The news from Watford Here's some news from Watford in insufficient detail, some of which I could have written more about, one of which I might return to and one of which I definitely will. • Watford has a new website encouraging you to visit Watford, live in Watford and move your business to Watford. It's called Watford Actually. I only laughed occasionally. "Watford offers the perfect blend of vibrancy and comfort" was one such occasion. "A lively town brimming with attractions for every interest!" was another, especially because they had to admit the Harry Potter Studio Tour isn't (quite) in Watford. • If you were planning to book tickets for the Harry Potter Studio Tour this month you can't, it's sold out. The next available date (at time of writing) is 31st July on the last tour of the day at 6.30pm. If you want a tour before 5pm the earliest date is 17th August. If you want a tour before 3pm try September after the schools go back. The cheapest no-frills tour is £56, since you ask. You should see the queue at the bus stop outside Watford Junction station. • In exciting news Watford's big shopping centre is being renamed The Harlequin Centre. I thought it already had been but when I reread last month's news story it actually said the change would happen "in the summer". For now it's still atria Watford, a rubbish name based on the fact the roof has a lot of glass. Before 2021 it was intu Watford, the rubbish name of a company destined to go bust. But before 2013 it was always the Harlequin Centre, a name suggested in a newspaper competition in 1992 when the place opened, which everybody in Watford's always loved so they're delighted it's coming back. n.b. The Harlequin name is believed to have been inspired by the Harlequin line, which in 1988 became the official nickname for the railway line serving Watford High Street station (this because it passed through Harlesden and Queen's Park). • I saw these bins in Cassiobury Park Avenue and I worried Watford Council had changed their logo again to some awful sunshine thing. Then I checked and it turns out the awful sunshine thing was the town's logo between 1997 and 2003, at which point the new Liberal Democrat administration sighed deeply and restored the traditional coat of arms. Then in 2016 they tweaked the shield and changed the town's motto from Audentior to Be Bold. That means these three bins are in fact showing three Watford logos in chronological order, first sunburst (1997-2003), then Audentior (2003-2016), then Be Bold (2016-now). Design agency Fresh Lemon gave the Watford council brand a jazzy revamp earlier this year but mainly only changed the backgrounds. • Watford has a new orbital path called the Watford Green Loop. It's 6½ miles long and designed to be walked or wheeled for a decent bit of exercise. The route crosses Cassiobury Park (pictured), then follows the River Gade and (cough) crosses an industrial estate to the Ebury Way, a longstanding cycle path along a former railway line, then ticks off Oxhey Park before (cough) crossing a retail park and following a bit of the River Colne, finally looping round the top of the town centre and back to Cassiobury Park. If you live in North Watford it's not exactly convenient but needs must. The Watford Green Loop won the 2025 Local Government Chronicle ‘Future Places’ award earlier this week and the council are well chuffed. I'm very tempted to do a circuit. • Watford also has a newish Heritage Trail in the town centre, complete with downloadable leaflet and snazzy information boards. Essentially it's a walk from the Town Hall to the Hornet statue - nothing too taxing - via some properly old buildings round the back of the church. It's nice to see Watford Museum staff doing something visible while they wait to reopen inside the Town Hall in 2027. • If you ever danced the night away in the nightclub by The Pond, it closed on New Year's Day 2024 and was put up for sale with a £6m price tag. In its final days it was Pryzm but before that the 2500-capacity venue's been known as Top Rank, Bailey's, Paradise Lost, Kudos, Destiny and Oceana. A plan to replace it with 147 flats failed so it's still on the market, now for £4m, which means you can enjoy a short fly-through video here and get all nostalgic. • Watford's Art Deco Colosseum, formerly the Assembly Halls, is said to have some of the best acoustics in the country. The production of Captain Pugwash I enjoyed as a birthday treat in 1974 was certainly top notch. However the concert hall's been closed since 2020 for (very) significant refurbishment, and is finally due to reopen on 29th August. The first event, unexpectedly, is a gig by Ocean Colour Scene supported by PP Arnold (followed in September by Jake Bugg, David Essex and The Stranglers). • Not Watford, but The Sportsman pub in Croxley Green sadly closed at the end of February. It's currently To Let, like anyone is going to want to reopen a pub in a village that still boasts four pubs and a Harvester, but was also designated an Asset of Community Value last month which might save it. • Not Watford, but Scotsbridge House at the foot of Scots Hill has been completely demolished. I was totally taken aback. I remember it as a crowded cluster of old buildings, and the sign outside for the British Friesian Cattle Society always had me intrigued. Alas it seems the farming organisation couldn't financially justify 40 employees rattling around in lovely premises by the River Chess so sold the site in 2023 and scarpered to Telford, and now every last bit of it is rubble. Coming soon are 59 flats, which I see come with 160 parking spaces which tells you all you need to know about the intended residents. Thankfully Three Rivers Museum made a lovely 10 minute video about the place back in 2015 so we'll always have that. • Not Watford, but the Croxley Revels are on 28th June this year, and haven't you always wanted to go ever since you saw John Betjeman gently mocking it in his Metro-land documentary?

