It's Bank Holiday Monday. There are three bank holiday clusters in the English bank holiday year. Double Check 2020). autumn gap is from the last Monday in August to Christmas Day. Double Check Double Check spring gap is from New Year's Day to Good Friday. Double Check Double Check 2038 (and then not again until 2258). Double Double Check April). Whenever Easter falls, the spring gap can never be longer than 112 days. 122 days is thus the longest possible gap in England. Double Check Scotland the August bank holiday is at the start of August. Double Double Check Conclusion The longest gap between UK bank holidays is 122 days. It only happens when the August bank holiday is on Monday 25th August. And it starts tomorrow.

It's 40 days since St Swithin's Day. n.b. It may not have rained for you but it rained where I was and that's what counts. I had to hide in a hedge near Heathrow to avoid getting drenched, and I thought ah well, rain every day until August 24th. n.b. Obviously the St Swithin's legend has been disproved as rubbish, obviously, because dead Saxon bishops don't affect our weather. But I always enjoy testing a hypothesis with real data I call it a SWITHINOMETER.  15     WET1617181920     21222324252627     28293031123     45678910     11121314151617     18192021222324     n.b. Yes I know technically we don't know the colour of today's final square. But then the weather changed (from low-pressure dominated to generally anticyclonic). Here are the overall results.  July 15thwet daysdry days 2025wet2020 UK weather doesn't do 40 consecutive days of exactly the same thing, and this year we've been way out. back in 2022, so won't trawl over my four decades of personal data again. Here are the best St Swithin's Day predictions since 1980.  July 15thwet daysdry days 1989dry733 1990dry733 The most successful 'wet' prediction was in 1985.  July 15thwet daysdry days 1985wet328 But some predictions have been appallingly incorrect. Here are the worst two.  July 15thwet daysdry days 1995wet634 2016dry337 I should say this is all very dodgy data. If I check the data from my favourite weather station in Hampstead, I get very different results.  July 15thwet daysdry days 2025dry (not wet)7 (not 20)33 (not 20) But I can finish off with one genuinely good conclusion. Did it rain today?yesno 1980-202544%56% But if you've ever thought "it rains quite often during the British summer, doesn't it?" ...the answer is yes it does.

Fleeting CLERKENWELL Back to London's premier lost river, now on the descent from King's Cross to Clerkenwell along the approximate line of the Camden/Islington boundary. It's no coincidence that the Fleet once marked the divide, although previously the boroughs were St Pancras on one side and Finsbury on the other. There are very clear contours in the area, the roads dipping down from Bloomsbury and more steeply on the opposite flank, although the precise level of the valley has been disguised somewhat by subsequent development. In 1768 there are accounts of the river flooding four feet deep round here, carrying off three cattle and several pigs, whereas what's being swept away today is the old streetscape. Rows of fine Georgian terraces survive at the top of Pakenham Street, but look down Phoenix Place and pretty much nothing of what I saw 20 years ago remains. The site to the left was once Coldbath Fields, source of yet another medicinal spring, and in 1794 a conveniently large open space on the edge of town on which to build a massive prison. The delightfully-named Middlesex House of Correction was originally used to house those waiting to be tried by magistrates, but later gained a fearsome reputation as a strict men-only institution with an enforced regime of silence. The governor was eventually dismissed following an inquiry and the prison closed in 1885. Enter the Post Office who purchased the site as somewhere to sort their parcels, a growing trade, creating what would soon be one of the largest sorting offices in the world. The upper section once used for parking hundreds of red vans was sold off a few years ago, inevitably for housing, as was the scrubby car park across the road. The resultant estate is called Postmark and has crammed in 681 luxury flats starting at £990,000, the sole enticing feature being the row of pillar-box-shaped vents along the central raised garden. A more attractive local presence is the Postal Museum which opened at the top of Phoenix Place in 2017. Step inside for a first class display that clearly delivers, also a free-to-enter cafe (which may help explain why none of the commercial units at Postmark are yet occupied). A separate building houses the entrance to Mail Rail, once the GPO's subterranean delivery service and now a ride-on circuit where you take the place of the sacks. Its builders 100 years ago had to deal with all kinds of underground obstructions including the