The notorious ‘Carbuncle Cup’ is awarded annually by Building Design Magazine, to the worst new building of the year. And yes, the Walkie Talkie is so obviously ‘in your face ugly’, with its concave shape, worrying stoop, and the way it stands like a giant thumb, apart from the cluster of the City of London’s […]
Category archives: Ebb & Flow
Meet Rob Jeffries
Rob Jeffries welcomes me into a large Aladdin’s cave filled to the rafters with hundreds of interesting, precious and exciting looking police artefacts including uniforms, weapons old and new, handcuffs, superb models of boats, pictures, books, and glass display cases filled with documents and photographs; all connected to the two hundred year history of police […]
Notes on the Shard
…towering above its neighbours in so many views of London, the Shard is even more striking in its place by the Thames. For though hidden at times as the river curves sensuously through the city, it suddenly comes into sight and takes over its surroundings. Now a familiar part of the London landscape, its ever-changing […]
Meet Chris Walker…
The tide was flowing fast upstream as I made my way down a ramp to the Tower RNLI Station on Victoria Embankment to meet Chris Walker. Kindly welcoming me during a break in his shift he led me to a table in the crew’s kitchen where the duty crew can cook something to eat and […]
Meet Vic Clarke
A chance meeting on social media and a shared interest in the Thames led to my discovering the early story of Vic Clarke, who trained at the Wellesley Nautical School at Blyth and who began his career on colliers delivering coal to Thames-side power stations in the 1960s. After undergoing a rigorous training with tough, […]
Unsung Heroes
Dwarfed by other vessels, construction sites and piers along the river, there is a fleet of small workboats, open topped or with a wheel house, navigating the river in all conditions. Unless you’re looking out for them, they can pass by un-noticed but their work is vital to smooth operations along the river. They fetch […]
Port of Call
…the swift running currents of the central London Thames divide and stream through the constricted spaces between the embankments and beneath the bridges. For those working along the river, they can be a useful energy-saving way of getting around and you will see all types of boats from tugs and tourist boats to kayaks skilfully […]
The Rising Tide
Known particularly for the ever-evolving sculptures of his beautiful, mysterious underwater museums, deCaires Taylor’s work has appeared all over the world. His strong emphasis on the environment and our duty to preserve it for the future struck a chord when his installation The Rising Tide came to London in September 2015. The Rising Tide, was […]
Notes on the London Eye
Now an integral part of London’s modern skyline and an accepted symbol of our city, the London Eye, originally known as the Millennium Wheel, was first seen by many as a ‘white elephant’ and an oversized fairground attraction, devaluing the surrounding buildings. Having never had much time for the grandiosity of the old County Hall, I would disagree. […]
Notes on Lambeth Bridge
Day and night, the Thames beneath in near-constant movement, lively or quiet, tides high and low and with ever changing lights and reflections. Though there was a ferry crossing point here for many years connecting Lambeth Palace to the Westminster side of the river, it wasn’t until 1862, after much pressure, that the first Lambeth […]