I was in Brentwood yesterday and walked past a Wenzel's bakery in the main street. Oh they're in Essex now, I thought. When Wenzel's started up they were very much a northwest London thing, but I've seen a lot more of their bakeries elsewhere recently. How have they spread this far?
So I drew some maps.
I've been meaning to do this for a long time.
The first Wenzel's bakery was opened by Peter Wenzel in Sudbury Hill in 1975. This became the epicentre of the expanding Wenzelverse. But at the time it was just a single shop with no aspiration towards dough domination.
It's hard to determine how and when the chain first expanded, but there are ways to dig back. It seems Wenzel's first launched a website in 2008 - all very minimal - and by searching back within the Wayback Machine I can see what the store list was.
Our stores are in Pinner, Northwood, Joel Street, Harrow, Rayners Lane, Sudbury, North Harrow, Wealdstone, South Harrow, Ruislip and Watford.
Joel Street is in Northwood Hills, if you were wondering.
So just the 11 stores in 2008.
Here they are on a map.
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Wenzel's is very much a northwest London bakery at this point, with the majority of stores in or around Harrow along the arms of the Metropolitan line. The original Sudbury Hill store is the black star at the bottom of the map. The only real outlier is on Watford High Street in Hertfordshire. It's taken the brand over 30 years to get to this point, and if you'd never been to the northwestern suburbs you'd never have noticed them.
There are now 34 Wenzel's bakeries, still with a Metropolitan line focus but now with a greater spread beyond. The business has crept closer to central London with stores in Wembley, plus a bold move into a unit inside Baker Street station. To the south the three lone wolves are Greenford, West Ealing and Yiewsley. To the northeast there's a new cluster around Edgware and a distant store in Radlett. And to the northwest there's Rickmansworth and also Little Chalfont, the first Wenzel's beyond the M25. It's a statement of intent...
That's quite an expansion! There are now 72 Wenzel's bakeries, essentially a doubling, as the chain exerts its dominance over northwest London. There's been a spread into north London, also a nudge closer to the centre. Proper Home Counties outposts now exist in High Wycombe, Aylesbury, Luton and Stevenage. However nothing's opened south of the M4, also Wenzel's is still avoiding east London where rival chain Percy Ingle has just gone bust.
The Essex star isn't in Chigwell or Loughton but in Debden, which is much more target audience. There are also two further eastern stores I've had to chop off my map, one in Romford and the other in Brentwood. It turns out the Wenzel's I saw yesterday has been there for a while, indeed it opened exactly five years ago in January 2021.
There are now 111 branches, very much no longer confined to the old Middlesex stomping ground. The bakery has now reached commuter towns like Basingstoke, Billericay and Basildon, even Guildford and Woking, in its search for fresh markets to tap.
But what I've not shown you are the additional dozen openings that lie off the edge of even this expanded map, for example the northernmost Wenzel's is now in Northampton. More extraordinarily they've opened bakeries along the south coast in Portsmouth and Southampton, even Bournemouth and Poole, almost 100 miles from the original store in Sudbury Hill. Many of these farflung extras are actually in out of town retail parks rather than on high streets, thus catering for a somewhat different clientele. You can check the spread on my summary Google map, it's got all these branches on.
Finally here's the map I really wanted to draw - the expansion of Wenzel's 1975 → 2008 → 2016 → 2021 → 2026.
This is a bakery chain on the up, both expanding its coverage and also filling in the gaps. No wonder Peter Wenzel received an official Outstanding Contribution to the Baking Industry accolade at the Baking Industry Awards last year.
There's still a lot further Wenzel's could spread, so if you haven't seen the orange bakery in your town yet it might be on its way. But I note that London south of the Thames appears to be resolutely and deliberately out of bounds (which reminds me, I really should draw some Coughlans maps one day).
The Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum Location: St Mary's Hospital, Praed Street, W2 1NY [map] Open: 10am - 1pm (Mon-Thu only) Admission: free Two word summary: antibiotic genesis Five word summary: where Fleming spotted lifesaving mould Website:imperial.nhs.uk/about-us/what-we-do/fleming-museum Time to set aside: less than an hour
A lot of us wouldn't be here (or have been born at all) without antibiotics. The first of these was penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington on 3rd September 1928. That's his laboratory on the second floor, in the protruding bay beside the main entrance just above the brown plaque. This tiny room is part of a museum devoted to telling the story of both discovery and discoverer, a very small museum that's essentially a hospital stairwell and a few rooms off it, which since 2023 has been free to enter. If you can get in.
Alexander Fleming was born in Ayrshire in 1881, not far from Kilmarnock, and moved to London in 1895 to take up a job as a shipping clerk. In a quirk of fate an uncle died and left him a bequest which allowed him to enrol at medical school. In a quirk of fate he joined St Mary's teaching hospital mainly because it had a good water polo team. Fleming did outstandingly well in his studies and was all set to become a surgeon but no vacancy was available, so in a quirk of fate accepted a temporary post in the Inoculation Department. He loved the work so stayed on, and twenty years later a carefully observed quirk of fate would make his name.
The entrance to the museum is a brown door just behind the hospital's ornamental gates. You have to press the button alongside to gain access, chatting via a semi-intelligible intercom to one of the volunteers upstairs. It's a very stiff door so might not open easily even after they've triggered the release (expect similar tugging issues on the way out). Entry is via an evocatively institutional stairwell tiled in green and ivory which curls upwards towards reception, and which is shared with maternity services because this is a working building. A volunteer will then lead you up one further flight to the room where the discovery took place. Be aware there's no lift, it being impractical to adapt an authentic listed building to modern accessibility standards.
During WW1 Fleming spent time at a military hospital in France where he observed how many injured amputees died for want of an effective antiseptic, so focused on this area of research when he returned to Paddington. His first great success came in 1921 when he observed that mucus wiped from his nose dissolved bacteria on a petri dish. It turned out this was because it contained our body's own natural antiseptic, also found in tears and egg white, which Fleming named lysozyme. He was very proud of this discovery, even much later in his career, but lysozyme didn't help cure the fiercest germs and so his search went on.
The second floor room where the discovery took place has been restored as it would have been in 1928 with dishes, brown bottles, stoppered test tubes and a microscope, all arrayed along a wooden bench in front of the window. Looking down Fleming would have been able to watch the traffic passing on Praed Street, and today you can additionally see a pharmacy in the shop opposite which feels particularly appropriate. A separate cabinet in the corner of the room contains medals, awards and other congratulatory ephemera from later in Fleming's life. You can't get right up close to the bench because only the volunteer gets to cross the divide and tell you all about it, then helpfully answer your questions. The room is also subject to the museum's widespread 'No photography' policy which is why I can't show you what it looks like.
