Walking the suburban margins of London I have stumbled - sometimes with surprise - across a range of housing estates. The explosion in population in the outer reaches of the capital travelled through the 20th century like a shockwave. Propelled by changing economic conditions, the aftermath of two long and bruising wars and the recognition that the conditions of life many faced were appaling, these new enclaves grew swiftly in every corner of the metropolis. The schemes varied in size, in style and in ambition - from the modest in-fill blocks of 1930s balcony flats to the vast sweep of Becontree - but had one thing in common: a recognition by the agents of the state that only intervention in the housing conditions of a mass of Londoners could assure they were adequately met. On paper at least, John Boughton's tale of council housing - a term he very deliberately sticks to throughout the work - shouldn't be an exciting read. However, the progress through a turbulent century where municipalism meets modernism is compelling from the early philanthropic green shoots right up to the present where ideology finally appears to triumph.

Born out of a painstakingly well-researched blog, Municipal Dreams makes the leap from screen to page effortlessly: Boughton sifts detail effortlessly, weaving the stories of some of the key people driving the rise of council housing into the broader narrative of policy directions and architectural bravado. A range of responses to the growing need in the early part of the century is explored, from the bravely modern adopters of Corbusier's vision to those Boroughs who dabbled in the building of garden suburbs. The book is anchored in London - which was a focus of the most intense need and the most varied solutions - but doesn't exclude the work of ambitious authorities in Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle and beyond. Throughout, the voices of tenants are given the space they didn't get in those days before consultation was a mandatory tick-box on the decision, and the book is peppered with contemporary quotes and interviews with those who experienced the shift from slum to point block.

I came to this book most interested perhaps in the architectural history: and Boughton doesn't disappoint in his exploration of the rise and - tragically literal - fall of system-building, the debates about densification and the ultimate rejection of modernism. However, the book is necessarily political too - and achieves a rare balance. The simple fact, as Boughton exposes very ably, is that both left and right tackled the issue of housing via intervention and that while the positions were not widely variant at the outset, the voices of ideologues have dominated the more recent discourse. Two distinct shifts in thinking emerged as the century entered its second half: the left shifting from a broad universalism to a rhetoric of 'greatest need' while the right responded by lionizing the aspiration to escape the clutches of the state. As the new century opened and local authorities grappled with the best means to leverage capital from the private sector, these views have whirled together into a perfect storm of policy failure: there is simply not enough housing, and no agreement on how that is best remedied. Boughton's book explores both the creation and the outcomes of this dilemma with care and precision - no party is let off the hook, as the dizzying and contradictory tumble of Housing Acts endlessly rebadges but fails to increase existing investment, indulges in ill-advised tinkering and ultimately presents the same old tricks in new clothes. Council housing becomes contested, blamed, a diagnosis rather than a symptom as a result. Residualisation both creates the myth of the 'sink estate' and condemns some troubled places needing assistance to perhaps even deep opprobrium.

Council housing is a political issue - and if you approach this book from an extreme in either direction - as a radical Corbyn supporter seeking an endorsement of the state as guardian of the people, or as a steamrollering free-marketeer who wants the dubiously proven laws of economics to take the decisions out of our hands - you will be disappointed. Boughton's book is a plea to the kind of municipal collaboration and effort which dominated the discourse back when those who governed Britain shared a collective will to solve problems and when politicians could disagree across the house - and indeed along their own benches - without resorting to character assassination. The post-war consensus which endured for many decades is after all, still active in the minds of the majority of voters, and perhaps it is only in those radical fringe voices - often thought the very loudest - that we have moved so far from this. It is a strange world where 'centrist' with is an insult. Boughton concludes that the state is good at some things and not at others and that the challenge is to restore the role of council housing: something that is simply one of those good things with a host of proven benefits and demonstrable value. The book opens and closes with a vision of Grenfell Tower smoldering and glowering over the rooftops of West London. At the outset, it appears a totem of failure, but by the end, it stands as a symbol of hope: good can be done, if we can separate lofty ideology and basic needs.

Throughout this journey - which is often frustrating and sad - Boughton manages to tell the complex, nuanced story with style and balance. It's easy to take sides - to believe that one path was more morally correct than another - but the public servants Boughton describes are usually, at least, doing their utmost with what they have and making decisions based on their best ideas. That they fell short is an inevitable conclusion to this concise but engaging history of an often glossed-over topic. John Boughton's book will likely become a standard text for those trying to understand this curious and torrid period as Britain accelerated to modernity, and then came to an abrupt halt.

