthology

Day Forty-One - Victoria Station Concourse, SW1

On the discman today: AM and PM - Simon Dupree and the Big Sound Part of my Past: the Simon Dupree and the Big Sound Anthology

Day Forty - Maberley Road, SE19

People from outside Europe (and people from posh suburbs) are often amused and perplexed by the idea of allotments, but in big cities where gardens are small or non-existent they provide an opportunity for people to grown their own produce and serve as a focal point for communities. Of course (huge generalisations on the way) working class city dwellers now subsist entirely on frozen ready meals and lard, so the annoying urban middle-middle-class have taken over whole swathes of allotments to supplement their organic vegetable delivery boxes.

I think the miserable weather is affecting my mood.

On the discman today: AM and PM - Daphne Oram Oramics

Day Thirty-Nine - somewhere near Battersea Park, SW8

Why is it I've taken so many photos around Battersea Park? Well, it's because the train tends to stop either in or near the station for ages, waiting to get into Victoria, and I tend to get bored and take my camera out.

The train stopped here for five minutes this morning. Then, just over the bridge and within sight of platform 9 at Victoria, we sat for twenty minutes for no readily apparent reason. An angry mob circled the driver as he eventually got out of his cab once we were in the station, demanding answers. He said that there were "problems in the station" and that his public address system was broken, honest, he had been making announcements but we couldn't hear them. The way he said it made it clear that it was, in fact, our fault that we couldn't hear him. Got to work in a pretty bad mood, not helped by the ridiculously low seats in the dilapidated old carriages they saw fit to put on today that made my back hurt like billy-o. Mumble grumble.

On the discman today: AM - Various Artifacts of Australian Experimental Music 1930-1973 PM - Belle and Sebastian If You're Feeling Sinister

Day Thirty-Eight - Anerley Road, SE19

This, of course, assumes that postmen can read...

Went to the GBBF again tonight, this time with Louise. Pictorial evidence of both nights - and a podcast from Tuesday , get me, I'm so 2004 - can be found here.

On the discman today: AM - Mahavishnu Orchestra The Inner Mounting Flame

Day Thirty-Seven - Victoria Street, SW1

The glass, steel and concrete canyon that is Victoria Street. You wouldn't think that Westminster Cathedral is just off to the right of that single-decker bus.

On the discman today: AM and PM - Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds of Fire