Between the strikes

I thought I would slip into London on the Thursday between the strikes at the beginning of June. A day on which the trains between Epsom and Waterloo were running to time, even if the morning started cold and overcast. Bearded indigent was on station, just outside one of the large glass doors into the booking hall, under repair, as it happened. 

Intrigued by the light-weight cranes on the roof of the block over the booking hall. I thought that there were rather a lot of them for window cleaning - but if they were not for that, what were they for? One more thing to keep an eye on.

Plenty of other people about, to the extent that it was standing room only by the time the train reached Worcester Park. Much eastern-style bowing as I left the train at Clapham Junction, occasioned I think by someone moving to allow the eastern party to sit together.

Do not be fooled by the zero charge. The day rental charge is recorded elsewhere. Divide and rule.

And the stands at Grant Road are not what they used to be. Perhaps halved in size after the redevelopments, some of them at least student flavoured, and after making provision for electric cars.

What used to be the cosy smoking den outside what is now called the 'Griffin Belle', a name which includes the badge of the Vauxhall cars once made in Vauxhall and the name of the small chain which runs the house. A cosy den which once came, as I recall, with a good supply of pot plants and hanging baskets. A good few years now since I took a puff there.

Inside, a cheerful new manager, new to me and from somewhere north of Watford. And I was impressed by the picture you got by butting up four screens, each one of which being of the order of size of our television at home. The black strips marking the joins did not seem to matter visually. You could happily watch the cricket, or whatever it was that was on offer.

Less impressed by further evidence of the privatisation of our schools, this one being the large old-style London primary school in Wyvil Road, rather like, in general appearance at least, the one that BH did a few years at in Kentish Town. In the days when there was a thriving street market adjacent. That is to say, Queen's Crescent. Is it still there?

So back in Vauxhall, some of the space has been sub-let to the dance academy at reference 1. Maybe they have the excise of falling rolls. Notwithstanding, the school now runs to both a head teacher and an executive head teacher. Perhaps there are roles like Director of Music and Directory of Diversity as well. With management teams at every level. Deliveries and visitors to the office are directed to the Golden Gates, which gmaps reveals to be a pair of gates to the right of the snap above, painted in gold coloured paint.

Interesting that the Board - or whatever ran inner London schools in those days - saw fit to splash out on a fairly fancy bit of stone work. Costing in more in real terms I dare say than the more recent splash of yellow paint on the gates.

And so to the Estrela where we opted to sit outside. A punt which came in as by the time we were finishing, we asked for an umbrella to be erected to take the sun off us, by then uncomfortably hot, despite the cold start.

The odd glass of Vinho Verde. Black olives and white bread. Some sort of fish paste to go on the bread. Followed by one the specials of the day, pork chop chef style. Which turned out to mean rice, chips and green salad, topped off with a hefty portion of pork chop. Garnished with a sort of thick, dark yellow gravy. I thought the gravy tasted of vinegar, which did it no favours at all as far as I was concerned. I should have remembered to ask for gravy on the side. Then on the way home, I started to wonder whether I had not confused the taste of vinegar with that of salt - excess salt being another of the occasional culinary errors at the Estrela. A possible confusion which has spawned an extensive investigation of the matter, on which I hope to be able to report shortly.

All wound up with some brown Aguardiente. I associate now to the fact that when in places like Soif (of reference 2) I tend to ask for brown Calvados. What is it about brown alcohol?

After all of which, I headed back to the station, picking up this substantial weed growing in the Travis Perkins fence. 

And on this day, I thought I could find time to visit the florid establishment noticed towards the end of reference 3.

And it turned out to be one of those underneath-the-arches sort of places offering a selection of bars and street food. Quiet at 16:00 but, I dare say, busy later. A thought corroborated by the barman who explained that if people wanted to smoke at seats from which they could see the sky, who was he to stop them?

I went onto to contemplate the crack enlarged above, above the 'RTS' of sports in the snap previous. I don't suppose anything much is going to happen in the middle of a large block of this sort, but I dare say I would worry if I lived behind it - and that a surveyor might get quite excited. Especially if you were punting for a large mortgage.

BH was rather pleased with the good length of free bunting that I acquired on exit. Clean and as good as new, despite the receptacle from which it had been retrieved. Put aside for the  next royal occasion.

Having seen a fire engine on the move at Clapham, I saw two more before I got to the station. With two Chinooks above, separately that is, not in formation. And the telephone confirmed that it was indeed Boeing who had a good grip on the market for big helicopters for the west.

While for me the platform library at Raynes Park furnished some old New Scientists, still full of advertisements for jobs, some with very curious titles, and two old maps from the National Geographic. One did the reservations and parks of the US and southern Canada, which played to the reading noticed at reference 4. I amused myself on the way home trying to work out how to fold it back up again. An amusement which lasted, on a crowded train, more or less all the way to Epsom.

While the other map reminded me later of the massive changes to the boundaries of Poland after the second world war, the massive shift to the west. On which the National Geographic hedged its bets by including the old boundaries (in pock marked red) and by including old names in parentheses. So, for example, pre-war Germany included what is now the Kaliningrad enclave between Poland and Lithuania; now home to a large naval base, then home to the ancient German/Prussian city of Königsberg. And with the strategically important land bridge between Lithuania and Poland, mentioned, as it happens, in today's FT, once called the Suwalki Triangle, in the very middle of the snap above. The snap being one quarter of the whole. What a mess. Hopefully not a disaster in waiting.

PS: nice to have a telephone which does one day comfortably, two days at a stretch. Microsoft was down to half a day by the time that I abandoned ship.

References

Reference 1: https://www.thebouryacademy.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/05/thirsty.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/skewered-again.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/05/life-in-minnesota.html.