Category: Cranes

Nova behind Pavlova

Another day doing Other Things, another evening getting ever more tired, and wondering what to put here.

When in doubt … Pavlova:

I didn’t know whether to pick that, or this closer-up version, so I show both:

Behind Pavlova is Nova. Did they call it Nova to rhyme?

While I’m in this directory, here’s the lady with a crane behind her:

All three of those taken within a couple of minutes.

That was nearly three years ago, when Nova was still being readied for its first occupants, still living up to its name. The interior wouldn’t look like that now, if only because there’d be less light pouring in from the far side.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Possible blogging interruptions

Because of how my life is going to be for the next week or so, there may be interruptions to the daily stream of blog postings here, daily in the sense of being something every day however trifling or banal, and daily in the sense also of me doing something before every bed time.There may even be no postings at all, for the next clutch of days.

This particular blog posting is being done before bed time tomorrow evening, and also before bed time this evening. But after midnight, which means it can either be backdated to today or left to date itself as tomorrow, the latter option being the one I select now. All of which is within the rules I choose to go by.

But, be warned. Maybe there won’t be any interruptions. We shall see.

Meanwhile here is a rather randomly selected photo, taken last summer, of the old version of New Scotland Yard in the process of being deconstructed …:

… to make way for this. So far, this (see previous sentence) has yet to become visible. It has yet to show, as they say of pregnant ladies.

In a perfect world, the traffic light in my photo would have displayed a number, denoting the number of seconds that will elapse before the light turns red. But this is not a perfect world, as you have surely noticed on the basis of similar – maybe worse – circumstances that in your life you have experienced. The traffic light had already turned red.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The centre of London from Alexandra Palace ten years ago

Yes, ten years ago to the day. April 23rd, 2008:

Memo to self: Go again to Alexandra Palace, and try to photo the exact same view, to illustrate what has changed.

No Cheesegrater. The Gherkin stands in something resembling splendid isolation.

No Shard. Just to the right of middle tower of the three dark Barbican (I think) towers on the right, we see Guy’s Hospital, in warmly lit concrete. The Shard is now right next to that.

That’s just for starters. Those are the two biggest changes. But there’d surely be others. The Gherkin is now almost surrounded by huge stuff.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

In Tottenham Court Road

I have an abundance of CDs, and CDs last for ever, provided you don’t mistreat them violently. I do not mistreat my CDs at all. CD players, however, do not last for ever, no matter how well you treat them. I was in Tottenham Court Road this afternoon, seeking another CD player, small enough to go beside my bed, to replace the small CD player there which is misbehaving.

The weather was grim and grey. We had a couple of first days of spring a while back, but so far there has been no actual spring. Not good photoing weather, in other words. But I did get a few shots of this ensemble, of the BT Tower, pollarded trees, and cranes, of which this was my favourite:

I tried a little “sharpen lightly” on that, and it looked, as you would expect, sharper. But, the weather wasn’t sharp today, so I undid it. That is exactly what emerged from the camera.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

An encouraging picture for Spurs

I became fixated on Spurs in the 1960s, like a baby goose, because then they were so good. Plus, I always liked their Jewish angle and still do. I have supported them, strictly at a distance and media access permitting, ever since. They’ve been sporadically good since that ancient time, but never as good. Finally, that seems like it might be changing.

Today Spurs beat Chelsea at Chelsea, the last time they did that having been in 1990. Spurs are now in fourth place, which if they stay there is high enough to get them into the Champions League again. They are now 8 points clear of Chelsea in fifth. With seven more games to be played, it’s not settled yet, but things just got a lot better for Spurs.

I just watched Dele Alli’s two goals on the TV highlights, and with both it was not just the skill but the speed with which he did what he did that was so impressive. Before that, Eriksen hit what the radio commentators were calling a potential goal of the season. One of those long distance, fast and late inswingers.

So, to celebrate, here is a photo I took of the new Spurs stadium, which will get moved into next season or thenabouts. It will be a few games before the Spurs team settles in and starts enjoying their home advantage whenever they play there. But judging by how well they did this season at the at first unfamiliar Wembley, it shouldn’t take them too long to settle into New White Hart Lane.

So, this is how New White Hart Lane was looking last November, with one of the Walthamstow reservoirs in the foreground:

Mmmm. Cranes.

I haven’t checked progress more recently, and can offer no photos from since then. But here are 103 more pictures, and counting, of New White Hart Lane’s progress. I knew you’d be excited.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Goodnight and see you tomorrow

Today I got up at 7am, worked on and off on a big piece of writing, then dined at Chateau Samizdata, out west, and am now back here, as in home, having not done anything here, as in at this blog.

Here is a photo chosen from the archives, pretty much at random:

Taken in March 2012, i.e. six years ago, when the Shard was just being finished. Taken from out east, beside the Victoria Docks.

And now I will go to bed, and get up just as early tomorrow morning as I was up today, and I will finish that big piece of writing. I promise this. That’s the plan, anyway. One thing is for sure. I am in no state to finish it now.

Goodnight and see you tomorrow.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Great Big City Thing – new Big City Things – a not so big City Thing

GodDaughter2 having dragged me into London at the crack of 10.30am (which is when that Traviata dress rehearsal started), I of course got to Embankment Tube early, on account of being so scared of being late. I had some time to kill.

So, instead of turning left at the Embankment Tube ticket machines and just trudging up Villiers Street to Trafalgar Square and on to the ENO’s Colosseum, I instead turned right, and went up onto the north London end of the downstream version of the Hungerford Footbridge(s). It’s a favourite little spot of mine, concerning which, maybe, there will (although I promise nothing) be more here, soon or whenever.

