Tomorrow, Patrick Crozier and I will, all being well, recording a conversation about the Industrial Revolution, aka The Kink.
Too busy re-remembering what they said to be able to write about that now.
Category: Friends
Robot car thoughts
I get emails from Google telling me what the internet has been saying about robot cars, and the most recent such email concerned a Forbes piece, entitled Full Self-Driving Cars Are Still A Long Way Off – Here’s Why. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a robot car believer in the long run, and a robot car sceptic in the short run. People who tell you that robot cars are just about to multiply all over our big cities are hyping – in plain English, lying. But robot cars will eventually happen, and when they do finally get into their stride they’ll change the world. But, I say again, in the short run, it ain’t happening any time soon.
I had another listen to this recorded conversation that Patrick Crozier and I had about transport, in November 2018. Half an hour into this, the fact that Google itself was making noises about how robot cars were now really really going to happen really really soon, just after Christmas, blah blah, was mentioned, and I expressed scepticism. I have now been proved right. Robot cars are still promised, Real Soon Now, and are still not with us in a big way. (The way that e-scooters are already with us in a small way.)
About fifty minutes into that recorded conversation with Patrick, I mention a libertarian headbanger pamphlet I wrote in the 1990s about transport. When I wrote that, I assumed that the system as a whole would be the clever bit, and the vehicles would merely take their orders from this system. I later thought that the way robot cars then started to be developed was proving me wrong. Now, I suspect that the system as a whole will have to be organised differently from the way roads are organised now, and that the system as a whole will end up being highly intelligent, just as I said way back in the last century. More like railways now than the roads now. The reason robot cars are taking so long actually to arrive is that it is being realised that in order for them even to arrive in the first place, the environment they operate in will have to be reorganised in their favour. And once that happens, it will make sense to have lots more central control.
I also had clever things to say about how robot cars would maybe look more like the most expensive sort of Ferraris than regular cars. But that was by-the-by. The point of such whimsy was merely to emphasise that actually, we don’t now know what robot vehicles will end up looking like and behaving like, any more than they knew in the 1890s how cars would end up looking.
Woodcat and Oscar
Am I becoming a cat lady in my old age? Probably. Although it may be more that, as I get older, I become less bothered about pretending not to be a cat lady, having always been one.
That’s Oscar, and a wooden cat, photoed just as I was about to leave GodDaughter2’s family in the South of France last January, and head for Carcassonne airport and back to London. I was all packed up and read to go, and waiting. So I filled the time photoing the two cats in question.
The reason I show so many photos of this photo-session is that if I merely showed you one of the last two, of Oscar next to Woodcat, you’d be assuming that Oscar was there, and I put Woodcat next to him. But, the above chronologically displayed photos show that I was photoing Woodcat, who remained immobile throughout, and then Oscar joined in. Rather obligingly, I think.
Remembering a happy birthday choral music experience
I’m now concocting a posting based on some photos I took in the South of France while visiting GodDaughter2’s family. This visit was in January of this year (which now feels like about five years ago), and I was accordingly looking for whatever other postings I had done about that expedition, so as to link back rather than repeat myself.
And, while looking for such postings, I also encountered this posting which I posted thenabouts, which also concerned GodDaughter2.
This was not a perfect piece of writing, but it was an adequate piece of writing (given that I was hungover when I wrote it), which described a perfect experience (at the party that caused the hangover). Accordingly I now give it a qualified recommendation and declare it to be worth a re-read, or, just as likely, a read in the first place. (Reader numbers here are now rising, and some people reading this blog now were not reading it then.)
Particularly recommended to those who enjoy good choral singing and who consequently find bad choral singing particularly painful to listen to.
