30 unblogged things I did in June Sun 1: My Dad hasn't had any answerphone messages for three weeks since BT switched him to Digital Voice, the internet-based phone connection. We tried to work out why this might be, and were surprised/shocked to discover that as part of the package you get transferred to a free BT Voicemail service. The only way to tell you have a message is to notice you have "an interrupted dial tone", i.e. you have to keep checking your phone just in case, then you have to dial 1571. This is inherently ineffective, especially when you're used to just walking into the room and seeing a red light flash. He told BT to turn this ridiculous freebie off which they promptly did, only to discover that 7 people had left a message during the hiatus and he will never ever know what they said. Madness. Mon 2: Supermarket update: I noticed that 9-packs of Kit-Kats were 'reduced to clear' so bought up several, having guessed what was inevitably coming next. True to form they returned to the shelves as 8-packs of Kit Kats but at the same price - i.e. a miserably cynical 12½% price rise. Shrinkflation strikes again. Tue 3: I stepped onto a train at one of London's least used stations, and I think that was my old boss sitting closest to the doorway but I wasn't sure and he didn't say anything. He didn't have his [Peach] with him otherwise I'd have been certain. We'd only have ended up discussing [Melon] anyway, so no great loss. Wed 4: At the library, Richard Osman's latest novel has finally reached the "there's always a copy on the shelf" stage rather than requiring a reservation. Only took 9 months. It's not as good as the Thursday Murder Club series either, sorry. Thu 5: BestMate'sOtherHalf now has four snakes living in a tank in the bedroom, and today I was proudly shown the skins they've just shed and how two of them aren't eating. Fri 6: While I was out today I thought "I wonder if this is one of the shortest platforms in London" but I wasn't sure how to check and I suspect that's a topic for another day. Sat 7: One of my neighbours decided to have a loud houseparty into the early hours, and I don't think it's a coincidence there was a brief power cut just before midnight. Sun 8: A bird very nearly walked onto my train in Epping but then walked off, and on some people's social media feeds this is what counts as top content. Mon 9: I've been told that an 11-year-old mains-powered smoke alarm is officially 'beyond its expiry date', despite not having an expiry date printed on it, and I beg to differ. Tue 10: Around lunchtime this blog received its 14 millionth visitor. And just 10½ months since the 13 millionth visitor, which'll be the fastest million yet, which is lovely. Thanks a million Wed 11: Amongst the slew of absolute tosh written about the so-called Strawberry Moon, yes it may be the lowest full moon in 19 years but that doesn't make it worth going out to look at. Every full moon reaches this height in the sky, every single one, before rising a bit higher. Even the BBC joined the insane urging to view this 'rare phenomenon', which it absolutely wasn't, and please could news desks employ folk with a basic understanding of science? Thu 12: The album from my nephew's wedding dropped today, not a luxury keepsake book but a scrollable online collection with over 1000 downloadable images. Everyone looks happy, beaming and natural, apart from the 30 shots I appear in which look entirely unlifelike... oh god, this is what getting inexorably older feels like. Fri 13: I finally finished last Christmas's chocolate-based presents which I've been eating one chunk at a time since the start of the year. I'm not sure they'd have survived the upcoming heatwaves anyway. Sat 14: I was on the Liberty line between Romford and Upminster when two inspectors boarded the train and checked everyone's tickets. So yes TfL are taking fare dodging seriously, but there must be far more productive places to check. Sun 15: One of my childhood homes is up for sale, much-extended, at a shocking price. My jaw dropped looking at the photos in the brochure (the new kitchen island is bigger than our kitchen) and wept looking at the garden (everything ripped out in favour of a tiered "low-maintenance entertainment space"). Mon 16: If you