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In other news:

It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.

Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.

A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.

We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?

By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.

Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.

London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.

We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...

I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...

(*) That is not a euphemism ...

Very nice. I am glad you enjoyed the Nash Terraces. They are sublime

Meh. They're identikit housing. No individuality...

Fascinatingly, that was one of the accusations levelled by Victorians against Georgian housing. "It's all the same". So Victorians wanted more ornamentation - stained glass, weird balconies, ornate cornices, etc

The postwar era remains an abominable stain, however. It is probably the only architectural era, esp in housing, which has not improved over time. We are now many many decades from the housing and townscapes of the 50s and 60s, and they STILL look like shit

They aren't even that cheap, either, if you take into account the higher level of maintenance as the concrete crumbles and the asbestos needs to be replaced and the number that have been torn down as dismal slums.

A terrible blight, not that the architectural profession has shown much sign of learning or apologising.

I think you are being too generous to the Georgian and Victorian periods there.

They built plenty of shit - eg back to back slums - but the worst stuff has gone, either abandoned or demolished or collapsed.

I am so old I also remember the old St Pancras. Going back 30 years now.

There was a station pub - I forget the name (probably the wheelwrights or something) - but never has there been a more sodden, stained and squelching carpet or overflowing ashtrays and broken toilets. Pickled eggs sat in jars on the counter. There was red or there was white. Or a fizzy lager or two. Pork scratchings were twice the price of the outside world.

If you went outside there was all the faded, broken grandeur of the old hotel and the steps down to the streets and across the road an irish themed pub.

Larkin had it right in the magisterial 'Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel'

In other news:

It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.

Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.

A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.

We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?

By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.

Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.

London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.

We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...

I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...

(*) That is not a euphemism ...

Very nice. I am glad you enjoyed the Nash Terraces. They are sublime

Meh. They're identikit housing. No individuality...

Fascinatingly, that was one of the accusations levelled by Victorians against Georgian housing. "It's all the same". So Victorians wanted more ornamentation - stained glass, weird balconies, ornate cornices, etc

The postwar era remains an abominable stain, however. It is probably the only architectural era, esp in housing, which has not improved over time. We are now many many decades from the housing and townscapes of the 50s and 60s, and they STILL look like shit

They aren't even that cheap, either, if you take into account the higher level of maintenance as the concrete crumbles and the asbestos needs to be replaced and the number that have been torn down as dismal slums.

A terrible blight, not that the architectural profession has shown much sign of learning or apologising.

I think you are being too generous to the Georgian and Victorian periods there.

They built plenty of shit - eg back to back slums - but the worst stuff has gone, either abandoned or demolished or collapsed.

He is cunning and malevolent and not senile unlike some claim (I do think he knows what he is doing even if he is both stupid and very ignorant).

No, he's senile

He was ranting last week about the guy that appointed Powell

Wanna guess who it was?

It is, of course, also possible to have a high IQ and to have dementia (not that I think this applies to Trump). Indeed, individuals with high IQs are better at masking memory loss, which can be a problem when you want to pick up signs of dementia early.

Having been drilled in IQ tests since the age of nine (they were an essential part of the eleven-plus) I was diagnosed with a nasty dose of it half a century before neurodiversity was invented. Back in the day it was identified through trivial puzzles like 'what's the next item in the following sequence' .....

(1) ch, d, dd, e, f, ......

(2) pp, p, mp, mf, f, ......

The answer is the same in both cases and, of course, PBers with a high IQ will get it without sweating.

Not really testing IQ though, are they? Welsh language and musical notation? IQ is logic and reasoning, not knowledge based.

The EU folds to Trump

https://x.com/kobeissiletter/status/1949523437585609064?s=61

That's enormously advantageous to EU carmakers, given that US car makers are struggling with massive tariffs on steel and aluminum, and auto parts. It will almost certainly be cheaper to build cars in the EU and export them to the US, than to build them in the US

Spencer Hakimian
@SpencerHakimian
*TRUMP: EU AGREES TO PURCHASE $750B OF AMERICAN ENERGY ANNUALLY

The European Union doesn’t even consume $600B of energy per year.

So the EU has agreed to overpay by $150 billion?

No wonder Trump is happy.

The first report we had of it did not say "annually".

Calm down PB, Trump is bullshitting.

Save your blood pressure for tomorrow.

It is also reported as UP TO $750B of energy. It could be anything. It is Trumpian BS.

So, they're not allowed to buy more than $750bn of US energy?

It's also absurd, given that energy is basically fungible.