The view from The Point
I’ve already done several photo-postings about that walk Alastair and I did, from Blackheath to the Dome. There was that posting that rhymed. There was a cat. There was that amazing photo of the River that Alastair did. There was Lord Nelson. Well, time for some photos taken at our Official Designated Destination. Our actual first thing we decided to visit which would supply me with plenty of photo-opportunities, after we had met up at Blackheath Station, was this:
Beyond the Point Hill sign is The Point. We got to that by walking up … well, here are a couple of maps. On the left, how to get from Blackheath Station to The Point. And on the right, why you would bother, the point of The Point being what you can see from The Point:
The point of this first photo is to explain why the photos that follow are the sort that you might not consider to be that great:
This was not the first photo I photoed from The Point, but it makes my point, which is that what you can see from The Point is most of it a really long way away. The photos that follow are all very zoomy.
For me the most striking Things to be seen were the Docklands Towers. There are now quite a lot of them, compared to how many there were when I vaguely recall last visiting this spot.
First, two views of the entire Docklands Cluster:
And next up, a couple of close-ups of this same cluster:
The light could have been better, but it was what it was.
I really like how Docklands is turning out. One or two of the towers there have a bit of distinction about them, especially One Park Drive. But the sum is greater than the parts, I think. This is because almost all these towers go straight up. There are no Gherkins, Cheesegraters, Scalpels, Walkie-Talkies or Cans of Ham. Just gravity following towers done in the most efficient way possible. And the result is a classic spontaneous order of skyscrapers, all done in the modern vernacular. Without gravity, there’d be little logic. But with gravity, and without the starchitectural urge to defy it, it is all starting to look rather impressive. I like the City, with all its weirdness and eccentricity, but I’m glad London also has a classic skyscraper cluster in the form of Docklands. It can only grow and only get more impressive.
I like the idea of people looking at photos of it, and saying: Where’s that? “London.” London? I’d never have guessed.
Off to the right, we can see the Dome:
The stuff to the left of the Dome is the muddle on the other side of the River, to the east of Docklands. The sooner that muddle gets gobbled up by the Docklands Tower Cluster the better. To the right of the Dome, south of it, on the Greenwich Peninsular, there’s already more stuff rising up, with more to come.
Off to the left, all the eccentricity of central London is duly on show, but even further away:
Let’s take closer-up looks at bits of that:
The photo on the right is a different photo. But the image on the left is a detail cropped out of the bigger and more panoramic shot. In that left hand shot you can clearly see the BT Tower in the distance there, as also One Blackfriars, looking very squat and far less elegant than it might have. For which, Alastair reminded me, we can thank Prince Charles.
And speaking of way in the distance, Alastair also helped with this next photo. Basically, he directed it and I just pushed the button, what with his eyesight now being so much better than mine:
Now that I’m home and looking at a screen twenty inches or so away from me, I can clearly see both The Wheel, and … the new Wembley Arch. I could dimly perceive the Wheel on the day, but the Wembley Arch I totally took on trust. Yet, there it is, way off in the distance on the right, being hovered over, like waiters, by two cranes.
And on the right, a new central London architectural eccentricity, in the form of that strange white triangle that is often to be seen now in photos of London from the south east. It looks like something you might click on to get video to play. But that’s the Scalpel.
So, there it is. That’s how the Big Things of London are/were looking during the Lockdown of 2020. Will London continue to develope, or will it pause for a decade? Or longer? We shall see. Or I will. I hope.
Memo to self: Go back there on a sunnier day. In a few weeks time, after it’s cooled down a bit.
Patrick Crozier and I talk about French military disappointments (and so does Antoine Clarke)
These disappointments happened in 1870, 1914, 1917, 1940, 1944(?) and 1954. We don’t talk about them in chronological order, because we started with 1914, which was the failed French Ardennes offensive, right at the start of World War 1. But events in all of those years get a mention.
Listen to our conversation here, where there is also lots of further detail from Patrick. Under where it says “Notes” there are 20 items of relevant information, any one of which could have been expanded into a decent blog posting in its own right.
But hello, what’s this? It’s a conversation between Patrick and our mutual friend Antoine Clarke, whom Patrick and I mentioned in our conversation, several times. This was recorded nearly a decade ago. Not having heard it before, I listened to it last night, further delaying me in putting up this posting.
