Sam Redlark

image generated by Craiyon There are placenames that you might otherwise never stumble across, were you not inclining your gaze upward towards a fragment of the London Underground map, so as to avoid the shuttered stare of the passenger who is sitting opposite. These outlying suburbs have been drawn into the sprawl of the capital. On paper at least, they are now part and parcel of London. Public opinion, particularly on the issue of where one neighbourhood ends and another begins, moves more slowly than urban development, advancing at a generational pace. To some, these far-flung locales will never be a part of London. They are simply too far away, in terms of time and distance, from the hustle and bustle of the West End. Speaking their names will often conjure bucolic rural imagery that belongs in the first half of the 20th century, if not the one before it. Often these places occupy diversionary loops, or short branches, at the distant ends of one of the more far-reaching London Unde...

This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 5th February, 2023. The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site, so it is appearing here instead. This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use. ~ What would be included on an up-to-date list of the seven wonders of the world? image generated by Craiyon I have limited my selection to three places that I have visited, and can vouch for as being sufficiently 'wondrous' to qualify. The Hotline Traversing the Ploskiysneg (Southern Russian Tundra) and therefore, in the present political turmoil, inaccessible to Westerners, the Hotline is a miracle of 1960s engineering filtered through the prism of the previous decade's science fiction utopianism. It is a ground-based monorail that uses guided fluctuations in the track tem...