The Millennium Bridge

“People always pine for a golden age. They’re nostalgic about an era in which life was simpler and more predictable.”

That was Pinker or Kahneman, doesn’t matter which. Both will tell you we are hard-wired for pessimism and should snap out of it (I paraphrase, but they have references).

A 360 from The Millennium Bridge over London’s Thames is quite something; ping me a better urban vista and I’ll visit.

Shard of Glass (it’s Sunday name) is the tallest building in the UK and screams 21st century as it sways in the breeze. At its base, Borough Market has been there 1000 years. Today you may fill your boots with cuisines from near and far.

Shakespeare’s Globe was opened in 1599, caught fire in 1642 and was pulled down by the Puritans in 1644. It reopened in 1997 so today you can walk right in, sit right down, look around in the round and buy The Bard’s pencil for a pound.

Tate Modern is the former Bankside Power Station and it’s free, though do put a tenner in the slot. Two miles west, round the bend, Battersea Power Station is repurposed, but has still to find its soul. Amazing, monumental, timeless architecture from the age of fossil fuels, beautifully reimagined as a homage to Mammon. It needs a Greggs.

At Blackfriars Bridge, Bankside Yards is under construction. It will be the UK’s first fossil fuel free mixed use development. Undoubtedly the first of many, watch as London changes again. It always has.

Next, on the bend, are the National Theatre’s beautiful Brutalism and Southbank Centre’s Modernism. Princess Elizabeth, the late Queen, attended the opening concert of Southbank with her father, King George VI in 1951. I know you’re not keen but give them another look.

You can do dinner and a show here, or across the river, for much less than at any time in the 20th century, but you don’t need to because there’s a monster TV in your front room with 792 channels. There were only 2.5 million TVs in Britain at Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation and the black & white picture was rubbish. The device in your hand is a phone and a TV and it has made dozens of other devices obsolete whilst transforming every area of your life.

Round the corner the London Eye arrived by barge, just like Henry VIII. It’s been revolving since 2000 and has not yet fallen into the Thames. Back in the day they had jousting and fireworks and you might live 30 years. There was only one bridge and folk were fished out by the wherrymen daily.

The Millennium Bridge is 22 years young and no longer bounces. St. Paul’s Cathedral wouldn’t have that cracking dome were it not for the Great Fire of 1666. There are cranes all over the place, sentinels to progress. And have you been on the Jubilee Line? One day all tube rides will be this way.

Don’t look back with rose tinted specs, look forward with rational optimism. Malthus was wrong about everything.