Colin uses echolocation to navigate London's streets Photo: Ryan Li

Colin has been totally blind since he was born 57 years ago. He works as an information resource officer and lives in Lewisham with his wife. Colin has asked us not to use his surname. Here, he describes his life to Clare Finney:

I’m totally blind. I’ve been blind from birth. If someone describes a sky that would mean very little to me; I don’t know about colours or what fashions there are. But what I do get out of walking in London is something quite different. An orchestra of smells, the feel of the breeze on your skin, the sun shining, the sound of the river… the buzz of the city. I get that. Even though I don’t see it.

Yesterday, me and my wife went walking round the Greenwich. We went to the pub a couple of times, walked along the river, went to the market and and bought a few bits – and I thought: this is London at its best.

There was the chorizo sausage the guy was frying on the Spanish stall, there was all the different perfumes, the sun oil, the people. And then there’s all the sounds of course. Only yesterday I was thinking – even when English is spoken it is spoken in all sorts of different ways. It’s in all the accents of the world, young voices and old voices, old language, modern language. Even without all the sights, there’s still enough there for me.

I would never go on a walk on my own though. It would have little meaning to me. The village where I live is described as the Hampstead of  south London – if I’m being snobby I say I live in Blackheath, and if want to be one of the boys I say I live in Lewisham – but I love it there because its so cosmopolitan. When I go on a walk around I am experiencing it through the people I’m with. Not that people are very good at describing – they tend to get sidetracked, because the visual swamps everything – but what people say and how they say it is very important to me. My world enters through their eyes.

It’s the sociability that keeps me here really – that and the food. If you lived in Bognor there’d probably be one curry house, a couple of Chinese, one Thai restaurant if you’re lucky – and they wouldn’t be that good at that. But London? I’ve got Top Table, I can go on the websites, I can go down and put my nose through the door. I went to Dans Le Noir [the totally dark restaurant where the waiters are blind] recently, and that was interesting. The first thing that people said to me was, every restaurant is in the dark for you – why do you go? But of course, what I got out of it was watching what they got out of it.

In some ways I suppose it would be easier living in the country; but I’ve never once thought it would be better than London. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’m used to the city, warts and all. It’s improved so much since I was little of course – the disability discrimination act has made helping us part of people’s jobs, not just a favour – but I can’t really think of many ways it could be better now. I love the talking buses. I love the voice on the tubes. Some might think them really irritating, but it makes all the difference for people like me.

In fact, I find streets really easy to get around, far more so than large indoor shopping centres like Westfield. Departments stores are so vast; it’s difficult to know what part of the floor you’re on or where the shops are at the best of times, and I can’t read the plans. On the street I can learn the order of the doorways and I can hear them using something called ‘echo location’ – hearing the sound shadow of objects. I can hear that wall there for example; I can hear corners and hallways. If you could tune into them you could probably hear them too, but its something blind people learn to master at a young age.

I suppose it’s our way of compensating. I used to run around as a child – in the way of children I don’t think I understood I was different, so when other children ran I did too – I just learnt to listen out for the walls. Equally, when I wanted to show a toy to someone I’d thrust it at someone and insist that they touch it, whilst all the while saying, ‘look at this’  because I didn’t understand what looking was.

These days I’m often  I’m glad I can’t see all the stuff there is to have. I’d probably eat a lot more than I do. In this café, now, there are probably loads of chocolate bars and muffins stacked up – but I don’t know they’re there. I’m not tempted by looking; I don’t get tempted by stuff. I can’t exactly go shopping. With clothes I’m normally at the mercy of the woman I’m going out with at the time; and if it’s a girl with good taste I’ll be better dressed than if she doesn’t. I’m married now, thank goodness, but clothes are still so meaningless to me.

Most of the time I don’t really know what I miss; it’s difficult when you have nothing to build on. You probably see a hundred people each day, not to mention all the posters and magazines. We only know what we know through hearsay, and sound. It’s little wonder blind people’s appearance can go amiss sometimes – because unless they go shopping with a good honest friend, how can they tell? Before I was married, the way I was dressed was entirely dependant on the girl I was going out with at the time – for better or for worse. It’s not like you can rely on the shop assistant. They’re thinking about Friday night and 5 o clock – not whether you look decent or not.

That said, I think I do think Londoners are incredible. You hear about the big bad city – but I’m 57 years old, totally blind and I’ve never been mugged and I’ve never been threatened. If I got lost in the middle of the country I’d be buggered; if I got lost outside here, within a minute I’d have some kind of help. I raise my glass to Londoners. I know people are short of time here. I try not to make them go out their way. But the funny thing is, they always do.

This feature first appeared in HUM magazine

Mirrors Photo: Luis M Justino Flickr

There comes a point in the life of every young woman when the urge for a full-length, full stretch, warts-and-all mirror of your very own becomes overwhelming. I’d survived without one for years; perching precariously on laundry baskets or gazing into darkened windows in an attempt to assess my outfit from top to toe – but with my 22^nd birthday just over the horizon, it dawned on me that now might be time to Grow Up.

Unfortunately, this epiphany did not entail money -  a shiny new designer mirror was no more within my financial grasp than it ever was -  but I was sure a little foraging in the name of Freeline would turn up something sufficiently reflective sooner or later.

Cue Freecycle – the website where people who don’t want their old stuff give it to people who do, and Freeline’s new best friend. I’d read loads about it of course, and I’d even gone so far as to sign myself up – but I’d yet to join a group, offer some stuff and actually get involved. Yet with the mirror situation now getting dire (I’d fallen off the laundry basket three times last week trying to see if my heels matched my skirt) I decided it was time to jump on the bargain wagon.

Joining a group seems easy at first. A quick search revealed groups in Croydon, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney, and  a large ‘Join this Group’ button appeared with each one. I clicked. Within minutes an email from Yahoo groups arrived asking me to confirm my request to join by hitting ‘Reply’. I clicked.

Yet as with so many things online, the devil was in the detail. Each Yahoo Group has a moderator who accepts or rejects people and manages membership. By simply sending a blank email as confirmation of my request, I’d neglected to give the moderators personal details as to where I lived and who I was, nor  had I shown any knowledge of the ‘Freecycle etiquette’.

The ‘Etiquette’ rules themselves are straightforward, and could probably be summed up in a matter of two words; Be Nice. But unless you prove in your reply email that you have read and acknowledged this rather basic requirement, it is the unenviable duty of the local group moderator to reject you and everything you stand for in the Freecycle world.

‘You failed to answer the four questions we sent you in a separate email’ spake the freecycling moderators of Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Lewisham – although the email with the questions had never been received.

‘You displayed a lack of understanding of the Freecycle ethos, ie you seem to think we are a ‘freebie site’ from which you are entitled to furnish your home for free!’ I was sure that wasn’t really fair, but  ‘for the same reason we reject applications from people who are members of groups some distance from where they live because in our experience people who join several groups usually in areas perceived to be affluent are looking for rich pickings. We also do not wish to encourage travelling by car with its effect upon your carbon footprints’.

Lastly, but by no means least insultingly, they postulated that I may be ‘a known spammer/scammer’.  If only I was, I thought. I might have found the system a little easier to operate.

With freebies of three of the four East London Line boroughs now officially off limits, I turned to Croydon. They hadn’t rejected me – they didn’t seem to care that I hadn’t read the rule book – and it was only a matter of minutes before the first ‘offering’ arrived in my inbox.

‘I am offering a black JVC hifi. It has a turntable (the lid is badly cracked), double tape deck, radio and output for cd player (cd player not included). Maybe good for parts. Please note ; this needs a plug and doesn’t come with speakers’

I thought daisycupcake was pushing her luck somewhat with a broken music player that was missing plug and speakers, but just as I was contemplating whether I could make use of a turntable, more emails came whooshing in.

‘WANTED: seed trays’ ‘WANTED: stilletos’, ‘TAKEN: JVC Hi Fi’ (who took that I wonder? ‘OFFERED: tropical fish’ and so on throughout half a dozen emails, each of them seeking an answer and pick-up within a matter of days.

Four hours, seventy emails and several shouts of exasperation later, I was still mirrorless. The endless pinging of emails was driving me to distraction, and my efforts to change the email address on my Freecycle account to one I used less frequently were proving futile.

Freecycle recognized my change of address; Croydon Freecycle didn’t. The Unsubscribe emails were bouncing, the group page on Yahoo could only be accessed if you had a Yahoo account (I don’t) and the group moderator, though understanding when I emailed her explaining that I was getting ten emails an hour to my work address, was as bemused as I was as to why it wasn’t being changed.

What’s more, to add insult to mounting fury, the mirror I was seeking had been and gone; snapped up whilst I ploughed through the hundred other emails from Croydon Freecycle to find the one that told me how I could leave.

The nightmare continued for five days. No other mirrors came up – though plenty of sofa beds – and in the end the only thing that stopped me from writing an Angry Letter to the Freecycle HQ was the sterling efforts of the Croydon moderator, who worked out how to adjust my settings so I only received emails of administrative importance.

I’m still a member – and I’m still looking for a mirror. I’m told by people who have freerecycled successfully that it’s a really positive experience, and I’m not ruling it out. But with 200 old freecycle emails still gathering dust in my Trash box, I’m wary of using it on a regular basis. One man’s trash is not every man’s treasure.

Freecycling Tips

When you sign up, don’t use your work address. Have an email address you specifically use for chain mail, and use that.

When you email your confirmation to join a group, say something about yourself; where you live, what you do and why you’re in Freecycle. Say you’re out for freebies, you’ll get rejected.  Say you’ve not much to offer, you’ll get rejected. Say nothing, you’ll get rejected.

Make sure you sign up to your most local group – the idea is to minimize your carbon footprint, not increase it by travelling miles to pick up a free sofa.

If you can, offer something first before you send out a request – and, when you do put a bid in for someone’s stuff, make sure you work out how to transport it first. If its going to cost you a hundred quid to hire a van, drive to the other end of the borough just to pick up a fourth hand carpet, you might as well buy new.

After 15 years of offering personal care to mothers-to-be in deprived areas the Deptford-born Albany midwives practice has been forced to closed. Photo: Oliver Beamish

After 15 years of offering personal care to mothers-to-be in deprived areas, the Deptford-born Albany midwives practice has been forced to close.

The emails are bouncing back. The answering machine is on autocue. The website still talks of midwives who are on call for women 24 hours a day, seven days a week; but today, the mothers-to-be of Peckham and Camberwell will have to go elsewhere.

Kings College Hospital have brought their historic contract with the Albany Midwifery Practice – the first, and only group, of independent midwives to offer continuous, personalised care to women via the NHS – to an untimely end.

Exactly why remains under dispute; in a statement, King’s College Hospital said they terminated their contract with the Albany for patient safety reasons, and that the hospital believes strongly in giving women the right to choose a home-birth, but the methodology of the review that prompted Kings’ decision have been contested by midwives across the board . Amidst this furore, however, one thing remains indisputable: the quality of care the Albany brought to midwifery will not be easily forgotten.

“You cannot appreciate how incredible it is until you’ve experienced pregnancy with them. I can’t imagine giving birth without that level of support.” Eilidh Morgan’s son was delivered in August, 2001. Eilidh can still remember the name of the midwife who delivered him, and the warm friendship that led to her having two more ‘Albany babies’ the following year: Maisy, a little girl who tragically passed away before she was born – “the difference in being able to have a home birth – to have my daughter at home for a few hours – it helped enormously” – and Fergus, the little boy whose gurgles echo down the phoneline as we chat.

They are just three of over 9, 000 children who have been delivered by the practice since its own beginnings in Deptford 15 years ago. Writing in the Midwifery Digest, founding member Becky Reid describes how, in the early 1990s, a group of six midwives working in south-east London began dreaming a dream – that the “choice, control and continuity of care” offered by independent practitioners might be available to women free of charge within the NHS.

What made this vision so revolutionary was not the method itself – well-off women have of course been commissioning their own personal midwives for hundreds of years – but the place; a run-down health centre situated in one of the most deprived and unhealthy areas in the country.

The significance of this cannot be overestimated, according to Salford’s Senior Lecturer in Midwifery, Sarah Davies. “The women in these deprived areas have some of the highest risk of  perinatal mortality in Britain – yet the actual mortality rates in the Albany practice are extraordinarily low.”

Their good work continued when financial difficulties led to them moving to Peckham to form a sub-contract with Kings Hospital: a mortality rate of 11.49/1000 in Southwark borough compares with only 4/1000 for children born under Albany’s care. At the Albany breast-feeding  is more popular, the popularity of home births is unprecedented, and the number of cesarean sections has fallen by over 50 per cent since the service began.

“It’s interesting that the Albany have been forced out on grounds of health when copious amounts of research shows that it is much safer and much cheaper and everyone involved is much happier,” says Emma Beamish, second time Albany mother and chief spokeswoman for the 700-strong ‘Albany Mums’ movement.

Off the record, another mum is more outspoken about Kings’ motives: “I can’t imagine an obstetrician taking kindly to giving advice to a patient only to have her turn round and say, ‘well, actually, my midwife says this and that’s what I’m going to do.’”

Albany Babygro made specially for the protest against practice's closure. In fact, campaigners want the Albany model to go nationwide. Photo: Oliver Beamish

Her comments echo the assertions of Sarah Davies and the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS) chair Beverly Beech that the question of independent midwifery is ultimately the old feminist chestnut of ‘power, and control’.

‘Empowered woman threaten all kinds of professions. Albany empowers woman. That was the problem’, explains Davies. If that is true, as indeed woman from the Royal College of Midwives to the ex-health minister Baroness Cumberledge are suggesting, then Kings College Hospital have seriously underestimated their opponents.

The Albany Midwives have been self-employed and self-managed for over 15 years. They have supported thousands of pregnant women, and their children, in what is one of the most deprived inner-city areas in the developed world – and they have done so in such a caring, dedicated way that their model has become the blueprint for reforms aimed at addressing the national crisis facing maternity care.

“Midwives leave for a variety of reasons and one of them is the system in which they work – they don’t feel they can provide good care for women,” says Eleanor May Johnson, an independent midwife who chose not to work in the NHS for fear of the centralised and impersonal “baby factory” conditions in which she would have to practice. She wants to see Albany-style practices contracted through Primary Care Trusts rather than hospitals, and, like the Albany mums the National Childbirth Trust, AIMS and the Royal College, she wants to see it nationwide.

“Ever since we started campaigning we’ve had groups of women around the country clamoring for an Albany,” Mrs Beamish says; many of them have been campaigning for over 30 years. It’s unlikely that they’ll win the fight against Kings – when I ring, they tell me that “their decision is final” – but really, the whole CMACE saga – the report that prompted the closure – has been outgrown.

The Albany Mums are taking their midwives national – and these ladies are not for turning.

Our very own video feature about the Albany Centre’s closure can be viewed here.

Related Source: BBC Woman’s Hour

Look out for signs like these to ensure safety. Photo- Transport for London

A man raped by an illegal taxi driver from Deptford warned last week of the dangers of using unlicensed mini-cabs.

This follows news that marshaled taxi ranks and private-hire pick-up points will open for the first time outside clubs in Hackney and Tower Hamlets as the Christmas party season begins.

The 19-year-old victim, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “Get into a black cab, don’t get any other taxi. Take it to the train station and wait there for your first train home.”

His attacker, Mohamad Caid, 38, was convicted this week at Woolwich Crown Court of rape, attempted rape, sexual assault and two counts of false imprisonment. He will be sentenced on January 11.

The move to use marshals and police officers to help commuters find taxis heading to similar destinations to prevent them taking illegal cabs is the latest in the ongoing Safer Travel at Night campaign, which is run by TfL and Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

Other initiatives include an increased number of night buses and the installation of a hotlink phone in Goldsmiths University linked directly to a local minicab operator.

TfL reports show the number of cab-related sexual offences in the capital has fallen year on year since the campaign began in 2002. The five years up to 2007 saw a 46 per cent reduction in attacks.

Marshalled taxi ranks are currently situated outside Macdonald’s at Liverpool Street Station and outside 333 club in Shoreditch, with more expected in the new year.

For immediate information on taxi operators, text the word CAB to 60835. The numbers of one taxi and two local licensed minicab numbers that serve the area the text was sent from will be sent directly to the phone.

Borough Browsin'. Photo: Emily Jupp

Is Hackney safer than Tower Hamlets? Will your children be better educated in Lewisham or Croydon? Which borough is the most environmentally friendly?

Answers to these questions and more can be found at a new government website, ‘Oneplace‘, designed to make public services more accountable to the taxpayer.

The site brings together information and assessments from six independent inspectorates responsible for monitoring quality of life in different areas in England: the Care Quality Commission, Ofsted, the Audit Commission and Her Majesty’s Inspectorates of Constabulary, Prisons and Probation.

The site rates the performance of local councils, the police, hospitals and schools and measures them against other boroughs using a feature called ‘comparison groups’.

When results from Hackney are compared to the group of ‘All English Councils’, the borough comes in the worst 5% for recorded robbery; yet when the same results are compared with others in Hackney’s ‘Crime and Disorder family group’, it is deemed ‘average’.

The website prevents users from drawing direct comparisons between individual boroughs – a measure which, it says, will ensure each borough’s results can be seen in context.

However, a brief look through the borough performance indicators does reveal where public services are improving and where they are deteriorating in east London.

Conflict of interests

Labour-led councils in east London have responded positively to the scheme, which is formally known as Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). A council spokesperson from Hackney described it as “a useful way for people to get an overview of an area”. Tower Hamlets Council Leader Lutfur Rahman also welcomed the findings, but said there was “no room for complacency” when it came to meeting local priorities.

In the meantime, the Conservatives have already drawn up plans to abandon the scheme if they come to power.

The Conservative councils of Wandsworth, and Hammersmith & Fulham have already pulled out of the scheme, citing the high costs involved. As of last night, Conservative-led Croydon had yet to comment. Opposition councillors in other boroughs said they remained “highly suspicious” of the new regime.

Liberal Democrat Councillor Andrew Milton said he was particularly concerned about the CAA’s last-minute decision not to openly condemn Lewisham’s notorious housing issues. As part of its scoring system, ‘Oneplace’ uses green flags to promote successful local initiatives, and red flags to highlight areas where services are consistently failing to deliver.

Yet whilst the CAA gave Lewisham a red flag for housing in an earlier draft of its assessment, the caution was not included at the time of the website launch, giving the councillor reason to believe the council had interfered.

Today the CAA denied that Lewisham had ever had a red flag for housing. Lewisham Council described the site as “an independent judgment of how public agencies work together locally to improve life in their area”.

The spokesperson continued: “This is the first time that it has been carried out and inevitably some people will focus on its shortcomings.  However, Lewisham Council is fully engaged with the process so that we can improve service outcomes.”

Green flags were awarded to boroughs along the East London Line for community engagement and empowerment of local people (Lewisham), improving infant mortality rates (Hackney), engaging and empowering local people (Tower Hamlets) and economic partnerships for future prosperity (Croydon).

Advent art in shop windows Photo: Jacques Thomas

Advent art is up in shop windows in Brockley; Hackney high street is ablaze with lights and the first of the season’s party animals are being picked up by the annual ‘booze hospital’ service. Christmas is coming and, with Delia Smith back on the box, there’s a risk we will indeed be getting a bit fat.

Yet underneath the spice and sparkle there is a very real sense that this Christmas won’t be so laden with trimmings as it has been in recent years. For one thing, we are still in the midst of a recession. Young people are protesting over the lack of jobs, Croydon Economic Development Company are themselves in economic crisis, and a recent government report suggests that the number of rough sleepers on our streets is continuing to rise.

Yes, there have been signs of green shoots sprouting in East London, but it is hard to be jolly when all you can expect from the festive season is redundancy or repossession.

Tempting as it is to cast a golden hue on pre-credit crunch years, we should not be distracted by ghosts of Christmas’ past. Whilst the persistent suffering described  at Tuesday’s anti-poverty conference was sobering, it breathed new life into the efforts of the organizations working to alleviate it – like the Off the Streets and Into Work initiative to help those in temporary accommodation move forward.

In fact, this issue is full of the extraordinary endeavours of volunteers who will spend most of their holiday helping people they have never even met. From selling Christmas trees for the homeless, to working around the clock in a booze hospital to free up front-line ambulances, their actions offer some light in an otherwise bleak midwinter.

When the Grinch ‘stole Christmas’ in the beloved Dr Seuss story, he found to his horror that it came anyway – without ribbons or tags, boxes or bags, or any of the other commercial trappings that capitalism has brought to the festive season.

A credit-crunch crimbo might be short of presents, but there’s plenty of reasons to be merry and bright. In the inimitable words of Mr Grinch: ‘Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”

The treatment centre will open early for yuletide revellers. Photo: London Ambulance Service NHS Trust

London’s seasonal ‘booze hospital’ for drink-related injuries has opened its doors even earlier this year, in order to relieve the pressure on emergency services over the festive period.For the next three weeks any 999 calls that involve alcohol will be referred to the London Ambulance Service’s (LAS) temporary treatment centre in Liverpool Street, which has responded to an increase in demand by opening a week earlier than normal and extending its hours to include Christmas Eve.

Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night two designated St John’s vehicles will be on hand to bring the patients back to the centre, where medics will decide whether to send them on to hospital or treat them there. It is hoped this initiative will free up front-line ambulances so they can respond to serious casualties – such as strokes, road accidents, and cardiac arrests – much quicker.

Yesterday a spokesman from the LAS stressed the significance of the centre’s contribution to the emergency services: “Over 200 drunken people are expected to be picked up by the centre overall this year – that’s 200 ambulances over 13 nights that will now be free to respond to other emergency calls.”

The number of people picked up by the booze hospital has almost tripled since it first started, from just 56 in 2007, to 140 last year. Asked why the LAS thought this was the case, the service’s spokesperson said they were not in a position to comment.

“This is about freeing up resources,” he said. “Staff don’t mind working at the booze hospital because they know how important this is for the ambulance service. They want to do their bit to help.”

Last weekend bad weather and transport meant only fourteen festive revelers ended up in the centre, but this figure is expected to rise dramatically as the Christmas party season gets into full swing.

Skin Health Spa in Tower Hamlets. Photo: John Elmes

The prosecution of an unlicensed laser clinic in Tower Hamlets last week has renewed fears that there may be hundreds of beauty and spa centers in London using laser equipment that does not meet safety standards.

Under the Care Standards Act 2000, beauticians who use lasers or intense pulsed light to remove hair are legally obliged to register their services with the health care regulator to guarantee minimum safety levels and legal protection for consumers.

The new independent regulator for health and social services, the Care Quality Commission, successfully prosecuted the owner of the Skin Health spa chain for operating hair removal lasers without registration.

The spa in Brushfield Street was one of five branches of the chain to be taken to court by the regulator, after members of the public raised concerns over the salon’s use of laser treatments. The spa was ordered to pay a total of £2,618 in a case heard at Thames Magistrates’ Court in October.

An investigation by East London Lines this week revealed there were at least four clinics in east London offering laser services that were not listed as registered practices by CQC.

Yesterday the chair of the Independent Healthcare Advisory Services cosmetic surgery group, Andrew Vallance-Owen, said he believed the problem was widespread.

“We are deeply concerned about the number of unlicensed laser operators in London. IHAS believes that nearly 50 per cent of operators are currently unlicensed.”

He continued: “Lasers are not toys and there are risks involved, particularly if operators are not properly trained.”

Last year government proposals to deregulate lasers and Intense Pulsed Light treatments for cosmetic use were met with fierce opposition from plastic surgeons who had seen rapid rises in the number of people seeking advice after suffering adverse reactions, burns, and changes in pigmentation as a result of laser treatment.

Now, experts like Dr Valance-Owen fear that rising demand and falling costs will see a rise in the number of unregulated clinics and salons looking to operate laser and IPL devices on their customers.

Following on from the Tower Hamlets case, CQC senior enforcement manager Tim Weller insisted consumers should check whether or not their salon was listed on the regulator’s website before booking.

“I urge people considering laser treatment to do their research,” he said. “Ask detailed questions about safety procedures, professional qualifications and potential risks – any good provider will be happy to tell you.”

The Horniman Museum. Photo: Edmund Sumner

Hackney Empire, Horniman Museum, the Tower of London, and Croydon ClockTower; these are the famous landmarks that the communities of east London have deemed ‘great’ enough to be featured in badges as part of the London 2012 ‘Landmark London’ campaign.

Each of London’s 33 boroughs has chosen a landmark to be featured in the set of metal pins, which will go on sale next year as part of a range of merchandise designed to celebrate the city in the run up to the 2012 Olympic Games.

Residents were given one month to vote for their favourite buildings, in what the Chair of the London 2012 Organising Committee, Sebastian Coe, described as “just one way over seven thousand Londoners are already involved in the 2012 Games.”

“The landmarks chosen by the public for the pin set showcase what Londoners want the world to remember about their borough,” he added.

Meanwhile, employees of the lucky landmarks described themselves as ‘delighted’ to have been selected to represent their communities in the Landmark London series.

“It’s great to know that local residents have so much affection for the museum and we hope to see plenty of our visitors sporting Horniman pin badges,” said director Janet Vitmayer.

Lewisham’s beloved natural history museum, along with its fellow winners in Hackney, Croydon and Tower Hamlets, all have the advantage of lending themselves well to being recreated in a metal pin form alongside the London 2012 logo.