I've been to see some art. Serpentine Galleries Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots (until 7 September) [exhibition guide] Arpita Singh: Remembering (until 27 July) Serpentine Pavilion 2025 by Marina Tabassum (until 26 September) medical capsule, much enlarged, chopped up into four ribbed slices. The chops help embrace the open air but also let the rain in, as I discovered when I dashed inside during a cloudburst and realised I was still getting wet. The interior feels a bit like a waiting room, all peripheral seating plus the obligatory hot drinks offering at the far end. Vision 1, Functionality 0. Play Pavilion (until 10 August) White Cube Richard Hunt: Metamorphosis – A Retrospective (until 29 June) Richard Hunt. I really liked his late period plantlike spikes but could have done without the formative prequels. It's so purely presented that Richard and his oeuvre only really made sense once I'd watched the four minute looping video showing him hard at work in a cluttered industrial workshop. National Gallery The Carracci Cartoons: Myths in the Making (Room 1, until 6 July) (on a practical note the horrific queues that blighted the gallery last autumn have all died down - I waited no seconds whatsoever at the main entrance) National Portrait Gallery Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits (until 13 July) Lines of Feeling (until 4 January) Photo Portrait Now (until 28 September) Newport Street Gallery Raging Planet (until 31 August) The Power and the Glory (until 31 August) visited recently and found it uncomfortable, not especially artistic and eminently skippable. I left reassured that all the photos were from before I was born so we've learned since, and unnerved that we might not have learned at all. Tate Modern UK AIDS Memorial Quilt (until 16 June) UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, created to commemorate lives lost in the 80s and 90s, is out of long-term storage and back on view for one weekend only. The Turbine Hall is the perfect place to lay out 42 colourful twelve foot panels remembering 384 people who died in the AIDS epidemic, commemorated here with love and creativity by their friends (and sometimes family). Some were well known names - Robert the photographer, Mark the activist, Christopher from Blue Peter - others shone brightly in their own corner. Each panel is unique, from simple symbolism to complex reminiscence, with red ribbons, rainbows and teddy bears frequently seen. In most cases you can only guess at the backstory from pictorial clues. It's the dates that really hit home, so many born in the 50s and 60s cut down in their 30s and 40s, and a few babies lost at barely two months for added shock. Some who've come to Tate Modern to see the quilts plainly remember the struggle first time round, and in a sign of quite how far things have moved on I also saw a teacher leading her primary class round the fabric cemetery and pointing out names and memories. If you can't pay your respects in person several panels are explorable on the Memorial Quilt's website. Bow Arts Gallery Bow Open: Connections (until 31 August) well chuffed to have had his systematic imprint selected. The most fun work by far is Campbell McConnell's 90 second video of medieval actresses repeatedly overacting. The space out the back is totally wasted. Try not to tread on the fabric snake. Halcyon Gallery - 146 New Bond Street Point Blank by Bob Dylan (until 6 July) The Beaten Path, which was also exhibited here, and there was his reinterpretation of my snap of Blackpool Pier on page 228... and 229... and 231. You have to smile, and I did just that all the way back out onto the Mayfair streets.

