’Tis the season, and Christmas trees are popping up all over the place.
But no mere festive fir would do in ultra-trendy King’s Cross, so we have this visual treat instead, described as “a chaos of shapes, colours and lights, with an alternative Christmas soundtrack to boot”.
In Diary’s eyes, it is a delight, one that brings to mind the zany psychedelia of a certain vintage of children’s television. It certainly wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Chorlton and the Wheelies.
But there is doubtless deeper significance to the installation, created by Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, titled (in capitals, no question mark) “DOES THE ITERATIVE FIT”.
So while it’s certainly pleasing to the eye, it raises a question common to much modern art – “What does it mean?”
Exceptional is the rule
Diary is putting the final touches to this year’s Christmas shopping list, but what do you get a major London landlord that has everything? Judging from Shaftesbury’s latest annual results, perhaps a stocking-filling thesaurus.
The West End real estate investor used the term “exceptional” no fewer than 15 times, six of those to describe its “exceptional portfolio”, and even twice in the same paragraph.
But who could blame Shaftesbury? After all, the West End is an “exceptional location” with an “exceptional variety of visitor attractions” and “exceptional numbers of domestic and international visitors”.
Diary can’t take exception to that.
British Land’s water baby
Could British Land be testing the waters for a remit-expanding offshoot? After all, its latest initiative is stretching the definition of land, British or otherwise.
BL is expanding its horizons and wading in to fresh territory – the Grand Union Canal, to be specific – with “Discover Paddington”. No, not the bear – the area.
It’s being celebrated in a new floating visitor centre and restaurant moored directly outside Paddington Station, which comprises two colourful canal barges designed by pop artist Sir Peter Blake, best known for co-creating the iconic sleeve design for the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The vessels are named Darcie Green (pictured) and May Green, and, as well as being a tourist attraction, the plan is to offer them as a quirky new London event space.
Fingers crossed they’ll float the boats of nearby office occupiers.
Cool cat works the room
When Twitter EMEA vice president Bruce Daisley took to the stage to deliver his keynote at EG’s offices and workplace summit, he pulled no punches.
Promptly chastising the whole room within the first five minutes, he made his thoughts on open-plan offices clear. “You have delivered us these horrible, wretched workspaces,” he said, arms raised to the ceiling in frustration.
But, far from the audience taking universal offence, the workplace commentator went down a storm. Maybe thanks to the sheer volume of YouTube clips, memes and stories about furry animals he managed to fit into a half-hour speech.
Well played, Bruce. Well played. After all, everyone knows there is nothing that a cat video can’t fix…
Royals ruin Greg’s big day
Poor Greg Clark. The business secretary’s big day arrived on Monday as he launched his industrial strategy White Paper – only to have it overshadowed by a certain other announcement.
Promoting anything with a title like “industrial strategy” was always going to be a challenge, but, once Prince Harry and Meghan Markle went public with their marriage plans, even the most studious devolution devotees were distracted.
It didn’t help that the three headline policies – raising total R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027; increasing the rate of R&D tax credit to 12%; and investing £725m in Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund programmes – were each repeated at least five times in a document that ran to a whopping 255 pages.
That’s almost as much paper as Fleet Street devoted to the royal engagement.
