Four things I wrote 50 years ago You may have had something similar, a small notebook used to record the spellings you needed checking when you were writing something in class. If we had a query we'd go and queue at Miss Green's desk and she'd tell you what the spelling was and you'd write it down. It was also the book in which you listed the words you'd got wrong in your exercise book and had needed to be corrected, so it paid to check first. Don't I have lovely handwriting? colourful is always a classic, conscious is pretty tricky for a ten year old and commanders-in-chief looks more like showing off. I see from the rest of the book that I was particularly focused on awkward plurals - echoes, heroes, octopuses, potatoes, tomatoes, thieves, volcanoes - or perhaps we just had a special lesson about words ending in o. I wonder what Miss Green thought when I asked her to spell frigid? Also you'll see that one of the words in my C section is incorrect, and it would be terribly easy to blame my teacher for this but it could just have been a transcription error. She got benefiting right on the opposite page so I'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt. We did French in the top class one afternoon a week as preparation for big school. A nice European lady came in and talked to us and we repeatedly repeated things, often numbers, animals and colours. Just being able to count to ten would give us confidence later, which I suspect is why she never led us into the morass of the seventies and nineties. Almost everything we did was oral so as not to scare us with actual spellings, but occasionally Mrs L got us to draw pictures and label them with the proper accents and everything. We started with parts of the body, which is always a good choice for classroom demonstration, then moved on to two pages of clothes and the inevitable symbols for weather. I still look exactly like that pencil portrait, obviously. Où vas-tu? with the correct prepositions and had the first hint of the grammatical horrors of a language with two genders. I thought this was well advanced, but checking my primary school's curriculum today I see they start teaching French two years earlier and this term the top juniors are 'consolidating their knowledge of grammar' and being taught how to order in a café. C'est la vie. I think it's original, I don't think I was consciously copying any particular existing piece. It's not difficult to come up with a tune, but perhaps rather more prodigious to be able to write it down in proper notation on actual manuscript paper. It would have been devised on the violin because I couldn't play the piano, even though my parents had somehow acquired a second hand instrument in the hope that I might. I should say that the guitar chords were added later by an interested adult, I wouldn't have had a clue myself. Also I think the intention was that I would eventually end up conducting a rendition by the school orchestra, which admittedly was mostly recorders, but blimey how good is that title? This is the puzzles page in my hand-drawn magazine, Splodge. Alas my classmates weren't particularly interested, even when issue 1 came with a free strip of ½p Green Stamps, and I see I had to amend the closing date for the story competition from Nov 13th to Dec 12th using a strip of sellotape. Nobody responded anyway. Also this was a time before reproduction was viable so there was only ever one copy, hence the instruction Do Not Write Into The Above Squares!, which really didn't help circulation. Splodge ran to eight issues before I finally admitted to myself that nobody else wanted to read it, but hey here I am 50 years later subjecting a far wider public to my self-published ramblings so maybe it all started here, on two sheets of A4 paper.

45 45 Squared 20) STATION SQUARE, BR5 Borough of Bromley, 90m×60m Why this one? I had ten minutes in Petts Wood yesterday between trains and there it was. Why the name? It's a square immediately beside the station. Is it square? Hell no, it's more a trapezium with two long sides and two shorter ones. How old is it? Like the rest of Petts Wood it dates from the late 1920s. Who built it? That'd be Basil Scruby, property developer, who paid local builders to turn 400 acres of fields into desirable avenues. He invested £6000 to get a station added here, then built a smart ring of shops to serve the new population. Which side of the station? East side, which is the better-off side. The money had started running out by the time Basil started building on the west side. What are the shops like? Lovely, if what you like is full-on herringbone brickwork with half-timbered infill topped with smart chimneys. Basil wanted to make an impression on potential housebuyers. But what are the shops like? Trad butcher, deli, bistro, salon, tapas, flooring specialist, proper greengrocer, two vets (but also Iceland, William Hill and an enormous charity shop). Who would have gone shopping here? David Nobbs, Pat Keysell, Charles De Gaulle, Pixie Lott and Jack Dee. Parking? Hell yes, this is Bromley after all. £1.10 an hour, max 2 hours, limited spaces. What's in the middle? Now you're asking. It's the Daylight Inn, a massive Neo-Tudor Charringtons pub opened in December 1935 and still essentially unaltered, hence Grade II listed. Includes four bars and a former ballroom. It's named after William Willett, the local resident who inspired the introduction of British Summer Time (previously blogged). Live jazz with the Green Chain Quartet takes place on the 1st Thursday of the month (ooh that's today). What else is in the middle? The Cow & Bean sit-down coffee shack (in the former lavatory block) and the Aqua Mediterranean Grill (whose offering perfectly targets respectable retro suburbia). What happened to the Lychgate? According to the plaque on the estate agents it was removed in 1995 and relocated to Memorial Hall Gardens. Any other good plaques? The Walk London panel that marks the start of London Loop section 3 - there aren't many of those left. And the most notable thing? Probably the Petts Wood village sign whose four quarters depict i) Invicta, the emblem of Kent, ii) the coat of arms of the Pett Family, iii) an Elizabethan galleon (built using oak from Petts Wood), iv) day and night as a representation of daylight saving. And what happened to Basil Scruby? He took a speculative gamble on building a seaside resort on the Isle of Grain at Allhallows-on-Sea which failed utterly, but that's another story.

