'Saturday Night At The Movies'

Day 69

 

Paddington - Park Royal - Parson's Green - Peckham Rye

 

A layer of fog covers Ealing as I set off on my travels this morning, giving the local park the air of a horror movie film set.

 

A real pea-souper...

Atmospheric though it is, I'm hoping it'll clear before too long or my photos today will be somewhat less than the interesting and informative records of my travels that I would hope them to be...

 

***

The first station - and the first of the 'P's - is one of the better known of London's railway stations, for a number of reasons.

 

Paddington - the railway station entrance

For a start, Paddington is the terminus of The Great Western Railway, or GWR. Otherwise known by the nickname 'God's Wonderful Railway', and engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the GWR was the major route westwards out of London to the Devon and Cornish seaside destinations favoured by holidaymakers in the late nineteenth, and early twentieth Centuries.

There were routes into Wales as well, and by the time of the 'Golden Age Of Steam', everywhere west of a line drawn between Liverpool and Portsmouth was served by a GWR train.

Brunel also designed the station at Paddington (as well as Bristol Temple Meads and other structures on the network) and the huge arches over the concourse are pretty impressive.

Brunel's Arches

Paddington Station's other main claim to fame is the fact that it gave its name to a duffel-coat wearing, marmalade munching and somewhat accident prone little bear who had just arrived there from 'darkest Peru'. A bronze statue of the bear, under the clock on platform 1, pays tribute to the fact.

Paddington Bear



 

Please look after
this bear...



Michael Bond's creation first appeared in 1958, but the recent movie version of his story, featuring Nicole Kidman, has rekindled interest in the stories.

 

 

Some scenes from the movie (the interior platform shots) were actually shot here at the station, although - as I have previously mentioned - the more cinematically attractive Marylebone Station was used as the entrance of the station.

 

 

As well as the bronze statue, there's a decorative bench, above which a green plaque informs passers by of the station's ursine connection.

 

 

Other than that, it's a fairly typical - if impressive - example of London's major rail termini.

 

Around the corner from the station is another 'star' of the screen - though this time it's the small screen, and the star is an entire building.

 



St Mary's Hospital



Currently featuring in the BBC 'fly on the wall' documentary 'Hospital', the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust runs several hospitals, of which St Mary's, near Paddington, is just one.

 

 

However, St Mary's is notable as being the maternity hospital of choice for the Royal Family - having seen (among others) the third in line to the throne - William - and his two children, George and Charlotte, into the world.

 

 

 

 

 

Alongside this, it is also famous for having been the location of the discovery - by Alexander Fleming - of the antibiotic Penicillin in 1928.

 

The plaque celebrating this fact (which you can just make out in the picture above, to the left of the gates) is one of the most geographically specific ones I've seen on my entire journey so far.

 

It reads:

 

"Sir Alexander Fleming

1881-1955

Discovered Penicillin

In the second storey

room above this plaque"

 



Which certainly narrows it down a bit.

 

 

 

 

While today we take Penicillin (like so many things) for granted, it's hard to imagine the scale of the impact Fleming's discovery has had on the history of mankind. It wasn't being mass produced until 1944 - when of course it was in great demand during the Allied Landings in Normandy - but since then it's been used to prevent infection across the entire globe.

 

Another drug which was first synthesised at St Mary's - and one which, rather less happily, has also found a market across the globe - is Heroin.

 

Ironically, the discovery of this drug (by one Charles Romley Alder Wright in 1874) was made during an attempt to find a non-addictive form of the drug Morphine. It took some years, after it had already been on the market as a 'sedative for coughs', for commercial production to cease in 1913.

 

To the north of the station is Paddington Basin - a canal basin at the junction of the Regents Canal and Grand Junction Canal.

 

Paddington Basin

And this too has recently featured on the big screen. Last year, Matt Damon reprised his role as Jason Bourne, and some of the action scenes were filmed here.

