clare hill

Camden New Journal
Page 12

Such is the memorable premise of Jim Carrey’s film Liar, Liar – about a man punished with the inability to suppress the truths – that any vaguely similar tale is bound to draws instant comparisons.

But why a monopoly on lying? In his first comedy, writer David Crook asks: If there are so many plays about love, why can’t there also be many interpretations about lying? After all, it makes the world go round.

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City A.M.

Politicians last night warned of a “serious collapse of confidence” in London’s electoral system after City A.M. discovered a flat that has just two adult residents – but seven active voters.

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The Sunday Telegraph
Page 5

Parents of teenagers will know that there is no greater mystery than what is going on in their children’s minds.

But help could be at hand with the release of a new parenting guide on how to raise adolescents, written by two 17-year-olds.

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The Sunday Telegraph
Page 16

The drought is threatening supplies of beer and fresh vegetables as farmers face substantial crop losses because of the lack of water.

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South London Press

South London experts have responded to reports that prospects for the capital’s small businesses will only worsen in the short term.

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The Jellied Eel magazine
Issue 34

Aggie MacKenzie may be best known for the no-nonsense TV show How Clean is Your House? but, she says, she’s always been more interested in food than cleaning. Fair enough too.

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The Sunday Times
(Perth, Australia)

The patriarch of Australia’s most famous circus family has relived his brush with death after WA doctors told his family he had just 12 hours to live.

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Southwark News

James Jarché is often considered one of the foremost British photojournalists of the twentieth century. But the man himself and his upbringing in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe have largely been forgotten.

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The Jellied Eel magazine
Issue 31

The phenomenon of the supper club or pop-up embodies austerity chic and is easy to grasp: amateur chefs can ‘have a go’ without committing to a full scale business and diners get a relatively affordable meal with a measure of urban and culinary adventure thrown in.

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The decision by Camden Council to sell off the Town Hall annexe is a fait accompli, but the planning guidelines covering the site are currently under review.

With talk of a building up to 22 storeys high, the review’s request for comments is a important chance for residents and concerned groups to call for the height to be restricted to eight storeys.

The deadline for comments is Tuesday 1 May, but local group Friends of Argyle Square have done the hard work of wading through the planning jargon of the review document, Camden Site Allocations Local Development Framework and responding in the particular structure requested by the council.

FoAS invites the local community to support their opposition to a tall block next to the Town Hall. To do this, read their response, and email info@friendsofargylesquare.org.uk with your message of support by 1 May. They are particularly keen to hear from groups in the King’s Cross or beyond, if you are one please include its name and the number of members in your message.

The response refers to pages 19–21 of the aforementioned framework document. If you feel inclined to respond directly, see the documents and response form on the council website, although they may be daunting. A Camden officer told FoAS it responses would be accepted even if they did not use the form.

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A massive graffiti mural has been completed on a building opposite St Pancras station today. The vivid artwork was commissioned by the building and hotel owner, Tony Megaro.

“The idea is basically to bring a bit of fun and colour to a drab stretch of road,” said Mr Megaro. “Now when you come out of St Pancras, you’ll think: wow, what’s that?”

The prominence and boldness of the painted design on Euston Road is likely to divide opinion, especially as it has been applied to a classically styled building.

Bill Reed, a local resident and member of the King’s Cross Conservation Area Advisory Committee, said: “It was an attractive building of high quality natural stone and brickwork that has now been knackered with a layer of permanent paint, that, like an unwanted tattoo, will never completely disappear.”

Mr Megaro denied that it marred or diminished the building and said the work was a colourful enhancement: “When you go to Barcelona you see all the coloured tiles and things like that. I think in this country we tend to be a bit conservative…it’s an impressive building, not an ugly building that we want to camouflage.”

He said that the design interacted with architectural features and “enhances some of the arches.” He added that the work had been thought and executed by four internationally commissioned artists, from the UK, New Zealand, the US and France.

A key concern of the mural’s critics is what it will look like as it ages and fades. Mr Megaro said it was supposed to last 20 years: “that’s what the paint company guarantees.”

But Mr Reed, who is also chair of nearby Argyle Square’s Friends’ group, said: “Exterior paintwork needs redecorating eventually, and when it does, this will probably end up a tasteful shade of cream, leaving no trace of either the eye-catching kaleidoscope of transient colour we see now, nor the enduring richness of the materials below that.”

