I’m amused by the fact that a company would go to the effort of printing this notice on hoardings and also feel like this could make valuable feedback for an awful lot of written reports in my line of work these days.

The last editions of the Yellow Pages in the UK were printed in 2019, so no-one’s really ‘in the book’ any more.

The hit film Atonement, based on Ian McEwan’s novel, was partly filmed in Redcar, including the famous five-minute walkthrough of the Dunkirk beach. To commemorate the even, the film’s director (Joe Wright) and producer (Paul Webster) unveiled this steel sculpture by Lewis Robinson.

The artwork is successfully photo-bombed by sportswear brand Discipline. The juxtaposition of the boneheaded slogan ‘attitude wins the game’ with a tribute to a film about the complexity of profound guilt, reconciliation and the impossibility of true atonement is certainly eyebrow-raising.

Recent posts may have given you the impression that Stockholm is a beautiful city—that was certainly the impression left by my visit. Yet, I’m afraid, a monstrous carbuncle looms over the city: Kaknästornet.

Built in 1957, it is a broadcast tower with radio, television and satellite masts. Until 2018, it was open to the public, and had a notoriously poor restaurant looking out over the city—but these days, the security risks are considered too high for such frivolity.

The association between Los Angeles, cars and traffic is well documented—not least in decades of Hollywood movies. Christopher Grimes had a pessimistic, or perhaps realistic, article in the Financial Times last week about the latest efforts to convince Angelenos to try public transport.

But here’s the thing: my mental conception of the city is completely different.

Wendy and I have visited Los Angeles exactly once, six years ago. This Amtrak train delivered us there.

We explored the city on foot and by Metro. Perhaps as a consequence, when I think of Los Angeles, my memories are inextricably caught up with public transport. I think of the grand architecture of Union Station and the whimsical decoration of some of the Metro stops, like these film reels at Hollywood/Vine:

Oh, and I remember my efforts to forget about work being undermined by these public health messages, which seemed to be everywhere:

But what I absolutely don’t think of is cars, freeways and traffic—despite them being so clearly a major part of life for those who live in the city.

It’s a tidy reminder of how experiences of a city can vary, and how a brief visit can leave one with completely the wrong impression of what a place is really like to live in.

We’ve done windmills recently, but here’s another one that Wendy and I visited recently: the ruined Calhau windmill in the Monsanto Forest Park in Lisbon. It dates back to the 18th century when Lisbon was full of windmills. It is, erm, no longer operational.

This is Hoop-La (2014), a sculpture by the American sculptor Alice Aycock in the Princess Estelle Sculpture Park in Djurgården, Stockholm. It was, in fact, the first piece acquired for the park.

I found it intriguing: it combined scale with real detail and finesse. The whole form seemed to change as I puzzled my way around it. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at first, but found it intriguing. And, in the end, perhaps to be intriguing is perhaps the point of the work.

When I walked past this, I imagined that the bank once financed shipping, as I linked the ‘marine’ mention with the big boat. However, as you may know, ‘ultramarino’ means ‘overseas’ in Portuguese rather than anything connected directly to shipping.

Founded in Lisbon in 1864, Banco Nacional Ultramarino was once responsible for the issue of banknotes in Portuguese overseas territories. One of these was Macau. Although now part of China, Macau continues to use the Macanese pataca, still issued by BNU, which is now part of another Portuguese bank based in Lisbon: Caixa Geral de Depósitos.

In a subway in Lisbon, there’s a 2024 cork artwork by Sagmeister & Walsh that spells out a sentence, repeated on a nearby plaque for much easier reading:

If a newspaper would only come out every fifty years, it would report how life expectancy rose by twenty years.

I scoffed to Wendy that this couldn’t possibly be true. In the UK, life expectancy has increased by about a decade since the 1970s and is now in decline. Surely Portugal couldn’t be so different?

With her usual sagacious wisdom, Wendy suggested that it was probably not meant to be taken literally. We were probably supposed to contemplate the negativity bias in the news and note how poorly it reflects the long-term improvements that I talk about regularly in a professional context.

But I couldn’t let it drop, so I did the research. Astonishingly, the artwork is reasonably accurate.

In the fifty-year period between 1970—when, of course, Portugal had yet to return to democracy—and 2020, life expectancy grew from 63 years for men and 71 years for women to 78 years and 83 years, respectively. It’s not quite a twenty-year increase, but it’s in the ballpark.

In 1920, the average life expectancy in Portugal was about 40 years, so the increase from there to the 1970s exceeded the artwork’s claim.

In 1870, the average life expectancy was around 29 years. The fifty-year span to 1920, therefore, delivers less than a twenty-year increase, but again, it’s in the right ballpark—and proportionately, it is astonishing. An extension of the average lifespan by a third in fifty years.

Exactly as the artwork (and Wendy) tried to tell me, it’s easy to underestimate gradual changes.

Opened across the Tagus in Lisbon in 1966, this was originally the Salazar Bridge. During the Carnation Revolution in 1974, the lettering was ripped off the bridge, and it was renamed to commemorate the date—which leads to the curious fact that the 25 April bridge opened on 6 August. The Lisbon half-marathon crosses the bridge each March.

It originally carried four road traffic lanes, later expanding to six lanes. To minimise aerodynamic forces, the cars in the two lanes in the centre of the deck drive on metal grating, which means that the bridge emits a distinctive hum.

The bridge’s original design also called for it to carry trains on a lower deck, but cost constraints meant that this element was dumped. It was subsequently un-dumped in 1999, when the original builders were brought back to re-engineer the bridge with a second deck after all.