 To the South Bank's Alchemy festival on Sunday - a celebration of South Asian culture, with a Bollywood dance teach-in (phenomenally popular), and food stalls which sell the sort of stuff you wish Indian restaurants would.
Between us, we managed a papri chaat, a chole bhatura and a masala dosa. Grand!
 The craft exhibits in the Royal Festival Hall were greatly depleted however, thanks to HMG. Seven of the stalls - that's more than half the total - had notes saying that the artists had been 'delayed due to visa'.
Alchemy is now approaching its half-way mark, so I suspect these guys are never going to make it to the South Bank. A pity!
Will Paula Milne's TV drama 'White Heat' do for Tufnell Park what the televising of White Teeth did for Cricklewood and Willesden? Not so much make it chic and fashionable, but at least give it a toehold on the rim of modern British culture. Milne's story about a group of sixties students who share a house in Tufnell Park, their young lives interlaced with the present day as they gather to mourn one of their number, is a wonderful piece of mythmaking about the '60s - the sex, politics, music and sense of opportunity. (Has White Heat Got the 1960s Right?, the Guardian asked). It's also about the first time Tufnell Park has made its mark in popular culture since ... no, it's simply the first time.Tufnell Park's absence from public consciousness is all the more remarkable given the number of media types who live on the streets either side of Tufnell Park Road (the main drag is more resistant to gentrification, and still largely bedsit land). The wiki article on Tufnell Park has a list of luvvies and the like which puts the area almost on a par with Primrose Hill and Maida Vale. But the entry is also reduced to commenting that 'the shabby genteel reputation of Tufnell Park made it a standard comic reference in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries'. Thanks a lot! And its claims for Tufnell Park's cultural footprint are wildly exaggerated - there is certainly no hard evidence to place Mr "Nobody" Pooter on the TP side of north London's railway tracks. So, where in Tufnell Park is the 'White Heat' house? And where were the exterior scenes shot? Asking this morning at the Tufnell Park farmers' market (another sign that the area is making it - there's even 'Tufnell Park honey' ice cream on sale, a bit like Tupelo honey minus van Morrison), I was told that some filming was done by the side of the Tufnell Park playing fields ... and that the location manager lives locally and had been buying baguettes and broccoli and stuff a few moments earlier. Anyone able to supply more details?And while we're at it, can someone explain the denouement? The phone rang just as Orla's safe was being unlocked, and when next I turned to the TV the gang were all swearing to meet again soon, and - moist eyes, firm handsakes, and feline hugs - heading off in the direction of Tufnell Park tube, or Flavours deli or wherever. LATER: a browser comments - Exterior shots are of a house in Avenue Park Road, Tulse Hill. Yours for 1.6 million: http://www.foxtons.co.uk/property-for-sale-in-west-norwood/chpk0654891. Can it be true? Even in its fifteen seconds of fame, Tufnell Park is eclipsed by, of all places, Tulse Hill!
 Ashvin Kumar's 'Inshallah, Football' is an engrossing and powerfully told documentary film about contemporary Kashmir. Its focus is a young Kashmiri footballer, Basharat, who is deemed good enough to play in Brazil ... but can't get an Indian passport, because his father was a leading militant in his youth. The film takes in everything from the routine torture of young Kashmiris in the 1990s, to dating Kashmiri-style in (if I've got this right) the Arabica coffee bar at the Broadway hotel. The story is about the misery of contemporary Kashmir - but it also takes in the remarkable story of Bashir Baba, Basharat's father, who was a key Hizbul militant, was caught and tortured, and is now both a prominent Kashmiri businessman and reconciled to his torturer ... and the Argentinian-Brazilian couple, Juan and Priscla, who settled in Srinagar, set up a football academy, and became inspirations to dozens of young Kashmiris. The film ends with Basharat getting his passport and waiting for his visa for Brazil, but the soccer academy threatened with closure because its founders' Indian visas are not being renewed. That was in late 2009. So what's happened since? Well, from a brief tour round the internet: the good news - Juan and Priscla are still in Kashmir and their soccer academy appears to be going strong; on the other hand, to judge by his Facebook page, Basharat is not in Sao Paulo these days but still in Srinagar. I suppose that's a score draw - a better result than Kashmir usually gets. LATER: I've now heard that Basharat did get to Brazil. By the time his visa came through, he was apparently too old to go as a player, but he went there for a few months last year to train as a coach. So the story has a happy ending for Basharat.But less so for Juan and his soccer academy in Kashmir. There have been moves to impose a ban on his activities - this recent article from the Greater Kashmir newspaper explains more.
