The joy of six o'clock commuting

Today the Government announced an £8 billion investment in the railways to increase capacity. For us long-suffering commuters who spend hours standing on overcrowded trains it can't come soon enough. However, it's not just the trains that need improving, some of the infrastructure is in a pretty poor state  and could do with a little TLC.

Commuting to London by train is not too hard if you live near a main station.  Me, I live in the sticks and my local station, Thatcham, is a poor country cousin to the likes of  Reading, Newbury or Oxford.

I have to be up at 4 am every day to get an early train to London and one Saturday last year I found myself the only punter for the 6 am train. Looking around the deserted station I was shocked by the state of the place. 

The ticket office/waiting room was closed, the clock wasn't working, neither was the information screen and the ticket machine had been vandalised. To cap it all, being a Saturday, I couldn't even get a free Metro to read. What a depressing scene.

The only positive thing was a sign saying "Welcome to Thatcham". A little ironic when you consider the welcome that awaits any would be traveller  arriving in a world without time and information and the prospect of a penalty fare if caught travelling without a ticket.

Since then, things have improved. The ticket machine has been repaired and the information system given a software upgrade and no longer slips into Jackson Pollock mode. The station has  been repainted and a new Help Point console has been installed. Unfortunately, all the clocks have been removed but I suppose you can always use the Help Point to ask someone the time.

If this happens again I would like to complain to the Fat Controller about the poor facilities but as I'm half English, half Scottish, I have a slight dilemma on how best to approach the matter.

My English side says, phone the head office and politely explain that Thatcham Station has failed its usability acceptance test and wouldn't it be a good idea to spend some of the thousands I pay in fares each year on improving the place.

My inner Scot says climb to the top of the footbridge and shout abuse at the world - it's not my fault that my inner Scot is Rab C. Nesbitt.

Up the Gherkin

In 2008 I found myself working for an Insurance Broker in the City. Their office is in Mitre Street, in the shadow of the tower that everyone calls the "Gherkin". Officially, it's 30 St Mary Axe.

I used to spend my lunch hours in the Gherkin plaza just taking in the symmetry of the excellent design and construction that makes this building one of the best in Europe.

I always wanted to go inside and one day a colleague, who knew someone who worked there, managed to get me into the restaurant on the top floor (floor 39). The food wasn't very spectacular, but the view certainly was.

Bearing in mind that you have to photograph  everything through curved glass (lots of reflections and flare) and it was a very dull day, I was quite amazed at some of the pictures I took.

The ceiling of the 39th floor, Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast.

Canary Wharf, the London Eye and the 2012 Olympic Stadium.

Top: Tower of London. Bottom: Looking west down the Thames - Waterloo Bridge, Hungerford Bridge and Cleopatra's Needle.

Below: Lunchtime at the plaza on a typical summer's day. Seasonal refreshment from the Sterling,  a pub on the ground floor of the Gherkin.

What type are you?

I have just finished reading a lovely little book about type design and typography - boring? Definitely not.

Typefaces are a major part of our visual experience and anyone with a computer probably has access to dozens of fonts. We all like to use them to express ourselves in email, letters or, if you're like me,  creating that special menu or party invitation using Photoshop.

So whether you find it interesting or not, type is everywhere and has a strong emotional effect on how we perceive and react to so many forms of visual communication.

The author of Just My Type, Simon Garfield, has produced a really interesting account of the history and development of type. Simon's excellent knowledge of the subject and entertaining and witty style make this a really good read.

This book explains how fonts have become such a big part of our lives and also offers some advice on how and when to use them. The book itself uses over  a 100 fonts with  chapters describing a particular font and its designer.  (It's worth reading for the chapter on Comic Sans alone.)

The story is right up-to-date and includes the fonts you see on your mobile phone but starts with the earliest type designs produced in the 1440s. The book is also a potted history of printing technology and on a personal note it covers my career in printing exactly.

When I started in print in 1962, everything was hot metal and letterpress - William Caxton could have walked into any 1960s printing house and started setting type. By the time the Beatles disbanded in 1970 everything had changed. Offset Litho was king and hot metal had given way to computer-set type on film. ( or "cold type" as we called it in those days).

This book covers nearly all the typesetting technology I worked with, hot metal (Monotype and Linotype), the Lumitype film setter, the IBM Selectric Typewriter with the interchangeable type sphere ("golf ball"), which could be used to produce camera-ready copy to make a printing plate.  I used a Selectric a lot in the early days of computer typesetting, then we called them "idiot boards" as you didn't have to make any decisions about word breaks, just type in the text.

The Selectric typewriter was connected to a punch producing paper tape which was fed into a computer. The computer converted the octal encoded punched tape into  punched tape that could be read by the control unit of the  Lumitype film setter.  All the printing technology was in the computer and one of the first jobs I did when I started using computers was to type in a hyphenation dictionary.

There is even a chapter on Letraset, the rub down lettering that made everyone a typographer - I still have a stack of this stuff in the attic. The description of how Letraset was made is really interesting. The process took a long time to create a complete font as every character was cut by hand before photographing and the type cutters worked in a windowless factory to avoid dust.

