Advent Windows

Since today is Advent Sunday, I know you'll all be busy with your coat hangers and tinsel making the Blue Peter Advent Crown (these days, the Health & Safety spoilsports recommend you use baubles instead of real candles, but that's just plain wrong...) but I thought I'd let you know that the Greenwich Live Advent Windows is going to be happening again this year.

As last year, there will be a different decorated window in Greenwich Town Centre revealed every day of Advent. Some are in shops, some in schools, some in festively-minded individuals' houses. If it's anything like last year, it will be a bit of a pick & mix - most were fabulous, a couple were utterly breathtaking; one or two decidedly patchy, but all together they make a really lovely build up to the Big Day and I wouldn't miss it for all the coffee at Beehive.

If you can't be bothered to check the website every day, I'll be posting the address of where to find the day's window each morning on the blog. A sneak peek ahead looks really quite exciting.

Annoyingly I can't find any of the photos I took of last year's windows. They're in an album somewhere on my computer. Grrr.

So here's my favourite unofficial Christmas window photo from last year. I call it "T'was Christmas At The Kebab House..."

If that doesn't get us all in a festive mood, I don't what will...

Greenwich IMAX

I've just been invited to a launch screening at the new Greenwich IMAX next Thursday. I can't go, of course - sadly the whole Anon business gets in the way of such freebies, but I thought you should know it's coming.

The email I've been sent is annoyingly vague. They call it the Odeon Imax, so I'm assuming that it's at the cylindrical wind tunnel next door to B&Q on the peninsula, but when I looked up the Odeon's website all it said was that a new IMAX screen was coming - no details. They give no dates for it - save the actual launch screening .

Strangely, when I delved deeper, after the initial 'it's coming' message I found, it suddenly appeared to have already launched - are they quietly testing it out at the moment? Maybe that email was sent to me from another dimension and they've had this for years. Have I been sleeping - a sort of Rip Van Phantom? I've asked the PR company to furnish me with more details. They probably won't after I've been so rude about their email...

Well, folks. We can't say we're stuck for cinematic options. We have the largest screen in Europe at the O2 (don't sit in the front row of the balcony though) we have the dear little Picturehouse, with its all-embracing screenings for everyone from screaming children through autistic people to the elderly and still has a truly personal, grown-up touch (I confess this is still the Phantom Choice - oh, and if you renew your membership via direct debit, they give you an extra three months on your membership at the moment...)

Sadly for me it also seems to be everyone else's choice - when I called up to get a couple of tickets for the free screening next Sunday, they'd totally run out. Peter O'Toole+Snowy Picture In December+Free seems to be a winning combination.

But now we have an IMAX screen at the Odeon, which, frankly, needed something to make me want to go. It's geographically closest to me, but the hoards of teenagers, the general racket in the actual screen(chatting, sweet wrappers, mobile phone conversations - why do these people bother paying to see the movie - they could do all that outside) and the desolate feel it has on a cold windy night means that it's my last choice just now.

But an IMAX might just tempt me for the big movies. Apparently The Dark Knight was filmed in IMAX, and Harry Potter may or may not be 3D (they didn't say whether they meant the last HP - or the next...) and if there's extra, fun, gadgety bits on a film I deffo want to see them. It might have relieved the tedium of the last Batman - which could have comfortably lost an hour and still been wonderful.

I haven't been back to the Odeon since the bloody awful Popcorn, which I only went to because it was set at - well, at the Odeon in Greenwich, actually. But I will give the IMAX a go, next time there's a blockbuster that isn't Madagascar II in town.

Satellite Dishes

Dave has decided to get himself SKY HD - but he's run into a problem...

"As my dish is located at the rear of the house (my area has a preservation order, so nothing on the front) the only access is over the roof.

It seems that Sky now have "Health & Safety" rules which prevents their engineers going on to roofs so I would like to know if any "Phantomites" know of a reliable installation company."

The Phantom finds it mildly surprising that a company specialising in dishes that go on roofs won't insure its employees to actually install them on one, but perhaps that shows more about the society we live in these days. (bring back the child chimney sweeps, that's what I say...)

I asked a pal who has just had an aerial installed where they went to and for the life of them they can't remember (though the most ringing endorsement they had for the company was "Well, it hasn't fallen down yet..." so perhaps you can do better.)

So I'm opening this one out to the floor. Have you had an aerial (or SKY dish) fitted recently? I know that erecting them in this area is often quite a bugger as we're the 'wrong' side of Greenwich Hill, so in order to get a clear signal from Crystal Palace, we need to have aerials almost as tall as the mast itself, so anyone who regularly works in this area must know how to secure things pretty darn well.

Happy HD Dave...

Royal Nepalese - Eat-In

2-4, Station Crescent, London, SE3 7EQ
Tel: 020 8269 0505

I confess I've been a drifting Phantom as far as Indian restaurants and takeways have been recently. There seems to have been a general swapping-round of chefs in the area and my erstwhile solid favourites have been sorely disappointing recently. I've been forced to start my search again, randomly picking new places - and testing a few I dismissed earlier.

Now, takeaway and eat-in are two different things. Look no further than the Mehak for that - their eat-in is absolutely great (possibly a fave) but the takeaways just don't seem to cut it IMHO. So whenever I review a new place from now on, I'm going to say whether I ate in or had a takeaway.

