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.

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.