Goodbye to BBC Television Centre London

BBC Television Centre has a special special place in British hearts and many of our best loved television shows were made there. But last week it closed its doors for good and will be handed over to the developers. Sometime in the future 3 of the studios will reopen so TV programmes will be shot there again, however it will not be a beating heart of TV production again.

TVC (as it's called in the BBC) was opened for business (show business of course!) in 1960 as a Television Factory, the UK's first. It's famous shape was supposedly based on a question mark drawn on an envelope by the architect Graham Dawbarn when he was trying to think of how the building should look.

I worked for the BBC for 18 years and many of those were spent in TVC which was by far my favourite BBC building.  I was lucky enough to go to 2 events in its last month of operation: Red Nose day, the last big studio event; and, the BBC Club party, just 2 nights before the doors closed.   Red Nose day was a great evening full of celebrities, massive amounts of work to raise £75million for Comic Relief, a huge studio show and several parties. The Club event was current and former staff catching up with each other and saying goodbye to TVC and we seized the moment to sneak our own tour round the empty building. 

I was sad to walk out for the last time, so many good times in this building famous throughout the UK. End of an era for so many of us but, enough nostalgia!  Instead let's enjoy some photos from those nights:

The iconic entrance - going in for the last time.....

 

The  famous 'donut' - central courtyard

Looking down on the entrance from the News block

A sneaky peak in the Match of the Day studio

This sort of thing can happen at TVC - me and David Tennant

Famous BBC corridors

Says it all....

Bye for now.
Sue
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon

St Patrick's Day 2013 in London

St Patrick's Day is big all over the world and I have yet to be anywhere on my travels that does not have an Irish pub to celebrate in!

London really goes for it with Trafalgar Square dressing up to be at the centre of all things green and gold. This year brought us a chilly day with quite a bit of rain but spirits were not dampened for one moment. The square and surrounding streets were full of Irish and non-Irish but everyone was Irish for one day and covered themselves in Irish themed clothes, scarves, hats and wigs - yes, lots of red hair sprouting from strange hats!

There was Irish dancing and Irish bands such as Yngve and The Innocent, Irish DJ sets and a big sing-along to finish off the day. 

No St Patrick's Day is incomplete without a parade so London gave us a suitably quirky version which incorporated the Hare Krishna folk in Irish colours!  Not sure what the dragon was about but perhaps someone can help me with that?

Enjoy some photos from the day - only iphone quality I'm afraid but hopefully you'll still get into the swing of London's Irish day!

Always good to be sure you are at the right event

Having fun in the parade

Hare Krishna getting their Irish groove on...

Dragon, pink wig - anything goes in the parade

Great hair and beards

Plenty of dancing on the stage

Hair, hats, scarves, pints of Guinness - got it all!

Dressed for the job

Of course - the pointy hats

Top branding from the black stuff

No need to say any more

Spot the green...

It's either cold or wet in London at the moment but we are ready for spring to arrive very soon. In the meantime there are tons of indoor activities to visit so you are never stuck for something to do in London whatever the weather.

Bye for now
Sue
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon

It's great to be back in London!

I've been on a big adventure in Tanzania for the last 2 months doing a couple of volunteering projects followed by some travelling. I love to travel but it's great to be back in London again.

There are 2,200 photos documenting this latest trip but you'll be relieved to know that I've chosen just a handful to give you and idea of what I've been doing and where I've visited. Tanzania is a wonderful country with extraordinary wildlife, history dating back to early man and wonderful people but it has great poverty too and needs our support. 

My first voluntary project was based just north of Dar es Salaam where we were building a new hut for a small school for young kids set up by a man who wanted to make sure his daughter had a school to go to. We dug holes, nailed posts, tied lateral wood pieces, wove coconut palm leaves, secured them with string and worked with one saw, one hammer and a few school benches for a ladder! The new hut will act as an extra classroom, somewhere for the kids to eat their meals and to play under, away from the burning sun.  It was 3/4 finished by the time I left but I know the volunteer team completed the roof the following week so it will be in use by now.

Here's how the hut was built:

Getting dug in!

Working on the roof

This is who I was doing it all for

Weaving coconut palm leaves - not easy!

Constructing the roof

My second project was on the wonderfully named Mafia Island - would you believe the capital is shortened to Kili but no Sicilians with machine guns in sight!  Mafia is a most beautiful tropical island with coconut palms, white sand beaches, blue/green warm sea and villages with sand roads. I was on a conservation project surveying bird populations, charting mangroves and cleaning up beaches to clear a path for newly hatched turtles. 

Drift away with these photos:

Whale shark approaching!

Wonderful Maasai dancing

The living conditions on Mafia were very basic so I treated myself to a fabulous safari afterwards to the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti. We were lucky enough to see hundreds of fabulous animals close up, enjoyed the wonderful geography of the Crater and were amazed by tales at the Oldupai Gorge, often called the 'cradle of mankind'.

Enjoy and wish you were there:

Zebra crossing...

No zoom used

Ngorongoro crater

Hands off my food

The final leg of this big adventure took me to Zanzibar where I stayed a couple of days in Stone Town. I loved this exotic town with its Arabic style architecture, hundreds of fabulous doors for which it is famous, great markets and good bars and restaurants. Of course I took a spice tour but mostly just wandered around getting lost and finding new alleyways. It was a centre for the slave trade so has a sad and horrific history from the time for which there is little visible evidence except for the preserved slave pens.  Shuddering, you emerge back into the vibrant world of modern day Zanzibar. 
  

Busy market street

One of the famous decorated doors

A slave pen for 75 people...

The beauty of the beaches and the dhows

Tanzanian men are mad about football and keep up to date via television but also very handy street scoreboards:

Football mad

My next blogs will be all about London again but I wanted to share my Tanzanian adventure before normal service resumes.

Bye for now
Sue
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon 

Looking forward to London 2013

London 2012 was an extraordinary year!  It was full of major events, a time when we welcomed the world to our parties and did ourselves proud. 

We started the big stuff with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, full of street parties, the incredible river pageant of thousands of boats (in the pouring rain), the concert in front of Buckingham Palace and the pomp of the parades and traditional balcony scene of the royals at Buckingham Palace. London was full of Union Flags and we had a party. 

Then London braced itself for the Olympics with some trepidation as the signs were not good. However the torch relay toured the country and did a tour of London cheered on by thousands and things were looking up. Then came the opening ceremony. We gathered in a local bar and held our breath, tho as one of the lucky few to see the technical rehearsal I was confident of success. It was brilliant and bonkers and the games were under way in a surge of patriotic pride. Medals flowed, tears flowed and we rushed to every event we could. The Olympic Park was huge and wonderful but all too soon the games were over and we asked ourselves if we were ready to go for it all again with the Paralympics. 

The Paralympics lifted us all to great heights and the Olympic Park was full of Brits having an amazing day out. We were overawed by the skill of the athletes and new heroes were made and new sports grappled with. Another 2 weeks were spent glued to the TV to follow every moment of these incredible events.

The parade of all the Team GB athletes through London brought the crowds out in their thousands again as no one wanted to let go of the Olympic glow. We waved at our teams as they went past and they waved back and thanked us for our support, what an amazing feeling. 

London has experienced a year like no other, and I hope many of you were there to feel the joy and the fun. 

I'm sure 2013 will have its highs too and I am looking forward to it but still looking back with a sadness at the passing of 2012 and wonder if it will ever be as good again.... let's see.

I'm off to Tanzania for a while and there will be a break in blogs as I'll be away from the world of the internet. So I'd like to wish you all a wonderful 2013 and I'll be back soon.

Bye for now,
Sue
@itsyourlondon
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk