I enjoyed the rest of the museum, too. I hadn't been since the new refurbishment, so it was quite interesting to see what they'd done. The entrance struck me as a bit odd, featuring subway maps from Paris and Tokyo rather than our own London Underground. This is after all, the London Transport Museum, and documents the history of travel in London, not other cities, so I'm not sure what the point of that was — to show how much influence Beck's map had in international circles, perhaps, but if so, then I think it was the wrong place to demonstrate that as it has no context. There's a nice little detail at the start of the museum, though. The displays are in chronological order which starts at the top of the building, so you have to take a lift. Instead of the numbers above the doors showing the floors as you pass by them, it shows dates, going back in time to 1800. You can't beat a bit of time travel, although I did wonder why it didn't go back further still, since public transport existed before then, too, even if it was privately funded.

One thing I wasn't prepared for was how noisy the museum is. There's a lot of information to read through, but also loads of recordings all playing at once, which can be a bit distracting until you get used to it. They're cleverly done, and go a long way to getting a better context of what travelling was really like. There are also lots of mannequins who help the illusion because, rather than using dull plastic mannequins, they've got wonderfully sculpted expressions which really provoke stories about what they did. Even the miniatures have been sculpted with the same care. I was well impressed.

I was also impressed with the amount of ephemera to look at. London Transport does have a massive wealth of brilliant design to choose from, especially during the famous Frank Pick era. Many of these designs are available as posters from the museum shop, but how could you choose just one? They are all so beautiful. Today's designs mostly look plain, ugly and unfinished next to any of the ones from the Pick era. And can you imagine anyone nowadays printing a list of the best places to pick blackberries, with the best buses to get there? Back in the 1920s, they promoted it as A Good Thing, but imagine the Health & Safety uproar if they did that these days. More pics on Flickr, as usual.

I leave you with some seasonal imagery from the 1930s. Come to think of it, I don't have any plans for Easter yet. Maybe a trip to the countryside found at the furthest reaches of the Underground will be just the thing, if I can find any countryside left.

Just before Christmas I managed to get my hands on a box set of the complete series. It's something I'd been wanting to see ever since Greg Rucka recommended it in the first issue of Queen & Country (which you can download here¹). If I ever saw the DVDs in any shops (which wasn't often), it was always from the end of the series, but I managed to luck out and find the complete set for £25 in the Zavvi at Piccadilly Circus.

There are details in this show which made my not-so-inner London geek stupidly chuffed. First was the opening scene, where the main character, Neil Burnside (played by Roy Marsden), walks down Regent Street and into the tube station at Piccadilly Circus. The thing that made me so chuffed about this, because I love little coincidences like that, is that there's a frame with the very building where I bought the DVD in the background of one shot (along with a police phone that's not there anymore).

Episode two has one of my regular buses getting a whole lot of screen time, which isn't necessarily interesting in itself, but there's a point where he gets off the bus in Whitehall, and walks past a bus stop which lists my other regular route, the 168. What's interesting to me, being the London geek that I am, is that the 168 doesn't go anywhere near Whitehall anymore, nor does it go anywhere near Trafalgar Square, Embankment Station, Blackfriars, Ludgate Circus or Farringdon Street. It now avoids those areas all together, and goes south of the river to Old Kent Road. I realise very few other people would be interested in that, even if they do use the same routes, but there are loads of London bus routes that haven't changed in 100 years, so to discover one where the route has changed so dramatically is one of those odd little titbits that makes urban life so interesting for me. Like I said, it's the sort of stupid little thing that makes me chuffed.

The show really is just as brilliant as everyone who's seen it says, though. It's superbly written, and very compelling. For a spy show, it might seem lacking in action by today's standards, but the writing is so good it could work as an equally compelling radio drama (if only radio drama was as well written). I was really disappointed when the third season was over, with no more to come, until I discovered the reason why. Creator Ian Mackintosh mysteriously disappeared without a trace, and even though some of the episodes were written by other people, ITV took the interesting decision not to continue the series without his input.

I'd be really interested to see how a series about MI6 might compare today, but it seems unlikely anyone will make something in direct competition with Spooks, even though that's about MI5 instead. (Although, given the rivalry between the departments, rivalrous programming seems quite appropriate!) If you're a fan of shows like Spooks, you should definitely try and catch The Sandbaggers.

