As you may have noticed, Alison Lapper Pregnant has been removed from the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square. We at Treasure London miss her already: she made an excellent clue on one of our treasure hunts.
Jonny Wilkinson stood on the plinth for a few hours in October, and “Model for a Hotel 2007″ has been there for 6 weeks - incredibly I haven’t seen it yet*.
*(I just realised that I have seen it but I didn’t realise it was supposed to be there! oops).
The GLA are taking advice on what’s next for the fourth plinth - an exhibition will follow in the New Year which should be worthwhile if a bit “Young British Artist”-heavy.
I think the YBAs have mellowed out in their old age to try and bag more public gigs like this and (inevitably) lost a lot of their exciting shock value - a diamond encrusted skull is just not the same as a formaldehyde shark. The novelty and originality has evaporated.
Happy New Year to our readers!
Yesterday we attended the St Paul’s Christmas Carol Service.
I wasn’t so excited about going but I realised it was a great opportunity to get inside St Paul’s for free and experience a Christmassy atmosphere and a fun enough sing-a-long. But in fact it was awesome!
We must have arrived just at the perfect moment, about 15 minutes before the scheduled start. A queue had just formed, which we joined near the front… meanwhile hundreds of people were lining up behind us. I don’t know how many of those people got in… as we were ushered into the cathedral it became clear that it was already quite full. Another identical service is performed today (Christmas Eve).
We were directed further and further towards the front of the cathedral… an usher joked with us ‘I hope you can sing, cos you’ll be in with the choir’. And we were! Right in the choir bay: somewhere between the altar and the choir proper, where we could see the organist hiding, the wandsman directing readers to and from their seats with his big wand, and exactly how restless the cathedral choristers were. Fantastic stuff.
We had to sing 2 carols that we didn’t know. Miriam, on my left, took the option of singing the correct words to a seemingly random tune which gave me fits of giggles, as seems to happen in every church service I’ve been to as an adult. The second carol was for experts only, it had extra random notes dotted about the place and even the choir seemed to be struggling. Weird choice.
I especially liked that one of the readings was given in proper Cockney.
Merry Christmas to all of Treasure London’s supporters.
Enjoy the holiday,
Ronald
As far as I have figured out, London Underground staff refer to blind people as ‘VIP’s - which stands for ‘Visually Impaired Person’. I call that Political Correctness gone good.
I was on a tube carriage earlier in the week while a VIP was boarding the train. A staff member helped him board, and then presumably had to call forward to ensure that he received help at his destination. As the doors were closing, the staff member shouted through:
“You’re going to Kings Cross, sir, isn’it?!”
It really made me smile how this staff member showed the maximum possible amount of respect in one sentence.
Not only by showing respect with formal language, calling the guy ’sir’
But also by showing respect with his own informal use of language, framing the question with ‘isn’it?”
Really cheered me up, it did. Thanks, London Underground staff 
Went for tea and yum cakes in a lovely little place in Soho - the Maison Bertaux Café on Greek Street. While there, Noel Fielding has an exhibition of his art around the place.
I’m not a fan of the Mighty Boosh but the art was pretty impressive. He’d used the space in the café as a canvas, writing notes and doodling on the walls. Hard to describe with one style, lots of modern influences - surrealist pop art? I would have taken some of the pieces home with me but they were all already marked up with the little orange dots of Sold (exhibition opened a week ago). Tried to estimate the value of the art in this tiny upstairs room in Soho… maybe £10,000? more? A nice payday for a man of many talents.
Exhibition runs until end of February. None of the art is online at the moment, but you can check out Maison Bertaux Blog or Independent Article
One negative aspect of living in London is the apparent lack of doctors.
Even though I’m a member of a general practice that is largely frequented by students (who are all away on holiday), I can’t get an appointment to see my GP for 3 weeks. And this is perhaps their quietest time of the year.
Given that I generally only go and see a doctor if there is something wrong with me that is irritating or needs attention, I don’t want to have to wait 3 weeks to even speak to someone about it. Do people just go to the GP for a chat when there’s nothing wrong with them? (actually yes: I briefly did some work experience with a GP and it was all old ladies with their corns)
I have previously been advised by my doctor’s receptionist to go and wait in Accident & Emergency if I want attention in a reasonable time frame - I should only have to wait 4 hours for non-emergency care due to government targets, she told me.
A General Practitioner friend of mine expresses her love of GP-ing by noting that GPs provide continuity of care… becoming familiar with individual patients and building up a level of trust and respect. However, when I moved house within London - just 800m down the road - I was told by my previous GP that I was now a few metres out of their catchment (even though I’m still in the same local authority etc) and no longer eligible for treatment at their practice. I don’t find this very continuous care.
NHS Direct (0845 46 47) are pretty good for talking you through your options but they’ll laugh with you about your ability to get an actual doctor’s appointment or treatment.
My problem is the level of hassle that you have to go through in order to get any sort of non-emergency treatment on the NHS. If I was just a bit more timid than I am, I might quickly start ignoring potentially-serious illnesses just so I didn’t have the additional stress of dealing with the NHS in London. And that’s clearly not good for the city’s health.
Rant over.
By far and away the best blog for London trivia is Diamond Geezer’s:
http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/
I had previously heard that my local station (Finsbury Park) was the busiest outside Zone 1. However, in 2006 this was not the case - both Hammersmith and Canary Wharf received more visitors (thanks to DG). I’d like to think that I’m contributing to Finsbury Park’s demise with my bicycle - that’ll be 500 fewer visitors next year!
And Here’s Your Host of the top blog resource on game shows - Brig Bother
http://www.bothersbar.co.uk/
I have spent 10 minutes watching Bob Monkhouse back in Christmas 1984. Good stuff!
From news story on HR Zone and BBC
A recent Microsoft survey lists skills workplace skills that are seen as most important by UK business leaders:
1. Team working and interpersonal skills
2. Initiative
3. Analysing and problem solving
4. Verbal communication
5. Personal planning and organising
6. Flexibility
7. IT skills
I’d say as a business owner trained in computer science that I agree with the survey results - I’d place IT skills at the bottom of the table too. For my business, interpersonal skills and initiative do feature as the skills I most value. While adequate IT skills might be essential in the modern workplace, strengths in the earlier fields are far more valuable than a strength in IT.
I might be biased - cos I think a corporate treasure hunts is one of the best ways to develop and analyse business skills including: team working and interpersonal skills, initiative, analysing and problem solving, verbal communication,… but we don’t offer IT courses!
Happy treasure hunting,
Ronald - Treasure London
Londoners - don’t miss your chance to go to The Championships, Wimbledon.
Tickets are always in high demand, and a ballot system determines who is eligible to buy top tickets.
Your chance to order a ballot form for the June/July 2008 Champs will end TOMORROW (Saturday 15 December). Once you’ve received your ballot form, it must be returned by the end of the year.
Full ballot details here
Good luck!
Ronald - Treasure London
There are a number of reasons why Treasure London is awesome for corporate events, and here’s another one:
At the end of the company event, when everyone else is on their way to the pub or home, Treasure London still has a bit of work to do.
After the event we’ll set up a special site with additional information about the locations that we used, and upload all the photos taken during the treasure hunt. We’ll include a forum to ensure that people can talk about their shared experience of the treasure hunt, which can form part of an ongoing company team-building exercise.
We’ll set an appropriate address, e.g. example.treasurelondon.com, and password-protect it for you before sending you the details. We expect that you’ll be talking about our Treasure Hunts for a long time after the event… and we’re always interested in what you have to say.
Awesome!
Ronald - Treasure London