To the farthest reaches of Docklands in the past week - and the University of East London's Docklands campus. It lies well beyond Canning Town, not far off Beckton. A windswept spot on the north side of the vast Royal Albert Dock, which opened in 1880 - with a full three miles of quays - and closed about a century later. The photo above, taken from the campus and looking west and south, shows the old Silvertown Tate and Lyle plant (there's a close-up below), the focus of a marvellous piece of oral history The Sugar Girls, and to its right, City Airport, also on the south side of the Albert dock. In the distance you can just make out the Dome and the towers of Canary Wharf. UEL's campus is adjoining the Cyprus station on the Docklands Light Railway. I was told that the station was named after the Cyprus dock. Not quite. The station took its name from a Victorian housing estate, the Cyprus estate, built for workers at the Royal Albert Dock, and in turn named after Britain's acquisition of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus in 1878.
These pages from a 1917 London street map - with a close-up above - show just how isolated the Cyprus estate must have been. Even thirty years after the docks opened, it was a few streets in the middle of nowhere. The dock opened into the Thames at Gallions, and Gallions Reach is the name of a DLR station lying between Cyprus and Beckton, the end of the line.
 To Leyton tonight, to see my old team Huddersfield Town - the first time I've seen them in a League match for decades.
And a chance to watch their wonder striker, Jordan Rhodes. He scored twice in a 3-1 win for Town over Leyton Orient - a better score line than they deserved. And Rhodes is certainly good, hard working and with great finishing. But not quite a van Persie.
Good to see Huddersfield. Great to see them win. But they are a long way short of being a shoe-in for promotion to the Championship.
The first football match I ever saw was at Huddersfield's old Leeds Road home back in, I guess, 1965 take a year or two either way. The visitors - Leyton Orient. And as far as I can remember, Town won then too!
 Not quite what you might expect at Tufnell Park tube. But somewhere lurking at the barrier, or in the ticket office, there's a real poetry enthusiast. And rather than 'good service on the northern line', we get something much more lyrical. Today's verse is by Jehane Markham - and not her best known poem at that. The previous offering was Rupert Brooke. You know the: 'If I should die, think only this of me ...' one. So there's a wonderful range of material. And at greater length than those ultra short Poems on the Underground which sometimes appear in ad spaces in the tube carriages. (Though I like those too!)
 And there's some lovely bits of whimsy too. So last week I spotted this touch of Christian propaganda - 'Ten Ways to Love' based on extracts from the Bible. For more on this, here's a link. And while I'm not keen on Scripture, as aphorisms most of these are on the 'upbeat' side of unexceptional. Indeed, I think I'll encourage my kids to look, read and inwardly digest. "Answer without Arguing" - indeed! Whoever is behind Tufnell Park's 'Poetry Korner' is a public benefactor. God knows, the area needs a few. And, to cite Philippians, I do trust the authorities will "Enjoy without Complaint".
I've worked in the same building in central London for the most part of thirty years. But I'm still finding new things within a three minute stroll of my workplace.
 This is an old parish watch house straddling what was a lane dividing two ancient parishes, but is now a pedesrtian only dead end, best accessed through a rather bleak set of stairs.
The lane has a resonant name (as do the stairs), and on it - as well as this rather wonderful watch house - is a small property owned by the National Trust - you can just get a glimpse of it on the right in the photo above.
Anyone know where we are?
The previous blog showed the view from my window as it was until this morning - now it's what you see above.
