A part of Euston Road as a result now looks unrecognisable. Last week saw all the London Plane trees by Euston station chopped down in an act of what felt like more than just brutal brainlessness. This is also why so many London Plane trees have recently been planted in so many of the world’s pollution-blighted cities.īad news for tree lovers, though. Amazingly, some splendid specimens like the London Plane trees - at their best in St James’s Park - are pretty much impervious to air pollution, and can filter damaging pollutants far better than most trees by laying hold of the pollutants on the bark and leaves. A kind of arboreal comfort had to be taken from knowing these trees were such effective air filters, no matter the strains we pollutant-splutterers of the early 21st century place on them each day. It was why I was looking up so admiringly up at the line of girthy oak trees by Observatory Hill. It was in pursuit of good air that we were walking across the park. ‘Untangle the tangles,’ as the song goes. But it does make for a melodic household. ![]() Sharing the same air as these two talents doesn’t mean ignoring HouseFresh with its recent statement that air quality in London is the equivalent of passively smoking 154 cigarettes a year. Am I allowed to say that? It is written with her brother Anders Bach who has also produced it. But Clara Bach has her latest single - ‘Untangle’ - out, I am happy to report. Protecting creativity is a million torrid miles from anything sentimental, I should add - there is nothing ‘precious’ about it at all - and a lioness will always guard her cubs. Let us hope there are benefits to come from the government’s latest ‘discovery’ of a spare £166 billion. At home we try to be a creative family - art, music, even writing - but life is hard for people in London right now, creative or otherwise, and I suspect people need each other far more than they used to. Just as I am not sure I could get by without my friends. I don’t know if I could survive London without its parks. When this book came out in 1995 I can well remember a number of shaking heads among the elite and often male academic maritime community, as if this American outsider, a woman no less, had stolen their idea, forgetting of course that no one ‘owns’ history. ![]() Which is not to forget about the illustrious longitude backstory with Harrison and giant telescopes and the cosmos feeding into Greenwich Observatory - nor more recently the shrewd success of ‘Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time’ by Dava Sobel, recounting this time. Brits by deliberately confusing the distant past with the more recent past like to take all the credit for Prime Meridian remaining here, but it was in fact an American decision. The reason Prime Meridian is here and not somewhere else is because the Americans had already selected Greenwich as the starting point for their own federal time zone system, and because in the ship-savvy late 19th century almost three-quarters of the planet’s commerce depended on sea-charts using Greenwich as Prime Meridian. ![]() A simple clock, on the other hand, tick-tocking away as if inhabiting some kind of rare Dickensian silence, measures always exactly the same length. For all we knew, she may have just killed an abusive husband and was celebrating the fact.Īt the risk of sounding technical, funny to think that solar time is actually less reliable - this is Greenwich, after all - because solar time keeps changing throughout the year, and the actual time interval between the sun crossing a set meridian line changes. We even took the liberty of imagining her holidaying alone and therefore craving this kind of interaction, forgetting again that many people who live alone are perfectly happy with their own company. The fact the Austrian or German woman was preaching to the converted didn’t matter it was her delight at everything which had been so winning to us. One or two bright young yellow crocuses were pocking the green grass sloping away from us, while tiny buds in the trees had created a kind of faint green mist around One Tree Hill. ![]() This was right before the latest cold snap spoiled the party. I didn’t ask her where she was from exactly but she was full of the joys of spring. An Austrian or German woman approached us close to Prime Meridian in Greenwich Park last week.
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