I have a strange and troubled time with London east of the city. Inspired by Iain Sinclair I've wandered some fairly strange paths, and visited places I'd never dreamed of heading for in search of the curious corners of the city. But more than anywhere, wandering here makes me feel something separate from the City - an outcast, albeit quite often in a sea of other temporary citizens. Here, especially, authenticity is brought into sharp focus. With so much written and spoken about the legends of the territory, from ancient plague-grounds to modern murder myths, its hard not to feel like a tourist. The grim reality is that the Hoxton art student posing his way along the queue at the Beigel Bake, or the carefully designed media type lurking around 93 Feet East is more at home here than I will ever be. For someone who tries hard to read the City unconditionally and walks with a degree of perhaps pathetic reverence, this is a crushing defeat of style over content.

A bit of recent reading though has reassured me that this area is far from out-of-bounds to the outsider, and reminded me that these boundary lands have been contested spaces and seen multitudes of populations share the streets and alleyways over centuries of change and redefinition. So today's walk, tagged onto a trip further east into incongruous rural Essex, was an attempt to reclaim my little bit of Spitalfields and Shoreditch and to walk shoulder to shoulder with everyone else who didn't really belong but had gravitated here for sometimes unfathomable reasons.

I started at Aldgate Station, turning east into Whitechapel High Street and falling into step with the low pulse of the market and the throb of deep music from passing BMWs with shaded windscreen glass, before swinging left into Osborn Street - ostensibly the southern entrance to Brick Lane. There is a boarded-up, closed-for-business feel here, almost an attempt to turn back the casual tourist - this is not what you thought it was. A friend of mine who I sometimes travel with would call it "a dump" for certain. But peering through the cracked hoardings into a deep excavation, the old foundations can be seen. Encouraged northwards, I press on into Banglatown. A bewildering but not unwelcoming combination of scents assault the senses - diesel, curry, hot coffee, bad drains. Quiet, alien sounding music pours from a nearby restaurant - one of hundreds all imploring the passer-by to enter, even at this early hour. Onward, passing the entrance to Flower and Dean Walk, sanitised and erased except for the archway which gave entrance to the model dwellings which replaced the seething rookery a century ago. I try to get a haircut, but I'm refused in a case of embarassed but good-humoured racism by the proprietor - and I respond with equal good humour and a handshake. A little solidarity, and a moment of awareness of how alien we both are here. I press on, Christ Church School with it's tiny Star of David emblem hidden on a downpipe betrays the last great wave to sweep the area - where church became Synagogue, and in turn has become a great Mosque.

Beyond Fournier Street, with its painstaking heritage treatment measured by balooning property prices, Brick Lane changes. The curry houses dwindle and the former Black Eagle Brewery begins to dominate both sides of the street in a warm glow of yellow brick and shadow. Here in Dray Walk are the painfully hip bars and shops which are perhaps where I am most truly out of place. I slip apologetically into Rough Trade East in the hope of finding a fairly obscure American release I've been looking for. It's hard to understand the store - all space, pastries and sofas - not like the happy clutter of their West End locations. I slip out, negotiating the crowds of in some instances genuinely beautiful people, and regain the main line of the lane. Here, where the railway crossed before the bridge was dismantled, I head into Pedley Street to find the remains of Shoreditch Station. On my previous foray, this is where I bailed out, not fully grasping my bearings. Closed for a year or more, the station is decaying. Beside it, a glimpse over the wall allows sight of the ancient and long abandoned Bishopsgate Station platforms deep below, and which my train into Liverpool Street had passed just a little while before. The cutting in which the East London Line ran now accommodates a sweeping concrete bridge taking the gradually forming extension high over the Great Eastern Lines. I pass under this, through a narrow tunnel in the scaffolding and hoardings which divides the two sections of the lane almost perfectly. Tiny, expensive shops full of intricate, innovative and artistic goods sit comfortably beside the Beigel Bake. Young professional families stroll by, making the most of a cold, bright winter morning. What little of the market is out today straggles along to the Cheshire Street junction before petering out entirely as I turn west into Bethnal Green Road. The sign for Shoreditch Station twisted back on itself, perhaps not accidentally pointing to the vast concrete box bordering Sclater Street which will eventually be part of the new Shoreditch High Street station.

