psmv5: Morley College

Time for cheese again - and time to get back onto a Bullingdon, after a break of more than three months - what with holidays, back and one thing and another. The idea being to leave the rollator and the Stockholm, but to take a stick instead, just in case. Plus a visit to the Morley College gallery in a converted public house near Waterloo Station. A visit prompted by a number of their magazine found in the margins of the expedition noticed at reference 5.

Pleased to find that the telephone version of the docking station map from TFL was working well, much better than I remembered. To the point where one did not need to download bits of it from the laptop - or even take the paper map. Although, liking paper maps, I dare say I will carry on with this one for a bit yet, tatty though it has become. I don't suppose they dish them out any more.

Nice neat job on the new cover for the gas board hole at the top of Clay Hill Green. Some kind of gas flavoured valve or something? And the lid is quite tricky underneath, although that does not come across in the snap above, even on zoom.

It had been a bit misty earlier and there was still a low cloud hanging onto the top of the Shard when I got to London Bridge a little before noon. Got my cheese and then off to the Hop Exchange to pick up a Bullingdon. It had been a toss up between a luggage strap and a pair of boot laces for attaching the stick to the Bullingdon and, in the event, the boot laces worked very well. Helped along by a handy fixing point at the back of the saddle.

Made it to the Morley gallery after a couple of wrong turns. And plenty of cyclists, mostly young men, appearing to pay no attention at all to the traffic lights - although I dare say there was an element of bravado about it and that some of them were actually looking out quite carefully. Not good enough, even so. For what it is worth, I try to make a point of being quite pedantic about stopping at lights.

A gallery which had been a pub indeed, but which had been nicely repurposed and which was bigger inside than I had expected. Adding in the large cellar helped. An opening sample of the wares is snapped above - £4,000 for a photo print on mounted paper, whatever that might mean. Is one getting one of a thousand prints? Walking round, I was quite struck by the high prices being asked. But then, I have no idea of what the going rate is in the art world.

I liked this wall hanging, better in real life than it is here, but I don't know that I would pay the £8,000 being asked, even if I was in that sort of spending league.

From the studio of Tobias Laurent Belsen, but not for sale. The inventor of samplism, for which see reference 2.

This one, from Armet Francis grew on me. Helped along by the thoughtful provision of seats in the cellar. But, once again, too strong for me at £4,000.

Prices notwithstanding, an interesting place to have visited. I had seen no red spots and I did not think to ask whether they used them to mark sales.

Onto St. George's cathedral, handsomely rebuilt after war damage in 1958. BH is sure than we have visited in the past, but it must have been a while ago as it did not seem at all familiar to me.

A grand looking grand piano, but with a locked keyboard and I failed to find anyone to ask. So not scorable.

The handsome baptistery.

And the stations of the cross. A sort of very cut price version of the Gill stations in Westminster Cathedral, the ones that got him out of serving in the First World War. Plus some higher grade joinery to the double doors.

There were some community facilities, but there did not seem to be a café, at least not one which was open, so pulled another Bullingdon and headed for Waterloo, where I remembered a café which did bacon sandwiches underneath Elizabeth House.

Past what used to be the Bar Kitchen at the back of the Old Vic (reference 3), and for a short while a bar restaurant featuring provocatively dressed young waitresses (reference 4), being redeveloped as a venue to be called Backstage - which last does not seem to have made it to Bing-visibility yet.

Arrived to find that all the retail outlets underneath Elizabeth House boarded up, pending redevelopment, so over the road to the All Bar One there.

For, guess what, a paella. Which seemed slightly wetter than the Regent Street version, but I dare say they all come from the same central supplier drawing on the same central kitchen where entry-level chefs do it by numbers - rather like the curiously lifeless bunches of flowers they sell in supermarkets. At least there was more of the paella than might appear from the snap above; quite enough for a lunchtime snack, given that a proper meal was scheduled for later.

Quiet when I arrived at around 14:00, but it picked up. Pensioners and tourists, not all foreign. Plus quite a number of mums and babies. Clearly some sort of regular gathering.