¹I stopped reading Queen and Country early on, not because I didn't like Greg Rucka's writing but because I thought that Steve Rolston's artwork (which I do like) was inappropriately cartoony for the subject matter. Does anyone out there have the books and want to lend them to me, by any chance?

On New Year's Day, I went to see Aime Maeght & His Artists at the Royal Academy, which I would be recommending to you all if it hadn't closed on January 2nd. It was pretty good, though, with rooms organised by complementary artist pairs: Bonnard and Matisse; Miró and Calder; Braque and Giacometti. My favourite was the Miró and Calder room, which was full of exuberant colours and shapes, designed with humour and playfulness. It was a very uplifting thing to see on such a grey, cold day, and the two artists complemented each other very well.

There was also some film footage of the artists at work, and I was fascinated to see how considered and meticulous Giacometti was. His drawings look so effortlessly spontaneous and almost slapdash, but in fact he took his time working out exactly where each line would go. Discovering that was quite a revelation, and a new way to think about working. It's actually quite hard to take a long time to make something look effortless and still good.

In contrast to that, the following day I went to the Osbert Lancaster exhibition, which I really enjoyed, despite the fact that it was badly hung and the picture captions were really confusing, and recommend it if you're in the Bond Street area in the next week (it finishes on January 11th). I'm not sure how many others will appreciate the dated digs at moneyed establishment (which Lancaster was himself a member of), but fortunately there's more to the show than that. I particularly liked his elegant book jacket designs, which show off his skilled draughtsmanship, and wonderful use of colour and composition; and his witty illustrations of architectural design throughout the ages should be seen by anyone who has an interest in the urban environment (and his description of "Stockbrokers Tudor" is so much better than "mock Tudor"). There are also some brilliantly funny pastiches of portrait styles throughout the ages (his take on Cranach had me giggling particularly loudly), and some charming paintings of Egypt and Europe. It was fascinating to see the clever way he used the texture of the paper to create textures of buildings, which is something you never properly see in reproduction.

I was quite surprised that the exhibition was at the Wallace Collection (somewhere I'd been meaning to visit for years), as it seemed to be more suitable for somewhere like the Cartoon Museum, but in fact it was perfectly at home. Most of the people looking at the pictures looked as though they could have stepped off the page, and if Paul hadn't been so hungry, we would have loved to have stopped for a cream tea in the delightfully pink and posh tea room, and had a proper look around the rest of the House afterwards. Something to save for a rainy day, I guess.

We had quick, filling nosh-up at Bodean's, which is an okay but not brilliant American-style BBQ sandwich place, that massively overcharged me £2.50 (TWO! POUNDS! FIFTY!) for one regular can of non-imported ginger beer. And sadly I have to knock them off my list of potential places that do proper hash browns because they don't (they don't even serve the frozen potato cakes that people usually serve in place of proper hash browns). Nowhere does proper hash browns in London, so far as I can tell. Getting hushpuppies in London is even harder, but I started craving them in Bodean's and now I must find them!

We also took a look at the new Photographers' Gallery, the ground floor, anyway. The current Soho Nights exhibition is tiny but really interesting, and with some fantastic photos. It was fascinating to see Slim Hewitt's photos of people dancing to jazz in the 50s, because the women's clothes and hairstyles could have come from last year. The only thing that really dated the pictures was the men's hairstyles, in particular that floppy-fringed one that I always associate with Ian Carmichael in the film of Lucky Jim (see pic). There are also some brilliant candid photos by Ken Russell, which capture people in unintentionally hilarious poses, as they try to dance in a tiny club so crowded they can only hand-jive. (There's a good post about this over at History is made at night).

The other thing that interested me was a series of pictures which accompanied an article about Soho's Little France, which mainly congregated around one pub, called the York Minster, now more famously known as The French House (which has some nice photos on its website). Anyway, it's a fascinating little exhibition which really demonstrates that it's a subject which deserves to be in a bigger space, with a more in-depth overview. Maybe someone will curate one, one day.

