Old St Pancras Church

I have shown you Sir John Soane's mausoleum and The Hardy Tree in it its churchyard. Here is Old St Pancras itself. It is an oddly rural looking building for such an urban setting.

When I arrived there were people coming and going. I thought I was going to achieve my ambition of getting inside to have a look.

But when I reached the door there was a handwritten note saying: "PRIVATE BOOKING TODAY. THE CHURCH IS NOT OPEN TO VISITORS". If I were a believer I would be quite offended by that.

I did consider faking a spiritual crisis to gain admission - "I need an altar and I need it now" - but thought better of it.

It turns out that the church will be open this weekend as part of the London Open House Weekend. I don't know if I will get there as there is the attraction of the reopening of Harborough Museum on Saturday.

But I'll get inside Old St Pancras one day. Even if I have to do something extreme like go to Divine Service.

Lord Gnome on the Bowstring Bridge

The Bowstring Bridge has made it into the new Private Eye.

Unfortunately they refer to the Pump & Tap, the pub that is also threatened with demolition, as the "Pump & Tab". Shurely shome mishtake?

Why isn't Mark Reckons shortlisted for Blog of the Year?

Oh dear. I had just regained my usual cheerful equilibrium when I looked at the shortlists for the Lib Dem Blog of the Year awards again.

And I saw that Mark Reckons has not been shortlisted for the main award.

I find this inexplicable. In my book he was one of the two favourites to win it.

Rather than rant about cliques, let me be try to be constructive.

Writing your blog posts in the style of essays or newspapers comment articles is a perfectly valid method. There are some excellent examples of blogs using this approach on the shortlists. But it is not the only way of blogging and should not be the only way that the Blog of the Year judges reward and thus encourage.

Those judges should make more effort to reflect the variety of blogging approaches that flourish in the party. Mark's recent interviews are an excellent example of what I am talking about.

Mark Oaten's sex life was the most remarkable thing about him

I don't want to keep attacking Mark Oaten, but a myth about him is in danger of developing. It is fuelled both by Oaten himself and by his supporter Mark Littlewood.

Let us be clear. Mark Oaten was not a dangerous, exciting politician brought down by a straitlaced press and public opinion. He was probably overpromoted when he was made Lib Dem shadow home secretary and his performance while in the rule was neither particularly impressive nor particularly liberal.

As evidence I refer you to a post of mine from a couple of years ago. It reminds us that though Oaten was happy to talk about abolishing prisons after he had left office, while he was in the post he presented himself as the apostle of "tough liberalism".

An earlier posting of mine may help too. I do hope Mark and the other libertarians of Liberal Vision will agree there is no simple trade off between security and liberty.

Vince Cable is speaking in Leicester tomorrow

Later: Details here.

The following press release reaches me, but I am not sure precisely where it comes from:

On Thursday 17 September, Vince Cable MP will give a lecture at the University of Leicester entitled The Economy: The Way Forward.

Vincent Cable has been an MP for Twickenham since 1997. He read Natural Science and Economics at Cambridge University, where he was President of the Union, followed by a PhD at Glasgow University. He worked as Treasury Finance Officer for the Kenya Government, then lectured at Glasgow University in economics; worked as a first Secretary in the Diplomatic Service in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; was Deputy Director of the Overseas Development Institute, this included a period working for the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, John Smith MP and was Special Advisor on Economic Affairs for the Commonwealth Secretary General, Sir Sonny Ramphal.

From 1990 Mr Cable worked for Shell International and from 1995 was Shell's Chief Economist. He has also been head of the economics programme at Chatham House.

Since becoming an MP, has been appointed a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and at the LSE. Mr Cable has been the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor since November 2003 and is currently Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats. He founded and has, until recently, chaired the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Policing and Victims of Crime. Mr Cable has published several books, most recently the best seller The Storm, and reports on international economics, trade and environmental issues.

The lecture will take place from 5.30pm-6.30pm in the Rattray Lecture Theatre, followed by a reception in the Senior Common Room Park Lounge, 4th floor CWB.

Musical Ruth has her own website

Good news. Musical Ruth, the nun with the mobile electric piano who was a highlight of Market Harborough Arts Fresco, has her own website. With video.

