As part of the gearing up for the weekend of Jubilee bunting and frolic, we're starting to see boats arriving for Sunday's grand river pageant.

At Canary Wharf and St Katharine's Dock, the smaller boats are being parked together, and many are already getting themselves decorated. Out in the river, there were this afternoon only one or two of those listed for the Avenue of Sail (so we have to assume they're coming overnight or first thing on Friday).

Strange how, in a high wind, the flapping of plastic bunting sounds exactly like a heavy cloudburst. I do hope it isn't an omen.

New arrivals

Two days ago, the swan nesting on Millwall Dock was diligently turning three eggs to stop them overheating. Today, there is one contented-looking ball of fluff peeping out from underneath her wing, some frantic cheeping from somewhere underneath, and a head that looked sadly inert until some maternal nibbling prompted it into rather groggy movement.

As I recall, the first year I was here, cygnets hatched on May 14th, so perhaps the cold spell earlier this month delayed this brood. The coots have been breeding all over the dock for some time; the one who won the confrontation just by the swans' nest is still there, seeing off any attempt by the new cygnets' father to use the back way to get to their nest.

The grebes who were scared off have moved upmarket, to a purpose-built set of floating mats looking like artificial marshes, handily placed by one of the main entrances to Canary Wharf. Here there are two pairs of grebes as well as several coots and moorhen, each with their own area. None of them seem bothered by the others, or by the passing traffic and people who stop to watch them.

There's been at least one grebe chick (grebeling?) for several weeks now; it's already much bigger than its parents, and quite happy to come close to people on the dock walls.

Shiny, shiny!!

Who wouldn't like the idea of an easy-to-clean, coffee- and doughnut-proof, sleek and shiny keyboard and mouse like this?

And what could be more appropriate to so many internet users than a technology called Frustrated Total Internal Reflection?

Self-restraint or holding fire?

I can't help wondering if it's a superhuman resistance to temptation, or simply a desire to hold something in reserve, that's preventing the Guardian from using a certain headline.

J. Alfred Prufrock's new kitchen

TS Eliot may not have been the most admirable of people, but he could certainly nail down a moment or two. This quotation was on the wall of the café where I stopped for a restorative coffee after a session in the showroom:

..And time yet* for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea....








*Eliot, of course, was not of the world of "Hurry! 50% discount ends Friday!" marketing

Insecurity

Strange how unsettling even minor unexpected change can be.

It wasn't so much the finding, on arrival home from Barcelona, that the dishwasher had gone into a huff for my exchange partner, since I don't use it much (perhaps that was the source of the problem). But a few days later the washing machine threw a wobbly (literally - that's what happens when you try to wash too many bath towels at once): like the rest of the kitchen it's nearly 20 years old and the repairman said five years ago that its last repair was just that.

No matter that it was hardly a matter of having to beat the washing on the stones by the riverside (there are launderettes within walking distance, and thanks to the internet, choosing, ordering and taking delivery of a new one is a virtually painless process - apart, of course, from paying for it). No matter that the new machine was delivered in a couple of days and easily connected: there was still a day or two of the oddest sense of unease. Even when it was up and running, there was a period of re-adjustment, even a faint (very faint) echo of what, perhaps, parents of a new baby ask themselves: "It's very quiet - is that too quiet? Should I check if it's all right? Now it's making a noise - what does that mean? It's not leaking, is it?"

It's a reminder that the ordinary certainties of daily life can't be taken for granted at any time, and less and less as the decades advance. More practically, it's one more sign that the whole damn kitchen is about due to be replaced. No more "just looking" and shiny-fondling in showrooms: time for decisions and upheaval. Not that it's unexpected, or a financial problem (money was put aside on the off-chance some time ago, and as it happens some suppliers have some very attractive offers available at the moment); but my toleration threshold for the slog of taking decisions and waiting out the disruption seems to get lower and lower.

Security

We have visitors.

For the past week, the Navy's largest warship has been moored between us and Greenwich. A helicopter carrier which also carries Marines and their landing craft for a variety of amphibian duties, HMS Ocean is (along with anti-aircraft missiles on Blackheath and on various residential roofs in East London) part of the current exercise to scare us all silly reassure us that the powers-that-be have the means and plans to see off any malefactors intending to cause mayhem at the Olympics.

All week we have had helicopters buzzing self-importantly around and various inflatables and landing craft James-Bonding it up and down the river practising various manoeuvres. Whether all this is based on solid intelligence, worst-case imagination or just a show of determination, those who know aren't telling, and I'm not sure I feel any more or less secure than I did before they turned up; let's just hope we don't have to find out if it was necessary or not.

Either way, on Bank Holiday Monday the ship was open to visitors; even before opening time, hundreds of people were queueing up for the short boat ride over. The steep ladders up into the hangar area give you some idea of her size, but even so, it was a surprise to find the first thing on display was an ordinary white Transit van. Up a further very steep climb to the flight deck were yet more trucks and transporters and lifting gear, not to mention the helicopters. These were all roped off for the occasion, but the children among us were allowed to clamber happily all over the trucks and pose (under expert supervision, of course) for family photos with various types of alarming-looking guns. Down again into the hangar, some dozen or so of the ship's areas of activity each had a display set up, from Marines to radar operators to cooks to doctors, complete with a charity cycling team drumming up support. Even so, this massive space is only the top part of the ship: all the crew and what supports them are squeezed in below.

And, as required by modern PR techniques, we exited via the souvenir shop.

Where the body police lead...

.. the grammar police are sure to follow.

I know some people........

...who might quite like this to be standard equipment on all bikes:

It's not often one gets to drink a coffee with 1000 tons of ship hanging overhead, but now you can (at a price). The Cutty Sark has been reopened, and I managed to get in with the first group of visitors this morning.

The ship has been raised several metres to rest on a secure steel framework rather than its own keel (which was deforming its shape and threatening eventual collapse of the hull), and the wear and tear of decades (not to mention the damage from the fire during restoration work) has been repaired and refurbished with a degree of care and resort to traditional materials and craftsmanship that borders on the obsessive.

You enter through the lower hold, with the bones of the ship on full display, along with plenty of information about the tea trade (including a special space for the tiniest children).

Then it's up to the tween-deck, a broad open space for cargo (and for the captain to practise his cycling and roller-skating), with most of the crew squeezed into quarters in the bows. Here the focus of the displays shifts to the wool trade and to the experience of working on the ship: there's a chance to practise your skill at steering to catch the fastest wind, and to sit on a seat that rolls while you watch old film of sailing ships in the roughest of seas.

Onward and upward to the top deck, with the officers' quarters, the galley (and pens for pigs and chickens, complete with sound effects), and the masts and rigging towering above. Then you "go ashore" into a staircase and lift block, to take you down to the dry dock itself, and the most dramatic element:

coming out from an anonymous corridor to find the shining brass cladding of the hull and keel lowering above the open space (which will of course be let out for lucrative private shindigs).

Here there is a small cafe, and a striking collection of ships figureheads,

dominated by Nannie, the Cutty Sark herself, clutching the tail of Tam o' Shanter's horse. More displays on the restoration of the ship and its impact over the years of its being a tourist attraction, and then, as ever, one exits via the gift shop.

It's not cheap (and not just to get in - nearly £5 for a coffee and small cake?!), but then neither was the restoration. Worth it? It was for me: but it may be years before I go again.

One thing Barcelona does better than London

Litter bins in the metro, or rather, clear plastic bags on a simple stand - one every few yards, so that no-one has any excuse for not taking those few steps. Granted, in this case it seems to have worked only with those people who had a bag right beside the bench; but rather proves my point - it's got to be better to have that much provision than, as we do, having to call in the station cleaners to build-ups all over the place.

It's not as though Spain has any the less to worry about in terms of security, but I suspect TfL's argument (if it bothered to make it) would be that it's actually more cost-effective to do without bins and just clear up as and when. The problem with that, of course, is the wider social effect of people getting used to just leaving litter wherever they like: who's costing that? (Is that what economists mean by "externalities" - making things someone else's problem?)

Barcelona: the Magic Fountain

This apparent cathedral is the National Palace of Catalonia, set in some beautiful gardens, and now housing the national art museum (impressive Romanesque frescos, big Gothic collection, and a huge central arena that could almost double as a bull-ring, not that Catalonia approves of those now).

For most visitors, though, (and anyone who watched the Barcelona Olympics on TV), it's best known as the backdrop for the Magic Fountain, which puts on a display, to some mostly cheesy music, at weekends. It was too cold to hang around until after dark, when the coloured lights make it really spectacular, but all the same it was impressive:

Cold as it was (well, colder than I expected, especially when a sea breeze blew in and the clouds closed out the sun), it was clear that Barcelona is the kind of city where a lot of life is lived outdoors.

The early Saturday sun brought out children to sardana classes in Plaça Catalunya (sponsored by the leading department store - imagine Harrods sponsoring morris dancing classes on Trafalgar Square!), older people to sit on the Ramblas catching up with the world, and a multitasking busker:



More official entertainment for those who are out and about is offered by the public art in the streets and parks, and even on the water:



You're reminded of what the climate here can do when you see avocados and oranges growing out in the open:


But not everyone wants to offer the tourist a warm welcome:

Barcelona: Gaudi's Casa Mila

Here are some of the most striking chimneys and ventilation shafts to grace a Barcelona roofline, on Casa Mila or "La Pedrera", one of Gaudi's most famous apartment buildings (so famous that you need to get there for opening time or be swamped by the deluge of tour parties and other visitors).