 

Narrow-boats on the basin

The basin has been here since 1801, though the days of working canal boats have of course long gone. These days it's a modern development of offices and restaurants, but I can certainly see the attraction of working in an office overlooking the canal, colourful narrow-boats and open plazas.

Walking north-west along the side of the canal a little way, I approach the busy A40 Westway road. Along the way, on the underside Bishop's Bridge Road, I find a huge art/poetry installation called 'Message From The Unseen World'.

Message From The Unseen World

It's a digital display, on which the words of the poem appear and disappear in what seems at first to be a random pattern.

'Revel in your liberty...'

The poem is written in the form of a 'message' from the late mathematician Alan Turing - born in the area, though some way to the north, beyond Warwick Avenue Tube Station - in which he tells the story of his life and work.

The poem is by Nick Drake, but the visual interpretation is by a group called United Visual Artists, who wanted to create a tribute to Turing's ground-breaking work, by having 'a computer trying to write like a poet, whilst thinking like a machine'.

The poem by Nick Drake in full.



'Two Figures'

A little further on again, is another artwork - this time a pair of sculptures of men facing each other.



The two men - one standing still, the other walking towards him, and collectively known as 'Two Figures', are by the modern artist, Sean Henry.




Similar figures of his can be found around the world, including Sweden, Norway, The USA, and (closer to home) in parks and galleries across the UK.



Standing Man

Walking Man

Perhaps because, unlike other sculptures, these two figures are painted more realistically to resemble real people, I find them strangely fascinating. As do the many people who pass by this artwork on their way to the station, or to their offices - that is, if the number of 'selfies' being taken next to one or other of the figures is anything to go by.






And so I leave my first station of the day, which has provided me with much of interest to see, and ponder, and write about - and head to my second, which I'm afraid is rather less generous...

***

Park Royal

Park Royal station sits on the A40, about a five minute walk from the insanely busy Hangar Lane Gyratory, which of course I visited some time ago.

The part of London known as Park Royal is predominantly a business area, with industrial estates, factories, offices and warehouses proliferating across the whole area.

The reason for such a concentration of businesses is purely one of convenient transport links, with the A40, the North Circular, and the two tube stations being close by.

Otherwise the area has little to recommend it to the casual visitor, and the best thing that can be said for it is that, should you find yourself in the place by some misfortune, it is very easy to get away from it again.

The A40 in all its picturesqueness

There is, by way of entertainment, a cinema and Ten-Pin Bowling complex, with the usual KFCs and Pizza Huts, but unless you want to weave your way through the gangs of teenagers in low-slung jeans eating their burgers and smoking dope in the car-parks, I'd probably go to a more salubrious cinema.

I leave the delights of the A40 behind me, before I breathe in too many exhaust fumes, and head back to the station.

***
And on to my next stop, which could hardly be more of a contrast.

Parson's Green

Parsons Green is - on the face of it - bereft of slouching teenagers.

If they're anywhere, they're at home with their chums from school, playing video games on the 50" wall-mounted TV with surround sound and eating organic pizza on the sofa in the 'games room' mummy and daddy built them...

The Green

A little history...

Instead, on the streets, are the affluent residents of this green and pleasant enclave of the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

The 'Green' in question is the triangular patch of open space south of the station, at the southern end of which is the King's Road (or - as it is here - New King's Road) which has of course been the haunt of the fashionistas (at the Chelsea End of it at least) since the 1960s.




At this end of the King's Road there are antique shops, organic grocery stores, gastropubs and art dealers aplenty, and the coffee shops are full of Apple Macbooks and celebrity-endorsed pushchairs (or 'Travel Systems') being wielded by the trendy locals.

New King's Road shops

On one side of the Green is Lady Margaret School for girls - whose former pupils include such luminaries as Nigella Lawson, Janet Street Porter and film-maker Martha Fiennes. I don't, of course, have a photo of this to show you, since standing outside an all-girls school pointing a camera at it is probably not the wisest thing to do these days.

