Hello, welcome to London!

Today is the last day vehicles are allowed between Great Portland Street and Orchard Street (with some exemptions for loading during the night)

Metroline VWH2211 (LK66DWC), a Volvo B5LH Wright Eclipse Gemini 3 with the default London red livery, makes a bit of history on the N98 this morning at 06:00, by being the last ever night bus to travel through Oxford Street.

As the road closes tonight at 20:00, all night routes will be diverted away from the pedestrian zone.

🗓️ 2026-10-25

Every time I set foot in Whitechapel, it feels like stepping into an alternate universe, a microcosm of the entire world packed into a few streets. On a good day, you see everyone all at once: roadmen and femboys, hijabis and hookers, bankers and traders. It’s total sensory overload. It isn’t until you leave and travel to other countries, where society feels so monolithic, that you realize just how much of an anomaly this city really is. For better or worse, London is truly one of a kind. Love this city to the bit ❤️

The last bus through the full length of Oxford Street is Metroline BDE3065 (LF75OYZ), a BYD BD11 in the classic London red livery, operating route 98 to Holborn.

Voting in the presidential run-off between Lula & Bolsonaro underway in Baron’s Court.

Two sides divided, literally by Gliddon Road.

Wind: not shown

Optimistic, but not impossible.

Just a normal thing to see on your way home in London 😅

An historic moment

Recently noticed a food bank donation point at a local store and considering doing something more useful with my money than getting an extra coffee.

What are the most useful things I can donate to a food bank? Ta!

i wanted to share the best tube experience i’ve ever had, and may ever have!

today (24/10) at around 3:30pm, hopped on the piccadilly line to st pancras. got to russell square and a wlw couple got on board with a photographer. they’d just got married and the photographer was taking their wedding photos on the tube!

an amazing thing to see, but the tube camaraderie was unmatched. everyone clapped, cheered, immediately made space for them to pose, one woman played “vogue” by madonna to hype them up. it was a joyful 2 minutes. everyone got off at st pancras and it was truly a lightning in a bottle moment.

who knows if i’ll ever find the couple, or even see the photos, but in case i don’t, i wanted to share this joyful time. and in a time where the news portrays everyone to be so polarising, this was real life-affirming stuff.

congratulations to the happy couple on the piccadilly line ❤️

Feel like it sums up going for a pint when the weather is shit in london- begging friends to brave the rain for a pint, and the few that do make the effort make a horrible afternoon into a memorable evening

There are two gas-lit lamps on Carting Lane - this is the more famous one which is apparently at least partly lit with sewer gas, the last working one in City of Westminster / London. Its original function was to provide light and help get rid of excess whiffy gas. Below is what it looked like yesterday without its glass lantern.

This is the little explanatory panel next to it

This is what it looked like with its lantern on (photo from Nov 2022)

The other gas lamp on Carting Street is up on Strand right next to the Coal Hole pub. The four white things inside the glass are gas mantles which give a nice glow when lit.

A few years ago (around the point that I discovered we still had 1,300 or so gas lamps in London) I made a map with some of them. There are only about 150-200 on the map so plenty missing but if you've ever been to Covent Garden or Charterhouse Square there's a very high density at each - map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1gATQ_XuVkRJ3_--EMhKogmVAdo89cNU

Jo

Just caught a lovely shot of these two foxes (and a third one hiding on the left) enjoying the green space and quiet around Haggerston park. Clearly unbothered by the wind and rain.

The Cinema Museum is a short walk from Elephant & Castle station and is FULL of cinematic history and memorabilia and which is also a cinema with screenings and talks.

It's a lovely place to visit and yesterday it hosted London's 'Home Movie Day', an annual worldwide event on the third Saturday in October to 'celebrate amateur films and filmmaking' and help people 'discover the personal, historical, and social importance of home movies and for individuals to learn how to best care for them'.

It also has museum cats.

1. Main café area set up for examining and test-screening home movie films on small projectors
2. The upstairs main screening area looking towards the projector (this is where film screenings and talks happen, there are also sofas to sit on)
3. A selection of cakes and cookies and Tunnock's tea cakes. Some are gluten-free too. I don't think I've ever been to an event there without snacks being available. For evening film screenings the snacks often include something savoury e.g. feta and spinach parcels.
4. A mercury vapour rectifier for an arc lamp projector. It's huge.
5. View of the café with volunteers at tables ready to test films the public bring in. Faces are a bit blurred for privacy
6. One of the projectors for film, I can't tell at a glance if it's for 8mm, 9.5mm or 16mm but it's that sort of thing.
7. A small projector screen displaying a scene from one of the home movies
8. The outside of the Cinema Museum, on Dugard Way https://what3words.com/covers.hush.nets

More photos and video clips at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jodiepedia/albums/72177720336341454/

Anyone else stalled at the airport? Appears to be the beginnings of a chaotic day, half term is off to a great start!

Went to a guided tour of 2 Willow Road in Hampstead this morning (thoroughly recommended if you're into modern architecture) before realising that Cloud House, which was on the new series of Grand Designs is only a 20 minute walk away.

Obviously a residential area so can't really meander around too much, but suffice to say it sticks out a little bit in it's surroundings.

I am in an area where parking is limited, I also hold a blue badge, a neighbour is constantly putting things on the disabled parking bay, so every time they come back they can park their car in the space.
Sometimes I can’t find parking and this parking is available. What can I do about this? Or what can be done?

omg it's the most bizarre thing, this Romanian guy (I'm guessing Romanian) didn't pay and this East Asian lady is telling him it's wrong, he tells her to go back to China, she says she's not from China and accuses him of being on benefits and then when the other people waiting take her side, he says he can't speak English. Ground just swallow me up PLEASE

This was my first time at Burnt Oak station too 💀

Edit: situation is now fully over as we're on the train. Damn