My main reaction to what Antoine said is that, clearly, what I said about how the French “self image” switched, in Parisian artistic circles, from warmonger to peacenik, took its time spreading to the rest of the country. Antoine talks vividly about his ancestors telling their children that the reason they were born was to get Alsace-Lorraine back from the Germans. Also, he said fascinating things about reparations. French had to pay reparations to get the Germans out of France after the 1870 disaster. And they paid the lot, and the Germans left, far quicker than had been expected. Everyone chipped in voluntarily. I knew none of this.
In general, I think that following our chat about Lockdown, Patrick and I showed a return to form, assuming I’m allowed to say that. Maybe you’ll think better of our Lockdown chat than I do, but for me the trouble with that was that all I recall us doing was expressing our own opinions, much as anyone listening could have done for himself. But people listening need to be told at least some things they didn’t already know, just like Antoine does in his talk with Patrick, for instance with all that stuff about reparations that I knew nothing about. At least, when we talked about France, Patrick and I had read interesting books which people listening might not have read. Patrick had been reading this book, and I’d been reading this book. (I copied both those links from Patrick’s Notes.) That may not be anything like an eyewitness account following one of us having been present as a small child at Dien Bien Phu, or a great uncle reminiscing about bombing French civilians following the D-Day landings. But it is something.
Still Thames water at the beginning of Lockdown
I think that, on balance, this was the best photo I got yesterday:
But I didn’t photo it yesterday. I couldn’t have. This was taken on April 5th, by Alastair. He showed it to me on his phone, and I said, can I stick it here. No problem.
What we see is the effect of Lockdown when it began, and when it was as tight as they could make it. The point being: no boats moving on the River. So, in the absence of wind, the surface of the Thames is ultra-smooth. Not quite as smooth as an actual mirror, but pretty close. On his phone, I had to take this on trust. But with my clunky old C20–style computer with its big C21 screen attached, I can see it clearly. Wonderful.
It is possible that in the above, April 5th should be read as May 4th, but I don’t believe so. I wish the Anglos could have a conference and agree about the order of month and day of month numbers. 4-5-2020, 5-4-2020? May 4, April 5? I never know which is which. When communicating dates, to myself or to anyone else, I try always to use English for the month, and then it’s clear.
But back to the photo, which was taken with his mobile (a Samsung). But of course. When those things learn to do x25 zoom, I’ll probably stop bothering with a camera type camera myself.
Towers and flowers
I spent this afternoon with Alastair, who often comments here. Great day. We walked from Greenwich to the Dome, with pauses for drink. So, am now knackered.
Which means that just one photo will have to suffice for now:
That was how the towers of Docklands were looking from the other side of the River, where there were flowers.
Good night. Sleep well. I will.
LATER: Well, I didn’t sleep that well, but I did get the starting point of our wanderings wrong. Blackheath, not Greenwich. Which makes it more than I said. Nobody else will care, but I like to get these things right, for myself.
Tower Bridge at night
Lots of postings yesterday, but today, after one, other things to do. So, to make it two today, here’s a quota photo that I like:
This is another of Michael J’s, photoed, presumaably, on one of his nocturnal walks in the clear air of London (See his comment there). I copied it from his Facebook site a while back, but now cannot find it there. He has other photos up of a similar sort, including that earlier Shard photo, and including another similar view of Tower Bridge which includes the Shard, here.
I particularly like the way the surface of the water looks, like a rectangular grid of reflected light.
Two fearless cats
First, a cat I met during Lockdown in June, enjoying the almost empty road, and strolling across it like he owned it:
If Lockdown ever ends, the urban animal tendency is going to be mysteriously baffled as to why things became so mysteriously nice, before going back to being regular old nasty.
And second, Oscar, the cat of GodDaughter2’s family, as photoed perching on some railings by GD2’s Dad, earlier this month, in the south of France:
I bet it’s hot down there just now.
Actually, Oscar is being quite careful, and is perched in such a way that if anything did go wrong, he’d fall onto the balcony, not to the ground outside.
Nice pics there GD2D, but I think this photo, also illustrating Oscar’s fearlessness of heights, is even better.