Ghost bike, Notting Hill Gate. A permanent memorial.

 Sunday 5th September a ghost-bike was fixed to a railing in Notting Hill Gate.

It’s there for many reasons, the main one being to mark the death of yet another London cyclist, Eilidh Jake Cairns.

Eilidh was killed by a tipper lorry near this spot. The lack of any witnesses meant the driver has not been prosecuted. 

The ghost-bike will also serve as street art and, one hopes, as an unsettling warning to all road users.

Ghost-bikes have become an increasingly common sight around London and the world, marking the spot of a fallen cyclist.

This particular ghost-bike is unusual in that London Mayor Boris Johnson gave his permission for it to remain  a permanent fixture.

Local authorities would normally remove them after a time. This one, however, will stay.

Ghost bike, Notting Hill Gate. A permanent memorial.

Men unload mountains of Estate Agent's glossy mags to pump through your letterbox.

 One of the joys of W11 life is taking the mountain of free, glossy mags that get pushed through your door to the recycling bin.

Captured here is the moment when the van turns up and the magazines, full of overpriced properties for sale, get divided up by the team.

That’s a lot of carefully prepared print material that no one wants. But every day, more turns up.

Estate agents - pure evil.

It was great news when Gelato Mio opened last year, selling real Italian ice-cream at their new parlour on Holland Park Avenue.

The ice-cream was so good and there were so many flavours, the little HP Tarquins and Jocastas practically exploded with impatience as their mums queued up.

(Though it is hard to queue there, have you noticed?)

But those of us with less liquidity are this week appalled to see the price of a single scoop go up from £2 to £2.50.

And this in the middle of a recession. Clearly they think we’re hooked.

Well, for me this price change has crossed a threshold of what I’m willing to pay. So, sadly, no more stracciatella for me.

London does next to nothing for cyclists. It does so little it might as well be nothing. Other cities in Europe put London to shame.

Two cyclists were killed recently on High Street Kensington, one crushed by a lorry. Another was crushed by a lorry at Holborn. The Driver in the Holborn incident didn’t even know what he’d done until he was waved down by pedestrians.

London continues to mix bikes and Lorries and dense traffic.

This lovely young woman killed at Notting Hill Gate is just the latest pointless death. She was commuting to work in a green and healthy way.

In this case, the lorry driver can’t be prosecuted as no witnesses have so far come forward.

More…

Central London the Cycle crash capital of England

Cyclist killed in lorry collision is the second victim in a week…

Some midnight digging on Holland Park Avenue.

This stumpy iron thing used to be twenty feet tall and was a vent for methane from the sewers. There used to be many of them around London, apparently.

(Taken on a mobile phone.)

The discovery of a Martian cylinder under Addison Avenue has caused major disruption to residents and estate agents in Holland Park.

Major Martian disruption on Addison Ave

The metal tube, believed to contain a giant three-legged robot with a heat-ray weapon ‘eye’, was found last week as someone tried to extent their basement to include a subterranean swimming pool and sauna.

Residents have been very put out by the alien object.

‘It has meant the Ocado van has had to park quite a bit further away,’ said one local.

Mums bringing their children to Norland Place School have had to park their SUVs up to fifty yards further away.

Six Tarquins,  two Jocastas and one Sherston reportedly needed emergency oxygen after the unforeseen requirement to walk.

Local councillor, Mr Bribes, assured residents the matter was being dealt with. “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one,” he said.

But they still came.

Westfield, Britain’s third biggest indoor shopping mall, opened Thursday. Though the real opening was today, Saturday.

It’s cold, grey and raining but that, seemingly, has not deterred anyone.

A huge number of people have been drawn to this new place. There are stewards, as you might find at a football match, guiding the crush in an improvised contra flow.

Guided in to the new shopping experience

When you finally arrive at an entrance, and get a glimpse inside, it truly seems like a palace of wonders. The designers have succeeded horribly well in making you feel you’ve found somewhere shopping dreams really do come true.

It’s so spectacular, in fact, that for a while you think, surely we don’t deserve such a place. Later it catches up with you that actually this place only exists to take our money.

My reflection in the ceiling, what a wonderful place!

If you have come to hate the Oxford Street experience, because the of elbows, the argy-bargy, the exhausting waits, the extremes of cold and heat – the sad news is Westfield seems to offer that same experience, turned up to eleven.

People were pushed, shoved, funnelled into jams and all whilst being bombarded with visual spectacles they instinctively wanted to stop and take in.

If you need a break or are hungry, just like Oxford Street you must join a 20-minute queue for the privilege of rest.

Doing the Shopper Shuffle: dense crowds in Westfield

There’s next to nowhere to sit for free except the floor.

I saw red-faced, ‘bushed’ older ladies doing just that, sprawled at the bottom of some escalators, their plastic bags fanned around them, cruelly imitating pillows.

It’s such a massive site it’s hard to comprehend. You are bombarded with glittering, elegant stimuli and are lured by possibilities around the next corner.

But despite the scale and the billions spent, there’s not green space, no calm corners. Every square inch is making money.

I bought a scarf in M&S. Given the shop was crammed, there were surprisingly few people actually queuing to make a purchase.

The girl who served me said that she was local and for years had found it hard to find meaningful work. She told me she was glad for the opportunities the new mall had brought.

The Westfield Gridlock, just as predicted

Outside the West Cross Route was gridlocked northbound, just as the environmentalists said. Shepherds Bush roundabout is a tangle of cars, horns bleating in frustration.

As I left, carried along in a river of people, a steward with a bullhorn was announcing that Shepherds Bush Tube Station had closed, I assume because it just couldn’t cope with the numbers. People with Prada bags were cursing in the rain.

We make our environments, then our environments make us.

When Boris Johnson was elected Mayor, he promised an end to Ken Livingstone’s high-handedness. From now on, said Mr Johnson, there would be consultation and he would listen to what people said. For this new democratic start, he took the chair of Transport for London himself.

It hasn’t happened. In April, some residents of the Ladbroke Grove district in west London discovered that TfL had awarded contracts to drive two new bus routes through the heart of the W11 historic conservation area, ostensibly to take people to the giant new Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush…

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