In my latest drive to find somewhere new I decided to retry the Royal Nepalese by Westcombe Park Station (opposite the still-pretty-good-for eat-in Coriander.)

I last ate there about three years ago. It had been one of my favourites before that but suddenly seemed to go downhill and after a couple of very lacklustre meals, I moved on.

It's been so long that they've actually redecorated since I last went in - a simple, almost oriental style with sundry pictures of elderly Nepalese gentlefolk, one of whom looks distincly like she's blowing a party blower. The reception was friendly - very friendly - we were the only ones in there, perhaps a sign of the times.

We ordered a combination of the secret Phantom Control Meal and a couple of chefs recommendations, with some puppodums while we waited, which was probably a good thing - it took some time to serve us despite our being the only table in there (though not as long as the new Ghurka place - which I'll get onto another day...) The puppodums were crisp and light, and tasted fresh, and the chutneys and pickles were tasty and at least one of them looked home-made.

As regular readers will know, the Phantom Control Meal remains a closely guarded secret, but I guess it's hardly a surprise that it includes rice - which was fluffy and fresh - and naan, which was pleasingly heavy and bready.

The other dishes were pleasantly-spiced (neither too hot nor bland) and although some of the 'extra ingredients' (nothing bad - I don't mean creepy crawlies or anything - just unexpected) felt a bit odd, they weren't unwelcome.

I asked if they'd changed chef - it was such a difference - but the waiter/manager said it was the same guy. I can only assume that they've pulled their socks up, as this was a completely different experience from my last visit. Maybe it has something to do with the competition opposite. Who cares, if it means there are now two good curry places within ten metres of each other?

I haven't had a takeaway from them yet, so I can't recommend that section. But I have to say I was highly impressed with the eat-in experience. At a time when we're all cutting down (yes, even me) on eating out, the last thing we want is a duff time when we do venture out. I'm not convinced I've found Curry Nirvana in Royal Nepalese, but it will certainly do while I'm still looking...

The Phantom Bookshelf is Live

Folks, the Phantom Webmaster has been up all night, Allen-key in sweaty mitt, patiently putting Tab A into Slot B, tightening Nut C and trying to find Washer D, building the Phantom Bookshelf (sadly not bought at MFI...) to replace the housebrick-and-plank combo it was resting on. It can now be found on the sidebar, if you're ever looking to find a book about Greenwich.

Of course my own work isn't nearly done. I've listed about a third of my bookshelf, but it's deceptive as I haven't got to the little racks of pamphlets and really thin books yet and they're the ones who are going to take the serious time. And I keep getting distracted as I pull something down which I forget I've got and start reading it. Invariably I find something that needs 'further research' and that's it for the day...

I'd say 'please bear with me' but I utterly loathe it when someone in a call centre in Arbroathshire tells me to do that...

Greenwich Geese

While reading about cut-purses, highwaymen and general cozenry around Greenwich, I discovered that, far from being the angelic old gentlemen that was the popular image of the Greenwich Pensioners, many of the descriptions of wanted men in the 17th and 18th centuries included desperadoes who'd scarpered with "a suit of blue clothes, one hat, a pair of shoes, three pairs of stockings, a shirt marked G.R., a stock, cup, spoon, and towel."

They acquired their nickname 'Greenwich Geese' from a tale of light-fingeredness told by a disgruntled local farmer whose flocks kept going missing. He woke up one night to hear a cacophony of cackling from his barnyard and on peering out of the window, saw no geese at all - but he did see a bunch of rapidly-disappearing elderly gentlemen in blue outfits making a quick getaway in a boat. (Given that virtually every picture I ever see of Greenwich Pensioners seems to involve at least one wooden leg, I can't help feeling there's a sitcom in there somewhere.)

"There, go my geese, there go my geese!" he shouted - and the name stuck. History does not tell us whether he ever got his birds back or whether they went to supplement what was, admittedly, a pretty rubbish diet.

Looking at how the pensioners lived from day to day, it's sort of understandable, even if not exactly condonable, that they'd take to a spot of farmyard-breaking. I was reading The Pictorial Guide to Greenwich from 1844 recently (mostly fascinating for its less-than-appreciative remarks about Thornhill's murals in the Painted Hall..."uninteresting"..."want of taste"..."extremely ludicrous...") which has descriptions (and the engraving above) of the living quarters - which, it would seem, tourists could just wander around at will.

"It has a rather sombre look; and despite the cleanly neatness of the sleeping places, which are something between ship's cabins and civilised bedchambers, the thought will force itself upon us, that the old men, after their lives of stirring danger, must find this place dull. "

It goes on to describe the different ways that each cabin's effort towards personalisation - one "gay in coloured prints," others had sheaves of naval songs, models of ships, books or carvings, which had "occupied the leisure of seven long years of an old pensioner who thus whiled away the tedium..."

It's exactly the excuses we hear for crime purveyed by Youf Of Today, isn't it, only this is Senile Delinquency. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. Presumably providing table tennis bats and once-a-month discos wouldn't have cut it for them, either. In fact when I think of all the almshouses, with their frequently-ignored rules, the hospital with its Geese and the highwaymen of the heath, I begin to think that we've got it soft these days...

I should perhaps point out Greenwich Geese have nothing to do with Winchester Geese despite the two existing around the same time as each other and being just a few miles apart. At least, I assume they didn't have anything to do with each other. Given the tales of drunkenness and half-inchery, I'm beginning to wonder...