I head into familiar territory, Commerical Street with its grime, traffic and gleefully down-at-heel edge. Self-aware rich kids jostle me on their way into pubs, thankfully devoid of Ripper Tours today. I'm aware that I'm ill - the cold I've been nursing for nearly a week has finally overtaken me. I'm light-headed with hunger but not particularly wanting to eat. I lean against a railing, not realising until I reorient myself that I'm beneath the awesome frontage of Christ Church. A private function prevents entry today. I cross and re-cross the road, looking for inspiration for an ending to the walk. Eventually, after more false starts, I return to Brick Lane via Fournier Street and walk south - this time feeling more at peace with my surroundings. Via a staggered route through the abandoned metal stall frames of Petticoat Lane market I stumble back to Liverpool Street and gulp welcome hot coffee. I've made sense of much I've read during today's walk - and beyond the photographable landmarks which remain, almost everything has changed. I belong here as much or as little as the over-polite restaurant tout, the cheerfully racist barber or the studied self-aware art student.

Perhaps we are all shadows?

As I approach the end of a year of obsessively covering the odd bits of track I've missed during my previous travels, it's not surprising to note that the big gaps are still in the same places. Whilst South West Wales is now covered along with large parts of East Anglia and most of Scotland, there are still strange areas of emptiness - namely around mid-Wales and the Essex Coast. While the former will surely appear on railtours at times, I realised some time ago I was going to have to chase the other bits on my own initiative. So today's trip had several purposes - firstly to work around the mess of engineering works blocking my path to the North, next to cross another line off the list in Essex, and finally to provide an opportunity to explore the territories I've been reading about recently in more detail. Started the day with the now customary sunrise-chasing trip up to London, arriving early and in surprisingly clear and bright weather. A quick underground move to Liverpool Street and soon on a slightly earlier than planned unit out to Shenfield. I'd forgotten just how poor these Class 321s were inside, and was pleased just to be doing a short hop on the particular example I used to Shenfield. Just outside Stratford we passed the Pathfinder trip to Great Yarmouth arriving from it's circuit around the Capital to pick up the Western from here. Half-wished I'd made the arrangements to do this run, not least because I could have done the elusive Wensum Curve in style! Left the train at Shenfield to await the unit to Southminster which shuttles back and forth all day or so it seems, at least at the weekends. A total failure of the information system meant that the station was relying on good old fashioned shouting of instructions by increasingly surly platform staff, sick of being asked where each train was going again and again, despite their efforts to communicate this! Eventually onto yet another 321 and onto the Southend lines.

As far as Wickham, I'd covered this line - though so long ago and in such innocence of the network that I really didn't remember it. However, realising that there were two ways to get to Southend and that I should do both was probably a very early, formative event of my evolution as a line collector. At Wickham, with the majority of the passengers detrained, we curved away from the double track route to Southend and headed onto a single line travelling over flat marshes punctuated with tufts of grass and streams in deep muddy fissures. The landscape had a real edge of the world quality... this was a long way from the cartoon Essex of dog tracks and white stilettos, and I confess I found the strangely marooned landscape impressive if a little bleak and unsettling.

Realised I was the only passenger in my carriage on arrival, but noted a few others detraining at the terminus. The rails just seem to run out here, alongside a fairly substantial building which appeared to be mostly abandoned and boarded up. Found a spot for a photograph, and realised suddenly and unnervingly that I was totally alone and the road was entirely silent. Noticed the driver of the unit which had brought us in heading up the street in the distance, so decided civilisation must be that way. Southminster appeared a pleasant and quiet place, maybe little more than a large village perhaps. Found a local shop and brought provisions, before heading back to the station, again passing a strange terrace of houses apparently made from slats of wood. Noticed a small pub, The Station Arms also constructed in the same way. An impressive list of beers were on offer, and notes were duly taken as this might be one to come back to sometime. Back on board the unit, with a few more companions this time - mainly people heading into Wickham for last minute Christmas shopping.

Settled in for the ride back towards London in bright winter sunshine. Trips like this remind me of why I never tire of travelling around Britain. A change at Shenfield once again, onto a very busy Class 360 heading into Liverpool Street. Another chance to look at the eerily abandoned Olympic site. I was heading into the east of the city this afternoon to take a walk through territory I'd incompletely explored and had been reading about almost obsessively, and that likely belongs in another entry here.

Took Pix to the vet again for her injections, and then treated her for fleas and coaxed her into taking her worming tablet. Hence the mood was somewhat surly here this morning! Released Gtkdial 0.2.23 which sees the completion of development on the 0.2.x code branch! Its gone from a dodgy Perl prototype, to an equally dodgy GTK/GNOME application, but amazingly still does what I originally meant it to! So tomorrow, work starts on 0.3.... Welsman Massive once again venture down to Weston for "Winterval" celebrations, including a bhangratastic rendition of "In A Gadda Da Vida" at the Curry Garden!