On the crucial day in 1928 Fleming had been away for the summer and, fortuitously, some of his earlier dishes hadn't been cleared away. One showed unusual patterns where a mould on one side of the dish had inhibited the spread of staphylococcus on the other. Nobody's quite sure where the spore came from, only that it floated in randomly on the air, quite possibly from the fungi-focused laboratory downstairs. "That's funny," said Fleming to his junior colleague Merlin Price, a Welshman who arguably spotted the peculiarity first. The secretion was initially called 'mould juice' and Fleming tested it on a few of his colleagues to see if it cleared up their infections. It proved encouragingly lethal to certain microbes and not to humans, but also very hard to isolate and stabilise so the groundbreaking work essentially stalled.
After breathing in the atmosphere of the laboratory the volunteer will lead you up to the screening room on the third floor and press play on a ten minute film. This tells the full Fleming story complete with archive footage, including a speech Sir Alex gave in the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh on the 25th anniversary of the discovery. I learned a lot but the flickering presentation had all the nostalgic quality of a film I might have been shown in a science lesson on a wheeled-in telly, so I sat through the black and white credits to see when it was made. It turned out to be a 1993 production, the same year as the stairwell was turned into a museum with the aid of money from the drugs giant SmithKline Beecham, who plainly haven't been back to update it since.
In 1938 researchers from Oxford University were drawn to Fleming's work, initially via his discovery of lysozyme, but soon realised that penicillin could be considerably more useful. Howard Florey and his colleagues were eventually able to test it on a few critically injured patients and reverse their infections, but couldn't generate enough supplies to ultimately prevent their deaths. It being wartime the team needed to turn to America for the means to mass produce penicillin on commercial terms, and by 1944 it was being used on the front line to save countless lives. Fleming, Florey and a biochemist on the team called Ernst Chain were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945 "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases".
The final room is 'the exhibition', a circuit of 19 information boards telling the whole story from Fleming's birth to the present day, assuming the present day is 1993. It's highly informative and all the better for lacking the flashy screens and sparse text that would likely be the presentational style were the display ever redone. The central section explains how bacterial resistance has always been an issue and how scientists have attempted to keep pace, initially by attaching cunningly similar but non-identical molecules to the penicillin nucleus. But essentially the exhibition is a celebration of the ground-breaking discovery made downstairs when a sequence of quirks of fate led a former water polo player to spot a mould that helped make medicine hugely safer.
After your visit don't head round the corner for a proud pint in the Sir Alexander Fleming pub because it's closed.
Also I can confirm there's no real need to troop down to the Chelsea Embankment to see the blue plaque on Fleming's home at 20a Danvers Street, although I did anyway and got very wet in the process.
If you really do want to track down Fleming's legacy then a trail leaflet has been produced complete with several maps. But it's probably best to stick to the museum itself where the curator and associated volunteers do a fine job of explaining what they can in an outdated space where history was made... on that bench there, just up the road from Paddington station.
Hour 1 0:00 Just by standing outside Romford station I can tick off HAVERING (1). 0:06Chadwell Heath is an excellent station for borough-visiting. The ticket hall is in REDBRIDGE (2) and the pavement outside is in BARKING & DAGENHAM (3) 0:28 I continue west via Crossrail to Forest Gate which is in NEWHAM (4). The smell of baked goods from the Hovis factory is very pleasant. It's only a short walk up the road to Wanstead Park to join the Suffragette line. 0:48 A simple switch at Blackhorse Road, stepping out into WALTHAM FOREST (5) to admire the black horse mosaic. Then disaster strikes - the Victoria line is part suspended and the next train is 30 minutes away! The platform is full of confused passengers wishing a member of station staff would make a useful announcement. The next train is now 39 minutes away! An automated message urges everyone to take care because surfaces may be wet. The next train is now 32 minutes away! (thankfully the display was lying and the next train was only 3 minutes away, but phew that could have wrecked everything) 0:56 Everyone changing between tube and rail at Tottenham Hale has to step out through a gateline into HARINGEY (6). It's been a profitable first hour.
Hour 2 1:14ENFIELD (7) is the first annoying borough requiring an 'out and back' train journey. But I've got very lucky with timings because a half-hourly train to Meridian Water is due. The new station is still surrounded by empty space containing hardly any flats. 1:32 The Victoria line remains buggered but I can still get a train to Finsbury Park. This is in ISLINGTON (8), and simply by crossing two roads I can spend a few seconds in HACKNEY (9). 1:42 All change at Highbury & Islington for the Mildmay line. Grrr, it's a maximum 9 minute wait.
Hour 3 2:12 Alight at Brondesbury because that's in BRENT (10). 2:13 Cross the road because that's in CAMDEN (11). Then cross back and catch a 189 bus to Cricklewood. 2:20 Great, that's done BARNET (12). Now all I need is a quick bus to Willesden Town, five minutes max. 2:21 Aaaagh the 460 bus is on diversion. The announcement doesn't say where to and dinging the bell to alight has no effect. Oh god we're going back towards where I just came from. I check an app and it turns out the diversion is an extra two miles because of a burst water main. The bus would eventually have reached Willesden Town but thankfully I manage to persuade the driver to drop me at Kilburn instead. Bullet dodged. 2:54 Finally up the Metropolitan line to Harrow-on-the-Hill in HARROW (13).
Hour 4 3:05 Switch from a Watford train to an Uxbridge train. I have to go as far as Eastcote to enter HILLINGDON (14), one of today's tougher boroughs. 3:15 I just missed a Piccadilly line train at Eastcote so I have to wait for the next one at Rayners Lane. 3:39Acton Town is another useful borough-ticking station because immediately outside is EALING (15) and just round the corner is HOUNSLOW (16). 3:55Hammersmith, obviously, is in HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM (17). Hurrah, I'm finally halfway and it's only taken four hours.
Hour 5 4:06RICHMOND (18) is a bit of a pain, so I've chosen to visit it by walking across Hammersmith Bridge and then straight back again, all on foot. 4:24 District line to Earl's Court, walk out onto the street to get KENSINGTON & CHELSEA (19). Then re-enter station and walk straight onto a Wimbledon train, perfect. 4:43 Nip out at Southfields to get WANDSWORTH (20). I could have nipped out at East Putney but I was at the front of the train. 4:53 A productive run ends at Wimbledon for MERTON (21). Now for the last annoying 'out and back'.