After that, on to the original Amato in Old Compton Street (not the johnny-come-lately branch in Charlotte Street), because I've had a crazy craving for some of their insanely rich and almost hazelnutty hot chocolate, but their machine is still out of order, and will be for about a month, according to the waitress. Oh noes! Where do I go to satisfy that craving now?¹ But chocolate disappointment was smoothed away by the unexpected pleasure of bumping into Gaetan and his lovely fiancee (who is also called Anna). We were soon joined by Billy and had a very nice chat about Turbine Hall installations, pizza toppings, wedding cakes, wine tours and other cultural things, before they went off to the theatre and the three who were left went to The Red Lion in Duke of York Street, which one of my favourite central London pubs. It's tiny, but fabulous; full of Victorian mirrors, great real ale and St James' toffs. Real character.

¹ I did try the Old Compton Street branch of French chain Paul a few days ago, but it's bloody expensive and it certainly wasn't hot — it was lukewarm in fact, and if I hadn't bought it as a takeaway en route to somewhere else I would have complained, but I couldn't, so I complain here. It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

The venue. There really wasn't enough space in the Match Bar to comfortably mingle, causing everyone to either bottleneck uncomfortably in the middle of one long section, or else to get stuck 'round tables in The Bridge area (that's what they call it), where there wasn't really enough room to mix it up. As a result, it seemed that there was a lot of sticking with people you already knew instead of really mixing it up.

The cocktails. And here I'm going to get pedantic again, so if you don't care about well-made cocktails, just skip this bit. Firstly, their Bellini is too sweet, needing a bit more cava to cut the sickliness of the fruit (and, to be extremely pedantic, the "strawberry Bellini" they gave me is more correctly called a Rossini). Secondly, they claim that their American cocktail advisor invented the Bramble cocktail, when in fact it is a very English invention using very English ingredients. The Match Bar version is tangy and refreshing, but with too much lemon juice it's not as accurate as it should have been. (Sorry to get pedantic again, but if you're going to lay claim to the credit you could at least get the bloody thing right!)

The people. Although I was mostly catching up with people I already knew, I did meet some nice new people. Unfortunately, I was a bit too spaced to remember who they all were (should have eaten something). If you're reading this, say hi!

The pants. Why? I mean, srsly, why? Nope.

The goodie bags. More to the point, the fact that I don't want any of this stuff and now I don't know what to do with it! Not because I'm a prude, but because I already have the stuff I need (I'm not stupid), and this looks like it's just going to end up getting chucked. Makes you wonder just how much landfill is taken up by unwanted sex accoutrements, eh?

The bloke dressed as a ringmaster. Again, why? We still don't know. Or who he was. Anyone have any ideas?

Hmmm… Looks like I had a lot to say, after all.

And then it was Friday, and I was late for Tuttle, but Lloyd said it was the best excuse he'd heard (so that's all right), and I got to experience what is fast becoming one of my favourite weekly rituals, a really good natter about random shit over coffee with my mate Guy (who has minimal web presence despite doing lots of web stuff). We had a great conversation about the way language has been changing, and other such things, and then I wandered off to a nice lunch at Mildred's with Annie, where we gossiped about boys and talked about all our friends who've had babies this year (it was eleven of them at the last count. Still time for a twelfth between now and January, though).

After that, I wandered to Leicester Square to see the funfair, where I gazed at the pretty lights and bad airbrush art. I have a real weakness for bad funfair art, and cannot resist taking photos of any I see. The worse it is, the better! I probably have enough for a whole book's worth of photos on my hard drive. (Hmmm… That's not a bad idea, actually.) I also popped over to Covent Garden to take a look at the Spinvox wishing well, which is really lovely. It's everything good interactive art should be: funny, touching, thought-provoking and pretty to look at. Go take a look!

I spent Friday evening in Leon, in the delightful company of some old-school LFMU Flickrites, which was very pleasant. It was a rather low-key affair, which suited me well after the debauched shenanigans of the night before (maybe "debauched" is too strong a word. No, maybe not). After dinner, we unwisely moved onto The Refinery, a rather horrid bar at the other corner of the BlueFin, where I had a very poor gin martini, despite Kevo's efforts to ensure it was a good one.