TfL are holding a Board meeting next week, and amidst the 252 pages of documentation are these statistics and revelations relating to usage of the Silvertown Tunnel thus far. Let's bash some figures. Early analysis of data up to 11 May shows traffic volumes across the combined Silvertown and Blackwall corridor average 88,000 vehicles across both directions on a typical weekday, with 20,000 vehicles using the Silvertown Tunnel. Conclusion: 77% of traffic is using the Blackwall Tunnel and only 23% is using the Silvertown Tunnel. This compares with 90,000 to 100,000 vehicles per day typically using the Blackwall Tunnel prior to the opening of Silvertown. Conclusion: Despite doubling tunnel capacity, road traffic totals are down. (They could be down by just 2% or by as much as 12%, it's still too early to tell). This suggests that the impact of introducing a toll has outweighed the opening of a new tunnel. Observation: If traffic is down then air pollution may also be down. We are aware of some increased traffic volumes at other river crossings, including the Woolwich Ferry, which has seen an additional 1800 vehicles per day on average. Conclusion: Some (but not all) of the missing traffic is using the Woolwich Ferry. Observation: 1800 vehicles is a lot of extra traffic, about 40 ferryfuls. Observation: Past data suggests about 3000-4000 vehicles use the Woolwich Ferry daily, so this would be approximately 50% more vehicles. (but we await actual figures on actual ferry usage, so this is all a bit approximate) Route 108 continues to run through the Blackwall Tunnel, with initial analysis since the opening of the Silvertown Tunnel showing a 23% improvement in excess wait time compared to the same period last year. Conclusion: If nothing else, spending £2bn on a tunnel has greatly improved the reliability of my local bus route. Across all three cross-river bus routes, there is a daily average of more than 20,000 customers making use of these services. Clarification: That's bus routes 108, 129 and SL4. Route SL4 is new, route 129 was extended through the Silvertown Tunnel and route 108 has been running for decades. Past data: Last year route 108 averaged 9000 passengers per day and route 129 averaged 5000 passengers per day. Conclusion: The new total of 20,000 per day is thus 6000 more than before the tunnel opened. Observation: That's a bus passenger increase of 40%, but now spread across two routes not three. Observation: Given all three routes are free, you might have expected a bigger increase. n.b. As yet there's no breakdown for the three separate routes (but it's almost certain the SL4 is the least used) We typically see 7000 crossing the river by bus each day, which is around a 160% increase since the Silvertown Tunnel began. Inference: Previously 2700 passengers per day were crossing the river on route 108. So yes, a big jump. In addition, customers using pay as you go for journeys between Greenwich/Cutty Sark and Island Gardens, and Woolwich Arsenal and King George V have their fares refunded. To date, we are refunding around 5000 customer journeys each week on average. Conclusion: That's just 700 people per day, so the DLR freebie is much less popular than the free bus crossing. We are currently seeing 100-150 passengers using the cycle shuttle service on a typical day. Observation: The cycle shuttle operates every 12 minutes from 06:30 to 21:30, which is 150 crossings per day. Conclusion: That's an average of not quite one cyclist per bus. Embarrassing conclusion: That means the bus drivers are crossing the river more than the cyclists. This is below the capacity of the service and so we are looking at ways to promote it to Londoners. Crossing the river daily (tolled) (free) (free) (free) (free)

One Stop Beyond: Merstham In this series I'm taking the train one stop beyond the Greater London boundary, getting off and seeing what's there. Today that means Merstham, one stop beyond Coulsdon South on the Brighton line. For positioning purposes it lies at the foot of the North Downs, a couple of miles north of Redhill thus very much in Surrey. It's a truly ancient village whose long term expansion is mainly thanks to rocks, roads and railways, most recently the massive M23/M25 motorway interchange which despoils the immediate neighbourhood. If you can hear a muted roar throughout today's post, that'll be it. North Downs Way threads through the churchyard so you may well have walked past. I walked in. It's always lovely when a quaint old church is unlocked for visitors, something St Katherine's tries to do most days. The interior looks rather more Victorian once you get through the door (and have located the light switches and turned them on). The font's properly medieval though, and above it is the colourful spider formed by the dangling bellropes that Jack and his team tug every Wednesday ('for fun and fitness', if you're interested in joining). I was particularly struck by the little yellow cards arrayed across the nave, two per pew, encouraging servicegoers to scan the QR code and give some money. I've seen 'tap to give' pads at the backs of churches before (in