In April 2024 Sadiq Khan proposed introducing an express 'Bakerloop' bus route in lieu of a Bakerloo line extension. It was part of a proposed doubling of the Superloop network. BL1: Waterloo → Elephant & Castle → Burgess Park → Old Kent Road → New Cross Gate → Lewisham January 2025 TfL launched a consultation for the Bakerloop route and also covered a double decker with brown vinyl to promote the occasion. Yesterday TfL revealed the consultation results and confirmed that the BL1 will start in the autumn. • The northbound stop outside Lewisham station has been removed to help speed up the route. This leaves three stops in central Lewisham, one at Loampit Vale which is 150m away from Lewisham station, so it's no great loss. • Route 453, which shadows the BL1 between Elephant & Castle and New Cross, will have its frequency reduced. We don't know by how much. It currently runs 8 times an hour for most of the day. The press release doesn't mention a start date, only "the autumn", but it's almost certainly going to be Saturday 27th September because a separate announcement yesterday confirmed that's the day the contract to operate the BL1 begins. Subject to consultation, the next phase of the expansion would include a new SL13 service, travelling between Ealing Broadway and Hendon; a new SL14 service, travelling between Stratford bus station and Chingford Hatch; and a new SL15 service travelling between Clapham Junction and Eltham station. This is the map of 'Superloop 2' that the Mayor tweeted in April last year as part of his election campaign, but I've recoloured it. In grey are the ten existing Superloop routes, SL1-SL10. brown is the new Bakerloop route, BL1. (I've had to extend it to Waterloo because that wasn't the original plan) blue are the five proposed Superloop routes that now have a number, SL11-SL15. SL11: North Greenwich → Woolwich → Thamesmead → Abbey Wood 472. It will in fact replace route 472 but only stop in select locations, with other routes picking up the slack at unserved stops inbetween. Introducing it will actually save TfL some money. The consultation for the SL11 closed in April. SL12: Gants Hill → Romford → Elm Park → Rainham 66, which from experience is already pretty speedy as it hurtles along the A12. The eastern end will be a very welcome north-south link in a borough whose railways run west-east and where existing bus routes have a tendency to meander rather than run direct. Most innovatively the Rainham terminus will be at the remote estuarine Ferry Lane industrial estate. The consultation for the SL12 closed in May. SL13: Ealing Broadway → Hanger Lane → Brent Cross → Hendon 112, and quite what it means for the frequency of that route remains to be seen. SL14: Stratford → Walthamstow → Chingford Hatch 69/97 corridor out of Stratford and then entirely replace the 357, but only the consultation will tell us that. SL15: Clapham Junction → Eltham I see we've abandoned all pretence that Superloop routes are numbered in a logical way. The first ten were supposedly numbered clockwise starting in the north, whereas these five are numbered all over the place in order of introduction. yellow routes, notionally SL16-SL20, which could/should follow on later. • Harrow to Barnet (via Edgware): There are many possible routes from Harrow to Edgware so the chosen path is hard to call but I suspect it'll follow the 186, then the 384 from Edgware to Barnet. • Barnet to Chingford (via Enfield): This outer orbital will probably shadow the 307 to Enfield, then 313 to Chingford, maybe. • Richmond to Wimbledon (via Roehampton): This'll head round the east side of Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common, most likely shadowing the 493 and then the 93. • Ealing Broadway to Kingston (via Richmond): This is plainly an express 65, a busy frequent route on roads often clogged and slow, so it's not clear how it'd be much faster. • Hounslow to Hammersmith (via Great West Road): The clue here is 'via Great West Road' which strongly suggests an express H91, potentially also using the A4 to skip the traffic in Chiswick. maybe twenty, and even less of a Loop than it ever was.