Christmas 2012 (as it happened)

Saturday 22^nd December

Home all day

Sunday 23^rd December

Breakfast at Bill’s, Covent Garden: gosh, this place is getting popular. Walk in Seven Dials - they’ve done well with Christmas lights (one landowner for the area? Probably: always results in better Christmas lights). Three year old daughter invited to take part in performance art installation -  London’s cool. Walk to British Museum; what’s that spire over there? Oh, of course, St George’s Bloomsbury; wonderfully disorientating church; Nicholas Hawksmoor: genius. St George’s not appreciated enough. Why not? Overshadowed by British Museum? British Museum - wow, (wow!) those plates, that spoon, those cups are four thousand years old; daughter not bothered. Shame we can’t get into the Round Reading room any more (why not?); ah, so here’s the Great Court restaurant, have never found it before - glorious location but looks a bit bland (how much?! For that?). Bloomsbury Square playground; wonderful London terraces but such a shame Southampton House was demolished. Home.

That evening, carols in local parish church, St Mary’s, Walthamstow. Beautiful medieval building: funny how Christmas seems so tied to Anglicanism, holly, dark nights and Victorian street lamps, and not to Judaism, olive groves, bare mountains and the Roman Empire.

Monday 24^th December

Lunch in Borough market, not charged for food: “We’d made too much anyway, it wouldn’t have lasted over Christmas”. Aren’t people nice? Borough feels peaceful the day before Christmas; wish it was like this on Saturdays. Nice coffee. Home.

Tuesday 25^th and Wednesday 26^th December

Stockings, presents, a bit too much wine, turkey, roasties, stuffing, my wife’s family, bread sauce, mince pies, ham (on Boxing Day) Christmas carols (not this year – that’s a shame, why didn’t we?) and board games in the evening. The only two days of the year where I can be certain I’m doing more or less the same thing as more or less everyone else in this country. I like that. That’s why I eat sprouts.

But did you see the stats for Boxing Day shopping? Blimey, who knew? I wouldn’t go.

Thursday 27^th December

I went. Sales. Oxford Street. Could have been worse. Lunch in Apostrophe on Market Place was nice. Did most of the shopping in Debenhams. Walked back to tube via back streets. What’s that? Discovered St Peter’s Vere Street (hiding behind House of Fraser): charming. Another underappreciated church by James Gibbs. Small, understated but beautiful. Home.

Friday 28^th December

Working. It was fine.

Saturday 29^th December

At home with overexcited three year old playing with all her new toys. Gorgeous. This is why you have kids. Afternoon trip to Waterstones. Why are sci-fi and romance next to children’s? Have you seen the romance section recently? If not, you really must. Endless clones of Fifty Shades: very funny. Home.

Sunday 30^th December

Bus to Smithfield with sleepy daughter in the morning; I love this part of London, so quiet and understated but you can feel history leaching out of the stonework. Stoke Newington for lunch, this is posh! No, seriously posh! I grew up in London; Stoke Newington wasn’t like this - it’s got a Whole Foods Market! When did that happen? Clissold Park to play footie with daughter; OK, this is lovely, I see what they’re paying for. And some seriously nice Georgian houses on Church Street; never noticed those before, did the deprivation really blind me to this until it went upmarket, how shallow. Finsbury Park for coffee with friend (Bon Matin Boulangerie) – wonderful cakes; another part of London that’s so much more upmarket than I thought it used to be. What would Abu Hamza make of this? Home.

Monday 31^st December

Back to Finsbury Park to collect daughter’s football we’d left the day before: oops. More coffee and cake in Bon Matin Boulangerie; why not? Home. Friends round for New Year’s Eve. Hey, a decent New Year’s Eve; there’s a novelty. Should old acquaintance be forgot? On principle, no – but I’m rubbish at staying in touch. 

Tuesday 1^st January

Victoria Park: what a stunning day: blue sky, no clouds, how fresh. New year feels like it’s brought new air with it. 2013’s going to be ok after all, you know. Lunch in Fish House on Lauriston Road. Have you been? You should. Race against daughter round lake. She won. Playground (good quality kit – I notice these things now) then more football (she’s taken to this; that’s a surprise!) then to Hackney Wick for coffee and cake in Hackney Pearl. Very cool. Lots of very beautiful people with trendy beards. Friendly staff. Great cake. Cool’s ok you know – as long as you don’t take it seriously. Train and bus home. Daughter to bed. 

Wednesday 2^nd January

To work again tomorrow. It’s been good.