There were several bad points against them: firstly, the fact that Kevo had to walk the bartender through every step of mixing the drink (which is, sadly, not unheard of even in better bars). But in this case, it seemed to be because the bartender didn't have a clue what a martini even was, and kept mispronouncing the name. That's pretty shocking, especially for a busy central London bar. Even with Kevo holding the bartender's hand, and all but mixing the drink himself, it wasn't very good (though not for lack of effort on Kevo's part, for which I thank him). Not only was it shaken — something you should never do with a good gin martini — but it was poorly shaken to boot, with slivers of ice resting on the surface of the drink, which was tasteless at the top of the glass, and undrinkable at the bottom of it. They even had to fetch an olive from the kitchen, which is why it's sitting on the giant wooden skewer, instead of a small wooden toothpick.

But take a closer look at the picture, and see why I definitely won't be going back to The Refinery any time soon. Here, let me make it easier for you. Did you spot it? Or more precisely, them? Not one, but three chips in the rim of the glass. Somehow, I managed to miss them and was drinking from the unchipped side of the glass. What you don't see, because it doesn't show up in the photo, is that under the small chip on the left, there was also a lipstick stain. As you might imagine, I stopped drinking when I discovered that. I'd suspected I wasn't going to like The Refinery the moment I walked past its huge goldfish windows and saw the braying hordes of liquored-up business suits, but I didn't expect such an appalling drink. Ironically, their own website lists among their selling points "innovative cocktails", "staff that are there to make your experience one you will never forget" and "more importantly, The Refinery is about getting what you want from a bar." Sure it is, if what you want from a bar is poor service, uncomfortable seating, cramped tables and dirty glasses. Never again. Avoid avoid avoid.

Still, the company was lovely and it was great to catch up!

Us Now is not a perfect film, and it runs the danger of preaching to the already-converted and those in-the-know. Pundits are sometimes captioned with job titles or company names that have no context unless you already know who they are (which is a hell of an assumption to make of your audience), so that there's no explanation as to why they should be a particular authority over anyone else, and captions often don't linger on the screen long enough to read them, anyway. The narrative voice can be confusing; voiceovers are sometimes made with certain authority, but with no indication as to whose authority it is (which was particularly noticeable during the Conservative Party section, for some reason). And, obviously, the film doesn't cover everything. Each of the examples used in the film could easily warrant its own individual documentary, a fact which director Ivo Gormley readily acknowledges.

However, it's got a positive outlook and is eager to look to the future, to see what wonderful things might happen next, something that most of the people taking part in the post-screening Q&A session were not. It was unfortunate that the overwhelmingly positive message of the film was completely negated by the nay-sayers who dominated the Q&A, moaning about all the things that the film wasn't about, instead of appreciating it for the small celebration it is. The essential message of the film is that there are tools (blogging, forums, social networks etc.) which are easily available and can empower you to make change yourself; you don't have to wait for someone else to get the ball rolling for you. The people who complained about all the things missing from the film were themselves missing the point: instead of sitting in a cinema enjoying (or not enjoying) a film screening that someone else had generously provided for free, and then moaning about it, they could use those same tools to get their own agenda heard in the communities which support it, and do something creative and positive instead of complaining that no one else has done it for them. But what can you expect from people who insist on spending all their time only focussing on everything that is wrong with the world, instead of reaching for the celebratory once in a while?

Not a huge haul from Comiket. I would be linking to more things I at least liked the look of, even if I didn't buy them, except that nobody had any business cards for me to remember who they all were. So you only get recommendations of things I actually paid for.

• this year's issue of Whores of Mensa, hot off the press and full of Parisian goodness. I think Ellen's piece on Lee Miller was my favourite from this issue, but I loved Jeremy's Les Chthulettes as well. Anything which combines girl groups, musical theatre and the screaming howling void between worlds is OK by me! It's not for sale online yet, but watch the Whores of Mensa blog for news.
   
• A bumper collection of Morgenmuffel, as well as the newest issue. I discovered this comic at the London Zine Symposium a few months ago, and I like it a lot. It's autobiographical but not boring because the stories are all about volunteering in an anarchist kitchen, fighting in riots, and culture clashes of visiting other countries. It's nicely drawn, as well.
   
• a new issue of the Sally-Anne Hickman diaries. Yes, more autobiographical comics, this time in the vein of James Kochalka's daily strips; they're brutally frank and not remotely self-aggrandising, but without being self-indulgent either (unlike many autobiographical comics) which makes me warm to them all the more. At the moment you can buy them from the LUC stall at Camden Lock, at least for a couple more weeks.
   
