bottom drawer

We were not in Delhi when the bombs went off yesterday - having arrived in Ahmedabad the day before. But it's quite awful that it has happened at this incredible holiday season, when all the streets we've seen are full of people shopping and looking forward to the 'Indian Christmas' - think bombs going off on Oxford Street on Christmas Eve and you might get the feeling. This is a strange time to blog from India and I'll write in more detail in due course. But suffice to say, we've had some absolutely incredible experiences - the people we've met, the places we've seen, the projects and so on - inspiring and moving, and giving me lots of ideas. It's pretty humbling to see what some incredibly committed people (whether the schoolkids in Delhi that we visited, or the wonderful engineer Himanshu Parikh whose work we've been seeing here in Ahmedabad) can achieve, with such intelligence and sophistication in this chaotic country.

Amazing - a survey has found that 75% of the British public want the railways re-nationalised, including 61% of Tory voters. Which is another interesting piece fo trivia to add to my growing file on the railways, tied into my emerging project for London Metropollitan about the architecture of rural services and community buildings (railways being a particularly interesting part of this, at least to me). Another piece of this puzzle is this fascinating post on what happens to churches now they're not so useful for worship any more. Apparently old cinemas are being converted into churches for the evangelical masses, and churches are becoming everything from nail bars to climbing walls. And another rural-themed report from We Make Money Not Art about the invention of self-milking machines for cows. I happen to know that a certain former-head of a big regeneration agency in town (no prizes for guessing) who spends most of her real energy on her organic farm, has been planning exactl

Yesterday we went on an outing to the Middle Farm Apple Festival near Lewes, Sussex, held to coincide with Common Ground's National Apple Day . I'd found out about it through (nerd that I am) a website about American old-time music gigs . Because yes, banjos were present. But more than that, it was the mention of chicken-racing that made me really want to go. There were chicken races. And real proper old-fashioned fairground rides. And an amazing Mousetown (how much fun must it be to live as a mouse in a real model town, crawling up and down stairs, in and out of windows, sitting in the pub or disappearing into the manhole covers?). Many, many more varieties of cider than I knew could exist - and they were pretty tasty. Cows, ducks, geese, pigs, morris dancers and lots of apples. All really lovely fun and made me, again, nostalgic for the countryside life. [Though I must admit, it being near-ish to Brighton, there were a few too many yummy mummys/novelty wellie boots wandering

I am all for open-source. Blogs, the power of millions of people sharing, a decentralised knowledge base, f*** Microsoft, let's all hack around with Linux and GoogleMaps . It's so much easier and more fun not to have to know everything and then try to guard it - all you need is a great network of other people who know stuff, and then we can all share! But when it come to my everyday work, I get very inconsistent. A large part of my work involves research into a very new and constantly shifting field of practice, which is globally scattered, and involves a network of fantastic practitioners who are, in effect, our 'open-source' collaborators. Which is all fine, but this 'creative capital' - our in-house knowledge, expertise, and our social and professional networks - are what we need to make money from. We're not after pots of gold, but we would like to keep ourselves in shoes and stockings. In addition, a lot of other people (in our view) don't really

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but like many other topics it's been languishing behind a pile of other work. Recent work by the government's Neighbourhoods Unit proposes five ways to measure so-called community strength, which is meant to be one of those 'good things' although no-one really understand what it means. So here they are: 1. Governance - percentage of residents who feel that they can influence decisions affecting their local area 2. Cohesion and inclusion - percentage of residents who feel that their local area is a place where people from different backgrounds can get on well together 3. Volunteering - percentage of residents who affirm that they carried out voluntary work in an organisation once a month or more in the past year 4. Voluntary and community sector - percentage of VCS groups and organisations affirming growth in activity over the past year in terms of (i) financial turnover and (ii) volunteering 5. Services - Proportion