There is also some footage of the day on the Harborough Mail website.

Mark Oaten sells his soul...

...but doesn't get much for it.

Last month I complained that Mark Oaten had agreed that his memoirs should be published on the eve of the Liberal Democrat Conference.

At the same time it was announced that Oaten's publisher was looking for a serialisation deal.

Well, he found one. Sort of. A single extract appeared in today's Independent.

Which strongly suggests that Oaten didn't get much for it.

Demolition work on Bowstring Bridge delayed

Leicester's Bowstring Bridge is not dead yet.

The BBC reports this evening:

Dismantling of the derelict Bowstring Bridge in the city's West End was due to start on 21 September but has been put back because of engineering works.

Independent Safeguarding Agency - I told you so

From the Daily Telegraph:

The recent storm of protest against the "intrusive" nature of the ISA – which critics claim will discourage people from volunteering – could have been avoided if MPs had passed a better law, he said.

"I'm surprised that some of the concerns are now being expressed were not raised by the legislators at the time," he said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

I don't like to blow my own trumpet (as regular readers will know), but I refer readers to my House Points column in the Liberal Democrat News for 27 October 2006:

On Monday MPs from all parties gave final approval to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill. Who could object to legislation designed to ensure people who work with children do not endanger them?

Well, let’s have a try...

The Hardy Tree, Old St Pancras Churchyard

Before he became a novelist and poet, Thomas Hardy was an architect. As a young man he studied under Arthur Blomfield, an architect based in Covent Garden.

At this time the Midland Railway was building its independent line from Bedford to London, with a new terminus at St Pancras. The line entered this new terminus across part of St Pancras Churchyard and, says The Victorian Web:

Blomfield was commissioned by the Bishop of London to supervise the proper exhumation of human remains and dismantling of tombs. He passed this unenviable task to his protegé Thomas Hardy in. c.l865. Hardy would have spent many hours in St. Pancras Churchyard . . . overseeing the careful removal of bodies and tombs from the land on which the railway was being built.

The headstones around this ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior) would have been placed here about that time. Note how the tree has since grown in amongst the stones.

I took my own photograph of the tree and stones last Saturday.

This episode inspired Hardy's The Levelled Churchyard:

"O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones!

"We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
'I know not which I am!'"

It's a grimly comic poem, but no wonder he was a melancholy man after this experience.

Lib Dem Blog of the Year nominations

Liberal Democrat Voice has all the shortlists.

Despite being the leading individual Lib Dem blog in the Wikio rankings as recently as June, this blog is not nominated in any category.

I am disappointed but not surprised.

On a brighter note, I am no. 69 (fnar fnar) in the Total Politics list.

Ant Orkezdra

Writing about the Market Harborough Arts Fresco on Sunday I praised the Ant Orkezdra.

Here they are marching (though not in Harborough - this video shows them in Church Square on Sunday).

Tim Farron interviewed for Farmer's Weekly

Don't look for controversy:

What trait do you most admire about farmers?

Their passion for the industry and their determination in the face of huge adversity.

What trait do you least like about farmers?

The fact they remain unappreciated and unrewarded by a market which ignores their role as environmental stewards of the countryside as well as food producers.

Read the whole thing here.

Campaigners vow direct action to save Bowstring Bridge

This is the front page story on today's Leicester Mercury:

People campaigning to save a historic bridge in Leicester have vowed to take "direct action" when the bulldozers move in to demolish the landmark.

The Bowstring Bridge protesters would not say exactly what form the action would take, but said the contractors who carry out the work should not expect an easy ride.

Demolition of the landmark is due to begin on or about Monday, September 21.

The video above shows Saturday's demonstration.

Sir John Soane's mausoleum at St Pancras Old Churchyard

Past the Natural Park, Camley Street curves under the railway leaving St Pancras station. On the other side of the bridge you come to St Pancras Old Church.

This is an ancient religious site in an atmospheric part of London, though the church is probably not Christ's resting place.

In the churchyard you can find the mausoleum Sir John Soane designed for himself. If it looks a little familiar it is probably because Giles Gilbert Scott, who designed the first GPO red telephone box, was a trustee of Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields at the time.

Alan Turing and Harry Golombek

Gordon Brown's apology for the treatment of Alan Turing has reminded me of the time in the early 1980s when I was working in London selling chess computers.