Rear Window (12)

We haven't had a Rear Window for some time (for those of you who have just joined the blog, it's where we get nosy and look at Greenwich from other people's perspectives, AKA their back windows...) - so today I'm delighted to bring to you a bit of a humdinger. This is Benedict's gaff - and just look at the view he gets. It's Greenwich Station, obviously, and if you're planning on getting a train from there this morning, don't forget to give him a cheery wave...

Keep 'em coming, folks.

Car Mechanics Again

We've been here before, but sometime's it's worth revisiting. Alison has moved down from the North West where she's been used to paying between £80 - £100 to have her car serviced and is a bit shocked at the quote she's just had for £240. She's wondering if anyone can recommend somewhere that's good and not too pricey.

I've just had my car serviced and it cost me £236.30, which I'm afraid, Alison, I think is pretty much par for the course down here. Of course, it's possible that I'm being ripped off, but the very fact that you've been quoted nearly the same amount as I've just paid makes me think it's about right.

My mechanic is an old family friend and sadly isn't taking any new customers on (not, I suspect, that you;d be particularly interested at that price...) - can anyone suggest any good people for Alison?

In the meanwhile, I thought you might like a sneaky peek at the Phat Phantom-Mobile, parked in its special residents parking bay outside the Phantom Apartment...*


*Not really...

Graham & Green

Anyone been noticing there's some movement going on in Greenwich town centre streets in the last couple of weeks? I haven't checked out Greenwich Boutique yet and I can't check out that new place called Fresh-Something-Or-Other where the Organic Cafe used to be (it can't, I gather, be a cafe, as that's why the Organic Cafe reckon they got the boot, so I'm assuming it's some kind of food store - either something along the lines of Fresh & Wild or, some dodgy mini-mart thing would be my guess.) The old dolls house and teddy bear shop gets ever-scruffier - it claims to be being turned into a china-painting place, though it's certainly taking its time. Apostrophe is moving into the old Rococo store.

Warwick Leadlay left a big gap in Nelson Road. I know they've only moved next door, but it does tend to be a bit out-of-sight-out-of-mind for me these days. I miss their old shop.

The street-front store has become a sort of homewares-come-giftshop, hastily decorated for the Christmas crowd. Graham & Green is a chain - albeit a small one, with branches in the Kings Road, Notting Hill, Chalk Farm etc. Presumably it's only chains that can afford the prices along Nelson Road these days. Still - it's an open shop, and it's not a multinational, and let's face it - it looks very pretty - and makes the road look more lively.

It sells fancy mirrors and shiny nick-nacks - think a sort of grown-up Joy (another chain but our branch is really cute...) There are a lot of Christmas decorations in at the moment, and dainty stocking fillers to give girlfriends you don't know very well. I liked the coloured glass tumblers with the silhouettes of mountainy-scenes, myself, and I may well be going back for some of the funky plastic wine glasses.

Downstairs they promise 'bargains' - and I guess that there was 20% off a load of stuff. Some nice homewares - a rather fab glass lamp and sundry soft furnishings, some occasional tables and screens, one or two items of clothing, door handles and soap dishes, candles and cushions; mainly in pink or white, it seems.

It's good to see an empty shop filled - it goes a good way to making Nelson Road look halfway decent again (I note also that one of the few shops that didn't actually need it, Pickwick Papers and Fabrics, have had a spruce up, which only leaves about a third of the street looking duff.) I'm not convinced that there is anything in Graham & Green I haven't seen before - but sparkly stuff and bright lights - and, when I was in there, loads of customers - are the kind of thing I want to see in Greenwich rather than empty stores and 'To Let' signs.

Roll Up, Roll Up - Get Your Olympic Consultation Tickets Here!

For those of you who have been a bit alarmed by the seeming inability of LoCOG to get their story straight (so are those trees' lower branches for the chop or not, then..?) then the Public meeting to discuss all Olympic and Paralympic activity in the borough between 7pm-9pm on Thursday 4th December is a bit of a must.

It's to be at the Indigo, at the O2 - which is, ironically, now the only one of the three original venues in Greenwich (and the only one that actually seemed suitable IMHO, being a purpose-built entertainments area with excellent public transport and infrastructure) not to be employed any more.

It's a ticketed event, but the tickets are free. Lizzie wrote to get some and passed the link onto me. Because not all of you can get hyperlinks, here it is in full:

http://greenwicholympics.cvent.com/meeting

While we're about it, if you missed Andrew Gilligan's article about the KPMG findings last week, it's worth taking a peek.

Chalk Me Up, Scottie

Spotted by Benedict, a sort of cubist Scottie dog chalked into the path near Princess Caroline's Bath. IMHO much more fun than those tedious Banksy-Lite spraycan rats that appear from time to time, but probably less durable...

Christmas Dinner Christmas Day

Anon asks

"I wonder if you know any pubs or restaurants that are open in Greenwich on Christmas Day for lunch. Everything in Blackheath is incredibly expensive."

The Phantom replies:

I guess the problem is that few people want to actually work on Christmas Day if they can help it - and if they do, they want to be well-remunerated for it. I did it once and I hated it so much I swore I'd never, ever do it again. So restaurants do charge more on that day.

Right-ho - no Blackheath venues, then, which, I confess cuts down the list of really good eateries.

It's been an interesting time trying to find out what will be open. I started with the places I'd actually choose to eat at for Christmas lunch, and worked out from there.

