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dandelionoftheday · 2 months

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Dandelion by the wayside: new dandelion growing in the cracks

#dandelion #nature #nature in the city #dandelion of the day #london #spring in the city #wild flowers #city wildlife #spring flowers #urban dandelion #harringay passage #not just weeds

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poemsliz · 5 months

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You made your mark on the world

#found #art #london #modern art #urban photography #street photography #photography #in the street #street life #harringay passage

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natureliz · 1 year

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Fungi in the Harringay Passage growing through the pavement

#nature #nature in the city #london #urban wildlife #city wildlife #harringay #everyday nature #make time for nature #fantastic fungi #fungi #mushrooms #fungus #fungiphotography #urban fungi

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dubmill · 5 years

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Thursday, 8 August 2019

To Hatton Wall for a haircut (341 bus to Mount Pleasant, then walked the rest of the way to the salon).

Afterwards, I walked to Holborn Circus to pay in a cheque at the bank, then continued down Shoe Lane towards Fleet Street. At one point I heard a man’s voice close behind me say, in an American accent, ‘Look at that Brutalist building!’ The Shoe Lane and Fetter Lane area has been hugely rebuilt of late, with construction still going on even now, so I wondered what he was referring to. It was the Shoe Lane Library, which stood out among the recent buildings. (Hill House, which contains the library, was built in 1975–79.) The speaker was a thin, wiry man in his sixties, wearing shorts and what I took to be walking shoes. A similarly dressed woman I presumed to be his wife stood back looking slightly ill at ease as he approached the library entrance, perhaps to read a sign. I carried on downhill and they eventually overtook me, not walking but very slowly jogging.

I hadn’t decided where to go next but noticed the American couple had crossed Fleet Street and gone down a side road, Salisbury Court, so I thought I would follow them. I soon reached Salisbury Square, where there were benches arranged around an obelisk of some sort. I sat down for a while. I quite liked the view of the obelisk, with random office workers standing about on smoking breaks, so I took a photo.

From where I was sitting I could see a passageway on the other side of the square, and I had an idea the American couple might have jogged down it, although they were long gone by this time. Nevertheless, I thought I would have a look down the passage, which it turned out led to another paved area with benches. I sat down again, but soon got up as I didn’t much like the view of a nearby office block. As I retraced my steps I noticed there was a church on the other side of a wall. It looked interesting, so I approached it via another alleyway further up Salisbury Court.

I could have gone inside the church (St. Bride’s, a Wren church on a very old site, perhaps as early as the sixth century), but the benches outside were more tempting. The churchyard was shady and cool, and I sat there for a good twenty minutes, alternately watching the movement of the shadows of tree branches on the wall of an adjacent building and glancing around at other people, while half listening to a man at the next bench speaking on the phone.

At length I got up and made my way back to Fleet Street to wait for a bus to either Waterloo or Charing Cross station, where I could use the public toilets. A 341 came first, so I took it to Waterloo.

After using the toilet, I left the station via the footbridge that crosses York Road and leads to the South Bank. This took me past the ‘Upstream Building’, as it is called, a surviving portion (and the most prominent tower) of the Shell Centre, built between 1957 and 1962 but now largely demolished. Not long ago I watched a video on YouTube, made in 1964, in which the newly built Shell Centre is seen from a boat on the Thames. Now, gazing up at the 351-ft tower, in its day the tallest office building in London, I reflected on the passing of time. I don’t even like the building particularly, so it’s not as if I’m relieved it’s been preserved, but it’s striking how much of what was familiar in London has been or is in the process of being replaced.

Above: Shell Centre tower, 25 July 2008

On a similar theme, I had already decided to take a 77 bus to Wandsworth Road to see what progress had been made in demolishing the building I used to work in.

Catching the 77 from Concert Hall Approach felt a bit strange as I hadn’t done it for nearly ten years. The feeling of going back in time persisted as the bus circled the IMAX cinema, took the familiar route along York Road, Lambeth Palace Road and Albert Embankment to Vauxhall Bus Station, then turned up Wandsworth Road. At Lansdowne Green I alighted and walked the short distance to Belmore Street. I had been here a couple of times in recent weeks, walking up from Stockwell station on evenings after visits to my mother. What I was interested in was seeing the old Vauxhall Centre of Lambeth College in different stages of demolition. Today, there was plenty of activity on the site, but what had remained of the building about a month before was still there, chopped off at one end, with a door on an upper floor opening on to empty space.

Above: Belmore Street, 9 July 2019

Next, I walked further up Wandsworth Road to the Mind charity shop I often visited in my lunch hour when I worked at the college. I was surprised to see the same elderly woman working behind the counter. She seemed a bit older, but not that much considering I hadn’t been there for ten years. The shop itself had changed a lot: It sometimes used to have unusual old books for sale, but the books section was now reduced in size and had nothing of interest.

Above: Mind shop, Wandsworth Road, 11 October 2008

Back on the street I waited for a 452 bus. I planned to spend the rest of the afternoon visiting Kensal Green Cemetery, which I hadn’t been to before.

By the time I got to Kensal Green, I was starving hungry. I was close to the East Gate of the cemetery but thought I would buy a sandwich before going inside. There were a few shops nearby but I couldn’t find any that sold sandwiches, so after a while I abandoned the idea of visiting the cemetery. Frustrated, I walked up the hill towards Kensal Rise. At first I was still hoping to find something to eat, but my hunger eventually began to fade and I thought I would just walk north-east, in the general direction of home.

The route, an unfamiliar one up Chamberlayne Road, then Sidmouth and Lydford Roads, was surprisingly light in traffic. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the walk, as the weather was hot and stuffy, but it wasn’t too bad, and at least I was getting some exercise. (One point of interest on this stretch was a cricket ground hidden behind a wooden fence. Peeping through a gap in the fence, I saw that a game was in progress, and I watched a few balls before moving on.)

Having calmed down a bit, I began to feel frustrated again at the end of Skardu Road. Continuing north-east was impossible because of the rail tracks of the Midland Main Line out of St. Pancras, and to cross the railway I had to detour some way south along Fordwych Road before turning north-east again on Minster Road.

When I reached Menelik Road (named after Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia, with whom local landowner and explorer Major Percy Powell-Cotton had an audience in 1900), I made a mistake. I followed the road as it curved round, up a hill and down again, and after about ten minutes ended up back more or less where I started, at the junction with Westbere Road. The problem was another obstacle: Hampstead Cemetery. To avoid it, I should have turned instead into Sarre Road, where I could have reached Gondar Gardens by a footpath.

Above: Gondar Gardens, West Hampstead, 1 February 2014 (I didn’t realise I’d been there before. In fact, had I taken the footpath from Sarre Road, I would have come out at almost this exact spot.)

I could then have skirted the cemetery and continued north-east towards Finchley Road and Hampstead Heath. Unaware of this possibility (I didn’t spot the very faint outline of the footpath on Google Maps), and by now feeling a bit weary, I gave up. Conveniently, there was a bus stop on Westbere Road and I caught a C11 to Archway, followed by a 41 to Turnpike Lane, then walked home via the Harringay Passage.

It had been just another aimless day. I’d walked a total of 8.3 miles, as well as riding around on buses quite a bit, but overall it felt unsatisfying because nothing I’d seen or done really stood out.