Photographed by Fiona in Donegal. I was deep in a book I’d discovered in the Four Masters Bookshop across the road. It’s a new book of essays about Douglas Gageby, who was an inspirational editor of the Irish Times when I was an undergraduate and the man who first awakened my interest in journalism.
Near the Bank of England yesterday. Flickr version here.
I love the City of London. My first job was in a company which was based between the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange, and once — for a bet — I managed to wangle my way onto the Exchange’s trading floor. My office window looked out on the side-entrance to the Bank and ever so often there would be a line of black limousines outside indicating that the Bank’s Court was in session. Later, when the Observer was based in Queen Victoria Street I used to get the train to Liverpool Street and walk down Old Broad Street, Threadneedle Street and Cheapside to St Paul’s, where I often popped in for a quiet moment before plunging into the maelstrom of the newspaper.
Yesterday I found myself at Liverpool Street and decided to walk my old route. Last time I was here was 14 months ago. The atmosphere is very different now. Much more subdued. Many of those expensive boutique shops which cater to the whims of investment bankers have ‘Sale’ and ‘3 for 2’ signs, though the cigar shop opposite the Bank is still in business, still displaying “the biggest cigar in the world” in its window.
Last time I was here it was Christmas and it was impossible, literally impossible, to get a taxi. But yesterday the vast majority of cabs had their ‘For Hire’ signs illuminated.
… for denying planning permission to hideous office blocks next to beautiful buildings. Flickr version here.
Covent Garden’s most popular street act yesterday. Flickr version here.
Flickr version here.
Hmmm… Swimmers might also be interested in this information. Spotted on Murvagh Beach in Donegal.
The GSM Association announced this week that its members have agreed to settle on a single, standard charger design for all cellphones — MicroUSB — and will aim for January 1, 2012 as the deadline.
Hooray! But why not 2009?
Important notice. Seen in a locksmith’s today.
Spotted outside my favourite hardware store yesterday.
John McPhee had a nice piece about fact-checking in a recent issue of the New Yorker which included this anecdote:
The worst checking error is calling people dead who are not dead. In the words of Josh Hersh, “It really annoys them”. Sara [a retired New Yorker fact-checker] remembers a reader in a nursing home who read in The New Yorker that he was the “late reader” in the nursing home. He wrote demanding a correction. The New Yorker, in its next issue, of course complied, inadvertently doubling the error, because the reader died over the weekend while the magazine was being printed.
John McPhee, “Checkpoints”, New Yorker, Feb 9&16, 2009.
Later: Julian Barnes (who wrote the magazine’s ‘Letter from London’ for years) had a nice essay about the New Yorker’s fact-checkers in one of his books. Now where did I put it?
