After Blackheath it crosses Hither Green railway junction, goes through Oxted in Surrey and reaches the Channel at Peacehaven, Sussex.Stung by Mr Rhind’s protests, the Ordnance Survey says it is considering the “possibilities for appropriate publications” to assist people about the route of the line. So is the Blackheath Society.John Sabido, a barrister who lives between Blackheath and Lewisham, has no need of a map. His house was given a plaque on the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Airy line. “I think it’s going to be quite crowded round here,” he said, a trifle apprehensively Just a bit. The latest estimate is that 10-13 million people will visit the Greenwich area during 1999..
It’s A quiet night at the Tas 202 disco in central Belgrade. Just a few months ago, the place would have been hopping with men in crew- cut haircuts and designer suits accompanied by their dolled-up, over-perfumed girlfriends. But these days, with revolution raging on the streets outside, Serbia’s inimitable class of wartime gangsters-turned-nouveau riche “businessmen” are keeping a low profile. The dance floor is deserted and only a handful of corner booths are occupied – most of them by single women in contraband Italian fashion wear, wondering where on earth the guys have gone.
A bouncer in a fake Dolce and Gabbana bomber jacket explains apologetically that the place, said to be owned by Mirjana Markovic, the wife of President Milosevic, has been upstaged by the opening of a new venue on the other side of town.
“I’d suggest you go to XL,” he says. “Marko has been there the past few nights, and that’s where everyone will be.”Anyone cruising the nightclub scene frequented by the bright young things of Belgrade (for which read profiteers from four years of war and sanctions) soon learns that Marko is Marko Milosevic, the 22-year-old son of Serbia’s First Couple, the epitome of cool on the Serbian youth scene who, even in these straitened times, still sets the agenda of what it is in and what is not.Part of Marko’s appeal is that he makes only rare public appearances, preferring to stay away from Belgrade in his parents’ home town of Pozorevac, where he part-owns the aptly-named Cafe Rolex as well as a nightclub called Madonna, decked out in hacienda style. When Madonna opened to great fanfare last summer, local farmers were so bewildered by the laser light show they were convinced a UFO had landed.Off we drive to XL, a hangar of a club. Sure enough, the place is packed, all 600 square metres of it, with the teenage children of Belgrade’s elite. But the politicians and businessmen themselves are not in evidence, and neither is Marko.”This is a place for city people,” explains one black-clad woman with peroxide hair.