Hour 6 5:05KINGSTON (22) can't be done on a TfL train so I've boarded a Hampton Court train to New Malden. The high street still has poppies on some lampposts. 5:37 And back to Wimbledon to catch the tram, which is by far the easiest way to visit SUTTON (23). I pick Beddington Lane but could have picked Therapia Lane instead. 5:53 The tram is obviously ideal for CROYDON (24), in this case West Croydon. I've got lucky because a Southern train to Victoria is in the platform.
Hour 7 6:15 Up the very long staircase at Crystal Palace for BROMLEY (25), then back down the very long staircase for an Overground train. 6:30 I've got lucky again because another Southern train is right behind us, so nip out at Forest Hill for LEWISHAM (26), then nip back in. 6:54 I've reached London Bridge just as the rush hour begins, but thankfully everyone's going the other way. That's SOUTHWARK (27) done and only six more boroughs to go.
Hour 8 7:05 An easy one-stop ride to Waterloo East, then a bit of a hike to neighbouring Waterloo to get LAMBETH (28). I'd prefer to catch the Waterloo & City line but unfortunately I still have to go to Westminster first. 7:15 One stop on the Sponsored Lager line takes me to Embankment (where yes they've fixed the incorrect map). Poke my head briefly above ground for WESTMINSTER (29). 7:32 Change from the Northern line to Crossrail at Tottenham Court Road and hop along to Farringdon. The quickest way up to the CITY OF LONDON (30) is at the Barbican end. 7:42 What I should have done at Canary Wharf is stop and come up for air. But I've already been to TOWER HAMLETS (31) because I live there, so I awarded myself a free pass for that one. 7:58 The Elizabeth line terminates at Abbey Wood which is convenient because the station straddles my last two boroughs. The street outside is in BEXLEY (32), and if you walk just round the corner before the Post Office you enter GREENWICH (33). And that's a two minute walk so my All Boroughs Odyssey has taken eight hours precisely.
I'm sure eight hours is beatable although I wasn't aiming for a record, just hoping to get to the finish. It was a 'slippery surface' day across the London transport network anyway. I nearly had very bad luck with line closures and bus diversions but on the whole my planned route worked out pretty well, with only a few changes of plan when an unexpected train offered a fresh alternative. Also I walked seven miles, climbed the equivalent of 70 flights of stairs and read two-thirds of a novel so I wasn't completely wasting my time.
I don't recommend trying to visit every London borough in one day because it's a bit knackering and ultimately pointless. But I have now completed an extraordinary achievement, and best of all I have no need to ever do it again.
Last year, you may remember, I went to every London borough at least 40 times.
Here's how I'm doing so far in 2026.
Enf
2
Harr
2
Barn
2
Hari
2
WFor
2
Hill
2
Eal
2
Bren
2
Cam
2
Isl
2
Hack
2
Redb
2
Hav
2
Hou
2
H&F
2
K&C
2
West
2
City
2
Tow
12
New
8
B&D
2
Rich
2
Wan
2
Lam
2
Sou
2
Lew
2
Grn
2
Bex
2
King
2
Mer
2
Cro
2
Bro
2
Sut
2
It's only 12th January and I've been to every borough at least twice.
That is very good going.
What's more I've been to every borough exactly twice. (other than Tower Hamlets where I live and Newham which I live five minutes from)
This is arguably the greater achievement.
It took some doing.
For example I'd been to Southwark, Lewisham and Bromley twice by 3rd January, then wasn't allowed to go back again.
For example this weekend I still had nine outer London boroughs to visit but had to get there without setting foot in an inner London borough.
n.b. my rules for visiting a borough are that I have to set foot in it - standing on a station platform or riding through on transport don't count.
My 2026 visits include a tour of SE26, both ends of the 222 bus route, the London New Year Parade, exploring Aldborough Hatch, a yomp across Richmond Park, riding the Waterloo & City line and visits to Arnos Grove, Barking, Belvedere, Colindale, Haggerston, Morden, New Malden, North Greenwich, Northwick Park and Upminster. I like to travel.
And at the other end of the scale there are Londoners who haven't been to all the London boroughs, not even once.
I wonder if that's you.
special comments box
I AM A LONDONER AND THERE ARE BOROUGHS I'VE NEVER BEEN TO
Your most unvisited: Barking & Dagenham, then Havering, then Bexley, then Sutton
It'd be hard never to have visited Westminster, Camden or the City of London. If you've walked along the South Bank you've done Lambeth and Southwark, if you've crossed Tower Bridge you've done Tower Hamlets, if you've done the museums you've done Kensington & Chelsea, if you've been to Battersea Power Station you've done Wandsworth and if you've shopped at Westfield you've done Newham and/or Hammersmith & Fulham. Further out if you've been to Wembley you've done Brent, if you've flown from Heathrow you've done Hillingdon, if you've visited Richmond Park or Hampton Court you've done Richmond, if you've been to Wimbledon you've done Merton and if you've been to Greenwich you've obviously done Greenwich.
But some boroughs are much easier to miss. Havering's so far east most Londoners have no need to visit. Harrow and Enfield are easily skippable if you live south of the river, similarly Kingston and Bexley if you live north. Barking & Dagenham seemingly has nothing to entice visitors from further afield. A lot of Londoners couldn't tell you where Redbridge or Sutton are, let alone think of a reason to go. There are all sorts of reasons why peripheral boroughs might go unvisited, even after several decades of living in the same city.
My hunch is that Bexley, Harrow, Havering and Sutton are the boroughs least visited by other Londoners, but we'll see if your comments back that up.
I wasn't always the roaming globetrotter I am now, indeed when I introduced my random jamjar feature in 2004 I was in some cases breaking new ground. Even so I'd been to most of the boroughs before I moved to London, aided by growing up at the end of the Metropolitan line and having family in Croydon, Waltham Forest and Enfield. A concert at Crystal Palace took care of Bromley, a wedding in Fulham ticked off Hammersmith & Fulham and a rail replacement bus must have delivered Havering. I couldn't tell you which was the last of the 33 boroughs I eventually visited but it wouldn't surprise me if it was Sutton, dullest of the suburbs.