this case default £10), but the steady decline of ready cash is spurring a donation revolution in our places of worship. stripe between the escarpment and the village proved the line of least resistance. Heading west a red sign warns of an upcoming 10% gradient, this the civil engineering compromise for climbing Gatton Bottom, and heading east a slip road opens up on the approach to mega-Junction 7. This is one of just three four-level stack interchanges in the UK (the others being the M4/M5 and the M4/M25), built when it was assumed the M23 would burrow deep into south London, and since surrounded by a shield of woodland. very attractive and has an excellent name - Quality Street. It used to lead to the local stately home, Merstham House, but that was demolished after the war so it's now a a very well-to-do cul-de-sac. The jumble of detached houses includes a former tavern, a converted village school, a half-timbered forge and a cottage dating back to 1609. The inhabitant of one house spotted me taking photos of Quality Street and addressed me with a challenge - "Do you know how it got it's name?" I very much did know because I'd done my research, but I played along all the same. "It's not the chocolates," I said, "it's the West End play." He smiled, thwarted, then asked for the name of the playwright hoping to catch me out. "That'd be J M Barrie," I said and he nodded, beaten. When Barrie's play Quality Street opened on Broadway in 1901 the lead actors were Seymour Hicks and Ellaline Terriss, and after the married couple moved into The Old Lodge in 1904 the street was renamed in their honour. We chose to leave all that backstory unsaid, thankfully, but if you are ever challenged while walking down Quality Street on the North Downs Way you'll know how to respond. Surrey Iron Railway followed the River Wandle to Croydon and was extended to Merstham in 1805, transporting sandstone from the local quarry in horse drawn wagons. As with many pioneering technologies it couldn't compete with later innovations, but what really killed it off was that its rails were too weak to support steam locomotives and by the 1830s it was gone. The rails here alas are replicas made by local resident Mr Postlethwaite after the originals were stolen. station on the eastern edge of the village, this still wonderfully convenient today. But most trains on the Brighton line speed by on an entirely separate line that carves a roughly parallel track all the way from just before Coulsdon to just after Redhill. The two lines now conspire to divide Old Merstham from the new, a large overspill estate built by the London County Council in the 1950s. You walk down School Hill past attractive tiled cottages, duck beneath a pair of viaducts and the conservation area swiftly metamorphoses into postwar pebbledash and brick. Thousands now live here amid a network of interlocking avenues, apparently the most deprived area of Surrey by some data measures, although quite frankly it looked like paradise compared to several parts of East London. At the estate's heart is a modern shopping parade with a Co-Op and an independent convenience store called Londizz - no copyright infringement admitted - located on the footprint of a demolished pub. Churches were still being built when the estate opened so three denominations got lucky, in typically postwar architectural style, whereas these days more people worship at the culinary trinity of Merstham Kebab, Merstham Chippy and Merstham Tandoori. The newest facility appears to be a snazzy Community Hub where the library's been rehoused, while the oldest must be the remains of Albury Manor. This looks like a patch of undulating wasteland behind Bletchingley Close, whereas it's actually a scheduled monument with inner and outer banks and a dip where the moat used to be. Merstham FC play nextdoor at a ground called Moatside, which is a much better name than the nickname their supporters have which is The Mongos. grassland along the edge of the estate. Thus if you're walking your dog you can shadow the westbound carriageway through open space and woodland for the best part of a mile, right up to the edge of the monster interchange, or you can cross another footbridge onto a slice of semi-untouched chalk grassland. I walked all the way to the far end of the estate where the quarries were, now lakes and nature reserves but strictly inaccessible except to wildlife because, as the scary signs on the gate attest, 'Quarry Water Is Stone Cold And Can Kill'. up in arms, claiming that this "huge increase in housing would bring Merstham's crumbling infrastructure to its knees". They've also successfully annulled the opportunity for 11 homes on the site of the former library because apparently it would overwhelm a service road, thus the old premises remain boarded up helping nobody. It's hard to be objective as an outsider unfamiliar with the level of local services, but it seems it only takes a few decades for the inhabitants of an overspill estate to become total nimbys lest any incomers might enjoy the same benefits they did. What a mixed bag Merstham is, and has inexorably become.