• a brand-new issue of There's No Time Like The Presentby Paul Rainey. It's a comic set in a mundane time where the Ultranet gets invented and people get nostalgic for a less-confusing time when every outcome wasn't already known. I can't easily explain it, so I suggest you just go and buy some copies here.

Last Tuesday I went to the London Transport Museum to hear a talk on Games, given by his daughter, Naomi, in honour of the newly released book Poster Journeys. It was a fascinating and personal insight to the man, full of asides such as the fact that "he was always travelling on the tops of buses," which was where he would often come up with the ideas for his design work, or that he was so adept at using an airbrush he would use it to sign his cheques, or that his school report described him as "lazy and untidy" and his drawing "weak." If you look at any of his work, you can see that it is anything but lazy or untidy, being extremely concise and very neat. It was also fascinating to learn that he detested hand-lettering all of his life, because I've always thought his hand lettering was remarkably beautiful.

One of the things which consistently came up in reaction to his work was that it was "too modern." It is somewhat ironic that, according to his daughter, some of his design work was still being dismissed as "too modern" even after his death in 1996. His work was often controversial, too, such as his infamous "Blonde Bombshell" poster for the ATS, which was debated in Parliament for a month during WW2. Apparently, her lips were "too red" and she was "too glamourous." You'd think, with a war on, they'd have more important things to be concerned about.

He revelled in such controversy, though, because it meant his work was getting noticed. However, I think this was also down to an arrogance he possessed, as he was constantly making such self-important statements as, "I'm going to be the best poster designer there ever was." To be fair, he is certainly way up there with the best of them, but let's not forget his contemporaries E. McKnight Kauffer, Tom Purvis, and Austin Cooper — even though he was determined to be better than all of them, that in no way diminishes their own fantastic graphic design work.

Whilst I may find it hard to say definitively that he was the best poster designer there ever was, I will admit that he really did have a fantastic eye for use of space and colour on a page; almost everything he designed was immediately eye-catching and iconic. This was partly because he realised early on that when it comes to poster design, most often they are viewed fleetingly and from a distance, so they need to be bright, clear and compelling enough to catch the eye instantly. He started every design with a thumbnail, because "if posters don't work when they're an inch high, they won't work." He enjoyed such restriction because "restriction disciplined him as a designer." He would test posters on his children and their friends; if the idea couldn't be expressed in a way clear that was clear and concise enough for small children to understand it, he would go back to the drawing-board.

Games designed a lot of posters during the war, many of them utilising imagery of hands, which was a theme to recur throughout his career. Quite often, he would put his knowledge of photography (his father ran a photography studio) to good use, such as on this poster, where the spiral background was created using a pinhole camera to capture the interior of a gun barrel. Such innovation was key to many of his designs.

I was interested to learn that Games hated art schools, and dropped out of St Martin's after just two terms, because he felt that art school students were too busy copying each other and losing their individual creativity. This is an argument I've heard levelled at art schools by several people in the last decade or so as well, so maybe some things just don't really change. Years later, he taught at the Royal College of Arts once a week, but scared his students so much that they once told his wife, "if he came more often, we'd all leave!" Some of his students were lucky enough to be given work designing covers for Penguin Books when Games was made the artistic director there in the 1950s. They were the first colour covers that Penguin had ever had, but were not popular at the time, especially with the head of the company. They were probably "too modern." Some of them can be seen here, and they really are rather strange compared to much of the book jacket design of the time.

I had no idea that Games had ever become involved in 3D work, but apparently he was "an obsessive inventor which made him hellish to live with," forever tinkering with things and burning stuff in the oven. He taught himself product design and designed the Cona Rex coffee-maker, made from recycled parts of Spitfires. The coffee-maker is still in production today. He also taught himself how to make stained glass, and created a memorial windows for the Jewish Military Museum in Hendon (which I had never even heard of before).

He was taught by his grandmother that we have two eyes, two ears and one mouth, so we should always see and hear more than we talk. I like that. I also liked the advice that he gave to his students, to "remember the three Cs: Curiosity, Courage, Concentration." I think that's a good maxim to apply to any creative endeavour.