As part of this work I went out to Chalfont St Giles to visit Harry Golombek, then the chess correspondent of The Times. He had been British champion three times in the forties and fifties, and had been a member of the British team at the 1939 chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires, which was abandoned when war broke out.

Like several top chess players, Golombek was then recruited to Bletchley Park to help break German codes. Recruits from other fields there included Roy Jenkins and the future novelist Angus Wilson.

I remember that Golombek talked about Alan Turing and what a brilliant man he was. This was quite unprompted by me: I doubt I had heard of Turing in those days. Hugh Whitemore's play Breaking the Code, which had much to do with his modern rediscovery, did not appear until 1986.

Golombek died in 1995 and his Independent obituary (dodgy Java script and all) records that he would play chess against Turing in quiet moments at Bletchley Park, giving the computer pioneer a queen start and still winning.

Arts Fresco: Marching ants and motorised nuns

Today was Arts Fresco day in Market Harborough. It brought thousands of people into the town, helping local businesses at a difficult time and reminding me how the town has changed since I moved here in 1973.

If some of the acts are art then so was my impersonation of Lord Bonkers at the Lib Dem Conference back in 1997. I should offer to take part next year. Still, it was all great fun.

And I did meet the chair of the organisng board, who turned out be to be someone I acted as agent for in a local by-election 20 or so years ago.

Here are some of the highlights...


These are the SuperEuros. I was not entirely sure of the point they were making:

This is Musical Ruth:

Her electrically powered piano plays a mean Hallelujah Chorus and has a surprising turn of speed:

Gordon the Cycling Panda and assistant:

Big Rory - "Quite possibly," says the programme, "the world's best solo stilt act":



This the Tavaziva Dance Company performing "My Friend Robert", which "asks how an inspirational African leader, adored by his people, can descend into the horrors of corruption, violence, disease and economic meltdown":



One of the Slinkies making her way to another performance:



This the Bureau of Silly Ideas presenting "The Hole Job":



The slightly scary Elementals:



And the magnificent Ant Orkezdra:


One of the things the Conservatives have done since taking control of Harborough District is get rid of its artistic development office. So I don't know whether we shall see more festivals like this in the town in future years.

Britblog Roundup 239

Courtesy of Philobiblon.

Dusty Springfield: I Just Don't Know What to do With Myself

Bob Stanley wrote in The Times earlier this year:

Until relatively recently she was seen as one of a crop of stars of the era famous enough to be known by their first names — Cilla, Sandie, Lulu and Dusty. All of them scored a string of hits between 1964 and the turn of the Seventies; all of them had their own TV series.
Yet whenever a new starlet has appeared this decade, be it Amy Winehouse, Duffy or Adele, Dusty is always the one cited as a reference point.

This recording of the Bacharach and David song reached number three in the UK singles chart in 1966.
The best website devoted to Dusty Springfield's life and recordings is Woman of Repute.

Camley Street Natural Park, London

Last year I wrote about the nature reserve at Camley Street next to St Pancras station for the New Statesman website:

Each year more than 50 schools visit its oasis at Camley Street, which is open to the public seven days a week. Into two acres beside the Regent’s Canal are packed ponds, wetlands, woodland and open grassed areas. Within them you will find kingfishers, reed warblers, reed buntings, rare fungi and a teeming variety of insect life. Geese, mallards, coots and herons make regular visits, while the cutting of the grass is subcontracted to the park’s resident rabbits Coco, Patch and Merlin.

Camley Street was created from a former coal yard. It opened in 1985 as a joint project between the Trust, the Greater London Council and Camden Borough Council when such partnerships were a novelty. Now the Trust runs more than 150 days of family activities here every year: its volunteers carry out maintenance work on the various habitats and lead guided walks and play schemes over weekends and school holidays.

As I said in that article, there are concerns about what the redevelopment of the King's Cross area will mean for Camley Street.

I was there again yesterday afternoon. Talking to the volunteers it seems that relations with the developers and Camden council are good, but that the increase in visitor numbers that will result from the redevelopment may lead to some areas being closed to the public and only being seen on guided tours.

So get down to Camley Street while you can still wander around it freely.