The Plume of Feathers, from its website, at least, has a Christmas menu but doesn't appear to be serving on the day itself. Inside, too, is shut between the 23rd December and 2nd Jan. The Rivington closes Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Ditto the Greenwich Union. The Hill is open - but full. I was only able to find the test page for the Ashburnham Arms's website and they weren't answering their phone, but if they're doing something, it may well be worth a look. The Cutty Sark uses that bloody awful telephone answering service supplied by beer comparison websites which I refuse to subscribe to, as does the Yacht, so I don't know what they're up to.

The Guildford would be my top choice. And it would have been anyway, even if all the others weren't closed. I love that place - and the food. The proprietor is great - sincere and passionate about his place. The Christmas menu is here and comes in at £24.95 - I don't know if there's a Christmas Day supplement - but it seems pretty reasonable to me for three courses. Nougat ice cream bombe. Mmmm.

If you're cool with Greenwich Inc, The Spread Eagle is open on Christmas Day, for both lunch and evening meal. Their menu is here and costs £35 or £42.50. Also the Bar du Musee, which has a choice of menu at £33. I confess I find the place soulless (it began so promisingly, but as it's been taken over and enlarged and enlarged, until it's developed an almost warehouse-like feel.) but plenty of people like it. The Trafalgar Tavern, which I would have expected to be a dead cert, is closed.

So there you have it -the bad news and the good news. The bad being that practically nowhere's open - the good being that the one place that personally I would choose over all the others is open.

Good luck and Merry Bookings...

LOCOG events

I've just found out about the 'presence' (their words, not mine) of LoCOG at the Pavillion Tea Rooms tomorrow (Friday 21st November) and Saturday. It's too late to stick it in the Parish News and be sure it's seen in time so it's on the main blog.

To be honest timing seems a bit vague - I think it's from 2pm but can't be sure from what I've been sent.

What IS interesting is this, though:

"Greenwich Council are organising a public meeting to discuss all Olympic and Paralympic activity in the borough between 7pm-9pm on Thursday 4th December at the Indigo at the O2 Centre with Seb Coe, Cllr Chris Roberts, and a panel of experts to answer your queries. It is a ticketed event, but tickets are free, and they are obtainable from clare.chapman@greenwich.gov.uk tel 0208 921 6191."

We need to keep up the pressure, guys. We'll never be able to prove that the Olympic organisers would have been as careful as they could be without concerned groups and individuals forcing their hands but making as much noise as possible will hopefully bring enough attention to the issue that they will be obliged to do the right thing.

From what I heard yesterday on the news, they're still determined to keep the equestrian events in the park. It's our job to make it hard for them to mess up. To keep our eyes so firmly set upon those in charge that they don't do sneaky things like setting up two companies - the first one to 'deliver' the Olympics, the second to 'clear up afterwards' (guess which one goes to the wall when they go over budget...) To make sure that Royal Parks don't lose their nerve and cave in to pressure over heritage, envirnomental and cultural matters when dates get close and tempers get hot. To never let them get away with ANYTHING that will damage our park.

Conker Canker

Warning. This could get nerdy, folks...


Sarah's worried. She asks:

"Say, you don't know about this thing with the chestnut blight? I'm really worried about the trees in the park, a lot of them seem to be hit by it. Do any scientist types know if it's something that will move on, or will it kill the trees?"

The Phantom replies:

You alarmed me there, Sarah. So much so that I went out yesterday to check every chestnut tree I could find in the park. Of course it had nothing whatsoever to do with the lovely sunshine or the threat of cold-and-nasty for the next few days. This was Science. Obviously.

According to the BBC website, the alarming-looking 'bleeding canker' which is a nasty bark fungus, and the leaf-miner moth which make the leaves wizen and drop off, only seem to affect Horse Chestnut trees* but given the close proximity of horse chestnuts to the historic sweet chestnut trees* I wanted to make sure. I don't think they're connected genetically (I believe that the edible ones are more closely related to beech trees) but I'm no expert.

The blighted trees had reached Chatham and the Medway by 2006 which is when the BBC site's dated, so I checked the RHS for symptoms to look out for. There are icky pictures of particularly bad cases on the BBC site.

As far as I can tell, the leaf miner just saps the trees, and makes them sick, but they can recover. And as it's been a wet summer, they may have gone away anyway. The bark blight is the real baddie - and some forestry types seem to think it could be the next Dutch Elm Disease. There's a rather alarming - if short on detail - map here that shows instances of the disease.

Obviously the leaves are mostly all dropped just now, so it was hard to tell whether they'd died because they'd been chomped or because it was winter. I could only look out for the nasty Bleeding Canker. I must have looked like some loony, staring up into trees, peering closely at the bark and muttering to myself but I couldn't see anything that didn't look like it shouldn't be there (save the odd parrot...)

So yes - I think that it's something to be on the lookout for - but personally I couldn't see any problems up there yesterday. And because it only affects Horse Chestnuts (as far as I can find out) I don't think it's an immediate danger to the 300-year old Sweet Chestnuts.

*The Phantom's Scientific Chestnut Identification Field Guide:

• Horse Chestnuts (Aesculus hippocastanum, if you want to get down, dirty and latin...)
  
