Daily Photo 30/11/08: Looking Across Greenwich Park

Not had a Daily Photo from Greenwich Park for … at least a week, so here’s one looking across the park towards Croom’s Hill.

Daily Photo 29/11/08: Cycle Warehouse

The Cycle Warehouse in Greenwich.

O2 Is Number One With Music Fans

The O2 Arena in North Greenwich has been named as the winner of the 95.8 Capital FM Best Music Venue Award at the Visit London 2008 Awards. The award was one of the evening’s People’s Choice awards, meaning the winner was voted for by the public.

Each category awarded gold, silver and bronze awards, with the O2 also receiving bronze for the Sports Tourism Award, silver for the Sustainable Tourism Award and another silver for the Accessible Tourism Award.

Other good news for Greenwich at the awards including bronze prize for Best Tourism Experience going to the Astronomy Centre and Peter Harrison Planetarium at the Royal Observatory.

See the full list of winners from the Visit London 2008 Awards.

Week In Review 28/11/08

At the start of the week, I went on one of my little expeditions to gather images for the Greenwich Daily Photo section. DaveH48 had kindly suggested I pop down to to the East Greenwich Pleasaunce for some good snaps which, I must admit, is a place I hadn’t visited before. So I was snapping away and came to a gate. I was in photo journalist mode so a gate wasn’t going to stop me, and I duly let myself in. Then I saw a lady coming out of the small building, heading straight towards me and I suddenly clocked what was happening: There was me, a grown man, camera at the ready, standing in a kiddie’s play area outside a playcentre. The lady from the playcentre was perfectly pleasant but it was still slightly embarrasing to find one’s self in the position where someone might have thought I was up to no good, lurking outside a playcentre. A mental note has been made to be more careful in future!

Slightly later than usual this week, Andrew Gilligan’s latest column brought with it a wonderful moment of confession when our esteemed local columnist admitted the famous places in Greenwich he hadn’t visited. Maybe we should all join in. What famous Greenwich landmark have you never been too? I think I only visited the Royal Observatory for the first time recently. Interesting place, with quite a funny one way system for walking around it. I was just inside the entrance, I could practically reach out into the courtyard but the staff instead directed me to walk the entire way route around place to reach the proper “exit”. Slightly over-zealous since you don’t even pay to go in, I thought.

And that’s the abridged round up of the week here at Greenwich.co.uk!

Daily Photo 28/11/08: Royal Parks Sweeper Vehicle

Britney Spears Live at O2 Arena

Britney Spears has announced that she will be performing at the O2 Arena in Greenwich. The two dates announced are for the 3rd and 4th of June 2009, and will be the only two European concerts in her World Tour.

The singer, who has had a couple of troubled years, looks set to be getting back on track with the release of her new album, Circus.

Tickets for the concerts at the O2 Arena will not be on sale until December 5th - bookmark this page and come back then to try and get hold of tickets.

Daily Photo 27/11/08: Westcombe Park Train Station

I don’t usually do much “post production” on photos, but this one of Westcombe Park was looking a bit drab so I brightened it up a little.

0 Marks

IN DAVID Lodge’s campus novel, Changing Places, the characters, English literature academics, play a game called Humiliation, where you score points by confessing the most embarrassing possible works of literature that you’ve never read. One of the academics loses his job after admitting, to win the game, that he hasn’t read Hamlet.

Well, as it says on the biography just to the right of this here screen, your current columnist is a “long-time resident of Greenwich.” Thirteen and a half years long, actually - six of them spent waiting for the 177 bus. But in my own personal Humiliation moment, let me, as a so-called SE10 expert, tell you the various deeply embarrassing Greenwich places I’ve never been, and cross my fingers they don’t sack me.

I’ve never been inside the Royal Observatory or the Cutty Sark, not since I moved here at least (I went on a school trip when I was 10.) Never been to Ranger’s House. Never been (shameful!) to the National Maritime Museum, not since it was refurbished yonks ago. Perhaps that isn’t too untypical of local residents in touristy areas. But there’s one other place which lots of locals visit and I never had: the 02.

I’d been when it was the Dome, just after Christmas 2000, about three days before it closed. But in a world containing, you know, Rome, Paris, and the Westfield Shopping Centre, never mind the National Maritime Museum, I never felt missing out on the 02 left a Hamlet-sized hole in my life. The fact that it is named after a mobile phone network was a bit of a clue that I might not like the place.