They look vaguely like Dr. Who's latest adversaries - though how many of them are decorated with fragments of broken plates and champagne bottles?. The humanoid appearance is hardly surprising, since his designs are heavily influenced by organic forms: to the point that (if I understood the exhibitions inside correctly) he did not produce fully worked out plans, rather sketches and concepts, influenced by his observations and studies of trees, shells, animal skeletons and so on.

The tour stars on the roof, and then you descend to the attic where all this is explained (there's a similar though, as I recall, less exhaustive explanation of all this at his other great creation across the street, the "gingerbread house" Casa Batlló). Much is made of the "catenary arch", the inverted shape of a suspended chain: turn the image of the chain model in this picture upside down, and you have the outline of the structure for one of his churches, complete with its supports, struts and buttresses. And looking the length of the attic, with a succession of arches supporting a single beam is like being in the belly of a whale.

Once you get down to the apartment on show, it all becomes much more conventional, since the (admittedly flexible and flowing) spaces are organised and decorated much more to the tastes of the early twentieth century. What sticks in the mind is the extraordinariness of what's on the roof, as striking a contrast to today's bland office-boxes as it is to the pomposities of its predecessors.

Rooflines

Somehow it's the rooflines in Barcelona that manage to catch the eye.

It's not just Gaudi (as here, at the gatehouse of the Finca Güell) that created such a striking impression, though he is the best known and most culturally respectable.

Almost wherever I've been walking, buildings seem to have their (often top-heavy) decorative topping, whether it be turrets on the Post Office, chimneys, finials lining up to draw the eye towards Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, a Madonna doing something that looks very dangerous indeed, Christopher Columbus waving mariners towards the Customs House, a pair of daffy gateposts, or a colourful crown to mark an otherwise unremarkable street corner.

Language lessons

An interesting discovery on arriving in Barcelona: the metro's train describer display screen in Catalan reassures you that the next train will be a "PROPER TREN" (but if you should be staying out late, as people in Spain tend to do, you may find yourself relying on a Nitbus).

In that dead spot of the evening when northern Europeans are already winding down but Spaniards are barely getting ready for dinner, I was sitting in a bar, almost deserted but for me and the staff (Chinese, as it happened), and a TV displaying impressive diving skills - for a lower league football match. About half a dozen Scandinavian ladies of a certain age arrived, and started ordering (in English): but "Irish coffee" produced a blank response, as did "ice cream". I tried suggesting "café irlandes", but that was no help. "Café con whiskey" got a bit further, but the idea of putting the two together in one cup was clearly more than strange.

But what really stalled the conversation was "cream", in English or Spanish (someone once told me that a lot of Chinese people literally can't stomach dairy products, so this may not be surprising). Eventually, the barman went to look for help, and came back with an Indian man, who eventually managed to find the right word(s) in whatever common language they could find.

The others had long since settled for plain black coffee, and given up on the idea of ice-cream, when a cup was delivered with some whipped cream floating on top; but, to judge by the expression on her face, the lady in question clearly felt she needed a rather stronger slug of whiskey in it.

Des. res., Docklands, self-build

Finding accommodation in Docklands isn't easy. As the estate agents' begging letters keep telling us, there are prospective tenants and buyers just waiting to snap up anything that comes on the market.

It doesn't seem to be any different for the birds around here. There are "official" nesting rafts on the docks, moored out in the middle of Millwall Dock, where the residents are permanently on show; but there's a quiet, unofficial-looking spot between the moored barges and the dock wall, which many seem to find safer. Here the coots and a pair of swans have been nesting for some years, protected by solid wooden fenders that keep the barges away from the wall: and now a pair of crested grebes are trying to join them, collecting an assortment of junk ("I said it'll come in useful some day!").

But this is not the quiet, neighbourly sort of spot that it seemed to be. At the other end of the fender, a pair of coots seemed to have abandoned an egg, as a handful of other coots swaggered in and started squaring up to each other in the traditional East End "D'yer want some then, eh? eh?" style. One coot, perhaps trying to escape, found its way blocked by the irritated swans, as the confrontation spilled over to the grebes' end of the fender, and a shouting match ensued, just as a police siren went off.

Quite like EastEnders, really.

There's pruning..

and there's this. I suppose this ornamental cherry had got a bit large for a small town garden, reaching to roof level as it had.

But this is almost surreal.