River Fleet, which is why heavy mid-tunnel floodgates are a feature on your way round. Royal Mail still sort parcels here in the remaining building at the lower end of the site which has been decorated with the names of postal towns between the windows. I smirked when I spotted a UPS van parked outside the delivery bay, and oh the irony as a brown-clad youth hopped out to deliver a package to a resident living on the site of the postmen's former car park. The dip of the land is particularly pronounced along Mount Pleasant, a concave road that predates the Post Office's arrival. The street pattern was once very dense here alongside the fetid waters of the Fleet, a labyrinth of slums including Fleet Row, Red Lyon Yard and Wine Street. The Fleet Sewer replaced the earliest culverts in the 1860s following the line of Phoenix Place and Warner Street, then a decade later the Fleet Relief Sewer added extra capacity under parallel roads. A bigger intrusion was the construction of Rosebery Avenue in the late 1880s, necessitating a viaduct to be built across the valley to speed up through traffic and requiring considerable local demolition. However walking underneath along Warner Street still feels like stepping back in time, especially the echoing vaults of Clerkenwell Motors and the bleakly open staircase that connects the bustle up top to the cycle-friendly street down below. As we continue south, the moment when this was the edge of built-up London gets ever earlier. For Ray Street this was around 1700, although at the time it went by the far less salubrious name of Hockley-in-the-Hole. Here the contours of the Fleet encouraged the creation of an infamous resort for the working classes, a natural amphitheatre at the foot of Herbal Hill where the City's low-life gathered to participate in violent sports. It was known as the Bear Garden, a place to watch and cheer on fighting creatures now the South Bank had been cleaned up. A flyer from 1710 reveals that at one event two market dogs were set upon a bull, a mad ass was baited, then another bull was turned loose with fireworks attached to is hide and two cats tied to his tail. The programme of events often included bearfights, cockfights, swordfights and bare knuckle bust-ups, although the worst of the behaviour shifted to Spitalfields in 1756 and the worst you'll find today is a pub. Which is closed. The Coach was previously The Coach and Horses, a basic joint oft frequented by Guardian journalists when they were based just round the corner. Their HQ is now flats and the London base for LinkedIn, while The Coach reopened as a gastropub in 2018 (think grilled rabbit and onglet steak) and is currently on its second refit. Of far more interest on this safari is the drain cover out front, which 20 years ago was in the middle of the street but is now safely embraced by an extended pavement. This is another fabled location where the Fleet can be heard flowing through the pipework beneath the street, the sound particularly clear at present even though there's been barely any rain of late, so if you've never experienced the rush of a lost river this is the prime location to visit. And so we hit Farringdon Road, which is reached up a brief slope because the land round here's been substantially reconstructed since a stream once ran downhill. Farringdon Road is one of the great engineering projects of the 19th century, simultaneously creating a major thoroughfare, shielding the first underground railway and burying a river. It's breadth here is striking, opening out into an arched chasm that splits the cityscape as trains emerge from tunnels on the approach to Farringdon station. One nominal remnant from the old days is the span of Vine Street Bridge, no longer open to through traffic but a great place to drop your Lime bike. Of greater relevance is the Clerk's Well, a source of water for the medieval Priory of St Mary and which ultimately gave Clerkenwell its name. It was rediscovered during building works in 1924 and can now be seen through the window of a lowly sales office whose tiny lobby is occasionally opened by Islington Museum, hence I was chuffed to get a closer look in June. While the Fleet Sewer follows Farringdon Road the historic interest remains on the east side of the railway. Turnmill Street is ancient enough to be named after watermills on the medieval Fleet, and by Tudor times was filthy enough to have become one of London's most prominent red light districts. It's been scrubbed up a lot since, including the purest of office blocks on the corner where Turnmills nightclub once stood. As for Cowcross Street this was once the route for cattle fording the Fleet - here the Turnmill Brook - on their way to market at Smithfield. It's now a pedestrianised road which divides the two entrances to Farringdon station, with the tube on one side, rail on the other and chuggers in the middle. Crossrail's engineers had to take account of a sewer following a tributary of the Fleet which crosses beneath the southeast corner of the ticket hall, meaning extra care had to be taken when digging out the shaft. It's just beyond the station that the Fleet officially enters the City of London and Farringdon Road becomes Farringdon Street. Which'd be a good place to pause, I think, before concluding this Fleeting series next week. 1300 map, 1682 map, 1746 map, 1746 map, 1790 map 54 Fleeting photos so far (18 from round here)

