Had another top night at Offline with Jesus Licks and Boomclick Soundsystem on the stage and a bevy of top notch poets and DJs.


Check out the photos: OFFLINE 29, Brixton JAMM, Thursday 29th June 2006

I've finally got around to adding a piece about St Mary's church, Silvertown, east London

When I visited it in the mid 1980s it was a burnt out shell, but it's since been restored. Check out the derelict-tastic photos here:
Abandoned church in Silvertown

Confiscated cameras and synergetic co-branding opportunities ahoy - I take a trip to the o2 Wireless Festival, Hyde Park, London.

Read my report here: o2 Wireless Festival, Hyde Park



Last week, the urban massive met up for a monster picnic in sunny Brickwell park, Brixton.

The turnout was huge - over 60 peeps - and a mighty fine time was had by all!

Check out the full photo report here: urban75 picnic, 2006

I saw this crazy blue glowing cloud over Brixton around 2.20am this morning. It looked like the Aurora Borealis had gone walkabout from the north pole, and the cloud seemed to be slowly changing hues from blue to a greeny blue and spreading in a north easterly direction. It looked very, very weird.

I've since learnt that I was looking at Noctilucent clouds

Here's how NASA describe them:

"They hover on the edge of space. Thin, wispy clouds, glowing electric blue. Some scientists think they're seeded by space dust. Others suspect they're a telltale sign of global warming. They're called noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds (NLCs)."



I started a thread on the urban75 bulletin boards and sent the image off to the BBC - and before I knew it, it was a major feature on the 1.30 BBC London News, with a follow up article later on tonight!

The station light is still on, but the station has closed forever (note the black bunting).

(Feature to appear in the disused railways section soon)

Cycing through the city
Up early to pedal into town on a glorious sunny morning.



Cycled to the Wobbly Bridge to see the last of the sheep being herded over the bridge as part of the biennale I'm still not quite sure what the connection with architecture is here).



Zipped across Blackfriars Bridge to watch the sheep being shpeherded into Paternoster Square, while some rather bizarre shouts could be heard from (presumably) animal rights protesters: "it's hot!" "they're wooly."

More photos here: Sheep drive through London

Pedalled eastwards on my trusty Dahon folding bike to take some pics of the Swiss Re building (aka the Swiss Gherkin) and the shiny shiny Lloyds building.

Then on to Brick Lane where I bumped into old urban75 contributor and Year Zero editor Adam Porter and his lovely partner.

Walked on to grab some pics of the now-closed Shoreditch tube station and then delivered some patting and stroking action to the super friendly goats at the Shoreditch City Farm.

Got hissed at by a gaggle of stroppy geese before watching an impressive fly by of sundry military jets, thundering towards Buckingham Palace (not to bomb it sadly, but as part of the Queen's birthday).

Cycled back into town and grabbed lunch at the Photographer's Gallery.

Next stop: Brockwell Park for a picnic. Report and photos here

Quick Test

Checking out freeware Palm blogging app u*blog.

View from my window now.

Full report to follow soon(ish) but in the meantime, here's the intrepid urban crew emerging from the Devil's Punchbowl, a stiflingly hot, bone-dry deep valley strewn with dead sheep in darkest Wales.

See previous walks here: urban75 walks

I love this kind of mad Victorian stuff - check out Volk's sea railway which ran for nearly three miles in the sea along Brighton's coastline.

Not surprisingly, it lasted less than seven years before being scrapped - which is rather a shame because it looked a mad ride.

Volk's Brighton to Rottingdean Seashore Electric railway



Happily, the nearly-as-eccentric Volk’s Electric Railway remains open - now the oldest remaining operating electric railway in the world - running for a mile and a quarter along Brighton's beach.

Volk’s Electric Railway, Brighton

Testing the Palm Treo/Splashblog mobile blogging tools - with this combo I can snap a picture on my Treo 650 phone, rattle off a caption and upload it to my blog in seconds!

It's been a bit of a bugger to set up though, but I'll give it a good try out tomorrow.

It's free to use (unless you're a hard core blogger) and has a simple interface that (when you've worked it out) makes it easy to blast out blogs on the move.
Check it out here SplashBlog

Today's album



The Jam: All Mod Cons
Here's where Paul Weller matured as a songwriter, combining his early mod/Who influences with a contemporary New Wave attitude.

Stuffed full of classic songs, Weller covers a lot of musical ground, from the acoustic beauty of 'English Rose' into the angry post-pub aggro of "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight." It's a fabulous album and still sounds fresh as fuck today.

It felt really odd coming back to a place I hadn't visited for twenty odd years, but I've posted up a photo report of my trip to Silvertown and North Woolwich in London's docklands here: A trip to London's Docklands



It's interesting to compare the photos with the ones I took back in 1980

North Woolwich Station


I've also added updated sections to my feature on North Woolwich railway station



There's also a piece on the fast-fading and soon to be closed, Silvertown station