Olympic torch floats past Barnes

It was the biggest thing to happen in Barnes and Mortlake since, well, the last flotilla. And that was only in June, for the Jubilee.

You can wait centuries for a flotilla, and then two of them come along at once.

Yesterday the torch was at the BBC in White City with Brucie, and sunshine!

Inside Television Centre

The BBC is selling Television Centre, but part of it will be leased back to the Corporation. Programmes will continue to be made, but there will also be other companies working on the site.

Here are a few pictures I took recently on my own errands around TC (as we called it) - to record its closing BBC-owned days. It looks pretty weird and gloomy. But it's a place to get things done, even if it is a bit Kafkaesque when you stop and look.

Welcome to TC, through the Frithville Gardens entrance (above).

Inside the donut.

Temporary tape storage (above), for Current Ops (below). This is where you take your finished programme to get it "into the system". Once there, if all the paperwork has been done right, it should get transmitted at the appointed hour. 

This button looks as though it would work, but the escalator hasn't for years. 

Goodbye, and back out to Frithville Gardens. 

I've got more pics of the deepest recesses of Television Centre here. 

Barnes Fair - rather unfair

It would be nice to say that 'wet weather didn't dampen the spirits...', but probably not true. It didn't stop people turning up though, and comparisons with Glastonbury were heard more than once. The highlight for me was the excellent jazz band in the churchyard. Not loud enough to wake the dead but good enough to cheer them up perhaps.