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What? Time to raise a glass, as we reach a half-century of Back Passages. The derivation of Wine Office Court is easily guessed; it was from buildings in this alley that licenses to sell wine were once granted. First-floor stone reliefs close to the point of inflection recall this history by depicting tools of the vintner's trade. Like much of the area, Wine Office Court is first documented in the John Ogilby map of 1676. The famous cartographer was, in fact, a local, owning a shop on the east-west portion of the passage. The most celebrated resident of Wine Office Court was Oliver Goldsmith, who wrote part of The Vicar of Wakefield in his lodgings at number 6. But of greater éclat than either Ogilby or Goldsmith is the world-renowned pub at the Southern end of Wine Office Court. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese was built immediately after the Great Fire on the site of previous inns. It has lasted through the reigns of 15 sovereigns;a heritage proudly boasted on a poster outside the entrance. Everyone has visited, including Dickens, Johnson, Carlyle, Twain, Teddy Roosevelt and Londonist, but few will be familiar with every nook and cranny of this vertically sprawling emperor of pubs. The remainder of the passage is largely unremarkable, consisting of handsome red-brick buildings and a more forgettable postmodern effort along the northern boundary.

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Why visit? Pub aside, Wine Office Court is the only alley we know of guarded by a cannon; a physical rebus to mark Gunpowder Square to the north-west.

Dodgy power lines are one thing, but who would credit that GPS problems could stymie a rail service? That's what happened on a Southern Railways train through East Croydon recently. A defective satnav prevented the train from stopping at six stations on its route down to Caterham in Surrey, causing significant inconvenience for passengers who rather fancied getting off.

According to a spokesman for Southern:

A lot of our trains have GPS which recognises where the train is and allows it to open the doors at the station, depending on the length of the train and the length of the platform. Doors can be opened manually in an emergency but we would not recommend it at other times.

What kind over crazy, overcomplicated world have we built for ourselves when trains need to send and receive signals from outer space in order to open a few doors? And does it work the other way round? Was the Beagle 2 Mars mission lost thanks to a problem with the electronic reservation system on the 08:15 to East Grinstead? Questions must be asked. If only a dodgy satnav had caused today's disruption in north London; we could have dusted off the old 'Euston, we have a problem' headline.

Image from Chutney Bannister's Flickr photostream.

Sadler's Wells' Spring / Summer schedule has been announced, and it seems you can keep up with your friends from Strictly Come Dancing throughout the next few months, without leaving the capital. (You might have to leave your sofa, though.)

Cheeky chappie Anton Du Beke will be twinkling his toes in London this April as part of Sadler's Wells' Spring Dance at the Coliseum series, with partner Erin "so much prettier than her surname" Boag. Anton and Erin - Cheek to Cheek includes tango, rumba, cha-cha-cha, waltz and foxtrot, with music to make your mum happy (Fly me to the Moon, Take Five, etc, by the likes of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin).

At Sadler’s Wells’ West End venue (the Peacock Theatre), Darren Bennett (the little one who partnered Jill Halfpenny and Emma Bunton) and Lilia Kopylova (who won Strictly in 2005 dancing with Darren Gough) will be bringing Latin to London. Latin Fever promises to take you on a journey through Latin American dance styles (cunning title, eh?), from the streets of Brazil to the bullrings of Spain, via the American dancehalls of the 1920s.

If you can’t wait until then, make sure you book now for Strictly Come Dancing The Live Tour in February. This is for the real fans: all your favourite celebs (Tom Chambers! Rachel Stevens! Jill Halfpenny! er, Julian Clary?!) and all four judges will be there, swinging from faux nasty to theatrically overwhelmed, just like on the telly. Shame you get rent-a-presenter Thornton rather than the real thing.

Anton and Erin - Cheek to Cheek, 22-26 Apr, London Coliseum. Latin Fever, 27 May-28 Jun, Peacock Theatre. Strictly Come Dancing The Live Tour, 3-4 Feb, Wembley Arena, 5-8 Feb, The O2.

The photos are drawn from a special section of Flickr known as The Commons. The project collects images from photographic archives and uses the 'wisdom of the crowd' (that'll be you lot) to tag and annotate the shots. The result is much richer than an officially labelled archive. Seventeen photographic libraries now contribute to the initiative, which is a year old in a couple of weeks.

Here are some of the finer images from London. Click on each shot to get more details. Because these images often come from foreign archives, they are little used in British media, offering a fresh glimpse of bygone times.

With apologies to Shakespeare.

Twelfth Night Holly Man by hapticflapjack via the Londonist flickr pool.

With that kind of cash sloshing around we're not just talking about one or two bendies either. 200 buses carrying the slightly hedge-betting (and actually agnostic rather than atheist) slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" are rolling around the streets of London (plus another 600 across the country). From next Monday, 1,000 cards will arrive in tube carriages featuring the slogan and atheist quotations from people like Katharine Hepburn, Albert Einstein and the late lamented Douglas Adams. And if you manage to miss all that, head to Oxford Street: opposite Bond Street tube station you will see an animated version on two LCD screens.

The atheist / agnostic fervour is spreading internationally, too. Washington DC beat us to the punch with bus adverts in November, Barcelona buses have gone godless and Italy has plans up its sleeve too. Oh, for a photo of an atheist bus heading to the Vatican...

And what do the religious think of it all? Well, they're being very understanding. Turning the other cheek, almost. Think tank Theos say the campaign is "great discussion starter". We doubt there's going to be a return to theological debate, but there's certainly enough to spark the odd row down the pub.

If you see one of the ads don't forget to snap it and add it to our Flickr pool and tag it with 'londonist'...

Ibis and Travelodge had the worst levels of hygiene in the findings, declared as safe by the chain hotels' spokesmen but most likely declared 'yucky' by users. Mould growing on mattresses in Manchester, urine splattered toilets in Euston and high levels of bacteria and dust in both northern and southern branches of Ibis and Travelodge did not provide restful sleepovers when the survey was carried out in September last year. Which? researchers posing as hotel guests visited 16 hotels and found Jurys Inn, Comfort Inn and Premier Inn the better chains - though Premier Inn for London had room for improvement according to the findings.

Budget may mean easy on the wallet but shouldn't mean 'not wanting to touch any of the surfaces in the room'. As we learned from the formidable Ruth Watson, Five's Hotel Inspector, the best kind of hotel room is one that feels like it hasn't been used by anyone else except you. Even if you're not expecting much because of the 'budget' bracket your booking falls into, there should be no need to bring white gloves and the How Clean Is Your House test kit with you, nor should you have to need to bring rubber gloves and disinfectant either. Ibis and Travelodge have taken on board the findings and have upped their game regarding cleanliness since the survey so book those budget rooms for this recession year with reassurance.

Spotted on Ladbroke Grove, W10. Ladbrooke Grove by kujunu.

Contribute your photos of words around town to this discussion in the Londonist Flickrpool.

We like to think we're a fairly international bunch, especially with our New York friends over at Gothamist. So we - along with half the known world - are pretty excited about The Bridge Project, billed as an unprecedented three-year transatlantic partnership, coming to the Old Vic this summer.

London theatregoers are used to seeing big name US stars swan across the pond to grace us with their presence for a few weeks, but The Bridge Project is trying something different. The brainchild of Sam Mendes, Kevin Spacey and Joseph V Melillo (of the Brooklyn Academy of Music), the idea was to get together an international cast of quality actors for a long season touring several countries. Should be simple, right? Nope. This tale has guile, catastrophe and derring do - and that's before we even get onto the plays.

Transferring productions across borders tends to rile local acting unions, who can force a settled company to recast numerous parts. Getting US and UK Equity to back the project was a coup but, as it turned out, negotiation with unions was the least of their worries. The Bridge Project should have kicked off last year with a double header of 'Hamlet' and 'The Tempest', but lead Stephen Dillane had to withdraw for personal reasons (perhaps lucky for David Tennant and Jude Law that he did). It also costs a phenomenal amount of cash - $6 million for its first year - and the team managed to get the final funding from Bank of America just before the economy went belly up.

After all that, we can now ask: what about the theatre? This year Mendes is directing 'The Winter's Tale' and Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard', with a company that includes Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, Rebecca Hall, Richard Easton, Josh Hamilton and Ethan Hawke. The season has just opened in New York and will be taking in Singapore, New Zealand, Spain and Germany before arriving at the Old Vic in May. We can't wait.

The Bridge Project will be at the Old Vic 23 May - 15 August. Book online. Seriously, book early.

... and it might be cold tomorrow, too. And so the national obsession with the weather continues, with papers reporting that, astonishingly, it can sometimes get a bit chilly in January.

As we reported yesterday (well, if the newspapers can run a story every single day about the weather then so can we), London is bracing itself for widespread disruption as a result of this somewhat seasonal and predictable weather. According to The Times:

Even during the day, temperatures are unlikely to stay above freezing in many places. To add to the misery, a belt of sleet and snow showers running down through East Anglia and the South East could leave 1cm (0.4in) of snow on the ground this morning. It could also wash away the grit spread by councils during the night and leave widespread ice on roads and pavements during the morning rush hour.

A whole 0.4 inches of snow, eh? Better break out the snowshoes.

Unsurprisingly, The Evening Standard wins the award for unjustified hyperbole with its mostly incorrect headline, “Minus 10 - it’s colder than the Antarctic”. And you can bet that they’ll have managed to cram even more hysteria into it by the time their later editions go to press.

Makes you wonder how they manage in places where it gets really cold, doesn’t it?

Pictures taken from kronoc’s and Martin Deutsch’s Flickr photostreams under Creative Commons licences.

A preview of the possible transfers our fantasy team of London-born players might make this month, along with other rumours

Though rarely as thrilling as its summer equivalent, football's winter transfer window already looks to have already found its marquee storyline -- the fate of Jermain Defoe, star performer for Londonist United, currently at Portsmouth but coveted by his previous employer. Tottenham sold the striker this time last year for £12m, but Pompey want at least £15m, fee that was agreed by the clubs this morning, despite Spurs boss Harry Redknapp, who managed Portsmouth a year ago, saying that his old club would be mad to sell their best player. Still, it's got the Spurs faithful dreaming -- one blog thinks that a front pairing of Defoe and the suddenly scoring Roman Pavluchenko could work wonders, while other pulse-racing names reputedly on their way to White Hart Lane include Stephen Appiah, David James, and £12m worth of Stewart Downing.

West Ham fans aren't so lucky -- preoccupations at the Boleyn centre on whether the club will even exist in a few months, given their financial status. Piling 'em high and selling 'em low appears to be the strategy. Scott Parker was rumoured to be on his way to Manchester City for a (probably unwarranted) £12m, with Crystal Palace's Ben Watson ready to step up to the Premiership and into the Londonist United side. West Ham have since denied that Parker is leaving, which is bad news for the purse-string holders, though they can still cling on to the hope that Craig Bellamy (Spurs again) might disappear, while Arsene Wenger is considering eating a rare helping of humble pie and simultaneously helping the Hammers wage bill by re-signing Matthew Upson, if Kolo Toure joins Manchester City. Less thrilling news for the Gunners: thanks to the club's baffling reluctance to sign him to a new contract, they could lose the services of England saviour Theo Walcott for a mere £400,000. Chelsea are said to be sizing the situation up.

A bigger story at the Bridge, though, is the buzz surrounding Luiz Felipe Scolari's future as manager, with odds on him being the next boss to be axed dropping from 33/1 to 10/1. If the stories about Abramovich's money problems are true, few signings can be expected, though the subject of Joe Cole's future might be under discussion following his increasingly rare appearances. Chelsea's near neighbours at Fulham have spent the first half of the season quietly going about their business, sitting comfortably in the middle of the table. It will chill the Craven Cottagers to contemplate that one of the players responsible for their success, Jimmy Bullard, could be off soon -- with the apparently limitless confines of the Tottenham locker room welcoming him.

Will any of it come to pass? Spurs could be looking at the biggest squad in history if it does. In any case, we'll be back at the end of the month to round up the winners and the losers - for both the London clubs and, of course, our motley rabble of a fantasy side.

Parlour Games

Granted a night in with pals playing board games is not uncommon, but Londoners once drew upon a vast vocabulary of parlour games, many of which required stamina and a quick wit. "Feather" meant keeping a feather in the air by blowing it between a roomful of your pals. In "Alphabet Minute", each new sentence in a conversation on a given topic must start with the next letter in the alphabet. In "Poor Pussy", players must address someone pretending to be a cat as "poor pussy" three times without laughing, and in "Dictionary" players vote on fake definitions of real (but obscure) words. Or for the more physically-inclined there was "Reverend Crawley's Game" where players stand in a circle linking hands - but no two hands may be held with the same person, and not with the people on either side of you. Then you have to unravel without letting go of hands. Others were more sophisticated - with players asked to write the first line of a particular novel, so that everyone can guess which is the real one. Not quite Wii, but surely better for the little grey cells.

Where are they now?

The vast majority of parlour games have either become drinking games, or are played by drama students in exercises intended to expedite trust or extroversion. Some have become commodities. "Dictionary" was packaged and marketed as Balderdash, but can still be played with a simple dictionary. The British Library and the Bodleian Library Oxford brilliantly re-created Ex Libris (available from the British Library shop) - the game where players write their own imagined first line of real novels. Visit Playin' Games near the British Museum for a great collection of board games (33 Museum Street, WC1A 1LH, tel: 020 7323 3080).

Meireles is an old-guard conceptual artist, starting off in the 1960s with the legacy of the uniquely Brazilian Neo-concretist movement. Participation is key, so you should expect every one of his works to be either infiltrating the outside world or inviting visitors to step into its own. Unlike much conceptual art, he aims for the senses as much as the mind, giving him a chance to win over even the sort of people who balk at Turner Prize entries. Beyond the heavy political themes that drive much of the art -- indigenous identity, globalisation, the missionary legacy in Brazil -- the works presented here are just plain amazing to experience.

It's the moments of discovery that really make the show, so we don't want to give away too much, but you should expect: a fireman's bachelor pad; a walk on broken glass and through a foot of talcum powder; £300,000 in pennies; and a vastly meaningful wooden sculpture so overlooked it would make Slinkachu proud. You can find out the rest for yourself.

Cildo Meireles's works are on exhibition at the Tate Modern until Sunday 11 January. Tickets are £7.80/£5.90 concs. Photo courtesy of Yish under a Creative Commons license.

• Ten hurt in bus, van, shop collision incident in Westbourne Grove this morning.

• Songwriting Baby P campaigner stands in Seven Sisters by-election, although she lives in Muswell Hill.

• Linguistic maverick Boris uses word "dosh" in TfL press release.

• Fearne Cotton (why?) to reveal Brit Award nominations tonight at schmoozy bash.

• Enfield weed factory goes up in aromatic smoke.

• Titian tension mounts as Scottish government criticised for putting up a "significant sum" towards joint fundraising campaign of National Gallery and National Galleries of Scotland. Did they do it, though? The deadline has now passed....

• And hooray for back surgery, David Tennant returns to Hamlet at the Novello, hopefully to complete the final week. Careful on those slippery streets now.

Image by D1v1d via the Londonist Flickr pool.

So instead of a stapler and some envelopes, the information obtained from the archives by a national newspaper (under the Freedom of Information act) shows that Nevin had taken home jade figurines, silver ink pots, Japanese sword guards, original drawings, illustrations torn from books and antique tapestries. His wife apparently used a 19th century Italian leather and tortoiseshell bag for her grocery shopping, their bathroom curtains were cut from a rare cloth and things made their way home with Nevin inside vacuum cleaner bags, up chimneys and even dismantled and stuffed down his trousers. He took apart a table, put it down his pants and walked out with it - that surely beats even the most daring collection of highlighter pens ever smuggled out of an office building in a handbag.

Nevin was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison, giving only irresistible attraction to the objects as reason for taking them from the museum. We can only hope that most of the objects went back behind glass as he went behind bars; our next trip to the V&A will involve in depth analysis of all objects for signs of use in a 1950s household, with special attention paid to anything looking like bathroom curtains.

While much of the South-East arguably has something to complain about, with drifts deep enough to close roads and schools, it is harder to sympathise with, say, the Piccadilly Line, which suffered delays this morning as the trains had to plough through literally millimeters of thin slush on their way into town.

Snow in the capital was even too weedy to allow such traditional winter pastimes as sledging on Parliament Hill, snowman building and being pelted with gritty slush balls by hoodies; though with the current cold snap scheduled to last well into next week, and temperatures dropping daily, we could well be treated to a frost fair on the Thames by the weekend. We can only hope that if this occurs, the Piccadilly line will still be running to take us there.

Photo courtesy of Angelocesare’s Photostream under the Creative Commons license.

It's just too embarrassing, see. Whilst many of us are chomping at the bit to get in heels and spangles to ballroom dance or shake our wobbly, fringed bits to a samba vibe, most of us have little inclination to take to the street with a bunch of bearded men in white pyjamas, skip in circles, wave hankies and shout OI.