It's a pleasant enough spot to stop for a bite of lunch, however, and I munch a sandwich and a coffee as I watch a bit of the world go by.

***
And then it's off to my final stop of the day - and back to the other extreme of London's wealth scale.

Peckham Rye

Peckham Rye station is - naturally - in Peckham, a district of the Borough of Southwark. It's an area with something of a history of deprivation and crime. The 'North Peckham Estate' was notorious in the 80s and 90s as a home for gangs, and the teenager Damilola Taylor was murdered here in 2000.

The station is on Rye Lane - a shopping street where you'll find a diversity of ethnic shops and cafés.



Rye Lane

Continuing the theme of television and film locations, Peckham is also the fictional home of the Trotter family in the sitcom 'Only Fools And Horses' (there's actually a real 'Nag's Head' pub at the bottom of Rye Lane) and this choice of location tells you something about the area's lack of wealth.

'I love Peckham'

These days there have been some attempts at rejuvenation, though the many banners being flown, with their various translations of the phrase ' I love Peckham', seem to me rather an exercise in wishful thinking - I can't imagine it's very high on the tourist trail itinerary...





Colourful Lamp-posts

Further south, the lamp-posts have been given a colourful make-over, and these do at least have a sense of fun that seems lacking on the shopping street.


The road I'm on now is actually called Peckham Rye as well, and it leads to Peckham Rye Park & Common - a large open space that includes what's left of the River Peck - after which the area gets its name.


At the northern end of the common is an unusual bit of artwork by an artist who goes by the description of 'public art clown' - mORGANICo.

Peckham Totem Pole

The totem pole is carved from an old tree stump and certainly lives up to the artist's stated aim of trying 'to make the world a tiny bit more colourful and interesting... that's IT.........'.

Peckham Rye Park & Common

And that's it for me too - at least for today. I leave Peckham Rye and its common and head back home, with the first few stations of a new letter securely under my belt.

'Ashes To Ashes'

Day 68

 

Oval - Oxford Circus

 

Another short-ish day of travelling today, since I only have two stations to visit to complete the 'O's.

 

The name of the first, Oval, will be familiar to anyone who's a fan of the game of cricket and - very probably - most other people too.

 

Oval

 

There are certain places - Wembley and Twickenham for example - whose names have become almost synonymous with the sports played there. With cricket it's a little trickier, since other names like Lord's, Edgbaston, Old Trafford and Trent Bridge are perhaps equally familiar. Nevertheless, The Oval could, with reasonable justifiability, have laid claim to being the 'home' of cricket, if Lord's hadn't already claimed the title.

 

The inside of the tube station certainly leaves no doubt as to the local preoccupation.

 

Spot the theme...

 

The cricket ground, which is - not surprisingly - oval shaped, is a few minutes walk away from the station, on an oval shaped road, called Kennington Oval. However, the shape of the road was not (in spite of what you might think), determined by the shape of the cricket ground, but rather the other way around. The Kennington Oval was originally a market garden owned by the Duchy of Cornwall before it was leased to Surrey County Cricket Club to build their home there in 1845.

 

The Oval

It also has the rather dubious honour of being the venue for the 'death of English cricket' - as facetiously reported by The Sporting Times in 1882, when Australia beat England in a Test Match here. The newspaper wrote that the 'body' of English Cricket would be 'cremated and the ashes taken to Australia', prompting English team captain Ivo Bligh to vow to regain them the following year - which his team succeeded in doing.

 

A trophy (a terracotta urn containing the ashes of a burnt cricket bail) was presented to Bligh by a group of Melbourne women (one of whom he later went on to marry) and thus the rivalry over 'The Ashes' was born.

 



The ground, with the
gasometers behind

I walk around the Oval and manage to catch a glimpse of the pitch through one of the locked gates. I had hoped there might be a tour of the grounds I could go on, but sadly these only start in February.



Looking through the gate I see the huge gas storage tanks (or Gasometers) which form the backdrop of the Oval.




