Cressingham Gardens – a village within a city
May 5th, 2014
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The spire of Holy Trinity Church seen from Cressingham Gardens. Split level houses on Hardel Walk. Wild flowers growing adjacent to Brockwell Park on the site of The Big Dig, a London wide project for enthusiastic urban gardeners.
Broken home
December 10th, 2020
Fifty years ago today my late father left the house he had designed and built in 1961, never to return. His marriage had broken down irretrievably and he had setup home in Cambridge with a forceful social climber who preferred an architect to her then travelling salesmen husband. The fallout from his decision has echoed down the decades leaving chaos in its wake and damaging many lives.
Ten years earlier he had bought a plot in a village outside Cambridge, together with a fellow architect and between them they had designed a pair of linked houses, with long gardens leading down to a stream. Such was the bucolic environment in which I spent a happy 1960s childhood surrounded by opportunities for play.
One day this may or may not form the basis of a autobiography but I cannot let the day pass unremarked.
Probation back in public hands
June 11th, 2020
This is welcome news for everybody concerned, the members of the public and the people on probation themselves. I well remember the furore on Twitter some years ago when then members of the probation service were up in arms about the damage being done to their service.
Apparently this process started a year ago
It’s not the first time a Conservative Government have thought better of allowing a natural monopoly to be run by private companies. When Boris Johnson was Mayor of London he ended the Public Private Partnership, then in place for maintenance of London Underground, and hid his announcement by releasing it during a General Election campaign, but he did so nonetheless. You can read about it here:-
City of Towers – Christopher Booker
May 4th, 2020
This film has reappeared in time for the 40th anniversary of its second showing on the BBC on 10th May 1980 as indicated by the image below taken from the BBC Genome project.
Read the rest of this entry »
Election result explained from @Sheff_socialist
December 25th, 2019
The only sensible thing I’ve seen written about the election result since the day it happened.
Taken from @Sheff_socialist with link at the end:-
A long thread about my own personal experiences during this election dealing with my Labour voting family deciding to out themselves as casual racists by voting Tory / Brexit Party in traditional Labour “Red Wall” heartlands
I come from a genuine working class family .
Grandparents were miners and domestic cleaning staff
Dad was butcher , mum was a cleaner and when she remarried after their divorce she married a miner .
I grew up in a two up two down terrace house that my parents rented from the local Co-op society and then moved into a council house in Kendray (Barnsley) when my mum remarried
Wetherspoon pubs map UK
October 3rd, 2019
Open House London 2019
September 14th, 2019
Single aspect flats
May 28th, 2019
I used to have a page here www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=8
At some point during the several blog failures and restarts it was changed without my noticing
to here http://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=21425
So if you are looking for my page on single aspect flat from
February 9th, 2010
it’s here -> http://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=21425
Sorry for the confusion.
This archived blog
May 19th, 2019
We are moving house this year, even further from London, which will mean fewer if any trips to the capital. So the blog is over but remains useful (in my eyes) for its take on housing standards and as an easily accessible table of Parker Morris standards.