Yesterday the Mayor of London made a bold claim. And rather than stoking pride, I thought "what a load of bolx". » Being "regularly voted #1 city in the world" proves nothing, indeed many cities achieve this accolade depending on what's being voted for and by who. London was crowned the World's Best City for 2025 in the annual ranking by consultant group Resonance, also the best city in the world by intelligence experts BestCities. However New York City was named the best city in the world for 2025 in Oxford Economics' Global Cities Index, while Paris is the best city in the world according to Euromonitor International's Top 100 City Destinations ranking. London was second in the Oxford list and merely fifth in Time Out's 50 best cities in the world in 2025, because nothing's cut and dried. "Incredible diversity with 300+ languages spoken" is not a pre-requisite for greatest city, just a nice to have. A quick Google search reveals that New York is host to more than 800 spoken languages, ditto Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, while Jakarta in Indonesia tops 700. London is way behind. "World-class transport" isn't a superlative, merely a subjective ranking. Many would argue that London shares its world-class tag with Tokyo, Seoul, New York, Berlin, Paris and Beijing, then sink into bitter recriminations about what precisely world-class means and why their favourite city's been missed out. "World leader in finance, tech and life sciences" is better, with New York, London and Hong Kong unarguably the top three for financial dealings. But Silicon Valley may outdo London for tech, and you can't really argue that Oxford/Cambridge are part of London for life sciences purposes, and is this really what makes a greatest city? "best museums and galleries on the planet"? New York has more art galleries than London, Paris has more art museums and indeed more museums overall, plus the world's most visited museum which is the Louvre. You could argue that the quality of London's museums is better but that's all getting terribly subjective... which is precisely what art is. "world-leading nightlife" no way, merely world-class which is something different. Cities with claims on the top spot include Las Vegas, Paris, Bangkok and Madrid, whereas if I check Time Out's latest Top 20 then London doesn't even feature, indeed locally they just list Brighton. "Like a certain type of food, niche sport or music? You can get it in London." is somewhat desperate. London's cultural spread may be vast but you can't claim everything is here because it plainly isn't. Not every sport is played in London, nor can you go out of an evening and enjoy hearing Fijian musicians, and even The A to Z of London Food blog gave up when they got to Chad. "Home to the world's best sporting events" is either subjective or incorrect, because as soon as you name a great sporting event outside London this claim falls apart. The Super Bowl, the Calcutta Cup, the Winter Olympics, every single golf major, QED. "Home to seven premier league clubs" suggests that whoever was compiling this list was running out of ideas. Admittedly no other UK city has more than two, but this is a list the rest of the world can't take part in because it's 100% UK-specific. It's like Americans claiming their major baseball competition is the World Series, then wondering why the rest of the world laughs. "Globally-ranked universities" is possibly the worst submission so far. Every university is globally ranked, it's just that it may be 39,407th rather than 2nd. At best London has two universities in the global top 20, admittedly better than New York and Paris but what on earth are we trying to prove here? "A city where you can be who you like and love who you love" is both a proud statement of civil liberties and a bland mayoral buzzphrase. Support the wrong pressure group or walk into the 'wrong' toilets and you may find London's not as friendly as it looks. Also most UK cities could make exactly the same claim, be that Liverpool, Manchester, St Albans or Brighton, and several world cities are friendlier places to be. "A place for everyone" is a truly bum finish. Millions would love to live in London but can't afford it, the cost of housing having skyrocketed to impossible levels, and that's before you get onto the heated issue of immigration. This final