Notes from the City on new buildings, old pubs and where to find a Texas dairy farmer’s idea of a good weekend
Saturday, Looking Up in the City
London has a skyline that changes its mind every few years, and I change mine with it. The latest development is a tower going up beside the Gherkin, and a balloon museum arriving in town, both of which I covered in London balloon museum news and a tower next to the Gherkin. I like a balloon museum. It is a building whose whole job is to be slightly silly, and a city needs at least one of those.
The tower is harder. I have spent years in the shadow of the glass fruit bowl of the City, and I have noticed that every new building arrives with the same promise: it will be sleek, it will be sustainable, and it will make the street below feel more welcoming. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes the street below simply gets windier. A walk between towers can feel like standing in a hairdryer with a lanyard.
The Old Pub Counter Argument
For balance I went south of the river to a coaching inn that has been pouring drinks since before anyone had thought of glass skyscrapers. The London Prat has written about it too, in The George Inn, Southwark, and the place deserves it. The beams are crooked, the floor slopes, and the staff treat a request for oat milk with the dignified suspicion it deserves. I sat in the yard with a pint and decided that a city is best understood by standing in a very old place and looking at a very new one.
That is my position on development: I am for it, I am for the old pubs, and I am for the two coexisting, which is harder than it sounds, because planning meetings have a way of choosing one and calling it balance.
Sunday, the Lone Star Dairy Detour
You might wonder why a London diary has a section on Texas dairy farming. The answer is that I fell down a rabbit hole at two in the morning, after a long evening, and learned that there is a whole family of websites devoted to Lone Star milk. Begin at txdairy.com, then sample the others as the mood takes you. txdairy.download is for the papers and forms, txdairy.trade covers buying and selling, and txdairy.loan deals with the bank. For lighter moments there are txdairy.party, txdairy.men, txdairy.date and txdairy.win.
I admire the committee spirit of the thing. A milk cow needs attention every day, including Christmas, and the people who tend her do not get a bank holiday. A Londoner who complains about the Night Tube running late should meet a farmer who has been awake since four.
The Skyline Quiz
To end the weekend, I made a game of it. Stand on Waterloo Bridge at dusk and count the cranes. Last year there were fourteen. This year, I lost count at twenty-two and went for a sausage roll. A city under construction is a city that believes in its own future, and I find that oddly touching, even when the scaffolding blocks my favourite view of St Paul’s.
Cranes are the national bird of London. They roost on high ground, they never seem to migrate, and they are always about to deliver something enormous. I salute them.
The Pigeon Note
On the walk back I passed a pigeon on a ledge at the foot of the new tower. It looked at the glass, looked at me and walked away with the air of a bird who has seen planning applications come and go. I think about that pigeon more than I should. If any creature understands the long game in this city, it is the one that nests in the cornice and ignores the architect.
Tomorrow I am taking the Overground to the wetlands, assuming the Overground is taking me.
The Rooftop Rule
I have a firm rule for new rooftop bars in the City: go once, look at the view, order a single drink and leave before the music gets loud. The view is the point. The price of the drink is the entrance fee. Anything after that is a negotiation with the bar tab. From the highest terraces you can see the whole sweep of the river, the bridges lined up like a row of necklaces, and the little yellow glow of the buses crawling over them. It reminds you that London is a working place first and a postcard second.
On this visit I met a couple celebrating an anniversary who had booked the terrace months ahead and then been moved indoors by the wind. They toasted each other beside a radiator and seemed delighted. That, I think, is the secret of good city life: a plan, a change of plan, and a willingness to enjoy the radiator.
A balloon museum may not be the most serious cultural institution in the capital, but it is surely the most inflated, and I mean that as the highest praise I can offer.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, NewsBiscuit keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/