Thanks very much to Annie for letting me know about the talk (her report is here), and to the London Transport Museum for generously offering us freebies. Apparently, they're planning to have more talks in this vein, so I shall be looking out for them. Maybe they'll have some evenings dedicated to other iconic designers who were commissioned by Frank Pick (see my previous post), or even one dedicated to Frank Pick himself.

London Loves was a couple of hours' worth of clips from films throughout the twentieth century, with live musical accompaniment. It was pretty was good fun, as there was quite a varied selection, and it was very interesting to see the parallels between the London of then and now. Even a century on, some parts of the city are completely unchanged, which made me wonder what the people on the screen would have made of the people watching them 100 years or so later. Would they have been surprised that, although we still don't travel around in flying-cars, many of us have portable communication devices that connect instantly with people thousands of miles away without any need to go down to a public telegraph office?

There were a couple of complete, short films that I found particularly interesting, and quite touching. One was London Contrasts, a silent film about the last day of the very last horse-drawn bus, which showed scenes of the City that look exactly the same today (e.g. the view outside the Bank of England hasn't changed much, which you can make out in Malcom's picture), but which also showed other parts of London which are completely different (e.g. there's no bustling marketplace in Caledonian Park anymore). The other one was also about the last day of a type of transport, this time a paean to the final days of London's trams in the 1950s, called The Elephant Never Forgets. The filmmaker, John Krish, was there to introduce it, and mentioned that he'd made it with borrowed equipment which had caused him to lose his job, but he didn't sound particularly regretful about that. It's a wonderful little film, quintessentially English in the same way as other cinematic love-letters to London such as The London That Nobody Knows or Patrick Keiller's films; affectionate, wistful and slightly eccentric, focussing on mundanities that most people tend to ignore. It was interesting to see just how much it paralleled recent experience with the last days of the Routemaster buses a couple of years ago — there was one panning shot of the final route numbers in a tram-shed which included many of the same route numbers that were among the final Routemasters. Although the sheer numbers of people who came out to wave off the last ever London tram were absolutely staggering, seemingly comparable to a post-war Victory parade. There was nothing like that for the old Routemasters!

Speaking of The London Nobody Knows (which I may come back to at a later date), there's a free screening of it at Wilton's this Saturday, November 1st. I might go along if I'm not busy, just for an excuse to visit Wilton's again (I wrote a post about it last month).

And speaking of Routemasters, I hope Ally doesn't mind if I show off this photo of hers, 'cos I think it's fab (but I'll take it down if she does):

It's beautiful, and easy to see why John Betjeman loved it so much, and why Ian Nairn compared it to an orgasm in his book, Nairn's London (cover image), because it could "only be understood in terms of compelling, overwhelming passion." Unfortunately, it's also very dark inside, due to a combination of dark walls and dim lights, so it took a long time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and for me to figure out the best settings on my camera to get any pictures at all. You'd really need a tripod to get anything good, though. Maybe I should go back with one. More photos here.

My final Open House visit of this year was to Wilton's Music Hall, and although it was a bit of a trek to get there, it was worth it. It's famously shabby and rundown — in fact, parts of the building are still derelict and off-limits, but I liked the bits I got to see, even if the walls were peeling paint and the stairs were uneven. Actually, that was what I liked about it, and I suspect most of the other people felt the same way, judging by how crowded the cafe was. There's something funny about seeing so many people quite happily sitting down to tea and cake in a place that they would usually find rather abhorrent — how many people do you know whose idea of fun is to take tea in a semi-derelict slum building?

Unfortunately, it was yet another place that was extremely dimly-lit, which made for a wonderfully evocative atmosphere, but yet more mostly awful photos. I got some nice ones of the walls outside, though, which are in a beautiful state of decay — a wonderful contrast of colours and textures. If you like that sort of thing, which I obviously do! More Wilton's photos here.

All of this year's Open House photos can be seen here. The whole set of photos from 2005-2008 can be seen here.

As usual, there were loads of places that I wanted to see and didn't manage to get to, and although I tell myself I'll make the effort to ensure I do get to them next year, I know I probably won't. But that's the great thing about Open House: there's so much to see that it doesn't really matter too much if you miss something. There's always something else. Which is worth reminding yourself of in other situations, too, isn't it?