About ten days ago, an uneventful trip to St. Helier, which for me means a train to Carshalton, a No.157 bus to St. Helier and then a stroll back to Carshalton or Hackbridge, weather permitting.
The snap above being the country end of the Victoria platform, with the Victoria train just pulling in.
The point of the snap being the long-awaited demolition of the old building at the corner of West Hill and Station Approach. You can't see what is going on on the spot because of all the protective hoardings, but up on the platform one can see the void above the (white) hoardings, with the buildings that are visible being the other side of West Street. With rather more recent notice of this to be found at reference 2.
A new to me style of litter bin, perhaps a London special, by the bus stop at Carshalton. Opened by pulling the handle above or pushing the pedal below. But it all seemed terribly elaborate and expensive for litter. Perhaps the dumpster divers of Sutton are particularly anti-social?
I associate to the wooden slatted bins of my childhood. My first attempt with Bing did not turn up anything very useful, so I tried Gemini, whom I now suspect of being a touch creative. Perhaps still putting more weight on the detail of the input than is wise.
But his suggestion did result in some images. First, the top part of a rather elderly bin of the right pattern.
And this one, perhaps a reduced model for use at the seaside. Plus, I remember a stalk rather than a tripod at the bottom. Long time ago though.
A cheap replica, with fake wooden slats.
And an expensive replica. But not that much like the original. To be fair to Gemini, he does turn up reference 3 as his authority - but as noted above, I think he has been a bit creative. Notwithstanding, following up on some of the stuff at reference 3, I turn up reference 4 (probably the source for the seaside bin), reference 5 and reference 6. A whole world of litter bins and litter bin design. No doubt there would be more if I kept digging. Maybe I would get to the bin I started with.
On the way back, I took in Welbeck Road. The real thing, not to be confused with Welbeck Street, near the Wigmore Hall.
Also the odd blackberry. But not enough to pick properly, even had I been so equipped.
On to the Sunshine Cafe where they did me a perfectly respectable bacon sandwich and tea. None of this garnish nonsense, although I dare say sauce was available, had I wanted it. In the background, quite quiet, we had what used to be called light music as broadcast by BBC's Light Programme, as opposed to the Home Programme which was serious and the Third Programme which was very serious. Which made a pleasant change from the stuff you get in a lot of such places.
As it happens, there were a number of other such places in the vicinity. Maybe I will try them all in due course.
There was quite a bank of green to my right as I approached Carshalton Station again, but no blackberries. However, I did wonder about the age of the station building, rather more florid than that of, say, Ewell West, which I imagine is largely original, unlike Epsom which has been remodelled. If it were a house I would say a few years before the First World War. Maybe I will get around to checking - but I don't suppose Pevsner stoops to suburban railway stations.
Home to pick up the trolley noticed at reference 1, before reporting for duty with the granddaughters.
PS 1: heritage litter bins had already arrived in my gmail in-box by the time I had posted this.
PS 2: more geekery arising from a version of the image above which appears at reference 8, all about how climate change is doing for our aging railways. Google Images soon told me that it was a tamping machine - a rather mundane name for a rather tricky looking bit of machinery. Read all about them at references 9 and 10.
PS 3: more still in the form of subtitle technology. We started watching an old but lush adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh story 'A handful of dust' on ITVX, where BH was unable to get subtitles to appear. So for our second attempt this evening, we pay a few pounds to watch the same adaptation on Prime, where subtitles pop up without any bother at all. The few pounds were worth it - and from Amazon's point of view, no doubt every little helps, as they say at Tesco's.
The subtitles looked to have been rather crudely generated by computer speech recognition software and it was rather fun trying to work out how the computer gets the subtitles that you see from the words that you hear. Kept one on the ball. Plus it does something with what it has been told are expletives. Presumably, the Prime computer is not doing all this in real time, as the film goes along, but one never knows these days. In any event, I hope that subtitles will prove to be a regular part of the Prime offering.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolley-925.html.
Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolleys-933-934-935-and-936.html.
Reference 3: https://metrostor.uk/the-essential-litter-bin-function-form-and-strategies/.
Reference 4: https://heritagecalling.com/2022/01/21/from-lamp-posts-to-litter-bins-the-stories-behind-englands-street-furniture/.
Reference 6: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23977482. In pictures: The David Mellor designs that defined the street - BBC News - 2013. Which includes a Mellor-special litter bin. And I had thought that he was into fancy cutlery and décor shops near Sloane Square.
Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/kensington-journey-home.html. Previous notice of the Sloane Square Mellor.
Reference 8: Train disruption warning in southern England as clay embankments crumble: Rail operators take emergency measures to allow repair works on affected tracks - Robert Wright, Financial Times - 2025.
Reference 10: https://www.plassertheurer.com/en/machine/tamping/overview.
Group search key: sub-title.
No comments:
Post a Comment