Like Gibbon

Oh dear, I seem to be on a declining trend. 

In October, my first full month as one of these new-fangled bloggers, I received 147 page views. In November, this fell to 118. So far this month, I’ve had 34.

I’m worried.

I’m not expecting to be the new Robert Peston, but it is only worth talking to the world if the world wants to listen.

I won’t be here next week (I’ll be cosily ensconced in the land of cold turkey) but what am I to do on my return? After all, there’s not much I can do to raise awareness of this blog myself. I don’t tweet (and, even if I did, I’d then have to find followers – which is the same job) and I’m too embarrassed to tell everyone I meet that “I have a blog”. It just sounds too postmodern.

So, perhaps, I need to accept a gradual descent into anonymity from the heights of 147 page views. On the current trend, I’ll be down to one view per month by April. That will be my mum.

However, there might be an alternative. If you, dear reader, could tell the world about my blog then, you never know, more of you might read it.

You see, while there aren’t many of you, I do know that there are a few. A couple of you have posted comments, a few more of you have mentioned it to me on the phone and I can see from my stats package that the 69 page views in the last month are not all the same person.

So, go on, tell the world! And while you’re doing it, wish it, as I wish you, a very merry Christmas and a joyful and prosperous new year.

Right place, right time

Do you recognise this church? Are you sure? Fair enough; it is a bit obscure. It is Dials Methodist Church, Gray Court, South Carolina. While you may not have known the name, the shape is probably familiar. A steeple rising from behind a pediment (that's the triangular bit) supported by columns and preceded by steps is a classic of American church design, repeated in thousands of small towns and big cities.

While these unremarkable churches are endlessly varied, they have one common ancestor; and it isn't American.

St Martin-in-the-Fields is one of London's finest buildings; and one of its most overlooked. Sitting in the corner of Trafalgar Square, it is the square's finest piece of architecture but without the celebrity sheen generated by lions, fountains, Nelson, the National Gallery and the fourth plinth. Goodness, even Admiralty Arch has acquired a certain grotesque glamour since becoming known for John Prescott doing the unthinkable with his secretary Tracey Temple.

While few Londoners now stop to admire St Martins (and very few could name James Gibbs as its architect), it was once the most talked about building in London. Gibbs combined the classic Italian temple front (columns and pediment) with an English baroque steeple. No-one had done this before, and Londoners (always conservative about church design) were sceptical anyone should have done.

However, if he had wanted architectural influence in what was to become the world's largest Christian country, he was building at right time. At the start of the 18th century, the population of the English colonies was 275,000 and the largest city, Boston, had a population of 7,000; a tenth the size of today's Walthamstow. St Martins was completed in 1724. By the end of that century, the newly-independent United States of America had a population of 4 million, and the radical design of Gibb's new church had spawned hundreds of imitations.

It's easy to take Trafalgar Square for granted, but don't. I was reminded of this on Sunday, at one of our family Christmas traditions. Every year, St Martins holds a blessing of the crib in the centre of the square. Standing in the cold and dark singing carols by lanternlight, surrounded by the noise and mundanity of the modern city, there is a magic in the layers of history to be found in the buildings of a square built for a long-lost empire. The names of some of the most prominent buildings speak directly to this history (South Africa House, Canada House, Uganda House) but so, much more subtly, does St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Money

Blimey, it's not easy being Chancellor, is it. No-one likes you, endless difficult decisions and everyone thinks they could do the job better. A bit like managing the England team but without a salary twenty-two times higher.

Having said that, I'm still not entirely convinced that George Osborne's got it right. The thing is that he seems to have misunderstood the nature of the problem he is trying to solve. Conventional wisdom is that "there's not enough money". But that's not right. Thanks to Sir Mervyn King's printing press, there's more money than there's ever been in history. The problem is that it's not moving about fast enough.

You see, "the economy" is simply a word we use to describe economic activity. The key word here is activity. If a pound is printed by the Bank, and promptly sits in the vaults of Barclays for a year then that pound has been worth a pound. However, if it is spent by an old lady on a bus fare which is used to pay a bus driver who uses it to buy some chips from a chippie who repaints her shop with paint from Homebase who pay it in corporation tax to the Chancellor who uses it to pay a teacher who uses it to pay his mortgage, then that pound has been worth seven pounds by the end of the year. Each time that pound changes hands, the great GDP-omiter clunks up another quid. The Chancellor's task, therefore, is to work out how to make Mervyn's millions move faster.