 Thames Water certainly didn't waste any time levelling everything in sight. And now the pastoral reservoir bank looks like a newly cleared copse - or a bit of the Amazon rain forest being converted into beef burger grazing.
Two men, well under a day's work, and a few decades worth of natural growth is gone.
 So what can we still see from our bedroom?
Well, the view's not bad - indeed it has a bit of a 'wow' factor. On my tinny point and shoot, you don't get the full majesty of the evening sun catching Canary Wharf. The human eye picks it up much better.
But the wide vista to the east and south-east is really enticing.
 And to the right you can see, little more than a mile away, Arsenal's Emirates Stadium - often floodlit in the evenings. A compelling piece of modern architecture.
And below you can see our glimpse of the City skyscrapers including, lurking behind some stray branches, the Gherkin - another mpiece of the modern that really works on the London skyline.
I live next to a covered reservoir, the Maiden Lane reservoir, which gives a heartlifting pastoral aspect to this crowded corner of north London. You can see for yourself - the photo above is the view from my bedroom window (which also takes in the Emirates Stadium, Canary Wharf and quite a few of the City skyscrapers). You can just see the top of the reservoir, and the fenced off banks are home to foxes, woodpeckers, finches - a decent array of inner city wildlife.
There's a network of covered reservoirs across north London - at Highgate, Hornsey Rise, Stroud Green and Claremont Square and I'm sure many other locations as well. Most date from the mid-Victorian era when there was an acute need to provide water to a rapidly expanding city.
It's only when repair work started on the reservoir that I was reminded of its name. Maiden Lane was the ancient name for the route from King's Cross to Highgate, now fallen into disuse. The northern part of the lane was renamed Dartmouth Park Hill as long ago as the 1870s.
Sometimes in my more lurid imaginings, I fear that the reservoir is about to burst and sweep us all away down the hill, following - no doubt - the route of the former Fleet River. So I suppose I should be grateful that Thames Water has of late been conspicuous in carrying out repairs.
A few years ago, they rooted out the trees fronting Dartmouth Park Hill, without much of a by your leave, to ensure the integrity of the reservoir. Now another round of inspection and repair appears to have revealed a small crack in the reservoir lining. This means the impending loss of all the trees in the photos above and below, and the driving of massive concrete piles to ensure the reservoir remains stable.
I suppose it's better than losing the space altogether - not that the reservoir and banks are accessible to the public (I've lived alongside for fifteen years without setting foot in it, though the area on the far side of the rails constitutes the windswept and rarely visited Dartmouth Park). But it would be nice to keep the reservoir in one piece - and the trees and bushes and the wildlife they harbour. Is that asking too much?
 The Whittington hospital in north London is much improved. The new wing is light and spacious. The A+E is as friendly and efficient as an inner city casualty ward can be. But spending a Sunday morning at the Whittington isn't anyone's idea of fun.
The saving grace is the wonderful architecture hidden within the hospital grounds.
And above all, there's the majesty of the double-fronted Smallpox and Vaccination Hospital - not visible from the road, but well worth a wander through the maze of Whittington buildings.
The Smallpox and Vaccination Hospital dates from 1848-50 - an Italianate design by Samuel Dawkes (that information lifted from the Camden History Society's excellent Streets of Highgate). The hospital was earlier at Kings Cross, but was displaced by the building of the station.  Two workhouse infirmaries were later built in the same area - one, an equally splendid design just across Dartmouth Park Hill, is now the Highgate Mental Health Centre. You can get a good view of the main infirmary building from Waterlow Park, next door. Highgate cemetery is also very close at hand.
The Whittington was created at the time of the birth of the NHS in 1948 - bringing together Highgate Hospital, on the current main site and including the Smallpox and Vaccination Hospital, with the two former workhouse infirmaries.
 This distinctly dated photo of the Smallpox Hospital - used for many decades as a nurses' home - is from the history page of the Whittington's website. The name of course comes from the Dick Whittington legend. The Whittington stone, where young Dick was prompted to 'turn, turn and turn again' back to London, is nearby on Highgate Hill.
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