'Life In The Fast Lane'

Day 1 (Part 2)

 

Acton Town - Aldgate - Aldgate East - All Saints

 

From Acton Town the District Line goes all the way to Aldgate East (and beyond). Astute readers will perhaps have noticed that Aldgate East is of course the fifth station on my list, not the fourth, which is Aldgate. But as it's only a short stroll from the one to the other I hope my readers will forgive me if I pretend not to see it when I get off the train, and only metaphorically open my eyes again when I arrive at Aldgate.

 

While I am waiting for the next District Line train, however, I count no less than four Piccadilly Line trains entering and leaving the station on the platform just a few feet away. The route to Aldgate using the Piccadilly Line would necessarily be a more convoluted one, requiring at least one change, but I can't help feeling it would nevertheless be substantially quicker. But then, I remind myself, perhaps that's why I'm doing this - to get me to slow down, and look around.

 

My travelling companions on the District Line, when it eventually arrives, are a mixed bunch. There's a scholarly looking gentleman in a tweed coat, flat cap and rather incongruous scarlet suede trousers, reading a history of the English Civil War (him, not the trousers); a twenty-something male of Eastern-European appearance; and a middle-aged couple. The wife of the couple is blind, and is assisted to her seat by her husband who then spends the rest of the journey complaining about his sore throat. This annoys me for reasons I cannot adequately explain.

 

Palin or Bryson would by now of course have struck up a conversation with one (or probably all) of these, and be regaling you with the amusing anecdotes they entertained him with. I, however, am still to escape the clutches of the "unwritten rule" of the Underground - namely, "Thou shalt not say a word, or indeed make eye-contact with any other person, and shall instead seek out for the forty-eighth time that poster about hair-loss, in the vain hope that there may be a syllable of it you haven't yet read, so that you can divert your mind from the mind-shattering isolation of it all".

 

Either that or you're actually reading Michael Palin or Bill Bryson, in which case you're deaf and blind to the world about you anyway.

 

As we enter Victoria station, the driver utters the immortal words "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform". "Mind the gap". Ah, now that's the Underground in a nutshell.... So rapt am I by the familiar words, that I almost miss the next announcement and the news that this train will in fact be terminating at Tower Hill, one stop before Aldgate East, so that unless I wait for another train (which given my experience at Acton Town could be a long wait) I must walk to my destination from Tower Hill.

 

This does at least mean that the alphabetical order will be preserved, and like many Underground stations, the two are so close that it may in fact be as quick (if not quicker - a fact which surprises many people, including most Londoners) to walk anyway.

 

It also means that by taking the five minute stroll from Tower Hill to Aldgate, I happen upon a street called "Crutched Friars". I have no idea who these friars were, nor why their crutches merited such celebration. And why "friars" plural? Was it such a dangerous time for monks? Were their legs in constant peril? Did a freak accident cripple an entire monastery? And, having been struck down, why did they (presumably) all hobble along to this particular spot on their crutches?

 

Such are my ponderings as I approach Aldgate. The station itself, which sits in the shadow of number 30, St Mary Axe - or "The Gherkin", as it is more commonly known - is an uninspiring place, and I didn't think I’d linger long.

 

Aldgate - It has a newsagent's next to it

However, just up the road, and a surprising deviation from the skyline behind it, is an odd wooden structure that catches my eye…

Paleys Upon Pilers - visit it soon before
they remember they were going to take it down

It’s called “Paleys Upon Pilers”, (or Palace Upon Pillars – thanks, Mr Google, you’re a star) and marks the site of the original Aldgate – the easternmost gate through the old London Wall. It’s also a memorial to Aldgate’s most famous former resident, Geoffrey Chaucer (hence the Middle English spelling).

 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe it was originally supposed to be a temporary installation, to celebrate the 2012 Olympics, but someone seems to have forgotten to take it down again.

 

I’m quite glad – it’s interesting and quirky and makes a change from the gleaming glass and steel buildings that dominate this area.

 

 

'Watch This Space' - it's more interesting
than anything else around here.

***

 

I head along Whitechapel towards Aldgate East, a matter of a few minutes’ walk, which of course means that the scenery doesn’t change all that much. I do notice this little side street with an amusing bit of 'street art' at the end. The artist has even gone to the trouble of making sure the perspective works from the top of the side street (notice how the arrow continues onto the ground below the wall?). What, if anything, the arrow is pointing to, I don't know, and for once Mr Google has been singularly unhelpful. By pure chance the woman in the red coat walked past me as I took the photo - but I'm naturally going to take credit for spotting the juxtapositional possibilities! (I'm sorry - I can't believe I just wrote that.)

 

I reach Aldgate East station a minute later.

 

Cyril M. Harris, in his book "What's In A Name", tells me that "The station was moved a short distance east in 1938."

 

Erm, sorry, what?

 

How do you "move" a station? And why? And what's "a short distance"? Are we talking a foot or two? Just for the hell of it? Was it blocking someone's view? Maybe that's what the Watch This Space artist was trying to tell us - watch this space or someone might move a station into it! In any case, if they hadn't moved the station further east, I would have reached it even quicker, so they've deliberately and unnecessarily prolonged my journey. Gits.

 

Anyway, finding nothing else of interest, I take a peremptory photo of the station and head down into it to continue my journey.

Aldgate East - the new position suits it don't you think?

 

***

 

Having caught the District Line to Bow Road, and then walked 300 yards to Bow Church DLR station (what a neat alphabetical coupling that would have been, had I been travelling in the opposite direction – one to remember for the future!) I catch the train to my final destination of the day – All Saints.

 

As far as I'm aware, this area has nothing at all to do with the popular beat combo of the same name.

 

However, the lyrics of their first hit "Never Ever" seem fairly apt right now.

 

Never ever have I ever felt so low,

When you gonna take me out of this black hole

 

All Saints - Never ever gonna come here again.

Ok, so I admit to being not a little travel weary by this point, having been nearly 4½ hours on the move, so perhaps I’m not in the most receptive frame of mind. But with the sky-scraping dominance of One Canada Square as a backdrop, All Saints rather suffers in comparison.

 

(In case you were unaware, 'One Canada Square' is the name of the building many people including myself have always called ‘Canary Wharf’. That is in fact the name of the area, not the building)

 

Another collection of betting shops, kebab houses and fried chicken emporia is about all I can find on the main street. There is a church, from which the station takes its name, and I try to muster some artistic enthusiasm for it in framing my Station Photo, but my heart isn’t really in it and I don’t hang around for long.

 

I make my way back into the station and head for Canary Wharf, where I change to the Jubilee Line. This involves a walk through the lower floor of One Canada Square, and from the somewhat squalid high street of All Saints, I’m suddenly immersed in a building positively dripping with opulence.

 

I feel equally out of place here, and rush through it as quickly as possible.

 

The Jubilee Line takes me to Bond Street (catch you later my ‘B’ friend) and from there I gratefully collapse onto a Central Line train back to Ealing Broadway and home.

 

It’s been a long and tiring day out, and a very silly and pointless exercise – yet somehow I feel it’s an important and necessary one too. For me at least, if for no-one else.