Obviously most Londoners go about their days without giving a damn where the borough boundaries are. You have to be a bit of an administrative nerd to know that crossing the Old Street roundabout takes you from Islington into Hackney or that one side of Kilburn High Road is Camden and the other in Brent.
But some people do deliberately go out to visit the lot. In 2018 Ollie O'Brien did all 33 boroughs by bike and train in 9 hours 25 minutes and wrote up his exploits here. David Natzler went one better and placed artwork at all the triple points, the places where three boroughs touch, and Richard Gower has a fabulous photographic summary of the results. Maybe you went out and did something alternatively specific, or at least kept track of your travels over a longer period of time.
special comments box
I KNOW I HAVE DEFINITELY BEEN TO ALL 33 LONDON BOROUGHS
For all other comments, including "I'm not sure which boroughs I've never been to", please use the ordinary comments box at the end of the post.
It's obviously entirely unnecessary to have visited all the London boroughs but, as I hope I've made clear over many years, the suburbs contain much that's fascinating so if you've never been you're missing out. Maybe this should be the year that you fill in your gaps - even Barking & Dagenham and Sutton have their moments! It shouldn't take long unless you've been extraordinarily parochial, indeed some of us have been to all 33 twice in twelve days flat.
But what if we did count our ages in days rather than years? 22223
It's a bit of a science fiction concept, a personal chronometer that ticked over every morning adding one to your lifespan (or worse ticked down towards a menacing zero).
If we did count in days then roughly speaking you'd go to school at 2000, move up to secondary school at 4000, become an adult around 6000, leave university at 8000, start your mid-life crisis at 15000, retire at 25000, hope to live into your 30000s and get a greetings card from the King at 37000.
In reality it'd be entirely impractical, far too reliant on arithmetic and rounding. But what if we did count our ages in days rather than years?
5000 days:Thursday 16th November 1978
Hurrah I am finally a fiveager! Open my presents before school, I get five books and a new briefcase. Arrive early and go to choir practice. Graham looks sad because he's 14 years old today but nobody celebrates that kind of thing. In double English we have to take it in turns to talk into a tape recorder while a mysterious lady visitor watches. At break my classmates give me the bumps - thankfully not all 5000 of them, they get bored after about 30. In French we do vocabulary about Metro stations (sorry, stations de métro). In History Dr Wise is away so all we do is colour in a map of the American War of Independence.
In Science we have a physics test on light. At lunchtime we celebrate my big day by buying ice cream cornets from the van at the gate. My so-called friends have already scuffed my briefcase. Maths is SMP Book 3 Chapter 8 - Linear Programming. I skip orchestra after school because it's time for my big 5000th birthday party. Mark, Andrew and Nicholas have been invited. Mum made the cake - the candles are very fierce! After everyone goes home I do my history homework and watch The Bionic Woman. Then I stick the little stickers onto my new radio ready for the big frequency switchover next week. Then I have a bath and then I go to bed.
10000 days:Saturday 25th July 1992
Today's the day I finally reach five figures! Celebrated big time last night with beers and barbecued venison sausages at the Olde Coach House Inn in Ashby St Ledgers. Woken around 10am with a cup of tea, a bowl of cornflakes and a glass of orange juice, but not a kiss because of morning breath. My first relationship has now reached week three and all the signs are it's going great! Ok so last night was restricted to cuddles rather than anything more climactic and OK maybe I shouldn't have dated a smoker. Also it's a shame our prospective plans for the big day are suddenly wiped out by the comment "ah right, now I've got to get on", bringing our weekend rendezvous to an abrupt close. But at least I get driven home to Bedford where my offer of a cuppa is turned down in favour of "an urgent trip to Sainsbury's", and yes this is all going great.
My brother rings with birthday wishes and says his girlfriend has just moved in - it seems our parents took the news well! Then nip out to buy a newspaper and a bag of chips liberally doused in vinegar, certainly a birthday lunch to remember. For my big party Steve has organised an amateur pop quiz at his terraced house in Luton. We watch the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Olympics while we wait for the other contestants to arrive and the wine box to defrost. I end up in the team with Mike and Hazel and we are soon three thousand points behind, mainly because I've taken the narcissistic decision to leave my glasses at home so the video questions are a blur. But the day's really all about the big ten thousand, even if I suspect it could have gone a lot better than it did.
15000 days:Monday 3rd April 2006
No rest for my birthday, it's a new week at work and I have to be in by 8am. Damn, the boiler's being temperamental so my hot water's not working and I have to make do with a kettle. Before my commute's finished I've read the Media section in the paper, which isn't bad for rush hour on the Central line. Prior to starting today's proper work I'm called into the new boss's office and told I have to alter Peter's contract. He won't like it! The other team are apparently still stuck in flooded Prague. There's no milk so we can't have any tea which puts a sour taste on the day. Our foursome in the canteen is joined by a senior colleague for a change so thankfully we don't end up talking about [Melon] and [Peach] as usual, instead we reminisce about school science lessons. Everyone's clubbed together and bought me a birthday card, which is nice of them but you only get a decent present on the day you leave.
After work I walk to the Visit Scotland office to try to pick up some brochures about the Outer Hebrides but they don't have any. Back home I'm annoyed when upstairs get their noisy electric guitar out again. I'm still getting lots of extra visitors to the blog after my kitten-based April Fool on Saturday. And I'm still trying to rescue the data off my hard drive which died in February but the recovery software keeps getting stuck on 48%. My brother and his wife who moved in 5000 days ago have postponed today's intended trip to Legoland with the kids. Hurrah BBC4 is repeating Dr Who and the Green Death, the one with the giant squirty maggots. I hope my boiler gets fixed in the next fortnight because it would be ridiculous if my next bath was in San Francisco (and you wouldn't want to have sat next to me on the plane).
20000 days:Wednesday 11th December 2019
A proper celebration today as I finally hit my twenties. My god I feel old! After breakfast I iron five shirts because you have to wear a collar where we're going, but I end up wearing none of them. Meet BestMate and his parents at the station and take the tube to Westminster. We're booked for lunch at the Peers' Dining Room in the Houses of Parliament because they open it up to mere plebs when the House is suspended during an election campaign. Still knife-edge between Boris and Jeremy, it could go either way tomorrow. We queue through security, then leave our coats on a rack in the corridor outside the Library. The staff are exceptionally courteous, calling us m'lord or m'lady even though they know we're just commoners taking advantage of an electoral gap. Pre-dinner gins cost under £3 as befits a subsidised public institution.