OK, so how do we do that? Well, if you want money to move faster, you need to get it into the hands of people who will spend it. A pound in a pocket is of no value to the economy: a pound in a palm is. By far the people most likely to spend all the money they're given are the poor. It's obvious when you think about it. Money given to the poor is valuable to the economy, money given to the rich stagnates; especially in a recession when confidence is low and everyone who can will hoard cash for a rainy day.

This is why "we're all in it together" isn't just about fairness, it's about economic necessity.

So how did George do? Well, despite the pain there were a few tax cuts in today's autumn statement. Increases to the personal allowance, tweaks to inheritance tax and a headline cut in corporation tax make sense. Companies now exist in a global marketplace, and it makes sense to attract firms to Britain. The reason Starbucks pay no tax in Britain is because they'd pay less by pretending their coffee shops are in Switzerland. Cut their taxes, and they might actually pay them.

There was also a cut in planned fuel duty. This seems a shame. 50% of the poorest fifth do not even own a car. The one tax cut we've got and 50% of the poor won't get a penny from it. Conversely, the continued squeeze on both benefits and tax credits will significantly reduce their real incomes. Taking money from the only group certain to spend it might not be the best idea for growing the economy.

So what is to be done? Well, perhaps instead of taking money from the people most likely to spend it, we should give them more. By all means make the structural changes to welfare that need to be made (and some do). But provide transitional support to get the poorest through the change. Good idea, but where will the money come from? Why, from Sir Mervyn, of course. 

Britain’s Quantitative Easing of £375 billion is worth £6,000 per head or £24,000 per family. Directed at the two-thirds of households with incomes below average (yes, most of us!) and that works out as a transitional payment of roughly £15,000 per household. Assume it's paid over three years, and that's an extra £5k per year to adjust to the pain of reduced public services.

That way, the Government gets to stick to its austerity plans while the poor kick start spending in the economy. Let's call it "trickle up". Unlike trickle down (the economic creed beloved of Thatcherites) it might even work.

Defoe's playground

On Sunday, I climbed a sixteenth century tower, toured a tudor manor house built by a courtier to Henry VIII, took tea in a National Trust teashop and strolled down a Georgian market street. I also watched the leaves fall in a Georgian  square and wandered through green space originally a sixteenth century common (vaguely reminiscent of Cambridge's Parker's Piece).

Where did I do these things? That's right: Hackney. 

An area of London I grew up slightly fearing, famed for its Murder Mile and sink schools, the place I have discovered since moving to East London is entirely different to my childhood perception. It is far more clearly the chain of ancient villages (Hackney, Homerton, Clapton, Wyck) than the cliche I thought I knew.

If you haven't visited in the last few decades, I strongly suggest you prepare yourself for a treat. 

Identity

I've just got back from taking part in a film campaigning to save Walthamstow. 

OK, perhaps that's a bit dramatic. The context is the review of constituency boundaries currently taking place (which, thanks to Nick Clegg's hissy fit over Lords reform, may never be implemented). It has proposed abolishing Walthamstow.

Up until now, constituencies have been designed to reflect the natural boundaries of local communities. This is amorphous, but the boundary commission seems, generally, to have got it right. The consequence, though, has been wildly differing numbers of electors in different seats. The Isle of Wight crams 111,000 voters into its self-evident borders, while at the opposite end of the country, Orkney and Shetland's 32,000 voters are outnumbered by sheep four to one.

This is changing. From now on, every seat (except, as it happens, the Isle of Wight) will contain 76,641 electors; with a 5% variance permitted. This means the boundary commission's longstanding respect for natural borders must be cast aside. It is for this reason that Walthamstow, a clearly defined single community with a thousand-year history and a powerful sense of identity, is to be lost. Half of Walthamstow is to be merged with Chingford; the other half with Leyton.

Does it matter? I passionately believe it does, but I haven't really got any evidence. Perhaps we shouldn't worry at all about natural borders or communities and just divide the nation into perfectly equal sized boxes: the population equivalent of the back cover of the Ordnance Survey map. It would be easy, but surely an MP should represent a place that voters recognise, believe in and identify with? Rightly or wrongly, I am sure democracy will be weaker if that tradition is abandoned.

The case study is local authorities. Over the last fifty years, successive Governments have weakened the bonds between councils and people as local authority borders have become more logical and administratively convenient; but less relevant to the people the councils are meant to serve.