  The classic conker trees - you can tell the difference by looking at the leaves - they're much bigger and look sort-of hand-like (to me, anyway...) They have 'candles' in the spring - pink and white, and they come up with big shiny, inedible conkers in autumn, in little hard green spiky cases. They're the ones you bake in vinegar and tie on bits of hairy string then smash into other kids' vinegar-baked arsenals (though you're probably not allowed to do that kind of thing any more due to H&S regs...)
  
  They're nothing to do with:
  
  
• Sweet chestnuts (Castanea sativa)
  
  Those big, gnarled-trunk jobbies that are getting in the way of an easy Olympics. The leaves are more spindly with crinkly edges, and even youngish trees look knobbly. But the big difference is in the nuts - they're edible for humans. The cases are much spikier and look softer.When they're on the tree, they look almost 'fluffy' from a distance. Don't be fooled. Wear gloves to pick them up - they're buggers for ripping your hands to shrebbons trying to open them.
  
  If you can get there before the hoardes of Chinese grannies who suddenly appear out of nowhere armed with giant carrier bags every autumn, you can gather them and roast them on the obigatory 'open fire...' (make a cross in the bottom with a knife first or they explode.)

Dig This

Jane asks:

"There is a large area which has been demolished in Greenwich High Road between the abandoned pub and the petrol station near the corner of Blackheath Hill. Roughly opposite the’ Golden Chippy.’ Something very old has obviously been uncovered there as the foundations are visible and it looks like they have been carefully excavated. I would be very interested to know what this find is. I have asked people who live locally and have searched on the internet, but can’t find any information."

The Phantom replies:

The problem with finding up-to-date news about digs, especially where commercial construction firms have been obliged by law to bring in the archaeologists before they can actually build anything, is that the information is pretty sensitive stuff. They have to get the historians in, but they're hoping against hope that nothing of interest will be discovered - it's not only very, very expensive for them to do at all, but if something fab is found (as with the tide mill at Lovell's Wharf) then the building work can be held up for months - or even years - as the place is investigated.

In some cases, the find is so important that the entire design of the new place has to be changed - off the top of my head, I'm thinking about the extra thick glass panel that had to be built over the medieval charnel house at Spitalfields or, even more extreme, the entire layer-cake of new levels that had to be built under the Guildhall to envelop the Roman Amphitheatre. That one held up proceedings for years.

The last thing that companies want is for the public's imagination to be captured. So although digs have to be done, they starve them of any publicity they can - and I'm not entirely sure that the information isn't formally classified. Maybe someone can clarify that for me?

Certainly I can find no record whatsoever of any commercial digs at all in London that have been carried out in the past couple of years by the Museum of London Archaeological Service, though digs are clearly going on all over the shop. (The Olympic site at Stratford is a bit of a special case - in that instance, they're desperate for any good publicity they can get...)

So yes - I've been applying a spectral eye to the gaps in the gates at that site myself (I'm assuming it's part of the water works (?) but what it used to be is anyone's guess) but I have no idea what they've found. I always find the best people to ask are the actual workmen on sites like this. I generally prefer the Bob-the-Builder types than the real archaeologists - they're usually happy for an excuse to chat - but I've never seemed to be passing whenever there are people there to grill.

Maybe someone here knows what's being dug up - it's just possible local historians will have been involved and can give us some clues (if you fancy spilling some beans, guys, your anonymity will be preserved, as always...)

However, in the meantime, I have found an interesting site that you may enjoy while we're waiting to hear some news. It seems that after two years, official site reports are published by the Museum of London Archaeological Service; here is the list of Greenwich results.

Happy digging...

Lamp Posts (2)

Well. Whaddaya know?

There I was, walking past those very 'brazier' holders outside Devonport House yesterday, when I actually noticed them. Brand new lamps - obviously part of the general tart-up of the grounds there - just not clocked before. So - those strange spiky bits were just brackets for lanterns after all. No braziers. Boo.

Still - they look pretty good, don't you think? I especially like the little crests on top (not very clear in this pic). Greenwich isn't all going to the dogs...

Lamp Posts (1)

Call me tragic. I've started realising just how fab our lamp posts are. Well - some of them, anyway. The ones that come from another time, when they weren't just there to perform an illuminatory function, but to be decorative as well. I was wandering through the ORNC yesterday and it suddenly hit me, the sheer variety of the things. Some stand sentinel at entrances, others are simple columns with traditional Victorian-looking lanterns on top. Presumably most of them used to be gas lamps.

There are giant versions, just outside the Painted Hall and the Chapel, with massive bulbs inside them, and tiny curly iron ones that, despite their ornate styling, we walk past and hardly notice - like this sweet little lamp round the back, near the porter's lodge in the car park.

There are those that light the two little fountains in the green bit just outside King Charles Block (the bit that used to be parade-ground) and discreet varieties lighting the inner courtyards, just dim enough to be frankly rather creepy at night.

And fab streetlights aren't just found at the ORNC. Those lamps up Greenwich Church Street are fantastic - especially if you look at them from St Alfege's churchyard, through the tree branches. Or in Gloucester Circus (they have curious little copper bits around them) - no wonder the place (or half of it, anyway) keeps being used in films. Or round by the gates to the park.

In fact, gates are a fantastic place to see good lamps. Here's a rather fuzzy set I snapped in the fog last year, that lead to the Queen's House. I did get a pic where there wasn't a car going past, but I rather like the red lines in this one.

I'm highly intrigued by the gates that lead into the grounds of Devonport House - they have what looks suspiciously like old braziers in them. Surely not..?

