This week’s trip to London began with some unexpected exercise. My train that was advertised as arriving at platform one was switched, literally as the train was coming into the station, to another platform. I and everyone else that was trying to catch the train had to run up over the footbridge and down onto the new platform. Now I’m quite sure they would’ve waited for us all but there is an urgency if not a panic when trains change suddenly do this, a disbelief that it is anything other than a trick. Possibly even one of those hidden camera pranks (this is one of those stories that begins with “I’m not a conspiracy theorist but …”).
I had a plan without a plan today. I would get on the first bus that came along when I got to Waterloo and see where it took me. This is nowhere near as adventurous as it might sound. However, it was very informative as I climbed on the number 68 bus to Euston with a man with obvious mental health problems just ahead of me. I sat for a quarter of an hour and listened to him talking about how Prince Andrew had been framed and that the royal family could give you cancer. He was talking to an imaginary friend called Michael and explaining that one of the cast of Emmerdale was attempting to assassinate him. Now I’m not a conspiracy theorist but …
Of course it was us, the passengers, who were uneasy. He seemed quite focused and although loud, was not distressed. Hearing voices definitely falls into one of two categories: those that distress you and those that don’t.
I got off at Russell Square and sat for a while in the beautiful sunshine. It really was a glorious day. Now Russell Square is quite big and quite nicely laid out; there is a central circle with paths radiating out into the corners. For some reason I used to come to this area quite a lot about 40 years before and go for drinks in the Russell hotel when they would occasionally have jazz bands.
I’ve forgotten what an imposing bit of architecture the Russell Hotel was. I managed to take a picture of it with miraculously little traffic in the way.
At this point I suddenly became hungry and realised that I had not used my free Greggs sausage roll voucher that my bank gives me every week (“Monzo perks”) so I looked on Google Maps and found that there was a Greggs just six minutes walk away.
By now there was a slight breeze so I put on my jacket. This is England after all and it is not even April yet. One brave soul was lying on the grass in Russell Square wearing only a pair of shorts and sunbathing. Personally, I think these people are just showing off. Either that or they are inordinately optimistic.
On exiting the park I came across a noticeboard with a remarkable collection of notices including local bylaws one of which was do not cycle in the park. This was of course completely ignored by a number of people on Lime bikes despite the very large notices at each gate saying “no cycling please dismount”.
I hate people that cycle where they shouldn’t. They should be caught, fined and have their ankles chained together for a month to stop them cycling again. I don’t think that’s too draconian.
Me being me, I walked for several minutes in the wrong direction as I was holding my phone up the wrong way when using Google Maps. Well, that’s my excuse anyway. I’ve never had a very good sense of direction. In fact in the days before Google Maps, I could spend weeks at a time completely lost.
Actually Google Maps let me down badly today. I found my way to where the Greggs was supposedly located at 22 Brunswick Square but wandered up and down for several minutes unable to find it. I spoke to a security guard; he said there was no Greggs, but I said there is a Greggs because it’s here – Google, says it’s here. I then went up to a man chatting to his friend and smoking a cigarette and said “according to this there’s a Greggs at 22 Brunswick Square which should be here. He said well that’s where I work and it isn’t a Greggs. He did some googling and found they used to be a Greggs there a long time ago.
I mean come on Google you’re supposed to be on top of these things. So I went to Google Maps and reported their error. Bastards. They should have their typing hands tied behind their backs for a month – that will teach them; and deactivate their voice commands. I don’t think that’s too Draconian.
By now I was grumpy and needed the toilet. It’s funny how often being grumpy makes you need to urinate. Or is it the other way round? I was also hungry. But I would be wouldn’t I, I hadn’t had my Greggs sausage roll? So I went to a pub called the Friend at Hand and bought myself an alcohol free beer and went to the loo.
The Friend at Hand is a classic central London pub in a side street. Sparsely populated at 3:30 in the afternoon with dark wood a good selection of beer and a plaque saying that Charles Dickens used to drink here. Most London pubs claim Dickens as a patron but this one seemed to be quite convincing. It serves great British classic fish and chips just like every other pub in a side street in central London. The clientele is a mixture of workmen who started at the crack of dawn and who had now given up for the day, elderly tourists who have wandered off the beaten track, trainspotters in strange raincoats, and intense couples talking in foreign languages, obviously either initiating a love affair or discussing how to end one. There is never more than one barman who is inevitably looking rather bored. In this case he looked like I did when I was 18 -very tall, painfully thin, bespectacled, shabbily dressed and wondering when his life was going to start.
Things did get quite exciting at one point when no less than four customers at once appeared at the bar. One of them was a man who walked in with wheeled hand luggage. It is a statistical fact that every London pub has someone in it with hand luggage on wheels at some point during the afternoon.
I left at this point as the excitement was getting too much for me.
There is a street next to the pub called the Colonade which claims to have a horse hospital in it.
Actually it’s an arts venue run on a collective not for profit base. The building itself dates from the end of the nineteenth century. This is a screen grab from their website which you can check out using the link above:
It was here I grabbed a picture of people taking pictures using what I think was a medium format camera and talking in various serious tones about what they were photographing, which I think was a building. Anyway they made for an interesting photograph.
At the end of the colonnade I turned right and found myself in Queen Square which is a quiet little square bang opposite the national hospital for neurology and neurosurgery, which is part of university College Hospital. On the south corner of the Square there were two pubs, one called the Swan which I’ve drunk in before and another one called the Queen’s Larder, which was very busy and even buzzy – probably due to its proximity to an NHS establishment.
On the opposite corner is the rather beautiful St George the Martyr Church which resides on the unlikely named Cosmo place.
Just around the corner is a very interesting little arts centre called The October Gallery which I must check out on a subsequent visit.
Along the gallery walls are some lovely artworks – dozens of them – set into the brickwork – of which this is an example.
I decided to walk back to Waterloo as I knew there was a Greggs on Kingsway, but I saw a man with tattoos hanging off a balcony so used hand signals to ask his permission to photograph him.
I then bumped into a very radically dressed older woman who likewise consented to be shot.
These two encounters left me very pleased.
On the corner before you get to Holborn is a decent mural which contrasted nicely with the sunny day I was having.
At the top end of Kingsway (actually on Southampton Row) is the remarkable Sicilian Avenue which is currently being restored and its shop units re-let. There was a colourful display of hard hats on show which intrigued me.
I did eventually get my sausage roll, took a walk around the vibrant alleyways behind the London School of Economics, and then stopped for another non-alcoholic drink at The Ship Tavern, just behind the LSE
Good day. Interesting. And sunny …
Eyecatching 