Although in a conservation area, the building itself is not listed, and in Camden the owner of the building does not need to seek planning permission for this type of change.

“Personally I don’t have a problem with [the design],” said Mr Reed, “but you have got to separate the design from what they have done to the building.

“It’s probably quite amazing for people visiting, but people who live around here are going to have to deal with it for a long time,” he added.

It highlights the different regulation in central London boroughs ­– Westminster appears to require permission for murals, as wall-owners with a Banksy found.

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[This is an updated post with the new, finalised document now linked]

The Friends of Argyle Square, who look after the interests of the terrace-fringed oasis just south of the station, have put out a guide to help retain the historic character of  the square.

It has been written in partnership with Camden Council’s planning department. Many of the buildings around the square are Grade II-listed, and/or lie within the Bloomsbury Conservation Area.

The Friends robustly opposed the adjacent Euston Road development, whose planning application was subsequently rejected. An application is being made to heritage-list the existing Georgian terraces on the site.

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The opening of the concourse somehow speeds the ticking clock to reveal the station’s original façade. So some renewed interest in it this week: here it is above, as part of a London alphabet on the delightful Spitalfields Life blog.

And a fascinating post on the original King’s Cross station – Maiden Lane at Ian Visits.

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The “glass pasty”, the “string vest”, the “eyelid” – the western concourse for King’s Cross will not be open for business until next Monday – but it has already acquired a load of nicknames to describe its curved roof and lattice of steelwork.

From the morning of 19 March, passengers will enter the station from the west side instead of the front. I’m sure the neckache-inducing southern concourse will be missed by few, except perhaps by those who will now have a longer walk. The old space will be progressively shut down as soon as the Olympics are over.

It hasn’t been without its headaches, but during construction, most of King’s Cross stayed open, with work going on “on either side, above, and in some cases, below” the platforms.

Tom Fernley, a retail delivery manager for Network Rail showed me around this week. He said about the project’s staging: “We liken it to open heart surgery on a person; we’re having to get into the station while it’s still functioning and everything’s still working, and pull it apart and fundamentally reconfigure it.”

He tells me that the thousands of tiny round white tiles that give the concourse’s mezzanine its “glomesh” detail were made by hand in Scotland. Laying them around the compound curves was a prize pain. The finished effect is beautiful, but you can spot where the tilers struggled.

The little white tiles instantly remind me of the cost and design controversies of the Sydney Opera House. And opinion will likely be divided along the same lines for this ambitious and expensive structure.

Meanwhile in the Grade I-listed old station, Harry Potter pilgrims have been robbed of  atmospheric Victorian grime after the roof restoration, now sunlight streams in. But they might be consoled by the dedicated new shop. The Platform 9 and 3/4 trolley “shrine” will stop moving after seven years and rest permanently near the interface between the old and the new buildings.

Also opening next week and nestled away in the old station is a pub fashioned from the old parcel office and themed with suitcases, tickets and other rail memorabilia.

The removal of the grim green corrugated iron canopy and the completion of the square at the front of the station are due for September 2013.

More pictures

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In Britannia Street at least. Gagosian Gallery has opened an exhibition of Damien Hirst’s dot paintings: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011.

The exhibition is showing simultaneously at all 11 outposts of the commercial gallery’s empire: in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva and Hong Kong.

The Brit Artist’s paintings have been lent by more than 150 different owners from 20 countries. A lotta dots.

In a loyalty card stamping game on steroids, visit all eleven exhibition locations by March and you’ll receive a dotty print signed by the artist. Joining the dots? No, they called it ‘The Complete Spot Challenge’. Anyway if anyone wants to send me on an international art review assignment, I think I can make myself available.

In the meantime, looking forward to seeing reassuringly expensive art for free at my local (not-so) mini-Tate once again.

The exhibition runs until 18 February.

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The Green Party London Assembly Member is to unite with cyclists in King’s Cross on Monday (9 January) for a ‘go-slow’ around the gyratory during the evening rush hour.

A statement from the organisers, Bikes Alive:

Jenny Jones, Green Party leader at the Greater London Authority, has announced that she is joining a cyclists’ direct action event at King’s Cross on Monday. The event, initiated by cycling campaign group Bikes Alive, is to demand a change in the balance of power on London’s roads and an end to the official policy of giving priority to the speed and volume of motor vehicles above the safety and sanity of everyone else.