For now, consider just this one photo, taken from that spot, at that time:

Because it is the morning, the light is not what I am used to. The Big Things of the City of London are not well light, because back lit.

The big picture story here is that the Big Things of the City of London are, slowly but surely, metamorphosing into one Great Big City Thing.

But when I got home and had a closer look, I was intrigued to see two moderately Big Things already clearly to be seen.

You probably noticed this one already:

That’s the Scalpel. That the Scalpel has been going up has been obvious for some time.

But this one came as rather more of a surprise. This detail had to be enlarged, or you might miss it, as I did, until I got home and looked carefully:

That, ladies and gents, hiding in among all the bigger Things, is the much touted but seemingly never actually happening (but it actually is) Can of Ham:

The Can of Ham is called that because it will look like a can of ham:

Come to think of it, I have a vague recollection of visiting those Big City Things, about … a while back. Bear with me while I rootle through the photo-archives.Yes, here we go. I was there on June 3rd, last year.

The Scalpel was already well under way, thanks to some particularly entertaining cranage:

And it definitely was the Scalpel, because it said so at the bottom:

But the Can of Ham was also already starting to go up:

As you can clearly see if you take a closer look at what it says at the bottom there:

By trying to call this thing “Seventy St. Mary Axe”, but by making it look exactly like a can of ham, and quite a big and visible one, big enough and visible enough for it to need a particular and memorable name, they screwed up on the naming front. It was only ever going to be called the “Can of Ham”.

Some bunch of idiots long ago tried to get the Gherkin called 30 St Mary Axe, and that never stuck either.

50 St Mary Axe is also a Thing, but such a small Thing that nobody cares what that’s called, so that actually is called 50 St Mary Axe.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A temporary RCM corridor – the inside and the outside

I visit the Royal College of Music quite a lot these days, thanks to GodDaughter2 studying there. There were those Bach Cantatas. Last Thursday there was a recital of songs by Women Composers, in which GD2 performed. And this evening, there was the RCMIOS (RCM International Opera School) production of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. All excellent.

It doesn’t feel right taking lots of photos while in the place, but here was a snap that I both liked and didn’t feel bad about taking:

They’re hardly going to call that snooping, are they?

The RCM is a truly bizarre agglomeration of buildings. The corridors joining this bit of it to that bit of it are labyrinthine. I never know where I am, if only because I am usually following GD2 around the place, rather than finding my own way around.

Here is another snap I reckoned it okay to take, of some building work in progress:

The fact that both of these snaps feature things which are only temporary is what makes me think them not to be breaches of etiquette. I don’t know if that’s truly right, but it feels right to me.

However, the point of these two photos is, as I later (like: one hour ago) realised, that they are both photos of the same things. The first photo is the corridor from the inside, and the second photo, in addition to all that grubbing about in the earth at the bottom, also features the same corridor from the outside. The outside of a corridor is not normally something you get to see, is it?

The reason I found myself inside that corridor is that it is the temporary way of getting from the main part of the Royal College to the college bar and canteen. I took the above photo on my way from that bar and canteen to the main entrance of the College. I was on my own at the time.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Up on the roof

The view from on top of my block of flats is jot quite high enough to be really great, like, say, the view from the top of the Tate Modern Extension. Plus, there is the great lump that is Hide Tower, right outside my front window, which blocks off a huge chunk of London.

But if the light is playing games, things can get entertaining. While grubbing back in the archives looking for a shot, from my roof, of the now deceased New Scotland Yard building just off Victoria Street, I came across this shot, taken just under two years ago, looking from my roof along Chapter Street, towards Battersea Power Station:

Cranes, roof clutter, vapour trails. Lovely.

I find that I can best photo a sunset, not by photoing the sunset itself, but by photoing it with and behind buildings, and showing what it can do to buildings. In the right light, the most commonplace of buildings can be transformed into something far less commonplace.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The light and the lights on Blackfriars Bridge

This is the last of my postings about my walkabouts beyond Lower Marsh on Jan 5th and on Jan 18th, the three photos below having been taken on Jan 18th.

Just as on Jan 5th, the light was extraordinary. On Jan 5th, it was, for me, at its most extraordinary on Blackfriars Road, and then at Victoria Station (see the posting immediate below this one). On Jan 18th, at the same time of the day, it was at its most extraordinary when I was on Blackfriars road bridge, which is what Blackfriars Road turns into when it crosses the river. Blackfriars Bridge being the one next to the Blackfriars railway station bridge, as you can very clearly see here:

What we see there is the now nearly horizontal sunlight bashing in under the clouds overhead and picking out the bridge. Very dramatic. And just as on Jan 5th, the light was particularly good at picking out something painted red. On Jan 5th, it was a crane, the very same crane that we see in the above photo, in the distance, in front of 240 Blackfriars. On Jan 18th, it was Blackfriars road bridge itself.

The above photo captured the drama that I saw at the time. The next photo, taken moments before the one above, isn’t so dramatic. It felt very dramatic, but my photo captures little of the drama that I saw. The light that illluminated that scaffolding in the middle looked amazing. But I now have to point it out to you:

So, why this photo? Well, for my purposes, it does have one great merit, which is that it shows that the street lights, on the right of the road bridge as we look along it, were not switched on. Yet moments later, these lights were “switched on”, by the sun, just as similarly un-electrified lights in Victoria Station had been lit up by the sun on Jan 5th:

Behind these lights are the lower floors of One Blackfriars, now nearing completion.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog