Crystal Palace

Eitan and I are mano-a-mano as Sonnet and Madeleine in Paris to see Rana and her daughter Darya. Rana a London friend who lives in Brooklyn's Park Slope with her children; she worked for Newsweek (business editor) until poached by Time when Newsweek merged with The Beast in one of those weird new media meets old media deals.

So I have the boy and the dog. This morning we (me and the boy) head to the Crystal Palace National Sports Complex for the Surrey Swimming Championships. Eitan in two relays swimming freestyle and butterfly. The pool a proper 50-meters encased in concrete which must have been a marvel in '64, when it opened, but now dated. Soon the palace will be superseded by the new athletic complex for the 2012 games including a sw-e-et pool. Eitan tells me he's nervous before his race then looks at me suspicously when I suggest us middle-aged dads would kill to be on the pool deck, a part of the competition. This isn't really the encouragement he seeks.

Meanwhile the transmitting station above is (only) London's third tallest structure at 720 feet behind One Canada Sq (771) and Heron Tower (756); it was, indeed, the tallest when it went up in the '50s. Though hideously ugly without an ounce of the Eiffel Tower, the structure useful : it carries London regions of BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1 and Channel 4 in analogue, as well as all six digital terrestrial television multiplexes, with range of about 30 miles for DTT and 60 miles for analogue. The tower is also used for FM radio transmission of several local radio stations BBC London 94.9, XFM, Choice FM and Absolute Radio, as well as a low powered relay of the 4 BBC national FM services and Classic FM.