Allow me a moment to praise my wonderful boyfriend, whose first major (£2.5m) building opened last night. The Egg, the new children's theatre run by the Theatre Royal Bath , is not only critically acclaimed and utterly beautiful, but that miracle of a well-run project - on time and under budget! You can see some pictures on the architects website in their photo dumpster . The boy crawled home late last night after all the boozing and backslapping at the opening. But for me the biggest praise for him as the project architect came from the contractor who built the thing. 'Tom' he apparently said, 'you're the only architect I've ever worked with who knows about building.' Knowing what contractors generally think of architects (scum of the earth), that's not bad praise! Congratulations to the whole team - including the boy's poor underlings who've put up with his occasionally foul moods for the last two years...

Yesterday I had to get up far too early to go and get the visas for myself and our photographer to go to India in a week. Quite an adventure - a sort of weirdly chaotic order of far too many people in the room, a supposedly quite strict and efficient system that actually broke down rather a lot and then resurrected itself in quite a human form when you least expected it. I eventually emerged triumphantly - five hours, two faxes, two couriered letters, and many phone calls back to the office later. Then it was time for a couple of hours in the office before I went off to have my jabs at the BA travel clinic - a rather surreally efficient process whereby I was in, injected and out again before I'd barely had time to catch my breath. Back in the office for a few hours and then, off to see the original Godzilla movie, in the original Japanese and black and white. It was quite an astonishing film - not only for how terrifying it manages to be despite the primitive special effects, and

My first weekend down at my parents' house (where I grew up) since I got back from the States, for my birthday. A quarter-century didn't seem like a time I particularly wanted to celebrate in any elaborate way, for some reason, and was spent peacefully in my old birthday rituals, somehow reaffirming a connection to my homeplace. The weather was, as is traditional, beautiful - an Indian summer, eating birthday lunch outside with sunhats, it was so warm. We picked quinces and pumpkins, as we always do, and ate a lamb tagine with quinces. A lovely walk over the marshes and picking huge, soft, pinkish beige parasol mushrooms, beaded with dew, in the morning for breakfast. Pints in the Nelson in Southwold with friends and scrabble before bed (I won, which was precisely as it should be!) Good food and delicious wine, and the most fantastic present of a life membership to the London Library - an incredible, wonderful luxury - thank you, parents! It capped off a week that saw my life

On my continuing mission to find myself more jam sessions to feed my addiction to old-time American music, Sunday night found me drinking in the Harlequin pub just behind Sadlers Wells theatre . A real gem of a pub, named after the clown Grimaldi who performed at the old Sadlers Wells (which itself has a fascinating history ) - tiny, real beer, perfect, and at the back there were two banjos, a guitar, three fiddles and an autoharp playing real old-time mountain music. Ah, my ears were sated - although I love bluegrass, old-time is another thing altogether and I happily ensconced myself with a couple of friends. No Sunday night blues when you've got a banjo ringing in your ears. Two of the musicians were also at the Hemingford Arms the other night when I went there, and I saw them again yesterday, when I finally took out my fiddle and played my first jam session in London. I went back up to the Hemingford and played with the old guys for three happy hours. It felt so good to be pl

Another London weekend has passed by, with many typical London activities. Yesterday, after getting up late (the boy meanwhile doing his errands of recycling, shopping at the local grocers, butchers and Italian deli) it was off to the Tate Modern to meet a friend. We drank coffee watching the steely London autumn light and the wind blowing the birch trees, then wandered around a bit of 'art'. I rather enjoyed the little display of Beyond Painting - Piero Manzoni, Fontana and Burri, the latter's sackcloth works being intriguing and quite rich. Then it was off for a pint and then tapas on the Cut, to Meson Don Felipe, where I hadn't eaten for a long time. The Young Vic redevelopment, which I helped design in the competition and scheme design stages, is well uner way on site and it was astonishing for me to see something that I'd made endless models of, and drawn countless permutations, actually take shape in reality. Almost enough to make me want to be a 'real&