Until 1965, Walthamstow was a borough in its own right. Now it is part of Waltham Forest; an entity that merges the leafy suburbs of Chingford and the northern tip of the Olympic park in gritty Leyton. In the half century since local council borders were redrawn in the name of convenience our local authorities have become the weakest in Europe. Led by people we don't know, in elections we don't care about, they have no power and little influence. Just perhaps, who knows, Walthamstow council might have been able to keep the power and influence that its larger successor has gradually lost.

I don't know; perhaps I'm mad. Just 17 of us turned up to take part in the film, out of 65,000 of us in the constituency. Perhaps this simply doesn't matter. Does it? Do you think your council or your constituency should be designed around the place you feel you live in? Maybe you don't.

But two final thoughts. If we do this with councils and constituencies, perhaps we should do it with nations? There are 503 million of us in the European Union, and 27 nation states. Well, 27's a stupid number - let's make it 20. It's neater, and means that each

country could contain 25 million people. Fine. Let's start in the West. 6 million live on the island of Ireland. Group Ireland with Wales, South West England, North West England and the West Midlands and we've got our 25 million. Now let's start in the north. Scotland, the North East, the East Midlands, the East of England and London also make around 25 million. Good. The final region would then combine the South East of England, Nord-pas-de-Calais, Picardy, Upper Normandy and Ile de France. Blimey, combining the commuter heartlands of both Paris and London, this country would be the world expert in commuter train travel. Bit odd that most of the population would need to cross a national border to get to work each day, but we can't let these things get in the way of logic. After all, much better that every country is a nice, neat average size...

If we're going to be like this, then let's take it to its true extreme and simply have the Government divide us randomly like the teacher did when splitting us into groups at school. "You're in 1, you're in 2, you're in 3..." and so on to 600, then back to the beginning. I might end up voting with a farmer in Falkirk, a teacher from Totnes and a builder from Birmingham. We'd all get together on Facebook and form our own, new community untrammelled by the false proximity of disregarded geography. It sounds rather romantic.

If you have an opinion on the boundary review (especially if you live in Walthamstow!) visit http://consultation.boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/

Life

The world divides into two distinct tribes: those that have (successfully or otherwise) attempted to become parents, and those that have not. It's a division more fundamental than any of race, class or gender, with procreation bringing its own distinct language to ensure the parental elect remain aloof from the barbarians. When, last week, I was forced to tell people that my wife was suffering from an ectopic pregnancy, their reaction instantly identified the listener's alignment. 

Those in the know reacted with horror: their eyes widened, their mouths opened and they expressed sympathy, sorrow and support. By contrast, the rest looked puzzled. Several said congratulations, but their furrowed brows revealed their fear that the "ectopic" caveat must, in some unexplained way, partially negate the benefit of the pregnancy.

As it is perfectly possible that you, my reader, forms part of this second group; let me explain. An ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy where the fertilised egg (and, yes, I'm sorry, we must use this kind of language when we talk about this topic) implants in a part of the female reproductive system that is not the womb; typically the fallopian tubes (and, yes, sorry but there are tubes involved in all this). In rare cases, it is fatal. In a large minority of cases, it costs the woman her fertility. In all cases, the potential baby is lost and the woman feels dreadful. The expressions of sympathy were deserved.

My wife, I'm glad to report, did not need to have surgery and is starting to recover. However, to get here has involved several trips to our local hospital, and specifically the early pregnancy unit (the reason, incidentally, for my silence last week is that I was there). The early pregnancy unit is one of those strange "joy and sorrow" places that you only visit if something wonderful or desperate is happening. Registry offices have the same atmosphere.

Growing up in Camden, the only two occasions I visited our rather forbidding local registry office in Kings Cross were for my brother's wedding and to register my father's death.

Like the early pregnancy unit, the Camden registry office had that downbeat public sector aesthetic. Notices handwritten or badly typed are taped to the walls; furniture is mismatching but not in the Shoreditch style and the decorative scheme is impossible to date even to a broad era, clearly having accumulated piecemeal over decades. It is as if the human stories within need to be diluted by an environment as bland as they are momentous.

Registering my father's death was odd. I was there to do the worst job I've ever had to do, and I was standing surrounded by ecstatic young couples there to register the child that - to them that day - was the only thing in their world. Wrapped up in their own cocoon of neo-natal bliss, they probably didn't notice the mourners in the queue. 

At the time it seemed rather insensitive to put us together; let alone with a wedding taking place outside the door. However, births, deaths and marriages are the stepping stones of life and it's probably a good thing to be reminded every so often that these are the big things and, actually, they are the only things that really matter.