have a 60+ Oyster card I can confirm there are only two stations within the zone of validity where the card doesn't open the ticket gates. They are a) Shenfield and b) Cheshunt. Both are run by Greater Anglia, whose staff will happily wave you through the gate if you ask, but no other train company is as cynical. Tue 17: As part of London Rivers Week they opened up the Clerks' Well in Clerkenwell to public view. It was only for three hours one Tuesday afternoon but scores of people visited the tiny vestibule to look down into history, and I hope the nice folk at Islington Museum have taken the hint and will do this more often. Wed 18: The bus stop at Seething Wells in Surbiton has a roundel flag and five tiles underneath, all of them non-TfL services, and I wondered if this is unique inside London. Thu 19: The new episode of Poetry Please, in which Roger McGough interviews Antony Szmierek, is the most delightful Radio 4/Radio 6Music cultural collision. Antony's going far. Fri 20: Eighteen months ago I started my quest to spot all the numberplate letter pairs from AA to YY. I'm delighted to say I've now spotted 518 out of 519, having finally seen UE on a black Toyota passing Bromley-by-Bow station. That just leaves UV and then I'm done, although based on experimental evidence the odds aren't looking good for a swift conclusion. Sat 21: Upminster's former pitch and putt was sold off by the council in 2021 and is now Kings Green, "a collection of exquisite detached homes set within a private community" where you can "step into a realm of opulence", and it seems that even when we do build on golf courses we waste the opportunity. Sun 22: They showed Saltburn on BBC1 this evening, the much-hyped jawdropping film previously only available on Amazon Prime. Why subscribe at £8.99 a month when all you have to do is wait 18 months and watch for nothing? Mon 23: I rewatched 28 Days Later tonight, now its sequel's sequel is in cinemas, and as well as being a great film it's also a excellent visual record of millennial central London. Tue 24: I think I saw Emma Thompson this afternoon, crossing City Island near the English National Ballet. You don't get many Dames in Canning Town. Wed 25: The shanty town under the Bow Flyover has been removed. I saw three ominous trucks parked alongside yesterday and now the entire rickety shelter has vanished, even the barbecue annexe in the middle of the roundabout. I'm amazed it lasted four months. Thu 26: According to the latest ONS data the population of Tower Hamlets is projected to increase by 20.4% between 2022 and 2032, the fastest increase in England. If true it'll then be the 4th most populous borough in London, up from 10th in 2021, up from 17th in 2011, up from 23rd in 2001, up from 28th in 1991. Bottom 5 to top 5 in four decades flat. Fri 27: I said last week that the intrusive building site at Stroudley Walk might lead to the premature demise of a local business and today coffee shop Posted threw in the towel. Officially they're 'hitting the pause button' until everything's 'looking fresh and fabulous again', but that could be ages and fingers crossed they return. Sat 28: The Atlantic World Gallery in the National Maritime Museum is being upgraded to show more stories of oppression, resistance, trauma and joy, rather than just a spin round the slave trade, and now ends with a 'reflective space' with books and beanbags. Sun 29: I love Glastonbury weekend, the huge slew of artists on TV for free without having to camp in a field and pee in a plastic loo. I watched the full sets by Supergrass, The 1975, Scissor Sisters, Pulp, The Prodigy, Ezra Collective, Rod Stewart, Self Esteem, Gary Numan, Lewis Capaldi, Caribou, Franz Ferdinand, Olivia Rodrigo, Loyle Carner, English Teacher, Charlie xcx, Four Tet and Kae Tempest, and quite a lot of Wet Leg, Japanese Breakfast and Black Country New Road. Roll on 2027. Mon 30: Yesterday's post, 'A Nice Walk', was actually about the Western Loop of the Jubilee Walkway. Paragraph 1 was Leicester Square, P2 was Trafalgar Square, P3 was St James's Park, P4 was Parliament Square, P5-7 were the South Bank from Lambeth Bridge to the Tate Modern, P8 was St Paul's/Fleet Street, P9 was Lincoln's Inn Fields and P10 was Covent Garden. It is a very nice walk.