All major type designers are mentioned in the book, Eric Gill and Edward Johnston (who created the font for the London Underground) are two of my particular favourites. Although Gill would probably be on the sex offenders register if he were still alive.

There are some interesting asides, such as the designer who writes a blog about inappropriate typefaces used in films. This is just too pedantic, please get a life. Then there was the outrage when IKEA changed its font from  Futura to Verdana, apparently the O in Futura reminded everyone of the classic Swedish meatball. The New York Times commented that this was probably the biggest controversy ever to come out of Sweden. You can't mess with IKEA - they're part of the furniture.

2012 Headline, about to take over
the world. Seen here on the
London Underground.

There is also a section about an online questionnaire that you can use to find out "What type are you?". I like to think that I'm Bodoni, slim, elegant, upright and oozing class, although others see me more as Expanded Antique, which to my eyes is Bodoni that has aged, suffers from rheumatism and doesn't do very much exercise.

The book also tries to define the world's worst typeface, and guess which one it is - 2012 Headline, the font chosen for the 2012 Olympics. It's nice to know that Team GB have already won an Olympic medal, coming first in the crap typeface competition.

Just My Type by Simon Garfield, published by Profile Books, 2010.
Colon-Dash rating:  :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Spot the difference

Berkshire Life                                                             Private Eye

I'm a regular reader of Private Eye and bought the 12th November issue as soon as it came out. The other day I was thinking about a joke in Private Eye whilst doing my weekly shop in Waitrose - chuckling to myself behind a display of Poilâne Rye and Currant Bread (£3.95 a loaf) - one of the essential range in this part of the country.

On looking up from the bread, the latest edition of Berkshire Life caught my eye and I just had to buy a copy and put the two covers together.

Both magazines are trying to exploit the success of "Downton Abbey" a TV drama series that was recently shown on ITV in the UK.  As I detest period drama, I didn't actually watch "Downton Abbey" but millions of people did.

"Downton Abbey" is set in the Edwardian era. It was written by Julian Fellowes, who won an Oscar for his Gosford Park screenplay.

Highclere Castle, the home of Lord Carnarvon, was used as the fictional "Downton Abbey".  Highclere Castle is just down the road from where I live in West Berkshire but it's in Hampshire, so what it's doing on the cover of Berkshire Life I don't really know.

The Berkshire Life cover is a publicity shot from the TV production company and shows the actual cast. Private Eye's Photoshop pastiche has members of the Coalition Government plus a former Prime Minister -  they actually look more Edwardian than the actors (if you're going to set the country back 100 years you might as well look the part I suppose).

My picture below shows what a depopulated  Highclere Castle looks like.

Spot the difference answers: The leading lady in the TV drama was played by Dame Maggie, in the Private Eye version she is played by Baroness Maggie. Dame Maggie is a talented actress and national treasure and Baroness Maggie isn't.

New office

3 Thomas More Square, London. The home of the "IT Crowd".

I'm on the move, changing offices.

My current employer, News International, is moving to a new office block just across the road from their current site at Wapping in East London.

The new office may look familiar to avid viewers of "The IT Crowd", Channel 4's brilliant comedy. A picture of the office is shown as a continuity link between scenes in the show and is supposed to be the office of the fictional company in the sitcom. The "IT Crowd" are the IT support staff and their initial response to any PC problem is "Have you turned it off and on again?". This reminds me of my first encounter with IT support when I worked for a large computer company in the 1990s, in those days PCs were too large for the desktop and stood on the floor. Then the response from the support guys was "Have you tried kicking it?"

The "IT Crowd" production team go to great lengths to set the right atmosphere for the geeky characters in the cast and have managed to find lots of old computer equipment and artifacts to set just the right atmosphere. I remember one episode where one of the characters wore a T-shirt sporting the acronym "RTFM", which was the first acronym I learned when I started my IT career.

Wapping -  heading for a make over.

News International are moving from their current office at Wapping so that it can be redeveloped over the next ten years. It will emerge completely rebuilt and with the largest roof garden in Europe.

The Wapping office is a very large site and was the home of News International's UK titles, "The Times", "Sunday Times", "Sun" and the "News of the World". I've been working on a new version of the "News of the World" website and I've also done some updates to the "Sun" website.

The News of the World clock, a bit
of UK newspaper history
hanging on the wall at Wapping.

I'm really proud to be part of the web development team at the "News of the World" as, technically, this is one of the best sites I've ever worked on. There's still some work to do so I'll be at News International for a little longer.

However, as a contractor in the IT business I will eventually move on to pastures new, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a look at some of the other places where I've worked during the past few years (in no particular order). 


Other interesting offices in my career

Team Disney, Orlando, Florida - really amazing!

Team Disney in Orlando, Florida is without doubt the most interesting and unusual office I've ever worked in.  I did a stint there when I was employed by ioko, a UK-based Internet company.