The dining room is a sumptuous L-shaped space with the original off-yellow herringbone wallpaper designed by Augustus Pugin. The menu is British with the emphasis on regional ingredients, conjured up onto the plate in modern style. I kick off with salmon on a disc of pressed cucumber floating in assorted creams and dollops, then move on to a half-plate of confit Aylesbury duck. Dammit, should have ordered the haunch of venison. It's a little odd to have to ask to go to the toilet, but wandering willy-nilly through the corridors of power isn't allowed so every loo visit has to be escorted. Had this been a Bexley restaurant my apple tart would have come with gaudy birthday sparklers rather than a ganache, and the meal concluded with a singsong rather than a tray of petit fours. We depart in agreement it's been an truly excellent experience and wonder who the British public will be voting onto the green benches tomorrow.
25000 days:Friday 19th August 2033
Creak out of bed and open all the windows because it's been tropically warm again all night. Today should be the day my state pension finally kicks in but I'm not hopeful of seeing any money after the Fujitsu software was crippled by another Russian cyber attack last month. Only one birthday card to open - my auntie insists on sending something physical even though a third class stamp now costs £4.90. Not much hope of getting a birthday request on the BBC National Service because the breakfast show's fully automated these days. Enjoy a couple of slices of The People's Loaf and then walk into Stratford because it's quicker than waiting for a bus. Every lamppost is emblazoned with a Stars and Stripes. Check out the library which is selling off all its surplus stock, then catch the Churchill line home. Hopefully the bins might be emptied soon.
A video message from the doctor's surgery congratulates me on becoming eligible for free NHS treatment, and if I agree to pay a subscription I should get seen before the end of the year. The British Care Service has also sent an application form for one of its fully automated care hostels, the perfect solution to the lack-of-migrants crisis. Treat myself to an ice lolly to cool off in this endless summer heat, one that thankfully didn't thaw during last week's power cut. BestMate apologises he won't be able to drive round because his Volkswagen bricked after a software update. Still no news from Japan where the AI network has gone rogue again. Fire up the air fryer for a celebratory fish substitute fillet - I'm fairly sure I can afford fifteen minutes of electricity just this once. How much easier life was 20000 days ago when the worst of my worries were a few spots and a scuffed briefcase.
30000 days:Sunday 28th April 2047
Let's not tempt fate...
Today I am 22222 days old.
Thanks for all your cards.
An ideal ride to celebrate would be the 222 to Tooting.
Unfortunately the 222 doesn't go to Tooting so I went to Uxbridge instead.
Route 222: Hounslow to Uxbridge Location: London west, outer Length of bus journey: 11 miles, 55 minutes
The 222 has been running between Hounslow and Uxbridge since I was 2222 days old. It heads west along the Bath Road towards Heathrow, then diverts north through Sipson and West Drayton. If it terminated at the airport then it would be the 222 to Terminal 2 but alas no, so 222 to Uxbridge will have to do.
Like half a dozen other routes the 222 starts in Hounslow High Street just outside the bus garage. The road's full of diverse convenience shops so it'd be easy to stock up on durian, fresh fish or fragrant country sausage before you board, but thankfully nobody has. Instead we head off round the back of the shops, pedestrianisation having won out over traffic hereabouts, narrowly missing a pensioner fleeing from the rear of the Treaty Centre. Planes roar regularly overhead. We pick up plenty of passengers at Bell Corner, just past the rebuilt pub and boarded-up Chinese restaurant. A milestone in the wall outside The Mulberries asserts that we are ten miles from Hyde Park Corner. A burst water main at the next crossroads means all the traffic coming the other way has been diverted, but thankfully we dodged that bullet.
The first of the three stations on this journey is heptagonal Hounslow West, the pre-Heathrow terminus of the Piccadilly. The shops opposite have a particularly Asian flavour, including an eggless bakers, a vegetarian restaurant and a yellow window from which warm naans are dispensed. Nobody has yet taken down the glittering Christmas tree occupying several parking spaces outside Sabba Supermarket. We skirt a grass verge doubling up as a pigeon sanctuary, then spin past a drive-in McDonalds to join the A4. The Waggoners Roundabout is named after a former pub, now a lowbrow hybrid of bar, banqueting suite and hotel rooms. Next up is Cranford, a suburb I don't want to say too much about in case I choose it as my alphabetical choice next month (although be warned, the word 'drab' may occur a lot).
By crossing the River Crane we enter the borough of Hillingdon, just as the perimeter of Heathrow Airport comes into view. This northern edge is completely dominated by places to park and sleep, most notably ugly capacious hotels with no architectural merit whatsoever. Interspersed are restaurants where global travellers can dine while staying over before an early morning flight, even a huge bowling alley taking advantage of a trapped temporary population. I imagine purgatory looks similar. We've been following a bus on route 111 for the last mile, another of London's triple-digit routes, but things really hit the jackpot at Nene Road where the bus stop displays tiles for 111, 222 and 555. I understand route 555 hasn't stopped here since it was cut back to Hatton Cross in August but until someone at TfL notices then what we have here is an extraordinary triple triple.
The 222 bears off the main road at the Esso garage as the sole route the serve the village of Sipson. This was once a quiet backwater surrounded by market gardens until the arrival of Heathrow Airport scarred it, specifically the M4 spur carved alongside. Once across the motorway the pebbledash houses begin and so do the St George's flags, one from every lamppost, because someone with antagonistic intent has been busy. Sipson proves mostly charmless other than its three pubs, one of which is tastefully half-timbered, one of which is now an Indian restaurant and one of which is bedecked with winter lights and plastic flowers as if the landlord didn't quite know when to stop. Revised plans for Heathrow expansion have reprieved the village but the third runway is due to end barely 300m from the main street sending planes roaring directly across Sipson's rooftops, and that'd properly wreck the place.
A monumental Holiday Inn dominates the north end of the village with all the charm of a Stalinist prison, then we duck beneath the actual M4. There are even scrappy red crosses here, hanging limp under the viaduct, so comprehensive is the flagging hereabouts. And it doesn't stop there, it continues along Cherry Lane where someone's additionally draped ten enormous flappers over a fence facing a primary school playing field. I get to stare at them for a full two minutes because the driver picks this spot to "regulate the service", less than ten minutes after he's done the same thing outside the Radisson hotel. Several silent curses are uttered. We then proceed through the outer reaches of West Drayton past its chippie, burial ground and boxing club. It's a joy to see the cupola on top of the newel turret at 13th century St Martin's church because nothing for the last half hour has been nearly as old.
