People who know me will have often heard my complaints about some of the annoyances of living in London. There’s a lot that seems tempting, for example, about what Jon has written about his recent move to Brussels.

But of course the flip side of this place is the amazing range of things happening here - and the trick is (unlike too many Londoners) to take advantage of them!

And at the end of last week I had the opportunity to enjoy two of its highlights.

One of them has been widely written about and recognised - and is the new production of Aida that is on at the ENO, designed by Zandra Rhodes. I must say when I first saw this advertised I wanted to go because I don’t know Aida very well and I wanted to hear the music and see the opera. I wasn’t that interested in who had designed it (and if I’m being honest although I had just about heard of Zandra Rhodes, I had only a vague idea that she designed clothes, a bit wacky I think, probably because her name begins with a Z!).

But from the moment the curtain rises the star of the show is very clearly the design on stage - both the set and the extraordinary costumes. Read the rest of this entry »

So I was just flicking idly through a routine briefing from the party, when I found myself reading the following sentence:

”¢ A report by the government’s Chief Scientist, Sir David King, is calling for a cull of badgers in some areas affected by Bovine Tony Blair.

I didn’t immediately clock at it first, but something didn’t sound quite right in the sentence so I looked at it again more carefully.

“Bovine Tony Blair”? That sounded pretty abusive for an internal party document so what did it mean? Our former Prime Minister wandering the nation behaving in a cow-like fashion?

A minute’s reflection gave the answer. Presumably the story is in fact about tuberculosis in cattle, or “Bovine TB” - and someone still has a shortcut programmed into their computer to expand automatically from the abbreviation of the former Prime Minister’s initials…

He may be gone but it’s good to know he is still…being blamed for attacking badgers!

Fall is well and truly upon us, and yesterday afternoon we took a beautiful autumnal walk around Highgate Cemetery.

It is very much a creation of the nineteenth century - one of several cemeteries built following the need for more burial space during the rapid expansion of London, and before the twentieth century vogue of cremation. And it feels very Victorian gothic, containing graves or other tombs which are at the least very grand and proper, normally topped by at least an angel or some other statue, and in many cases magnificently more: several large family mausoleums, as well as areas of catacombs. Most famously there is the ‘Lebanon Circle’ - a circular area of catacombs around a large central Cedar (of Lebanon); and an Eqyptian avenue reflecting the fashion of interest in Egypt at one point in the Victorian era.

The very leafy surroundings make it particularly evocative to be there in the autumn, and we had a beautiful fresh afternoon to be up there.

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I suffered a sentimental pang this week when I read that Lonely Planet has been sold and is being bought by BBC Worldwide.

When I went off round the world a few years ago, Lonely Planet guides were my constant companion - without them I would have been completely lost (indeed until I did find them, I was lost!). Their books, at least the ones I was using, had a very distinctive backpacker style and ethos - they were definitely much more than just a guidebook. No doubt some of this was just good marketing to their audience, but I certainly felt a lot of affinity with them.

I can remember well at one point somewhere in India someone having a different brand of guide (Rough Guide, I think), and among the group of people I was with at the time, this causing some slight bemusement - why would you use any guide other than Lonely Planet? Was it perhaps better? No, he said, he had just chosen Rough Guide to make a change from LP, he said, which, like everyone else, he had used all the rest of the time.

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Over recent years there have been some quite heated local battles about the various elements of the redevelopment of the Kings Cross area and a wide swathe of land around it. I haven’t been involved in those and would be very wary of commenting on them, so I’ll keep well clear of that!

But as someone who goes through Kings Cross and the large area around it affected by what is going on quite often, it’s impossible not to be struck by the impressive scale of the improvements that are taking place.

Most striking of all at the moment perhaps is the refurbishment of St Pancras station in preparation for Eurostar starting their services there in November. The station building itself, which I remember from ten years ago as a rather dingy four platforms or so for getting a train to Leicester or Nottingham (and where I was once short-changed in WH Smith; this may not have been a permanent feature affecting all passengers), has been magnificently transformed. The outside of the building looks amazing and the glimpses of the inside look just as good, though I think the full force may only be visible to people hurriedly getting on or off Eurostar trains.

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I have just discovered the ‘Wish List’ feature on Amazon and I think it’s great! All those books you think you’d like to read but will certainly forget or write on a piece of paper that you’ll then lose - and now someone else offers to remember them for you!

Now I just need them to offer to remember all the ones that I’ve already bought but haven’t managed to read yet!

Whenever Desert Island Discs has come on the radio, I’ve always got up to switch it off. I couldn’t bear Sue Lawley’s interviewing style. She always seemed to think she was Antony Clare and spent three quarters of an hour trying to get her interviewees to bare their inner psyche for us. And her approach to interviewing political party leaders was intensely annoying, trying to get a scoop by grilling Charles Kennedy about drink or Gordon Brown about being gay.

Kirsty Young seems to have been a great improvement. She’s ditched that distinctive “being very annoying” feature - and she also seems to have some interviewees that you have actually heard of and are quite interesting to listen to (that was one of Sue Lawley’s other problems - I always thought I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue caught it best, with their suggestion that she run a celebrity version of Desert Island Discs).

This Sunday’s was the best yet. I didn’t really know anything at all about Simon Russell Beale before, except that people who know about these things think he’s a good actor, and that he is currently starring in Spamalot…(not sure if those two naturally go together)

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I mean, it’s just ghastly, isn’t it.

Of the alternatives I seen my favourite is this one - simple and stylish (and I’m not alone in thinking that - it won a BBC poll).