Richard the Turd

I'm in White City, in a residents' association meeting, at the end of a freezing cold day which has found me popping up in all manner of corners of London. 

I stood directly underneath the Shard of Glass this morning. It's an awe-inspiring building close up, which I found almost impossible to look up at whilst walking along. The clouds were moving at high speed and created such a peculiar optical illusion that I lost my balance and ended up bumping into a rather unimpressed communter. 

Bermondsey is an impressive part of town. In the shadow of the Shard, a network of Victorian buildings and railway arches house art galleries, cafes, little theatres and some rather funky-looking shops. The area is full of media types and creative people and reminded me of parts of the East Village in New York. 

I watched the programme about the discovery of Richard III's body last night, glued to the telly like a child watching Scooby Doo. For those people reading this who've been living in a barn for the last few days, the body of England's most controversial king has been found underneath a car park in Leicester. He was previously thought to have been unceremoniously dumped in a river after being slain at Bosworth and his remains were considered lost. Their discovery is historically important and deeply fascinating. 

Last night's Channel 4 documentary featured an astonishing  woman from the Richard III society who had almost single-handedly peddled the search for his remains. Her combination of pig-headedness, belief in omens and seemingly endless capacity to be led by her emotions  left the scientists embarrassed and angry but her instincts were remarkable. Her decision to start the dig underneath a painted letter R on the car park Tarmac, prompted much mickey-taking, but the architects humoured her and immediately struck gold: proof positive that luck and portents are often as likely to succeed as science itself when searching for a needle in a haystack!