It's all now northbound, first past the lowly library and then into West Drayton's main shopping street. I struggle for a while with the name of a cafe called B☕tties before correctly concluding that the graphic of a mug represents a U rather than any less salubrious vowel. The 222 makes a special effort to turn into the forecourt of the station, a brief turnaround tightly sandwiched between purple trains and the Grand Union Canal. By crossing the railway we're now officially in Yiewsley, its high street somehow bolted on to West Drayton's to form an extra-lengthy chain of shops. I don't want to say too much about Yiewsley because it's very likely to be my alphabetical choice at the end of the year, but I will confirm this is the third consecutive paragraph with flags hanging from every lamppost and they show no sign of stopping yet.
The 222 is the sole bus route through the obscure suburb of Cowley Peachey, which from the top deck appears to be mostly cul-de-sacs and retail parks. Brown signs point towards Packet Boat Marina and Little Britain Lake, the braided River Colne being the dominant landscape feature. Beyond Cowley's bowls club the High Road morphs into a very underwhelming High Street - minor highlight the Karma Lounge - and then with less than ten minutes remaining the driver decides to pause and regulate the service again. It's his third two minute pause (appropriately summarised 2-2-2), and all the more annoying for being entirely unnecessary. We wait just long enough that a U5 swings in from the University and picks up everyone our delay might plausibly have helped, and only then does our jobsworth driver head off behind him. If you want to piss off a busful of passengers, this is how you do it.
Something astonishing happens as we pass The Crown - the flags on lampposts suddenly cease. There's been either a Union Jack or St George's cross on virtually every lamppost FOR THE LAST FOUR MILES, and because I travel widely I can confirm no other part of the capital comes even close. A few flags could have been the work of a patriot but this concerted effort feels more like deliberate weaponisation, a disruptive attempt to make Hillingdon's considerable ethnic minority feel ubiquitously uncomfortable. We plough ahead on the unadorned approach to Uxbridge, the roadsigns increasingly focused on ULEZ and car parking, before several severe office blocks herald the edge of the town centre. We hear the announcement "222 to Uxbridge" for possibly the 22nd time (it still sounds odd), and the driver eventually pulls up at the final stop opposite the bus station bang on schedule.
Minutes of the TfL Brand Partnership Committee January 2026
Chair: I hear you've clinched a new tube line sponsorship deal, Magda. Do spill. Magda: Yes we're super-pleased with this one, it's a European brewery and they want to sponsor the Bakerloo line. Secretary: What?! The creaky line with the graffitied carriages and Britain's oldest passenger trains? Magda: That's the one. I told you we were chuffed. Chair: So what's the branding? What's the cunning creative idea? Magda: It's double zero.
Secretary: Wow, that is so clever... actually no, I don't get it. Magda: Oh sillychops don't you ever go out to bars these days? It's a beer darling. Chair: I'm not sure we should be promoting beer in such a cavalier fashion, even for lots of money. Magda: Oh heavens it's not a proper beer, it's non-alcoholic. Nobody's going to get even slightly tipsy from this. Secretary: People actually pay to drink beer with no alcohol in? Magda: Of course! Nobody wants to be Nobby-No-Mates ordering orange juice! Far cooler to buy to be seen drinking the right brand without any of the squiffy after-effects. Chair: Oh and it's January so everyone's on a teetotal health kick at the moment! Magda you are brilliant.
Magda: What we've done, obviously, is taken the brand's zero-point-zero moniker and incorporated it into the line name. Secretary: Presumably they'd have paid less if we'd offered them Waterl0.0 & City? Magda: Quite, plus bankers are really only interested in spread-betting and crypto, not piss-weak lager. Chair: I see you've branded some stations too.
Magda: Of course! Everyone loves it when we rename stations! Secretary: They don't actually. Remember the Burberry Street fiasco? That set back the cause of station sponsorship by decades. Magda: But we've been clever here. Waterl0.0 is essentially exactly the same as Waterloo. Not even an international tourist would be confused. Creativity always finds a way! Minion: But how does Oxf0.0rd Circus work? There aren't two consecutive o's, only one, that's incredibly contrived. Magda: We loved it, the client loved it! Who cares if if makes no practical sense, it's all about the social buzz!
Secretary: Just the two stations though? You didn't add Harr0.0w & Wealdstone, Kent0.0n or N0.0rth Wembley. Magda: Oh gosh no, why waste money on cash-strapped Londoners beyond zone 3! Chair: Please say you haven't replaced all the signs along the entire Bakerloo line. Secretary: Heavens no, we only ran amok at eight central stations. You only need a small presence to amplify the brand message, no need to spaff the cash more than strictly necessary. Chair: I hope there are modified roundels.
Magda: It wouldn't be a viral campaign without modified roundels! Just half a dozen at each affected station... no need to go over the top. Secretary: What the hell does 'Proud partner of Bakerl0.0' mean? Magda: It's just brandspeak darling. It means we're chuffed they've given us hundreds of thousands of pounds for a few temporary vinyls, and what marketing executive wouldn't be proud of that? Chair: I imagine the platforms at Waterl0.0 look quite something.
Magda: We're particularly proud of Waterl0.0. It pushes the creative envelope about as far as possible before some killjoy complains. Secretary: They may have a point. Isn't this just tacky money-grubbing desperation dressed up as creativity? Magda: I don't understand why anyone moans about our bold tube sponsorship deals. After all it helps keep fares down! Secretary: It very much doesn't, they're still going up 5.8% in March. Magda: Where's the harm? They're absolutely loving it on TikTok.
Minion: You do realise that map's wrong, don't you? Magda: Sorry what? This campaign has been creatively polished to perfection. Minion: But there's an error on the line diagram. Magda: No there can't be, all the marketing supremos checked it. Minion: An actual mistake which someone might have noticed if they had a basic knowledge of public transport rather than brand strategy. Magda: I'm not seeing it. Minion: You've got Kilburn Park and Maida Vale round the wrong way. Chair: Oh god that's seriously embarrassing. Minion: It should be Warwick Avenue... Maida Vale... Kilburn Park... Queen's Park. Magda: We'll leave it. After all, all publicity is good publicity!