Morris dancing was already ancient hundreds of years ago and is intimately connected to the earth, the countryside and fertility rituals. For sure, it's more at home in the Cotswolds or East Anglia than in the West End but surprisingly, London has its fair share of fervent folky types, home as it is to Cecil Sharp's English Folk Dance and Song Society. The Westminster Morris Men, London Pride and The World Famous Hammersmith Morris Men are all active and ale-drinking in London and we'd be very surprised if Morris men didn't crop up at one of the friendly folklorist events run by SELFS some time soon.

So there is hope. The Morris Ring's campaign may well be hampered by its continuing refusal to allow women full membership but luckily there's the more progressive Morris Federation and Open Morris to fly the flag for Morris dancing for all. And, much as it might damage one's street cred to admit it, it's bloody good fun once you get going. Shave the Donkey, anyone?

Morris dancers in Trafalgar Square by Simon-K via the Londonist Flickr pool.

Formerly Paradise Street by AdrianCooper.

Contribute your photos of words around town to this discussion in the Londonist Flickrpool.

This Week In London’s History

• Monday - 5th January 1964: The Underground’s first automatic ticket barrier is installed at Stamford Brook station.
  
• Tuesday - 6th January 1725: The doors to Guy’s Hospital are opened for the first time. 60 patients are admitted.
  
• Wednesday - 7th January 1928: In the early hours of the morning, the waters of the Thames reach the highest level ever recorded in London (5.55 metres above the datum line). The resulting flood drowns fourteen people, destroys the homes of thousands more, and causes massive damage to the collections of the Tate Gallery.
  
• Thursday - 8th January 1991: A packed rush hour train carrying over one thousand commuters collides with the buffers at Cannon Street station, killing one person and injuring hundreds more.
  
• Friday - 9th January 1806: Following a grand state funeral, the body of Lord Nelson is buried beneath the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Random London Quote Of The Week

If you do not want to live among wicked people, do not live in London.

Richard of Devizes (Benedictine monk, 1192)

London’s Weather This Week
It will continue to be very cold this week. There’s even an outside chance of snow, apparently.

Picture taken from Niecieden’s Flickr photostream via the Londonist Flickr pool.

• We had a makeover and we're feeling smarter, neater, leaner and meaner. The kinks are still being ironed out but please tell us what you think. Like it, loathe it, let it be known in the comments and keep us on our frozen toes.

• What did London look like while you were off visiting rellies or lying on a beach? IanVisits got on his bike to capture magnificent empty streets and deserted squares.

• The Royal Institution Christmas lectures happened but fear not, science fans, you can still explore and participate online.

• Smart new stamps showed London design icons: the Routemaster, Harry Beck's Underground map and Carnaby Street's signature miniskirt.

• Fresh talent for our EARs - we got wind of Takeover coming to the Festival Hall in February whilst Rich and Mark tookover the Southbank in their own inimitable fashion.

• We went to Brixton, the ballet and the RSC at Wiltons and found out what annoys diners most about eating out.

• And, of course, we took a traditional look back at 2008 whilst Boris started making up words for the new year.

For more, browse our most popular entries in that panel in the sidebar or click through our archives using the links up top. If you haven't already, keep up with every Londonist post by subscribing to our RSS feed, in the sidebar over there. And welcome back, folks!

• Gothamist said good-bye to 2008 by looking back at the year and rang in 2009 in Times Square. (God bless YouTube for capturing Kathy Griffin's salty New Year's comments to a heckler.)
• Phillyist interviewed Robert Bielski, whose father will be played by Daniel Craig in the upcoming film, Defiance.
• shaking off some bad pizza recommendations and debating whether or not the New Year's Eve police shooting of a UW student--who was dressed in a military costume, holding a rifle with a bayonet--was justified.
• Bostonist was all about vice this week when they dispensed sparkling wine buying advice and celebrated Massachusetts' first annual Marijuana Possession Day.
• Londonist gawped at an utterly deserted London -- not even a zombie to be seen.
• SFist asked why in God's name did you bother going to work this holiday week; and, also, was tickled and awed to see Bay Area Rapid Transit (i.e, BART) ask subway riders to snitch on and snap images of fellow passengers behaving badly. To make public.