London Photos: London life in images by Kim Gilmour

The interior of London City Hall. This spiral doesn’t actually go around the edges of the entire building. Wrapped around three quarters of the spiral are where you’ll see the building’s actual offices. These are a far cry from the almost sterile modern offices you’ll see nowadays — they’re packed full of archival boxes, tonnes of paper and a general mess. One could say this could metaphorically reflect the general Mayoral administration, but seeing as most places I’ve worked have desks that are even worse than this (including mine) and things seem to run OK, whereas the opposite could be said for pristine, clean buildings, I don’t think desks are necessarily a reflection of the greater company. Below are images of some of the desks – you’ll notice plenty of reflections and glare looking into these awkwardly-laid out offices.

A look from the bottom of the ‘Erotic Gherkin’, formally known as the ‘Swiss Re’ tower. We lined up for four hours last Sunday on Open House Day in order to get a better look at it from the inside! Check out Rob’s weblog for more posts soon.

This is the view from London’s City Hall. Stay tuned for more images taken within City Hall itself during London Open House day — I got the photos put on a CD and at work I don’t have any image editing software on my desktop, so the colour balances in all the photos remain incorrect.

Built in 1939, Churchill’s Bunker – Paddock – was a top secret wartime bunker meant to house Churchill and his war cabinet. However, he only ever used it once for a war cabinet meeting, in October 1940, and absolutely hated its dampness.

Paddock sits under some Stadium Housing Association homes in Brook Road, Neasden, North West London. Over the years that it has been abandoned, funky mould and calcite stalactites grow. The many rooms – some functions of which remain unknown to this day – included a place for the war cabinet to meet, a BBC radio broadcast studio, telephone exchanges, a diesel generator, what was one of the oldest air conditioning systems in the world (not working now!) and a military control room.

You can only go visit a couple of times a year – and during London Open House day today, Rob and I joined a group of about 23 others and wandered along the muddy, sticky floors, mouldy ceilings and rusty equipment.

The photo at the very top of this post depicts the old telephone exchanges which linked up to the Cabinet War Rooms, among others. The others are just eerie atmospheric type shots of what else you can see. For some colour photos taken in considerably more llight than we experienced, see Subterranea Britannica’s exhaustive galleries.

Sorry for the lack of posts; unfortunately my laptop, camera battery charger and memory card reader were stolen so I can’t post any photos until these capabilities are reinstated!

Last week, two of the traditional Routemaster bus routes, including the beloved number 73, were discontinued. Anoraks (that’s geeks with an obsession verging on Asperger’s Syndrome) lined Oxford Street, snapping away, taking photos of the ancient hop-on-hop-off icons. There are still a few in service – such as the number 13, which terminates at Golders Green. I’m on my way to Finchley Road.
the last one

During a sunny summer’s day on Hampstead Heath, some elderly people sit for a chat and a read. See NYCLondon for more pinholes of HH.

A walk along Hampstead Heath, Saturday 4 September.

Lady in a red coat wandering up Primrose Hill a couple of weeks ago, taken with a Lomo camera given to me by some former colleagues of mine.

(Apologies if you’ve been to one of my pages and noticed unsavoury spam. I do have the MT Blacklist, but it’s hard always keeping it up to date. It took about three days before I noticed the latest batch of offensive rubbish.)

More photos have been added to RG’s running Photolog at NYCLondon – they are the same ones which have featured on the photoblog, but more accessible.

I’ve got a few Lomo photos which came back from the lab (yes, the photo lab!) today. There’s one nice one I’ll scan in sometime this weekend. Cheers. Oh, and I’ve signed up to the Lomo site but I’m confused by the ticked box: “Do not uncheck if you don’t want to receive no newsletters from lomography,” it says. What does that mean?