Secretary: It worries me that schmoozing brands takes priority over accurate passenger information these days. Magda: Oh come on, accurate passenger information has been well down the TfL agenda for yonks. Think of the money! Chair: I vote we open a bottle of non-alcoholic beer in celebration. Cheers!
LONDON A-Z In this alphabetical series I'll be visiting places in London I haven't blogged about before, ideally unsung settlements that fly below the radar. They may have been mentioned inpassing but they've never been the focus of a single post because I've never wandered around in detail before. I'm starting off in Redbridge with a semi-engulfedvillage on the edge of Fairlop Plain, and if you've never heard of it don't say the signs weren't there.
A is for Aldborough Hatch
For centuries Hainault Forest covered five square miles with dense woodland ideal for deer hunting. Around the perimeter were several entrances with wicket gates, or hatches, with Aldborough Hatch the fastest access for carousings at the Fairlop Oak. In 1851 Parliament passed "An Act for disafforesting the forest of Hainault in the county of Essex" which permitted the destruction of the vast majority of the woodland and its transformation to agricultural use. Many were aghast at this wanton privatisation and would later mount a much more successful defence of neighbouring Epping Forest.
As part compensation the Crown agreed to fund a new parish church on Aldborough Hatch Lane, at the time serving a small local congregation from a string offarms and manor houses. They also contributed a unique building material, namely chunks of Portland Stone from the original Westminster Bridge which had just been demolished in favour of a stronger replacement. The church was called St Peter's in honour of the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, better known as Westminster Abbey. You can't get inside unless the Reverend Kate's unlocked, but you can admire the squat turrety spire and wander round a dense churchyard packed with Alberts, Sidneys and Queenies. The parish hall alongside hosts murder mystery evenings and the 1st Aldborough Hatch Scouts, while at the far end is a well-tended Memorial Garden part-paid-for by Tesco Bags For Life (despite the supermarket having no local outpost).
St Peter's sits bang on the edge of the Green Belt so if you head north it feels like you're walking down a country lane. In reality it's mostly gravel pits behind the hedges, the largest protected by further fences and signs warning of deep cold water. The Fairlop Quarry Complex is vast and still partly operational while the rest rewilds. An unmarked gate on the right leads to Aldborough Hall Nature Reserve, in essence a long path trapped behind a hedge to keep the longhorn cattle in, and also a dead-end because public rights of way aren't plentiful hereabouts. Aldborough Hall Farm survives but now limits itself to geese and peacocks; it also claims to host the closest Caravan and Motorhome Club pitch to central London. Nextdoor is the village pub, the Dick Turpin, although there's no evidence the highwayman ever visited and it's now a Miller & Carter Steak House (which likes to pretend it's in Ilford).
The lane continues past farm machinery and grazing horses to a sharp right-hand bend where the pavement gives out. The white gate ahead marks the aforementioned entrance to Hainault Forest, the actual Aldborough Hatch, but since 1956 has been the entrance to an isolated equestrian centre. Although they welcome riders they don't make it obvious their driveway is the start of a permissive path, so yes you can lift the latch and walk round the back of the stables to cross the site. It's all very paddocky out here with smells to match, though thankfully frozen underfoot at present so not the hoofed mudbath it looks like it often is. The bridleway crosses further quarry workings, tightly padlocked, and then emerges somewhere just as remote but entirely different.
This huge open space is Fairlop Waters Country Park, formerly RAF Fairlop because a flat expanse of deforested land was ideal for aerial wartime manoeuvres. It's since been quarried and partly refilled so is fun to sail on, but this is the side furthest from the car park so less recreationally blessed. One all-weather footpath weaves through nature reserves and round scraped lakes but all the rest is open country with a web of grassy paths. Much of the adjacent land used to be a golf course but this hasn't reopened since the pandemic so Redbridge council have advanced plans to increase the extent and opportunities in the country park. It'd just be nicer for the residents of Aldborough Hatch if it was easier for them to get here because connections are both paltry and well dodgy underfoot.
In total contrast, turn right out of the churchyard and it's suburbia all the way. A wedge of avenues bears off from the original Aldborough Hatch Lane, this the Aldborough Grange estate laid out by a company called Suburban Developments Limited in the early 1930s. The majority are gabled, some are pebbledashed and most can't officially be called semi-detached because they're all joined together. Along the main artery just one house dates back to the 19th century, a small stand-out villa, while others are set back further than you'd expect behind a long shrubbery that used to be the village pond. A small enclave of townhouses was squeezed in behind the vicarage much later on, and I love the non-specific plaque that simply states 'This stone was laid by Maureen in March 1965 to initiate the development of this estate'.
What originally triggered the despoliation of Aldborough Hatch was the A12, here known as Eastern Avenue, which carved through what was then open countryside in the 1920s. Here engineers followed the alignment of a rustic backroad called Hatch Lane and transformed it into a dual carriageway, the only hint of former times being a line of trees on the central reservation. Ideally you don't want to live in one of the houses facing the maelstrom, you want to live one street back for a quieter life with excellent road connectivity. However only the A12 gets a bus service because TfL have never deigned to send a small bus round the backroads, condemning many in Aldborough Hatch to live beyond the usual 400m threshold. This includes residents on Oaks Lane, the wiggling boundary road whose residents still look out onto hedgerows, paddocks and the last remaining farmhouse.
The suburb has only two shops, both very similar convenience stores and inexplicably nextdoor to each other. It does however have a whopping primary school, a 1930s monster in brick with two end turrets and a central clocktower, also frequented by kids from across the arterial in Seven Kings. Where Aldborough Hatch stops is geographically dubious, especially the further southwest you go and the houses become a tad less aspirational. The long parade of shops, the mosque and the high school all address themselves instead as Newbury Park, this because they abut the railway and what dominates hereabouts is a Central line station. You know the one, it's got this magnificent postwar bus station outside...
...and could very easily have been called Aldborough Hatch instead, in which case you'd all have heard of it.
Thank you for your many alphabetical suggestions.
Let's see if some of them have legs.
» How about embassies of countries beginning with each letter?
