Technologies like automatic doors, sensor-controlled escalators and even contactless payments all allow us to glide through London without touching it—with our hands, that is. We feel the city with our feet. Through the soles of our shoes we learn the texture of London’s uneven paving, lumpy tarmac and slippery cobbles. We also read the city […]
To navigate our way through life we most often apply a kind of internal filter that organises the world into priority, inessential and junk. It’s a useful tool. But how much of the richness of experience does it blank out? How far does it hamper our powers of perception and imagination? Sometimes what we think we already […]
Now that London’s trees have all outed themselves with their new foliage, it’s a great time to go tree spotting. The Natural History Museum’s Leafsnap UK app is a handy tool for identifying species from their leaves. Of all the city’s trees, the London plane (pictured left) gives the capital its arboreal character. But it hasn’t […]
So wrote the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier in 1774, summing up his discovery that although matter can change its state in a chemical reaction, the total mass of matter remains the same. ‘Everything is transformed’ could also serve as the motto for the Circular Economy: the idea that we can produce stuff without waste or […]
International Dawn Chorus Day on Sunday 1 May is a prompt to connect with birds as they herald a new day. Do London’s birds sing differently from their country cousins? Studies have found that great tits chirp higher. This is thought to be so as better to project above the rumble of traffic and other […]
It’s been a very long time since my last post. A lot has happened. I’ve met a wonderful array of tour-goers, old and young. I’ve taken on Central London with London In Slow Motion, the London Ear and the recently launched Power Walk. I’m slow-cooking ideas for a new tour in 2015 about Common London. And […]
With London In Slow Motion launching officially on Sunday 22 September, I spoke about my walks to the lovely folk at Slow It Down. It’s an eZine ‘dedicated to making time for the more thoughtful, imaginative and subtle things in life.’ You can read the interview here.
Whether you’re going away for a week or stealing a day out in the sunshine I heartily recommend taking a moment to read this advice from E.R. Thompson. It’s from The Human Machine (1925), a collection of articles that first appeared in John Bull magazine. The Holiday Mind This month thousands of my readers will be having their holidays. I […]
Out this morning in the glorious sunshine on a recce for the Thames Bestiary. It’s a walk that I’ve developed for Viewfinder Gallery’s Thames Trail project, but will be leading again this autumn sans Viewfinder. Passed Aerosol Can Man, about to be whitewashed by Greenwich Council’s anti-graffiti team … … pigeons sun-bathing … … a […]
Generally, what captivates me most about old found photos and documentary footage is that sense of looking at ghosts. Watching this film of London in 1926, I experience the reverse: of being myself a ghost from the future visiting people from the past. It happens as the camera rolls along Petticoat Lane, from 4 minutes […]