Hard as it may be to believe from my supremely easy-going and liberal attitude these days (no laughing at the back), there was a time when I was, well, if not completely anti-vegan then certainly vegan-skeptic. To someone who once considered vegetarianism radically restrictive, veganism seemed like vegetarianism with the few remaining good bits (butter, cheese, cream, eggs) taken out, a path taken only by people who didn't really like food in the first place and were looking for a more socially acceptable word to substitute for "dietary neurosis". And certainly, there are cuisines that (for want of a better word) "veganise" better than others. Most of the SE Asian and Indian subcontinent handle veganism supremely well - certain subgenres of Indian food are largely vegan anyway, and I have it on good authority from a vegan friend who went on holiday to Thailand recently that he ate extremely well almost everywhere. Just don't try being a vegan in France - one member of my family recently asked for a vegan alternative to a set menu starter and was served pâté de foie gras, a substitution very much from the Nana Royal attitude to hospitality. Sushi, with its focus on fresh fish, doesn't seem like an obvious cuisine to lend itself to going vegan, but then chains like Pret and Wasabi have done so for a number of years already with their avocado and cucumber rolls. What if it was done properly, with a chef's attitude to detail and with real presentational flair? Studio Gauthier attempts to do just that, making excellent sushi that just happens to have no animal in it. Can it really work? Well, in a word, yes. The first thing to arrive to our table was this cute presentation of plant-based "caviar", the deception strengthened by being served in a little custom-printed caviar tin. The "caviar" itself was remarkably realistic - certainly the equal to the lumpfish roe you can get from Tesco, probably even nicer - and underneath was a layer of creamy, salty plant-based crème fraiche of some kind (probably made from nuts but don't hold me to that). It was all rather lovely, despite the vegan blinis perhaps not working quite as well as their butter and milk-based counterparts and also being somewhat burned. Passing the huge open kitchen a little later, I noticed one of the staff despondently picking through a pile of burned blinis for the occasional one that could be salvaged and used, so clearly something had gone wrong in the preparation that day. I'm sure they're normally a lot better than this. When it comes to accurately describing the actual sushi, I'm going to have a bit of an issue, as some of the very clever techniques they used to recreate the standard sushi sets are quite beyond my powers of deduction. But alongside avocado nigiri here are "salmon" and "tuna" nigiri made, I'm told from tapioca starch with more fake tuna urumaki, all of it more than convincing. What also helped was that the sushi rice was warm - a detail that plenty of "actual" (and far more expensive) sushi places get wrong. Another plate of nigiri featured chargrilled aubergine, piquillo peppers with passion fruit chutney and, in the centre there, "Green Dynamite" - crisp rice fritters topped with tofu "crab", and sliced jalapeño dotted with sriracha. Thoughtfully put together and each mouthful bursting with flavour, I think it was about this point that I completely forgot I was eating plant-based food and was just eagerly looking forward to the next thing to arrive. More "tuna" and avocado and truffled miso nigiri came sharing a plate with a bitesize inari - a spongey, sweet tofu thing stuffed with soft, warm rice. Inari are actually vegan anyway, so perhaps the success of this shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but it was still a very good example of its kind, and right up there with the caviar as one of my favourite things overall. With a couple of cocktails, the bill came to £43pp, more than reasonable for London these days, certainly for food which although doesn't contain any expensive protein did still clearly have a lot of work and thought gone into it. I'm just docking a couple of points firstly for the burned blinis, and also for slightly inexperienced service charged at slightly-over-normal 15% - we had to ask a couple of times for various things. Also, the room isn't air-conditioned which you could just about get away with when it's 28C (the day we visited) but once it goes over 30C, which it often does in London these days, you're not going to want to be there very long. Still, these are niggles. Even a committed protein eater like me had a blast at Studio Gauthier - it's intelligent, enjoyable food done well in attractive yet informal surroundings, and for not very much money at all. For vegans though, this could very easily be everything they ever wanted in a restaurant, where instead of having to choose between the only plant option (usually mushroom risotto, or something involving butternut squash) or going hungry, they can have anything they want from this enticing menu, and be just as smug and satisfied as their protein-eating friends anywhere else in town. And that alone has to be worth a trip, surely? 8/10

