John Stow

John Stow (1525-1605) was a historian best known for his Survey of London.


He is buried in the church of St Andrew Undershaft, where there is also a statue of him holding a quill.  Each year, the Lord Mayor and a distinguished historian place a new quill in Stow's stone hand, a token of the fact that the writing of London's history will never come to an end.

Lusisti satis

"Lubisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti, tempus abire tibi est" - "You have played enough, eaten enough and drunk enough; it's time to leave."


That is so going in my next resignation letter.

Barking Mad

The phrase barking mad comes from there being a refuge for the insane in Barking in medieval London.

London's Silent Spots

• Fountain Court, Temple
• Tower Hamlets Cemetery
• The square by St Alban the Martyr, off Holborn
• Keystone Crescent, off the Caledonian Road
• Kerry Street in Kentish Town
• Courtenay Square off Kennington Lane
• Arnold Circus, Shoreditch

Tory Scumbags

Getting onto the train on Friday morning, I got on at the very first carriage, where the door is right next to the driver's cab. Getting on, I heard from the driver's cab the phrase, "Hurry up you Tory scumbags, get on."

Which, personally, I'm not sure is an entirely professional attitude from a London Midland train driver. Or, indeed, a very clever one. While I suppose one can understand thinking that Solihull/Widney Manor might be a Tory area, it is in fact Liberal Democrat. So, 'Liberal Democrat scumbags' would seem to have been the phrase the train driving dickhead was looking for.

Mind you, the use of the phrase suggests that he wanted us to hurry up so that his train would run on time, so a small amount of kudos is due, as no one else at London Midland seems to care too much about sticking to the timetable.

Review of 2010

Ok, so after my somewhat geeky recording of several parts of my life over the past 12 months, the results have been counted and verified. So what did my life look like in 2010.

Well, firstly, and most spectacularly, I spent 80 nights away from home - holidays, weekends away etc etc. The best part of 3 months, or over £1,000 in rent paid for a room I wasn't using. Still, probably money well spent, given I'm generally happier away from home!

I travelled 5125 miles by train, mainly in the course of commuting, and flew 1286 miles. No exact total for driving, but suspect in the region of 8000 miles.

I read 30 books, totalling 7722 pages, which looks quite impressive, and gives me hope that I may be able to finally clear the backlog of books I have this year.

I watched 43 films - 34 on DVD, 7 at the cinema and 2 on TV.

I had 16 medical appointments - 10 of which were physiotherapy or physio related.

And finally, £70 was given to charity.

So, what about 2011? What will that hold? Well, would expect train travel to come down a bit due to shorter commute than last year. Flying will be massively up thanks to travelling around the world before too long! I will try and keep the driving down, in order to try and spend a little less money on petrol.

Nights away will probably remain roughly stable, and books read will probably fall a bit, as I really did blitz them last year. Films watched will likely remain stable.

Medical appointments - strange thing to track you may think, but I am determined there will be far less of these this year!

And finally, I will give more to charity. I got off to a good start last year, then gave virtually nothing in the second half of the year. This year I will choose a cause a month to give a little bit of wonga to.

So there we go. That was my statistical analysis of 2010 and predictions for next year. Tune in at the same time in 2012 to find out how I got on!