The bent crane

I have now followed up on the story of the crane at reference 1. So off to London with a short shopping list: plums and marzipan. With the option of Korean (Borough Market) or Van Gogh (Liverpool Street Station) immersive art shows afterwards.

Mildy irritated by all the in-train announcements and by the crinkling of sweet wrappers across the aisle from me. But I managed to divert myself with wondering about the A road numbering system, A1 thru A5 radially around London. With the curiosity of the jump across the estuary between the A1 and the A2. Then we have the A10 which makes it own way down to the City, seemingly independent of the A1. But what about A20 thru A50. A matter which I have yet to look into. 

All this on a very smooth Southern train, a train which could set off more or less silently - that is to say one would not know if one had one's eyes shut - but stopping silently it could not manage. It could not do away with a slight rock-back on the brakes. No doubt an engineer could explain what that was about. Maybe the naval uncle could have.

First stop, Borough Market, a good deal more crowded late on a Friday morning than in the snap above. Where I bought (cheap) a large bag of greengages and (dear) a smaller bag of cob nuts. Not very happy about the greengages, which I should have tried before buying. Cheap because they were very ripe. But maybe they would do for something.

Pushed on over London Bridge and up the A10, aka Gracechurch Street. Took a comfort break in the margins of a smart looking cafe taken out of a corner of a smart new building and then thought to take a look at the atrium of the smart new building, decorated as it was with very arty looking wooden furniture. A lot a foreign young men were in attendance and eyed me very suspiciously, and when I went to take a picture, I was more or less escorted off the premises. They were taking their instructions very seriously.

More arty wooden furniture. Photography just about tolerated.

More or less opposite this left-over from the 19th century. Identified today by Google Images: once the headquarters of the National Provincial Bank, then Grade I listed, then an event space, now unused. See reference 2. I suppose there are more dead banking halls in the City than there are dead churches - and banking halls at least lend themselves to the Wetherspoon's treatment. Notwithstanding the fine conversion they did on George's Meeting House  - an 18th Century Unitarian Chapel - in South Street, Exeter.

Thoroughly confused both inside and outside Liverpool Steet Station, not a little put out that I remembered so little of it, despite having spent more than five years going through it every day, with my bicycle. In my defence, that was around forty years ago.

The first sighting of the bent crane. Direct access blocked, so I had to work my way around.

Quite a lot of these vans around, as was the UK headquarters of UBS. Were the vans a sort of toy company for burnt-out bankers to be put out to grass on? Not too far from home, as it were, so they could pretend to their families that they were still going to work in town.

Getting closer.

Up close and personal. A McAlpine's engineer who happened to be standing by explained that the whole crane was owned by McAlpine's, not a hire job at all, with the top portion being a standard tower and the bottom portion a special. I think the story was, on my observing that the ties into the tower adjacent did not look as if they were doing that much work, was that most of the work was done by the sloping green structure, a lot of which was not visible, behind hoarding or underground. With the complication that the green structure had to keep out of the way of the brown structure, destined to hold up the floor and external walls of the new building.

I dare say that a diagram would have been helpful, but that would be a bit much to expect on the pavement.

I think that McAlpine's, of reference 3, must be one of the few big civil engineers around during my concrete days that are still around, still visible, today.

From the other side.

The scene as a whole.

Thought about taking lunch in the Sun Street Hotel - the public house next door looked a bit raucous with blue collars - but I failed to find the entrance and pushed onto to the nearby All Bar One instead. Perhaps just as well, the web site looks a bit grand, although drinks do not look particularly expensive. Maybe they would have drawn the line at my rollator.

I thought the big All Bar One, at the south western corner of Finsbury Square, was quiet for a Friday lunchtime. But they could do the same paella as the branch at Regent Street, and while it might not be quite as authentic as the offering at Borough Market, at least I could take it sitting down in comfort. But it was a bit of a mystery to me how only a few months previously I had managed two of them. Perhaps the cycling up from Victoria had given me more of an appetite on that occasion. See reference 5.

Lots of school girls wandering about, just like girls from Epsom's Rosebery, so there must have been a school in the vicinity. One lady carrying a cheap version of the Stockholm 2 seat. One lady dressed very high, very expensive, for the middle of the day. She looked a bit out of place. A lot more blue collars than I had expected. But I guess that all the buildings have to be built and then they have to be serviced. All  kinds of people. Having a window seat had its points.

Leaving All Bar One, my mind turned to marzipan. There was also the question of some plums which would be more suitable than the greengages for the pie that BH had in mind. So down into a large M&S food hall, where I was pleased to be able to meet both requirements: large red plums and marzipan. In fact, the pleasant lady at the till where I paid told me that the place was big enough to cope with real shopping, the sort of thing that BH usually does in Sainsbury's; not just a fast food place at all. I had already noticed that they did real Atora suet, a brand which must have been around forever.

The receptionist in the building with this cycle on display was a lot more friendly and helpful than the young men had been earlier in the day. I was not to climb into it, but I was welcome to take pictures. She assured me that it was real, not faked up for the purposes of display, but she did not know where it came from, other than it was some fad of the owner - or the tenant - of the building.

The windows says 24kws.com - for 24 King William Street - but it is not clear that this website exists. However, Bing does tell me that '2018 - Ella Valley Capital bought the building through off-market acquisition for c.£100m reflecting a capital value of £1,237 per sq ft'. Ella Valley Capital appears to be a US property operation, where part of the operation may be holding high value property for the very rich. Chinese billionaires who don't want to flaunt it for one reason or another? Rainy day stuff? See reference 7.

Next stop the Custom House, as noticed at reference 6.

Next stop a confusion of Findlaters the wine people and Finlays the tobacco people. I think both have have expired, although the building above appears to be the subject of some kind of a heritage operation. A once well known landmark, which I need to take a closer look at.

Abandoned immersive art shows and climbed on the train home instead.

Where I snapped the ancient VW above, which has been sitting, for a long time now, in the drive of an expensive house on the same Chase Estate where we live. There is presumably some tragic back story.

With this more delicate form of decay a little further along.

And home proper, I was in luck. It turned out that BH was rather fond of greengages, even rather ripe ones. And the half she stewed turned out much better than I expected.

The cob nuts were fine, even if the very large shells led one to expect rather larger nuts than one usually found inside.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/action-next-week.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_Hall,_London.

Reference 3: https://srm.com/.

Reference 4: https://sunstreethotel.com/.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/grub-up.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/church-two.html.

Reference 7: https://www.ellavalleycapital.com/.