A Nice Walk: A London Loop (6 miles) Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, leafy shade, river valleys, wildlife-adjacent, pretty views, a bit of heritage, a bit of a stroll, won't take all day. So here's a scenic loop some distance from the centre of London, not excessively arduous but a nice walk all the same. . Start your watch, we should be back here within three hours. Ahead is one of the finest green spaces on the walk, several acres with a full right to roam, although our designated path sticks to one side. I spy ducks, geese and swans and also get to dodge occasional fallen branches. Someone's put a lot of effort into their cottage garden with hollyhocks and sunflowers all ablaze, also pristine vegetable beds boasting runner beans, rhubarb and marrows. Mind the nettles beside the path. Now that's unfortunate - an old red phonebox with a jammed door and a broken glass pane through which has been posted an ugly pile of bottles and other litter. A waymarker atop a pole confirms I'm on the right track but also exudes an air of local irrelevance, also the map at its foot has faded since Neville installed it. Full steam ahead past plants with spiky fronds, also a squat conifer where bees hunt nectar deep in its bright pink flowers. I wouldn't have known that tree was a Mediterranean oak if it didn't have a plaque underneath. A family cycles by with what looks like a picnic scattered across their collective baskets. Occasionally there are raised benches to sit on, generally empty, but also an abandoned pushchair and what looks like a septic tank so best walk on. Someone's written "Big Dave Foxcroft - LEGEND" on the wall, also "Wilma is one of a kind" - she gets two mentions. For wildlife watchers a lone seagull sits on a post, a crow swoops off with a beakful of something, a butterfly emerges fom the undergrowth and the lamps have a patina of spider's web. Across the stream is a large house with what sounds like an alarm blaring non-stop. . This section of the walk is blessed with fine gardens flowering with some kind of large daisy, also something purple and heatherish, also deep holly but no barbecues please. The water's edge is littered with half-bricks and half-pipes, meanwhile the water ripples with occasional twigs and bottles. A phone mast is visible in a gap between the rooftops on the horizon. My favourite passing t-shirt is 'Made In The North, Forged In Gravy', just ahead of 'Catzilla Ate My Hamster'. The path broadens on the far side as it approaches a quiet road with a seemingly-unnecessary pedestrian crossing. The subsequent climb looks like it's approaching another churchyard but bears left prematurely past a cluster of Christmas trees to skirt the back door of the building instead. Spring's flowers may have faded but the hanging baskets here are a persistent riot of colour as the path drops gently into a separate river valley. Don't expect to see any water this time, not in the current climate. The pub by the crossroads offers a choice of proper roast or Vegan Wellington. The largest open space is of course pencilled in for commercial development, even out here. It is indeed a properly scenic spot but the majority of Londoners live nowhere nearby. Ian Visits blog I am fortuitously able to tell her. The path weaves more contortedly now, eventually entering a large field with holly hedges, shady oaks and group of friends enjoying a summer picnic. On the far side I pass a man dressed as a monk, also two sturdy men in Iron Maiden t-shirts, before crossing the busiest road on the walk so far. The whiff of sewage is intermittently apparent, also an outburst of shrubbery, also an ambulance sadly on call. Three agricultural carts have been repurposed and topped with potted plants which I consider to be very pleasant. Threading onwards passers-by now outnumber trees and hedgesparrows are less common. I have to hand it to the walk's creators, I don't think I've been down this alleyway before despite coming mighty close, although I don't like how it smells of wee. Initially I miss the penultimate alley because the waymarkers have failed again, or maybe I just wasn't looking carefully enough. On the final approach a lemon has made a bolt for freedom, also I swear those sunflowers are fake. And on returning to my starting point I see someone's now arranged a rows of deckchairs across the grass where I expected the information board would be so how would anyone know a walk starts here? They launched this circuit with such high hopes but I bet I'm the only person to have followed it today, which is a damned shame given the inherent glories of this corner of the capital.