statement is an utterly admirable aspiration, and perhaps broadly true, but you can't use it to claim that London is the greatest city in the world. the worst. On the surface it was a cheery thumbs up to the Mayoral cycling agenda, a concerted attempt over many years to make travelling on two wheels safer, easier and more appealing. But look closer and you'll see the news story being quoted was by Secret London and that should have set alarm bells ringing regarding exaggeration and truth. "London Has Officially Been Named Europe’s Favourite City For Cycling – Overtaking The Likes Of Amsterdam And Paris", a headline with typical Secret London bombast and questionable use of the word 'Officially'. When I see an article's been written by Katie Forge my first thought is "has she nicked one of my photos again?" and my second is "what mind-sucking sugar-coated pap has she churned out this time?" "Listen up, Londoners – I come bearing some brake-ing news. A recent study has revealed Europe’s best and most beloved spots for cycling. And London has – yet again – received a lovely, shiny medal to hang around its neck. So we’re feeling wheely rather proud of our sensationally cyclable city." Read on and you discover the 'official' data is courtesy of ferry and cruise operator DFDS whose unscientific methods involved "analysing major cities based on various factors including cycling infrastructure, terrain, weather, and online search volume". It turns out London wasn't top, nor even in the Top 10, having been beaten by proper cycling nirvanas like Helsinki, Strasbourg and Amsterdam. London was merely top of The Internet's Favourite Cycling Cities, a list based solely on "average monthly search volume for cycling-related terms in each city obtained via Google Keyword Planner", an entirely pointless metric. There is no greatest city in the world, and to claim there is is idiotic. London is amazing but there's no need for exceptionalism because that route only leads to argument and discord. "Husband, father, and Mayor of the greatest city in the world." Interestingly this use of the word 'greatest' doesn't sound stupid - more like a belief than a fact. It's like how you're allowed to think Liverpool is the greatest football team in the world even if other people may vehemently disagree. It's only when you try proving that your football team is the greatest that your claim falls apart, because any argument you put forward inevitably has holes and can be endlessly unpicked. It should be enough to say that London is great, which it is.

45 45 Squared 29) AERIAL SQUARE, NW9 Borough of Barnet, 80m×20m Where we are is opposite Colindale station, currently under reconstruction to create a portal to this upthrust hellhole. To the northwest a former hospital has been mulched to create 714 homes. To the southwest the British Newspaper Archive was unceremoniously replaced by 395 flats after its contents were despatched to West Yorkshire. And to the southeast what's been expunged is the majority of the famous Hendon Police Training College, skidpan and all, to be replaced by 2900 residential receptacles of varying sizes. It's a vast site, the Met Police having worked out they could consolidate all their operations into two buildings rather than 25, squeezed into 11 acres rather than 73. The capital's recruits still get trained so they're happy, and thousands of new Colindale residents get somewhere to live for good measure. Aerial Square is the gateway to this underwhelming crush. I looked in vain for a sign saying Aerial Square because what's spelled out instead on the front wall is Colindale Gardens, the name of the estate. Gardens my arse, it's mostly hardstanding, towers and locked courtyards. Aerial Square includes half a dozen wedges of not especially lovely grass, some with raised edges to encourage people not to walk on them. Three further shards include patches of shrubbery with scrappy plants lifted from the underwhelming end of the horticultural catalogue, also a couple of rings of stunted birches providing the absolute minimum of elevated greenery. The artist's impression will have suggested a verdant nirvana but the reality is more a cityscape in greys and browns, thus depressingly less inspiring. You might consider sitting out here in nice weather, but having watched an owner allowing his dog to defecate down the far end I wouldn't recommend it. One day, if we let it, more corners of London will look as nondescript as Aerial Square. It could be anywhere, rather than a former police college and aerodrome, the only nod to variety being that they used three shades of fake brick to create the cladding. We desperately need more housing so it's great to get some, but without character and charm this mesh of flats risks becoming an insipid ghetto and future slum. God I hate Colindale, most soulless of the suburbs, and all its horrible stacky boxes.