The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in London(31 Princes Gate, SW7)
You'll find the Afghan embassy in Princes Gate on the south side of Hyde Park, a diplomatic cluster that's widely known because the Iranian embassy interrupted the snooker finals in 1980. These very splendid five-storey houses were built in 1847 by C.J. Freake, an adherent of Italianate 'stucco classic' style, and are set back from Kensington Road behind a smart line of shrubbery and a limo-parking area patrolled by armed police. The great and good, like His Excellency Dr Zalmai Rassoul (Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary), enter through the posh doors with the twiddly ironwork. Lesser souls, like those in search of Passport, Visa, Tazkera, Power of Attorney & Other Consular Services, are directed towards a minor staircase leading down into the basement which I guess was once the servants' entrance. There would have been servants once, back when this was a private house before it was purchased by the Royal State of Afghanistan in 1925. A stucco annexe was added in 1955 which currently houses their consulate section and a secure garage for the parking of diplomatic cars. As the first country in alphabetical order Afghanistan has the honour of the premier 101 diplomatic registration, so for example that Range Rover parked outside has numberplate [101 D 216].
» We hear a lot about bus stop M, what about the other bus stops?
Bus Stop A - Harrow Manorway in Abbey Wood
There are 496 Bus Stop As in Greater London and here's a prime example in Abbey Wood. It's the northbound bus stop on Harrow Manorway, a short walk north of Abbey Wood station just past the enormous Sainsbury's. It's in the London borough of Greenwich but only just because Bus Stop B on the opposite side of the road is in Bexley. Just behind the bus stop is the Thistlebrook Travellers' site.
Routes served: 180 229 244 301 469 472 N1 Timetables present: 244 469 669 N1 (four are missing, which is a pretty poor show) Bus which won't be stopping here in 3 weeks time: 472 because TfL are Superlooping it Maps in shelter: Spider map and walking map (both appallingly grubby) Adverts in shelter: Eat Natural hazelnut and date bars; Michael Jackson the musical (closes next month) Other facilities: litter bin, bus-stop bypass Places of interest nearby: no
» Perhaps give unusual Blue Plaques in London a go.
Edward ARDIZZONE(1900-1979)
130 Elgin Avenue, Maida Vale
Edward Ardizzone was a British painter and illustrator of many talents including that of official war artist, but is best known for his children's books. If you went to school in the 70s or 80s your copy of Stig of the Dump was liberally illustrated by him so his penmanship will be innately familiar. Ardizzone grew up in Ipswich, but the family moved into Elgin Avenue in 1920 when he was working as an office clerk, and Edward was still there in 1972 after retiring as a tutor with the Royal College of Art. Alas these days his home at number 130 is a hollowed-out sham, a four bedroom split level luxury apartment with a minimum of interior walls, not that you'd ever guess from out front.
» An A-Z of musicians/bands who have lived or worked in London?
Blur's frontman was born at Whipps Cross hospital and grew up in a much bigger than average terraced house in Leytonstone. Damon's parents were artists, his upbringing bohemian, indeed there's still something screamingly middle class about this street. For his early education he attended George Tomlinson Primary School on the other side of the A12, not that the A12 was here at the time. The Albarns moved out of Waltham Forest in 1977 when Damon was ten, ensuring that all the formative Blur stuff took place on the outskirts of Colchester instead. Damon did however come back for the unveiling of his plaque in 2014 and grinned out of a bedroom window, mainly because he had a solo album to promote.
» An A-Z of public statues could be interesting.
King Alfred, Trinity Church Square SE1
Just off Borough High Street is the former Holy Trinity Church, now Henry Wood Hall, and in the garden out front is what's believed to be London's oldest statue. It's an eight foot high representation of proto-hero King Alfred, the top half being about 200 years old and the bottom half being Roman. The lower chunk isthought to have formed part of a colossal sculpture dedicated to Minerva in a temple on nearby Watling Street, and was carved from Cotswold limestone during the reign of Trajan or Hadrian. You can only see it from beyond the railings however, unless you're a resident or their guest and willing to abide by the list of rules posted by the gate. No daffodils and cherry blossom are currently present, but give it a few months.
» Have you done an A–Z of shops, defunct or extant?
AJ Sports, Robin Hood Way, Kingston Vale
Fordham Sports was founded by John Fordham in 1984 and claimed to be "the largest stockist of specialist Cricket, Hockey and Rugby equipment in the South of England". Their shop can be found on the A3 just south of Richmond Park - in fact three shops because they expanded into nextdoor early on. Then in 2019 they sold up to AJ Sports, a more cricket-focused business with branches in Clapham, Harrow and Guildford, who haven't yet fully updated the awning. It's very much a 'walls hung with equipment' kind of store arrayed with sports shoes and over 1000 hockey sticks, plus the latest Gray-Nicolls Imperia 2026 cricket bat and various duffle wheelies to stash your kit in. According to their newest window slogan HOCKEY'S BACK! ARE YOU READY? so why wait?
» Could you use alphabetical sandwich bars/cafes as a start point?
Ace Cafe Stonebridge Park
Here's a legendary location - the famous Ace Cafe. It opened in 1938 to cater for passing roadside trade, but very soon upgraded to the Ace Service Station. The current building is a postwar rebuild, made popular then famous, then infamous as a Mecca for bikers and rock'n'rollers. The last fried breakfast was served in 1969, that is until a 2001 reboot that saw the Ace reborn for an older generation. Drop by and there's usually high octane action on the forecourt with a variety of bikes lined up proudly at the roadside for all to admire. If their owners aren't standing outside absorbing adulation they're likely sitting inside in full leathers with their helmet beside them on the table, swapping anecdotes over a nice cup of tea. Ace indeed.
I confess that fiveofthoseyou'veread on here before and two I went out and researched specially yesterday. My apologies if I didn't get round to road-testing your suggestion.
» A-Z of churches and places of worship? All Hallows-on-the-Wall, Bevis Marks, Croydon Minster, Dalston Methodist, East London Mosque etc
» An A-Z of sporting venues might offer considerable scope for variety. Alexandra Palace, Battersea Park, Crystal Palace, Dulwich College etc
» An A-Z of people associated with London rather than places? David Attenborough, Enid Blyton, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Dickens, etc
» An A to Z of people buried in one of the Magnificent Seven burial grounds? John Auldjo, William Booth, Betsi Cadwaladr, Fanny Dickens, etc
» Trees? Amwell Fig, Bexley Charter Oak, Cheapside Plane, Downe Yew, etc
» Cockney rhyming slang expressions working through the alphabet. Apples and pears, Bees and honey, Cream-crackered, Dog and bone, etc
» Perhaps a series of articles that relate London to the phonetic alphabet? (great idea but, erm...)
» Cheeses? (no)
Key question: Would it make a broadly interesting year-long series without getting very stuck at X and Z?
I'm still mulling it over...
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