No, you're probably right - I'm just getting overexcited again. But you can't beat a good brazier. Maybe I should start a Braziers For All campaign. The local herberts would love it...

I think I shall start an occasional series on street furniture. Contributions always gratefully accepted...

Sundials (3)

Don't recognise this? No, nor did I. That's because this one, despite being one of the oldest (perhaps the oldest) locally, is in the courtyard of Morden College and most of us never get to see it. It was sent to me some time ago (thank you, Anon) and I'm afraid it's taken me this long to get round to it...

I know virtually nothing about the architecture of Morden College. The frankly tedious volume The History of Morden College, which I thought would end all my woes when I found it but is actually most useful as a cure for insomnia, says very little indeed about the building - more about the trust itself. Sadly it's almost all I have on the subject and, although the far more readable Neil Rhind touches on it a bit, he refers readers back to The History.., which looks as though it was being written at the same time as his own Blackheath Village & Environs (2). I daresay he was being polite, leaving it to their own historian, but I wish he hadn't been.

Admittedly the early political history of the college is fascinating (and if wagging tongues are correct, later political history too...) though perhaps not for a day dedicated to sundials.

And here is today's Sundial in context - on the South side of the quadrangle- sensibly set up to get the most hours of sun, though it doesn't look as though it was part of the original plan. Apparently, although it says 1695, it was actually erected 30 years later in 1725 "for keeping the clock which often goes wrong."

It seems generally agreed today that Sir Christopher Wren didn't build the place (as some tried to claim over the years...) - it was more likely his master mason for St Paul's Cathedral, Edward Strong, but I can guarantee he didn't create the sundial as he died a year before it was made. Whoever did make it had an eye for cute.

It's a pretty little thing - all curly and Dutch-looking (a very popular style then) and handily set up on a chimney, though looking at the damage on the face, it could do with a spruce-up. The little golden sun looks particularly battered.

And here is, presumably, the clock that was always going wrong. It looks like it would have been part of the original building, but I can't be sure.

1725 makes it five years before John Harrison would have created his first marine clock, so accuracy was a real problem - and a red-hot issue across the heath at Greenwich. All kinds of people were coming up with timekeeping inventions, hoping theirs was the most accurate to win the prize offered by the King.

The local dogs must have been delighted that the guys at Morden College decided to go with a sundial when they were getting a timepiece rather than that nutty idea some bright spark had of poking one dog at a certain time to see if the other one yelped.

Sundials have their drawbacks - not least the whole cloudy-day bit, but given what was on offer at the time, it seems a good choice. And even when it isn't usable, it looks good.

Has anyone noticed if they ever open Morden College to the public, like Trinity Hospital does? Open House Day? Charity fetes? Guided Walks?

Holiday Geology

While I was going through my bookshelf, cataloguing it for the new page, a piece of folded card fell out which I'd totally forgotten about, but which, for its size, is a remarkable find.

Called, fairly unexcitingly, Holiday Geology Guide- Greenwich, it looks as though it's a children's thing - and yes, I guess it is intended for kids. The dinosaurs on the front, champing their way through primordial undergrowth where the Observatory is now, leaving a little gap for the Meridian line and with the ORNC and Canary Wharf in the background, are very kiddie-ish - but if you look on the back, they're all genuine possible previous inhabitants of Greenwich (no gags, now, about where the dinosaurs reside today, eh?)

If you fold it out, there's a sort of 3D-in-2D cut-through map of Greenwich from a couple of angles, showing what's underneath it, geology-wise, how and when it was made and highlighting the really interesting bits, the best of which has to be the Greenwich Fault Line, created, apparently, at the same time as the Alps. How cool is that?

Even better, there are little notes on each of the main stone buildings memorials and other features, which tell you where the materials for each come from, including good stuff to look out for (little fossils, for example - snails, sea-lilies, corals, squid - or bits of them at least.)

The back pages continue the theme with photos, graphs and text, all actually interesting.

This is a single sheet of A3 card. But the information it holds punches well above its weight. I've included a widget for it from Amazon, because I've just learned how to do it, but it's not the best place to buy it unless you have an order over ten quid. I got mine from the Visitor Centre, and it works out cheaper if you can drop by.

The Phantom's 1000th Postday

Heavens! Where did that come from? One minute I'm thinking about starting a little blog about Greenwich, the next thing I know I'm been blathering on for just over two years and a rather alarming 1000 posts...

I've been trying to work out what would be a good thing to do to celebrate being 1000 (or commiserate with myself for no longer having a life...) and, alongside vowing to get out more, I've decided to add a page to the blog. The pair of which may turn out to be mutually exclusive...

I often get asked where I find information about Greenwich - where to find resources, out-of-print books/maps etc. The bottom line is that it's legwork - but I thought I'd try to cut out some of that legwork for you by giving you a lowdown on what's on the Phantom Bookshelf - what's out there and where to find it. (Hint for tomorrow - take a trip to the Amnesty International Booksale that Ros has just reminded me about...)

You'll currently find the page here, but when a moment appears in The Phantom Webmaster's stupidly busy schedule (which includes celebratory dinner for me tonight, tee, hee...) there will be a direct link from the front page.

This project is going to take me months, I'm afraid. I've been working on it for some time now, and I'm only about a third of the way through the stuff I own, let alone the stuff I know about. So if you're interested in that sort of thing, keep checking it regularly - I will add to it as I go along. There are several sections, but each one is in alphabetical order by author.