But last week, after someone was stabbed there, I thought: you know, why don’t I go and see what it’s like. And isn’t it a long way? It seemed to take about 20 minutes to cycle up the peninsula, and it was raining. That was the first test the 02 failed, actually - I couldn’t find anywhere nearby to park the bike. Various private security guards in yellow jackets hovered around as I tied it up to one of the struts of the building, half expecting it to be taken away by the time I got back. (Maybe you’ll tell me there are lovely cycle racks right next to the place: all I’ll say is I couldn’t find them.)

The fact that the 02 appears to have forgotten about bikes is one sign that this is now in many ways a relatively standard-issue out-of-town leisure warehouse, designed for the car - shiny ranks of which surrounded the place on all sides not taken up by water. Yes, I know there’s a tube station, and a riverbus, and I know the arena gets bigger names than the Royale Leisure Park, Western Avenue - but it’s still that kind of place.

There’s the usual slightly unfinished air, the usual grey surfaces, the usual big ugly spaces half-filled with escalators. There are the usual marketing men’s concept restaurants: Frankie & Benny’s, Slug & Lettuce, Zizzi, Ha Ha Bar & Grill, and so on, the great trophies of middle-market British industrial catering.

I especially like Frankie & Benny’s, which has a series of “New York Italian” diners in multiplex car parks across the land (I strongly suspect this chain has no current connection with New York, Italy or anyone named Frankie or Benny - it’s a division of The Restaurant Group.)

There are a couple of slightly more unusual chains, but none that really rises above the mediocre (based on my having eaten in their other branches.) There are also several outlets of my very favourite stealth chain, the Inc Group. I won’t describe them, for the sound reason that I haven’t eaten at any of them. There are, I think, no restaurants which are not chains.

There’s a cinema, where I went to see Oliver Stone’s film about George Bush, W. An appropriate movie in a place so American, perhaps. It is 65p cheaper than the Greenwich Picturehouse but does have that multiplex aroma of popcorn trodden into the carpets to make up. Inside the auditorium it looks unsurprisingly similar - dark room, oblong screen.

The one thing I didn’t see was the arena. Maybe I’ll go back and have a look at that sometime. You know what, they’ve got Barry Manilow next week. Elton John’s playing New Year’s Eve, for those with £99 to spare. In the meantime, I think I’ll head back to Nelson Road, where the number of empty shops - no doubt as a direct result of that piece I wrote last month - is about to fall by three-quarters. Hooray - life outside the multiplex goes on!

There are no windows at the 02, which is weirdly unsettling. It pays no heed at all to its surroundings; you’d never know there was a river, or indeed a city, outside. Even the swoop of the dome has been broken up by all the money-making bits they’ve put in.

I’m probably being snobbish about the 02. It is a considerable success in its new guise. But it’s not my kind of place, and only geographically is it part of Greenwich.

Daily Photo 26/11/08: Ghoulish Graffiti

Do you know whereabout this ghostly street art is?

Greenwich Lights Up

Greenwich Lights Up, December 5th from 3pm, Greenwich Market

See the Christmas lights in Greenwich get switched on by the cast of Greenwich Theatre’s “Jack In The Beanstalk” on Friday December 5th. The fun starts at Greenwich Market at 3pm, and then at 4pm a magical lantern procession will make its way from the Old Royal Naval College along to the market, via the Cutty Sark Gardens Christmas Tree of Light.

Mayor of Greenwich Cllr Steve Offord, will then join the panto cast for the official switch on at 4.30pm.

In anticipation of the event, the Mayor said, “Greenwich Lights Up is always amongst the borough’s most popular festive events and I’m sure it will prove to be a great occasion as always. On a personal note, it will be a great honour for me to join the cast of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ to help switch on the Greenwich Market Christmas Lights and I would like to encourage everyone to make the effort to come down and enjoy the start of the wonderful festive season in Greenwich.”

Santa will be in his grotto in Greenwich market from noon to 7pm, with a gift for every child.

Are you going to the switch on? Greenwich.co.uk has a £10 Amazon gift voucher for the best photo or video from the switch on. Email entries to the editor.

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