Jenny Jones said, “London’s roads must be fixed urgently if we are to make them safe for cyclists and all other road users. This is the Mayor’s responsibility, and I hope that if we make a statement through peaceful, direct action he will start to listen.”

Bikes Alive has called for cyclists and pedestrians to take active steps to calm the traffic outside King’s Cross station from 6pm to 7pm on Monday, if possible by closing the road to motor vehicles completely.

Disability campaigners’ support
The priority given to motor traffic affects pedestrians, as well as cyclists, and Bikes Alive demands changes which would improve the safety of all slow-moving and vulnerable road users, including the re-timing of traffic lights at junctions and crossings to allow much longer periods between successive green-for-traffic phases.

Lianna Etkind of Transport for All (which campaigns for safe and accessible means of travel for everyone, irrespective of their abilities or disabilities) has also spoken out in support of the demonstration, and will be present with other Transport for All activists. She said, “The Mayor’s insidious talk of ‘smoothing traffic flow’ covers an agenda of prioritising impatient motorists over the safety of pedestrians. Disabled and older people’s safety and independence is being put at risk by shortsighted streetscene policies, particularly the removal of crossings.”

Bring your dancing shoes
Bikes Alive was set up in reaction to the almost hysterical support, in many circles, for the divine right of motorists to delay, poison and terrorise cyclists and other non-motorised road users.

Albert Beale, speaking on behalf of Bikes Alive, said today, “Monday’s event is the first step in a campaign to stop – by whatever non-violent means needed – the completely unnecessary level of deaths, injuries and fear inflicted by motorists on the more vulnerable. I urge cyclists to join us on Monday. And if you don’t have a bike, bring your dancing shoes…”

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If you fancy learning a bit of food history in the nearby streets around Angel or brushing up on Cally or KX station trivia, there are a few walks on in the next three months.

Rob Smith of Footprints of London is running a historical gastronomic tour called Islington: London’s Larder on 15 January and 26 February. It does what it says on the tin, once upon a time Islington was an important centre of meat and milk in the capital. A word of warning: the subject matter will make you feel tortuously hungry by the end of the walk. Maybe that was just me.

Up The Cally is a two-hour exploration of either side of Caledonian Road on 5 February, and All Change at King’s Cross covers the history and future for the station on 25 March.

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In other news about hotel developments in the area, the proposal to build a 7-storey hotel directly opposite King’s Cross station has been rejected.

Camden Council has cited 18 reasons why permission was refused, but the main two justifications are about heritage conservation and the unsympathetic design.

The rejection states that demolishing three Georgian properties to make way for the block would “result in the loss of a terrace of buildings which is considered to make a positive contribution to the character and appearance of the Kings Cross Conservation Area” and “the design of the proposed replacement building, by virtue of its height, bulk, mass, footprint, and detailed design would have an overly dominant and intrusive impact upon the setting of several listed buildings and disrupt the balanced harmony…”

The publication of the plans on this site in late November 2011 revealed very strong local opposition, and numerous objections were registered. The developers have been working on this proposal for five years it seems. We’ll have to wait and see if this is the end of the story…

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The works scheduled by Transport for London for Pancras Road, York Way and Caledonian Road have started.

Letters were recently circulated to nearby households announcing work would begin between 28 and 30 December. This is the set of ‘improvements’ announced in April 2011 and which were originally scheduled to start in September of the same year. View them again here at ‘Download Kings Cross junction improvement scheme’.

In summary the works are: to create a straight-across crossing at the junction of Pancras Road and Euston Road, an advanced stop line (ASL) for cyclists, widening of pedestrian crossing on the Caledonian/Pentonville Road junction and the removal of the pedestrian island in York Way.

The York Way part involves moving the ASLs on eastbound Euston Road and losing precious pavement outside McDonalds in York Way, to widen Pentonville Road for cars, while adding a considerable amount of pavement outside the current location of the Harry Potter ‘shrine’ and narrowing the entrance to York Way. The plans have been widely criticised as merely cosmetic on this site and in other blogs.

The picture above shows the work for Pancras Road has started in earnest, no sign yet on the other work. It is worth noting that the Pancras Road plan has changed considerably, see below. The original plan was to remove the island, narrow the road and have pedestrians cross in one motion with a much-shortened crossing. When did this change?

(The whole Pancras Road drawing, as circulated by TfL in the letter to local residents on 24 December 2011)

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