But I'm not doing any more cataloguing for today. Today, I'm scoffing my 1000th Postday-Cake courtesy of Daisy Bakes, getting ready to celebrate chez Phantom Webmaster tonight - and raising a glass of Theatre of Wine champagne to all of you lovely folk who join me every day on my murky trips through this fantastic town.


Cheers!

Selling Up...

...buying down.

Jonathan's considering the unthinkable. Leaving.

"I am looking at selling my flat in Greenwich at the Anchor Iron Wharf development to move in with my partner who lives in Sydenham. Not the best time to sell, I know, and if my flat was bigger we would probably moving here."

(Is it really that small? I know you're young and in love - but - hell - this is Greenwich...TGP)

"Now, I know nothing about estate agents having never sold a property before and having bought my property (initially) through a key worker, part-buy, part rent deal, so I was wondering if you could ask your readership for any recommendations based upon past experiences with local estate agents? Can you help?"

The Phantom replies:

I'm not sure I should be helping you with this, J - but I guess that when True Love beckons, even Sydenham doesn't seem so bad.

But to Estate Agents. I don't like to recommend any of them, frankly, but if you've got to use one, I'd say stay local - they specialise and know the area. The only truly local one left, now that James Johnston have gone over to the Dark Side and joined a national, is John Payne (as far as I know - am I wrong on this?) They're not all nice in there - one particularly snooty individual in a branch I won't name took one look at me and told me there would be nothing in my price range (I hadn't actually told her a price at that point...) but all the other people in the company bent over backwards to help and I think on the whole they are very good (as estate agents go...)

Of the others - and there seem to be utterly hundreds of them (including the very oily-named 'Property Wealth' - am I the only one that thinks that name sucks?) - I don't really know. Perhaps everyone else can chip in here?

I shall be sorry to lose you, Jonathan...

Illustrious On The Move

From Benedict, for all those (especially Dazza who so wanted to see her) who missed Illustrious leaving town. Here she is being guided downstream by a tug - I guess it's too, ahem, hit-and-miss to allow her to try to get through the barrier on her own. (It's the 'destroyer' bit that's the clue...)

By the time she'd reached the ORNC she'd drawn quite a crowd. Sadly I wasn't one of them - but it's a fab surreal-looking pic, isn't it.

Thanks, Benedict...

King William IV 'Hotel'

Traflagar Road, SE10

After that little flurry about the dodgy leaflets through the door a couple of weeks ago for 'sales' of sundry bargain electrical goods, for one night only, no questions answered (which, BTW, has prompted an investigation from Trading Standards) I find myself turning to its host venue - the lovely-from-the outside King William IV Hotel.

Benedict sent me some pics ages ago, which I've dug out to show you what I mean. This place is lovely (refurbished 2003) if you can see past the teenage drunks hanging around outside and don't peer too closely in the upstairs windows at the rows of bunk beds that form the 'hotel' part of the title.

If you actually look up, rather than just seeing the sagging posters in the ground floor window, there are fancy mouldings, carvings, fruit and flowers, faces - even the brick's been tarted up. There's a curious oval moulding on the side - I assume it was once a brewery sign. The mouldings have been painted - which I rather like. Inside it's spacious, and decorated in Victorian style - striped wallpaper, giant mirrors, a fab wooden bar and yucca trees. If you just peered through the glass you'd think you'd found some gastro pub in Hamsptead. Which is exactly what Benedict did.

"It was the first pub I went into in Greenwich years ago and very nearly put me off moving here," he admits.

Ay, there's the rub. It's just not that nice. Ok - it's not The Old Friends which really was rancid (and still has strange lights glowing from behind the metal grilles and from the broken windows upstairs - there's life in there, folks...) - or even that nasty Wetherspoons at the DLR which seems to have blokes in the middle of a fight whenever I go past (I recently chose to walk home rather than wait for a bus in a giant pool of blood - ick ) but it's a hell of a lot rougher than it looks.

I guess it's what it is. A cheap hostel with added beer, pool and telly, which, since it has no pavement outside to speak of (hardly its fault, I'll agree) means walking the Gauntlet of Doom past scary drunk people if you have to go past late at night. It's hardly a destination venue.

Poor Old William IV. Not only is he the king that just gets forgotten in between George IV and Victoria (he's known as 'the sailor-king;' I confess I tend to call him 'the boring one,' even though he had a mighty colourful not-so-private life, about which I will talk another day) but he even tends to get short-changed when he is remembered.

In Greenwich we have a second-hand statue in a very suspect pose and a dodgy pub as souvenirs of Sailor Billy. Still, as Benedict points out, where else can you get a night's sleep for seventeen quid?*

I'm not conviced this splendid fellow supporting one of the pub's ornate exterior columns is actually respresentative of King Billy, but he does have a fantastic moustache.

*Try St Christopher's Inn at the Station. Unexciting, but only £15...

Feeling Flush

Methers has just lifted my heart by directing us to an article in the Londonist which imparts the brilliant news that the pumping station at Crossness is to recieve £1.5m to help restore it to glory.

I'm so excited by this news (The press release can be found at Greenwich Industrial History's Blog ) But though the Crossness Trust may have swanky board members, the day-to-day restoration is carried out by a team of volunteers who spend their lives crawling around sewers blocked with rust, a century of crap, and the sand that was used to prevent them collapsing when they stopped being used, cleaning them out and trying to get them working again - and they're the real heroes of this.

