Uncategorized

Most people assume that once a blue plaque is installed, it’s there to stay. That is not always the case. Around 50 of the over 1,000 official plaques are no longer in situ on their original building – almost always because that building has gone. Now English Heritage, the charity I work for, is asking for help from the public to track down any of the lost plaques that may have survived. In all likelihood, both early Byron plaques are completely lost – potentially somewhere within the foundations of John Lewis In 1867, the Society of Arts inaugurated its new memorial scheme with a plaque to Lord Byron, marking the

Foraging has become a sign of status rather than a lack of it and seaweed is perhaps the most abundant wild food of all. The alternative is mushrooms, but I’ve always thought fungus-hunting a bit too wild; the possibility of a first-class risotto being offset by the risk of death or, worse, expanded consciousness. Rotting seaweed is disgusting. My local newspaper in Cornwall regularly publishes complaints from tourists Caroline Davey, who trained as a botanist before becoming a forager, assures me that only three species of seaweed are poisonous and they are found only in deep water. They might conceivably wash up on the shore, but the basic rule of seaweed

Euston Station has been in the news again, and that’s never good. After a summer of overcrowding and delays, public anger forced the Transport Secretary, Louise Haigh, to intervene last week, shutting down the monstrous, flashing digital advertising screen that spans the concourse and which has made passengers feel like battery hens trapped in a seizure-inducing neurological experiment. A ‘five-point plan’ of further improvements is promised, but no one believes it’ll work. This is Euston. It’s irredeemable. Everyone – just everyone – hates Euston. This has always been a station with its sleeves rolled up and serious work to do Well, I don’t. I hate what they’ve done to it,

‘Buglers are operating in this area’ warns the Metropolitan Police sign, heralding the sound of trumpets perhaps. Aggravated burglary is often described as ‘a burglary gone wrong’, the planned effortless removal of domestic goods having met with some kind of ‘unforeseen’ opposition, the fireside poker taken up by the victim perhaps, or an XL Bully. I observed two signs, the first letting one know that this was a ‘Yellow Fever Centre’ and the other that it was advisable to ‘check with your dealer, as some supplies are impure’ Venturing out in London has become a little daunting. I was startled on a recent tube journey to hear over the intercom

Béziers, France The most significant application to date of artificial intelligence and unmanned aerial aircraft has been unveiled: the Poopcopter. It does what it says on the tin. It scoops poop. No more plastic bags. No more furtive glances while out walking to see if Fido’s emissions have been observed by truculent neighbours. According to its inventor, the Poopcopter is the ‘world’s first self-guided dog poop removal system, using a drone, and 3D-printed pickup mechanism.’ The drone has real-time computer vision and machine learning algorithms. A cloud-based system receives footage from the drone’s built-in camera, examines it, and looks for any excrement in the surrounding area. After identifying its target,

Way back in the noughties, Charles Moore observed that the Conservatives could learn a lot from the Boden story. ‘An individualistic, non-hierarchical, girly, aspirational, southern, 40 per cent internet-based, middle-class business, laid back but hard-headed. Yet, at the same time, it is quite traditional […] the way of life he is promoting is instinctively conservative’, Moore concluded. Of course, this was back in Boden’s heyday, when the mail-order catalogue company routinely posted an increase in sales year upon year, back when David Cameron was spotted wearing its floral boardshorts on holiday in 2008, and when the company was synonymous with the middle-class good times: drinks at the yacht club on