This is cutting edge architecture. At first glance it looks like Didcot Power Station meets Micky Mouse closely followed by  an explosion in a paint factory. It was designed by Japanese architect Aarata Iozaki and completed in 1990. The large circular tower is actually a sun dial, the largest in America.

In contrast to the colourful exterior, the interior layout is very conventional, four open-plan levels inside a vast atrium. Very modern, very clean. There was only one thing I found a little puzzling and that was in the loo where there was always one urinal set very low down. Whenever I used the facilities I got a little nervous thinking that any moment a cast member from "Snow White" would walk through the door - Hi-ho!

Channel 4, Television

Channel 4 Television HQ, Horseferry Road, London

I worked at Channel 4 in 2007 on their 4oD (Channel 4 on Demand) download site. The building was designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership and completed in 1994. I took this photo just after the company had erected a large temporary sculpture, in the shape of a figure 4, in the forecourt (perhaps I should say fourcourt).

What I liked about Channel 4 was all the cultural activities that went on. In the basement of the building is a large area known as "The Drum", which contains a cinema and a large reception area. It featured in the film "Bridget Jones's Diary".  (I loved walking down the stairs to the reception area in the footsteps of Hugh Grant. )

"The Drum" is used as a venue for lunchtime lectures and also for previewing new Channel 4 films. It was great to spend a lunch hour munching a sandwich and listening to some really interesting and talented people.

The Point

The Point, Paddington Basin, London

The Point is a large office designed by Terry Farrell and Partners. It is home to Orange and Marks & Spencer. I worked there in 2009 for Orange as a member of a team developing their iPhone website. The Orange office area is in the basement. Consequently, I was sitting below the water line of the adjacent canal basin. Had the canal wall given way I would have been flushed through Little Venice.

From a commuting point of view working at The Point was a dream, it is just behind Paddington station so I could walk off the station platform and be at my desk within ten minutes of my train arriving in London.

LBi Brick Lane

LBi, Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London

I was very pleased to get a contract at LBi, it's one of the top Advertising and Creative agencies in Europe. The office is an old brewery and is probably the oldest office building I've ever worked in.

The interior is a cavern, designed to hold large vats of beer. The beer has almost disappeared from the brewery apart from Friday afternoons when, as a treat, the office bar is opened for free drinks all round.

My first day was in the middle of December and it was really cold, as the building takes a long time to warm up I was still freezing at lunch time so I went over to the nearby Spitalfields Market and bought some extra clothes. I eventually got used to the climate in the office but LBi sent me off to work at a client's office in Cheshire, a long way north of London, which was rather depressing during the bleak Arctic winter of 2010.

Working at LBi was very stimulating, I love being around creative people and I really enjoyed my time there.  LBi are very innovative, for example, in the reception area is a large mobile, which is made from dozens of old mobile phones, all working. You can log in to the mobile and play a tune on the phones - brilliant.

The future

As I said before, I'll probably be looking for a new contract soon, but where? As part of the celebrations for launching the "News of the World" website, the development team ended up at the "Captain Kidd" pub in Wapping, right on the river.

After a few pints of "Samuel Smiths", the lights across the river at Canary Wharf looked really inviting, so I think that's my next target (dream on).

After all, when working in London the world is your Oyster card.

The "3 for 2" curse

I like books, I buy a lot of books, unfortunately I very rarely read most of them and they end up at the local charity shop. I often wonder what sort of people buy the books that I can't be bothered to read, which made me think about why I buy books in the first place.

My love of the printed word goes back to my early working life in the 1960s, when I worked in the book printing business. My passion means that I can't resist walking into a bookshop and parting with my hard-earned cash.

As Oscar Wilde said "I can resist everything except temptation" and I can't resist the temptation of the "3 for 2" offer, available at most good bookshops - especially Waterstones. Invarably, the book that takes my fancy has a "3 for 2" sticker on the front. Having grabbed the book I want, I have a dilemma - I don't really want to buy any more books but now I've not got a choice, I have to take another two books to the till to claim my free one.

I then spend the next hour or so looking for books included in this marvelous offer that I'm too weak willed to resist. I don't really care what the book is about as long as it's included in the offer. Consequently I take home a lot of books that I never read and, albeit with the best intentions, inflict a headache on Oxfam who have to sell them without the benefit of the "3 for 2" ploy.

Sad but true: I always smell a book before I buy. I love the scent of the anti-set-off spray that is used to prevent the ink smudging when the wet sheets roll off the press.  Sometimes, when my sinuses are really clear, I can tell the name of the printer from just one sniff.

Autumn at Stourhead, Wiltshire

Autumn at Stourhead is always a visual delight. The gardens contain thousands of trees as well as some classical temples, a grotto and a bridge, all situated around a large lake. Total chocolate box.

I am a frequent visitor to Stourhead and I was very fortunate on this occasion as the sun put in an appearance, which made the leaves come alive and also produced some spectacular reflections on the still dark waters of the lake.

Stourhead gardens were laid out between 1741 and 1780 to a classical 18th-century design, they are owned by the National Trust and are open all year round. If you get an opportunity please pay a visit, you won't be disappointed.