I realised that I forgot to chronicle my first success in searching out men with banjos in London town...which actually took place on Monday night. Which goes to show how, already, in London life, the concerns of the moment (work, etc) so rapidly eclipse experiences that one has had even a short time before. But in brief, I was hugely excited to go to the Hemingford Arms in Barnsbury, where I had read that there was an old-time/bluegrass jam every Monday night, and find that indeed, inside there were old men, banjos, mandolins and other assorted and appropriate instruments, playing that unmistakeable twanging sound... I was wearing my Tannehill Opry top as a little signal just in case anyone might recognise it...and sure enough, although no closet Alabamian embraced me as a long-lost sister, the opry-word did attract the attention of one of the players, who came over to talk to me. It was quite strange to hear a broad cockney accent issue from the mouth of someone who was playing son

I've started to work on my design and research project with London Metropolitan University in conjunction with the company I work for, General Public Agency . Broadly speaking it's on the spatial (planning and architectural) challenges faced by rural areas. It will start with some general research on current pressures and demands on differently located and sized rural communities and then focus in quite quickly on the potential for intervention/direct action in a few chosen places. This might range from working with a community group or parish council on a small building project, through to formulating a masterplan for new development or regeneration. A range of these projects (hopefully fairly radical, based in real places but seen also as 'prototypes' for other communities facing similar issues) would be worked up in outline form, in collaboration with local groups/agencies. One of them will ideally reach some sort of fruition by the end of the year - either being bu

So Bush nominates Harriet Miers, a close friend and utterly undistinguished lawyer to be a Supreme Court Justice. Her only previous judicial appointments have been ones that she was appointed to by, erm, Bush. And now, the liberal blogs are so up-their-own arses that they are actually happy about this nomination because, of all things, the fact that she's an unknown quantity appears to be getting the right-wingers up in arms as they don't know for sure whether she'll vote anti-abortion. I.e., the Democrats (including Senate minority leader Harry Reid) are happy about this ultimate stealth appointment who will agree like a lapdog with anything Bush asks her to, because of some ridiculous points-scoring off the rabid Republicans. How about kicking up a fight about nepotism? No, instead, we'll have "great fun watching conservatives go after Bush" while any tradition of judicial independence goes up in smoke. Guys, look outside your own petty Beltway posturing

The English autumn is a very melancholy season. Even its most pleasant parts - a quiet, delicious Saturday lunch in Medcalf , the clean, warm sunshine slanting down the side streets - are tinged. Especially when tomorrow a delicious year of freedom ends and I start back at work and school , let alone when Chelsea thrash Liverpool at Anfield. There is something so inherently romantic and melancholy about Liverpool anyway - the passion in the face of adversity, the tears on the faces of hard Northern men, 'You'll Never Walk Alone" and the constant memory of a lost golden age - that makes me somewhat wish to have been born a Scouser just so I could have that in my inheritance. But instead, I get a return to Highbury to see us beat a 10-man Birmingham not nearly as easily as we should have. Which is, indeed a great pleasure - the North Bank in the sun, the crowd and chants, the little rituals, the stress of watching the match and its battles, and Bloody Marys afterwards in t

In my quest for a worksafe wardrobe I have, over the last week, shopped the whole of Zone 1 London. I've shopped from Topshop to Selfridges, from Beyond Retro to Browns Focus. It's quite an interesting and at times depressing experiment - to take the pulse of the capital's fashion zeitgeist after a year away of living in cut-off shorts and t-shirts from the 50 cent rack in the thrift store, and still looking reasonably well-dressed. Fashion, right now, is pretty dull. Topshop famously produces instant copies of everything that appears in the high-end stores, but the depressing thing is that you might expect the quality to be far inferior but in fact, the Marc Jacobs top that's appearing in the basement of Oxford Street isn't really that much better designed or, to me, desirable, than its cheap rip-off. Too many frills, buttons, 'frayed' edges, cropped jackets, full skirts, 'military' jackets that look no more authentic when done by Stella McCartney t