You only have to look at the single engine they've restored to its original condition to see a) how bloomin' beautiful something that should by all rights have been a purely functional piece of engineering is and b) how far they've still got to go. And none of them are getting any younger.

This picture demonstrates. In the middle, the fabulous cathedral-like atrium of painted ironwork. To the right is the shiny steel of newly-restored steam engine. To the left is the bit they haven't got to yet. My inclusion of the random hard-hatted head at the bottom is deliberate of course. It's Art. Obviously.

What? You haven't been there yet? Shame on you. Go to a steaming day as soon as you can (and make sure it's a steaming day and not just an ordinary visit. Far more fun.) You'll find dates here. But don't expect the little coloured glass lantern in the Londonist feature. I'm pretty sure that that's actually the Abbey Mills Pumping Station on the north of the Thames. But hey - that's great too - and the Londonist feature itself is fab - I particularly like the last sentence...

The Peninsula Before...

When I first got hold of this map (sorry about the rubbish scan...) I had to stop for a moment and work out what was missing. We're so used to seeing the A102M carving its way up through the peninsula that I found myself mentally superimposing it onto this old streetplan (from about 1902.)It's easy to forget that the motorway didn't crash its way onto the Greenwich Marshes until the 1970s.

What we're looking at here, though, is the old main road to the tunnel - Tunnel Avenue - that sleepy little back road that now just consists of 1930s and modern houses south of Blackwall Lane; factories to the north, but which would have originally had a vibrant community of shops and services (not to mention two gasholders) and probably would have been as congested as the motorway gets today, with a combination of horse-and-cart ensembles and motor vehicles.

I always find it amazing that you don't need to look at ancient maps to see real differences in Greenwich's history. Just look at all those fields, for example - many of them would have been allotments - there's an Ordnance Survey map from about the same time that shows them specifically. There's a whole bunch of roads (which would have been newly-built then) that were swept away to make the flyover. And the collection of buildings where the Heart of East Greenwich will be, have already been demolished, built over and demolished again since this map was made.

But there's some that remains the same. The little Angerstein Railway, for example, which I always get a little thrill to see trundling its way through tracks I forget are there and which, frankly, I find staggering still exists. I'm not sure what's happening to it in this map - it appears to turn into a dotted line - perhaps it's because it's the bit that's shared with the passenger track.

But all that's for another day...

A Lusty Sight

Mike very kindly sent me this moody shot of HMS Illustrious AKA 'Lusty,' who's currently moored at Greenwich. I understand that her crew were taking part in the Lord Mayor's Show and Remembrance Sunday (today is, after all, 'proper' Remembrance Day) at the weekend.

I couldn't resist popping down to see her myself by daylight just now. She's just enormous - but then I suppose she is invincible...

Sundials (2)

We've not had a sundial for a while, so today, I bring you some of Greenwich's newest (though we don't really seem to have any really old ones - publicly-viewed, at least, maybe there are some private ones someone can tell me about...) solar clocks.

These are on the new block at Trinity Hospital, right at the back of the garden, which, considering what new blocks of almshouses normally look like these days, they haven't made a bad fist at. Modern, but at least with some kind of nod to the style of the original. That end of the garden was really only where they had the compost bins, so they didn't lose much in the way of horticultural delights. And I'm told that the old block, despite its being extremely pretty, was very cramped, cold and dark, not to mention damp. I bet there's been a stampede for the new wing by the '21 retired gentlemen..'

I even like the plaque on the side that reminds us that the place is funded by the Mercers' Company in the City. I don't know how many mercers are still in the City these days (I have a jewellery-making friend who got quite excited to be invited to a dinner held by the Goldsmiths Company, thinking they'd meet loads of like-minded metal workers, and there were only about two there - the rest were bankers) but the main thing is that they're obviously still pretty wealthy and looking after sundry elderly people around Britain.

The only thing I find rather sad is that I never once saw then delightful little arched door that opens from the Thames entrance into the ancient courtyard of the historic block open this year. It just gathered last year's Autumn leaves and made the place look very neglected. Maybe I was just there at the wrong time, but I miss that little secret view.

But back to the sundials. The first looks pretty straightforward - a simple stick-with-a-gold-bobble that points to Roman numerals. I confess I've never actually seen the sun shine on it there - it's a bit of a dark road, but I'm sure there are times when it's sunny there - and besides we don't really need sundials to tell us the time any more. They're pretty and that's all I care about.

The second is more of a puzzle to a simple Phantom. The signs of the zodiac on lines which appear to lead to each symbol's 'opposite' sign, and a little gnomon which is so short it doesn't look as though it could cast a shadow on anything unless the light source was immediately above it. I haven't got much of a clue on this. A moon clock or something? Maybe someone who speaks Latin can translate the motto for me?

Whatever. It's a lovely thing - and hooray for lovely things still being used to decorate modern buildings. I'll like it even more if someone can tell me what it all means...

Greenwich Baby Bin

Joe has brought to my attention a shocking development in Greenwich Council's policy on children. I know that providing nursery care and school facilities are getting more expensive, and that young people are a drain on council resources, but do they really have to resort to the kind of desperate tactics that encourage vulnerable people to dispose of their babies in a seedy underground toilet?

Greenwich Council's solution to the ever-burgeoning population problem is the deepl