Fran's Blog

I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff. I need to find answers a lot (the last thing I decided to look up was why, at the front of barbers they have a red and white spiral). For example, I’ll end up waiting at bus stops (waiting for a bus of course, nothing dodgy now) and wondering why buses are labelled the way they are. Whether there is order in the chaos or if I can create a logical order out of it.

So imagine my delight when I received an email from a work colleague today about London buses.

Read it. It doesn’t quite describe everything, but is definitely interesting: http://markhadfield.typepad.com/that_gormandizer_man/2009/03/how-london-buses-are-numbered-tfl-come-up-trumps.html

So there I was, walking home last Friday. And I saw the photo pictured to, hopefully, the left of this text. I found this funny, why? I love these things. I love them because every time I am quite drunk round town. I look for the darkest alley I can find, and usually find one of these bad boys. It makes me feel good that I don’t have to sully someone’s doorstep, and now it isn’t even an option to try and find somewhere else.

The reason i found this funny was because while Westminster do it well (alleys) Hackney council don’t do it well at all. First, note the chain on the smallest branch of the tree. Now some drunken nutters will be tempted to tip the thing. But best of all is its location, on Old street. The centre of it all. Right in the middle of everything. Now, there are tons of alleys and small areas (only last week I heard a man loudly vomitting outside my flat, he really went for it), so why not put it there? Not sure. Keep on the Hackney, keep on.

As we approach hopelessly, yet again into a Tube strike, yielding yet again to Bob Crow and his bunch of overpaid croanies, I felt it important to talk about my new London Transport love. The common bus.

I’ve used the buses for a few years in preference to getting on the Tube. I did rib a friend (sorry Jambo) when he had decided to do this many years ago for being cheap, but I now swallow my pride and have to say, he was right.

I moved to East from West London about 7 months ago to Shoreditch, what a different place! There are good and bad points to both. While Shoreditch has more clubs/bars, it also doesn’t have the great ales anymore. I always thought East London would be an ale drinking man area, but then I realised. Both the London breweries I know of are from West London, Fuller’s & Youngs. Truman’s is long gone. Are there any other East London breweries? i can’t believe the area is now a Stella oriented area.

I’ve just read something beautiful. Carlsberg have had a great advertising campaign since starting to do “Carlsberg don’t do [insert here], but if they did, they would probably be the best in the world”. If you aren’t familiar, here is a clip

Today they have taken it a step further and into the real world by dropping money (a total of £5000 in £10 and £20 notes) in the streets of London with a label like in this photo attached.

Fantastic idea, crack heads over London are probably on the hunt though.

I saw this street sign the other day as I walked from Brick Lane the other day. I love practical street names, but this made me smile. Code Street? If I could now find “Programmer Avenue” or “Javacsript way” even “Developer Pass” I’d have a collection.