London's Lovely Bits: LITTLE HOLLAND HOUSE Location: 40 Beeches Avenue, Carshalton SM5 3LW [map] Open: 11am-5pm (1st Sunday of the month ONLY) Admission: free Website: friendsofhoneywood.co.uk/little-holland-house.html Virtual visit: video/3D walkaround Four word summary: Franks's extraordinary ordinary home Time to allow: up to an hour Frank was born in Paddington in 1874 but sought to move away from the slums to start a better life. Inspired by John Ruskin he came to Carshalton, bought a plot of land amid the cornfields and started to build. He didn't have much cash so drew up the plans himself, created the furniture himself and employed the bare minimum of labourers to assist. Frank and his bride Florence moved in on their wedding night in 1904, then spent the honeymoon sanding window frames and staining the floors, as you do. Over the next few decades they added further furniture and features and made Little Holland House into a true Arts and Crafts home, combining function and beauty. And they lived here together for six decades until 1961 when Frank died, leaving Florence alone until she was forced to move out in 1972. That's when the London Borough of Sutton stepped in, recognising they had something special on their patch, and duly opened up the house (occasionally) to visitors. Beeches Avenue has been built up somewhat since 1902, no longer a quiet lane poking out into fields. Walking down from Carshalton Beeches station past a Tudorbethan bakery and several pleasantly ordinary houses, you do wonder if you can possibly be in the right place for a visitor attraction. Number 40's not even the most attractive house in the street - it's pebbledashed for heaven's sake - but the intricately carved gate and bespoke letter box hint at treasures within. You have to ring the bell to get in, entering a tiny hall because Frank didn't believe in wasting space on pleasantries. From here it's only a few steps to the living room, and that's when the scale of his project hits you. Downstairs is finely decorated throughout and almost entirely by Frank, from the coal-box by the fire to the herringbone parquet floor - ideal for dancing on. There are copper fingerplates on the (wider-than-usual) doors, stencilled curtains in the oriel window and inscribed joists over the opening to the sitting room. Wooden and chunky would describe a lot of the furniture, which is mostly in pine, although the chairs (and the cake stand) are walnut. As a budding artist all the paintings are Frank's own too, including the triptych over the fireplace depicting the dignity of the working man and the four family portraits embedded in the dado. A small landing a few steps up the stairs provided a mini-stage for in-house entertainment, while the gramophone is still poised to play The Blue Danube. Upstairs the master bedroom is a lovely space, from the carved inscription on the bedstead to Florence's embroidered curtains. Most striking is the painted frieze in green and blue around the top of the walls, illustrating lines from Longfellow's poem The Spanish Student. I could almost imagine 1970s Habitat selling this design on a peel-off strip, although Frank's design is a little too tasteful for that. In the boxroom are further accoutrements, from an oak dressing table to the couple's Singer sewing machine, plus one of Frank's paintings that almost made the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1946. Only the bathroom and front bedroom lack original features, the latter now an exhibition room where additional ephemera is displayed. It turns out Frank concocted detailed plans for the redevelopment of Carshalton town centre after the war, but as an opinionated amateur they never reached fruition. Little Holland House aren't open very often, only on the first Sunday of the month, so it'll be several weeks before you can follow in my footsteps. But do stick a reminder in your calendar if you're interested because Frank's gem of a property deserves more awe and attention, and maybe you'll gather some ideas for doing up your own place too.