The news from Havering (black holes, Schrodinger's bus and thatched rabbits) roundabout in north Havering has closed to traffic for 12 weeks. It is an almighty constriction. Gallows Corner flyover can be strengthened, even made safe for HGVs, safeguarding it for the next 60 years. But this requires sensationally savage road closures because the A12 arterial is already such a barrier that there's essentially no other way to cross from one side to the other. Through traffic is being diverted via the M25, which is miles and miles, and local traffic faces lengthy tortuous detours via insufficient roads increasingly choked with cars. From the south it makes a trip to the mega-Tesco basically unattainable and from the north it makes a quick nip into Romford most unwise. The only traffic permitted through the junction is public transport (and taxis and emergency vehicles) so the smart way across is by bus, but routes have reduced frequencies and anything trying to get through has to wait at temporary traffic lights (a 3-way junction with an approximate four-minute cycle time). I watched a suspicious number of vehicles trying to get through anyway, then struggling to reverse when they discovered their exit was blocked, blocking everyone else. Pedestrians can still cross but it's poorly signed, and basically stay the hell away unless you live here, in which case my deepest summer commiserations. A highly unexpected casualty of the Gallows Corner closure is the 375, one of London's least frequent buses which normally pootles out of Romford to serve the village of Havering-atte-Bower. For the duration of the closure it will instead terminate at Chase Cross, i.e. the urban 3 miles will be chopped off and only the rural lunge into Essex will remain. This is particularly rubbish for residents of H-a-B because it means their only bus won't even reach some shops, let alone a station, the intention being that they switch to/from the 175 to complete their journey. I went to ride this embarrassment of a stunted bus yesterday. A huge poster outside Romford Station warned potential passengers that the 375 wouldn't be stopping anywhere near here until September... so it was a bit of a surprise when a 375 rolled in at the bus stop opposite and disgorged several passengers. It was even more of a surprise when the supposedly non-existent bus reappeared and took a dozen of us out of central Romford. We passed at least six bus stops with a yellow poster claiming the bus we were on wasn't running, then drove straight past the stop where the journey had been due to start. I rode the bus all the way into Essex, way out beyond Stapleford Abbotts almost to the M25, and at Passingford Bridge the driver swung round and took a growing cargo of passengers all the way back to central Romford again. So is the 375 buggered or not? • According to TfL's bespoke Gallows Corner webpage, the 375 definitely isn't serving Romford. • According to TfL's Bus Changes webpage, the 375 is not mentioned so must be running normally. • According to a poster outside Romford station, the 375 won't be back until September. • According to the Countdown display it's due in 3 minutes. • According to the 375 webpage and various apps, all's normal. • According to every ounce of pre-publicity, Chase Cross only. restored, not a moment too soon, by a public body intent on carving up the borough. That building is Upminster Tithe Barn, built in the mid 15th century on the orders of the Abbot of Waltham Abbey. At 44m it's not quite as long as Harmondsworth's but it is believed to be London's oldest thatched building. It was also in an increasingly poor state, so much so that it was added to Historic England's Heritage At Risk list in 2023, and with its damaged timbers and leaky roof could simply have decayed away. Financial rescue came from a most unlikely place, namely National Highways who contributed £650,000 towards full restoration. A team of master thatchers and other craftspeople started in January and were done by June, and the resulting finish does indeed look splendid. 11,000 bundles of water reed were used to rethatch the roof and it looks properly crisp, like a recently barbered cut. Up top are a particularly striking pair of thatched hares named Willow and Hunter by local schoolchildren, added as a final decorative flourish. Three lightning conductors have been added in the hope that the new fire alarms will never be needed. The intention is to retain the barn for public use, indeed the superbly quirky Museum of Nostalgia is due to be back inside and offering Open Days again next year. As yet nobody's found the cash to install toilets, and if you go along today all you'll see is a smart locked building beside a dusty car park, but this fine survivor is indeed back on the map. Lower Thames Crossing. This is the new road tunnel between Essex and Kent which will scythe off through fields around North Ockendon and help declog the QE2 Bridge, and which was given the financial go-ahead just last week. Grants from the Lower Thames Crossing Designated Funds have been offered to over 50 community projects including Purfleet Heritage Centre, a local Scout Group, a bike skills area in Gravesend and Thurrock LGBTQ+ Network. It may seem perverse to be donating cash allocated to road building to rethatch a barn nowhere near the proposed dual carriageway, indeed a cynic might suggest National Highways are only doing this to take some of the eco-heat out of their hugely controversial tunnel project. But wouldn't it be nice to be able to drive under Gravesend Reach, and aren't those boxing hares superb?