I complete my circular (or rather, elliptical) stroll around the grounds, then head back to the main road, across which is Kennington Park.

When I visited Kennington Station, some time ago, I was in something of a rush, and didn't get to see inside the park - an oversight I correct today.

Kennington Park

It's a fairly typical park - trees, grass, playgrounds and so on - though it does also have one or two curiosities.



Air-Raid Monument

The first is a rather striking monument to the victims of the bombing of an air-raid shelter in 1940.

The wording on the monument reads:

"History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again"

It's a quotation from a poem written by American writer Maya Angelou, and read by her at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton.

Given the current state of world politics, and the fact that this week sees the inauguration of a new, and, ahem, unpredictable American president, it might be a sentiment we should bear in mind...

Also in the park is a 'Lodge House' (now used as offices), which - while not a palace by any means - nevertheless seems a rather grander affair than is usually found in public parks.

Prince Consort Lodge - Information

A sign nearby tells me the reason for this - it was commissioned by Prince Albert as being a 'model for working class family homes'.

The Lodge - now offices.

The Prince, philanthropist, though he undoubtedly was, clearly had a naively rose-tinted view of what most working class people could aspire to.

***
I head north from the park to Kennington Station, and thence to Tottenham Court Road. From here it's just a ten minute walk to my second - and final - stop today: Oxford Circus.



Oxford Circus

Oxford Circus is quite possibly the busiest place in London.

As an interchange of the Central, Bakerloo and Victoria Lines, as well as being at the junction of two of the busiest shopping streets in London - Oxford Street and Regent Street - it sees an annual footfall of over 90 million people. Which of course gives the lie to the clichéd epithet; 'it's like Piccadilly Circus round here', applied to anywhere over-crowded. Piccadilly Circus sees barely half the number of people Oxford Circus does.

The fact that they are both called 'Circuses' does not, sadly, have anything to do with them being noisy, chaotic places full of people behaving like clowns and animals - it's just that circus is the Latin for a circle or, in this case, roundabout.

Given the number of people spewing up out of the tube station every day, it seems perhaps odd that it was only as recently as 2009 that the junction was modernised to include a Japanese style 'pedestrian scramble' type crossing. This is a crossing at which the traffic is completely stopped from all directions, and pedestrians are able to cross whichever way they like, all at the same time.



Pedestrians 'scrambling'

This being polite Britain of course, and despite the number of foreign tourists also no doubt taking part, the so called 'scramble' looks to be more of a leisurely promenade, though that might just be the time of day - I've no doubt that at rush hour it's every commuter for himself.

Broadcasting House

To the north of Oxford Circus is Portland Place, and in particular Broadcasting House - the home of the BBC's radio output since 1932, and now the corporations main headquarters in London.








Technically, the original art deco style building is now known as 'Old Broadcasting House, following the construction of a new wing to the east and a connecting glass fronted building between them, forming a horseshoe shaped courtyard familiar to fans of the self-mocking BBC comedy 'W1A'.

'Old' and 'New' Broadcasting Houses.

Back to the junction, and the streets are getting busier, as lunchtime approaches.

Oxford Street - John Lewis, House Of Fraser, Debenhams, et al

As I alluded to earlier - if The Oval is synonymous with cricket, then the two streets which converge here - Regent Street and Oxford Street - are synonymous with shopping.



Regent Street

Many of the familiar high street department stores started life on Oxford Street, including HMV, Selfridges and John Lewis. The latter, despite famously being a 'partnership' (or 'worker co-operative') in which the workers have a say in the running of the business and receive a share of the annual profits as a bonus, began life somewhat differently as something of a dictatorship run by the first Mr John Lewis - known as a bit of an autocrat.

He would happily sack members of staff on a whim, and his management style led to disputes both with his workers (who went on strike) and his sons, one of whom (John Spedan Lewis) would take over on his death, and change the whole ethos of the company by setting up the partnership.

Around the corner from the tube station at Oxford Circus, on Argyll Street, is one of the most famous theatres (since the television age at least) in London.

The London Palladium

"Sunday Night At The London Palladium" (and its many subsequent renamed guises) has been a fixture on British television from 1955 to the present day, and has made the theatre a household name for generations. This is the theatre your gran has heard of, and (if like me, you're an actor) the one at which she doggedly hopes to 'see you on the stage' one day.

Just down the road is another famous retail name - Liberty. A luxury goods store along the same lines as Harrods in Knightsbridge, the business was started by Arthur Lasenby Liberty in 1875. The present building, with its mock Tudor frontage, was constructed in 1924 and used timbers from two 19th Century British Navy ships - HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan.



Liberty

Around the corner, and in marked contrast to the traditional façade of Liberty, are the hip and trendy fashion shops of the heart of 1960s Swinging London - Carnaby Street.

Carnaby Street

This is where the like of the Rolling Stones, The Who, The Small Faces and so on bought their gear and hung out with fashion designers such as Mary Quant. The whole area became a Mecca for mods, hippies and the 'In-Crowd' - so much so that The Kinks even wrote a satirical song about it; 'Dedicated Follower Of Fashion'.



The home of Swinging London

It seems just as popular with the fashionistas today, and certainly has a lively buzz about it. I'm not sure how much more Paisley the world really needs, however, and you'd certainly need a figure more svelte than mine to fit into much that's on offer.

But none of that dampens my mood today, as I head back to the station and to home, having ticked off another letter on my alphabetical quest. Next time I'll be launching myself into the 'P's, of which there are a fair few, and with luck and a fair wind I'll be approaching two-thirds of the way through the list of stations before too long. Onwards!

'Long Distance Blues'

Day 67

Oakwood - Old Street - Osterley

Happy New Year to you all!

Today we kick off with the 'O's  - of which there are just five to visit. However, the first and third of these - while both being on the Piccadilly Line - are miles apart at opposite ends of the line, so I suspect the chances of me completing all five stations today are (unlike my post-Christmas figure) very slim indeed.
 

***



Oakwood

Art Deco Bench

 

 

But let's start the ball rolling with Oakwood. This is the penultimate stop before Cockfosters, heading east (or north, depending on how you look at it) on the Piccadilly Line and you'll immediately recognise the traditional geometric simplicity of the Charles Holden design. Like Acton Town, which I visited on my very first day of Wombling, it's basically a big rectangular block of red brick and large windows across the front and back.



The car park in front of the station features a slightly unusual circular bench, topped with the London Underground Roundel.

 

 

Oakwood is a quiet little suburb up in Enfield, and although named after a park to the south, in which the titular Oak Trees were to be found, the station itself sits at the southerly tip of the huge expanse of open land called Trent Country Park - part of which I saw when I visited Cockfosters.

Trent Country Park is vast - 413 acres in fact - and the two stations adjoining it only touch the southern edge of the park which stretches a good couple of kilometres further north. Nevertheless, I like to wander into the greener areas of London whenever I can, so I stroll along Snakes Lane (should I be worried?) for a few hundred feet before venturing into the trees and fields of the park.

Trent Country Park

It's as if a sound-proof curtain has dropped behind me. Though the station lies on quite a busy main road, the trees towering above me seem to baffle the sound so all I can hear is some occasional birdsong.

Up where the air is clear...

Then I'm out of the trees and into the open space and looking at the rest of the park stretching out in front of me as far as I can see. For a capital city we don't do too badly for open spaces do we?

Is there anybody out there?

Back to the main road - which is rather less inspiring, being just the typical collection of shops found on many such parades on the approach to the city's stations.

The usual collection...

Heading west though, after ten minutes, I come to something of a ground-breaking establishment.

Chickenshed Theatre

The Chickenshed Theatre was founded in 1974 by Jo Collins and Mary Ward - quite literally in a chicken shed. The idea was to create a theatre company that was open to anyone, whatever their apparent 'difficulties' or 'disabilities' - since every one of us has some creativity within us, given the right environment in which to flourish.

What's on...

Since its early days in the original shed, the company has become a world-wide name, and as well as now having the purpose built theatre here in North London, has set up smaller inclusive theatre 'sheds' across the UK.

***

On to my next stop - so it's back along the Piccadilly Line to King's Cross, and then a quick hop down to Old Street on the Northern Line.

Old Street is, as the name suggests, old.

 

Old Street

 

There has been a street of this name (albeit with various spellings) since at least the beginning of the 13th Century. The station itself is actually underneath the junction of Old Street (which runs west to east) and City Road (running north to south) - two of the major thoroughfares of this part of town.

Despite its venerable history, the area surrounding the station, and in particular the roundabout under which it lies, have seen much modernisation and have become the home to many I.T. and Tech firms in recent years, giving rise to the nickname ' Silicon Roundabout'.



Silicon Roundabout



I walk to the north, up the City Road, towards one of London's better known hospitals - the Moorfields Eye Hospital.



No - it really does
look like that...



 

 

 

 

Along the way I encounter a building clearly designed to generate more work for the hospital as the weird proportions of the architecture are really bad for the eyes...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hospital , as the name suggests, is a specialist ophthalmic hospital and covers all aspects of eye treatment, from cataracts to contact lenses, glaucomas to glass eyes.

 

Moorfields Eye Hospital

I do think they've missed a trick however. Surely they could have had a bit more fun with the sign on the front of the building and given us something a little more like this:

 

 

 

MOOR

FIELDS

EYEHO

SPITAL

 

 

 

No? Oh well, suit yourselves...

 

***

The City Road is also immortalised in the lines of the Nursery Rhyme 'Pop Goes The Weasel'.

 

Most of us are familiar with the first verse from our school days:

 

Half a pound of tupenny rice,

Half a pound of treacle,

That's the way the money goes,

Pop goes the weasel,

 

But that's probably all we learnt. A second verse (or third, depending on which version you find) has the following lyrics:

 

Up and down the City Road,

In and out the Eagle,

That's the way the money goes,

Pop goes the weasel.

 

The meaning of the lyrics has given rise to much varied interpretation, though one I particularly like the sound of is that it's a warning about the consequences of spending all your money and having to end up pawning your clothes ('pop' being slang for 'pawn' and 'weasel' being rhyming slang - 'weasel and stoat' = 'coat'). The Eagle is a pub that still exists on the City Road, some way up from the Eye Hospital.

 

***

And so on to my final stop of the day (no - I'm not going to manage all five 'O's today I'm afraid).

 

Osterley is on the Heathrow branch of the Piccadilly Line, so it's another long journey from King's Cross to get there.

 

Osterley

 

This is another station with a geometric blockiness to it, though in this case the architect wasn't Charles Holden, but Stanley Heaps - who emulated his designs.

 

Tower & Obelisk

 

 

On top of the station is a tower, and on top of that is a concrete obelisk, the point of which I'm afraid rather escapes me.

 

 

 

It sits on the main A4 heading out of central London to the west, and indeed this stretch of the A4 is known as The Great West Road, though it has been largely displaced by the bigger M4 motorway.

 

 

 

 

Great West Road

The station is named after nearby Osterley Park - another of those surprisingly large open spaces dotted around the capital.

 

Entrance to Osterley Park

The park was built around Osterley House (now a National Trust property) which was originally built in the Elizabethan era an Elizabeth I herself actually visited it at one time. It was also used as a training school for the Home Guard during WWII and such techniques as hand-to-hand combat, explosives, and camouflage were taught here.

 

Osterley House

I take an enjoyable - if slightly mud-encrusted - stroll around the lake in front of the house, and pass an idle few minutes watching various wild-fowl splashing around in the water.

 

Being early January, it's rather cold, so I don't linger too long - but I do enjoy the afternoon sun setting through the haze as it drops behind the grand country house.

 

A hazy shade of winter

Not a bad way to kick off the New Year really...