More on the catching up...

Shepherd's Bush has a positive embarrassment of riches when it comes to stations. The only one left to bag is the Shepherd's Bush on the Overground. There's supposed to be a Christmas market on at Kensal Rise which is just up the line on the Overground, so figure that might be an interesting destination and tidies up both Kensal stations as well as the last of the Bushes...



( pictures of the Shepherd's Bush station, and onwards up the line )<

We drink proper builder's tea and tuck into a fried breakfast before getting back on the train up to Gospel Oak.

It's been so very long, and I'm so behind on entries that it is only through looking through the photo files that I can trigger any memories of where I've been on the system.  I blame this lapse of synapses on two things: firstly, I visited so many stations on the system already that they begin to blur into each other, and secondly I'm getting on these days - I've crossed that great divide between youth and encroaching senility and it can't be expect for the ole grey cells to be quite as active as they once were...

...but back in early March, before I hit my ovary-shrivelling 40s there was a short expedition to the farthest reaches of the Central and Piccadilly Lines.  Even with looking at the pictures, it took a long conversation with gmul to jog a few impressions of the journey.  Suffice to say Sudbury Hill and some of the Ruislips weren't that memorable.  Looking at an A to Z map, still not sure we have proper recollection. 

Looking down from street level:


( Heffalumps and Wozels )

Oh, it's been such a long time...pressures of work, college and getting shingles have conspired to keep me from the metropolis in recent months.  But the scabs are healing and the end of term (and the concomitant terror of the end of year show) rapidly approaches.

There have been a few mad dashes up and back, but I've then lacked the time to write them up, but being stuck at home on compulsory bed rest gives me an excuse to hit the keyboard again.  Expect a splurge of posts in the next few days. 

And over the upcoming Bank Holiday weekend I'm contemplating being in London again - I've been so out of touch with the rest of the world that I'd failed to notice that there's a Waterhouse exhibition on that finishes in early September - if anyone who fancies a afternoon gazing at one of my favourite Pre-Raphaelites then sing out and we can organise a posse.

...more to come...

Last Saturday's Guardian magazine's Take Ten feature was on clowns and featured me gurning to camera.  This is what happen if you wear pompoms on your shoes.

So far not been recognised on the street.  I may just wear dark glasses and a Hermes scarf next time I go to Sainsbury's, just for the hell of it...

...an idle piece of research and shopping has collided into the idea that I'd like to make a tubewhore tarot set.  At first I think I'll stay with just making the Major Arcana as that's a long enough job in itself, before I worry about the Minor set. 

As you might already have figured out, the idea will be to choose a station that will stand for the symbolism behind the 22 cards of the Major Arcana, and to incorporate imagery I've found in visiting these stations as well as traditional symbols and meanings into the design for the cards.  I have my own ideas of what station should be which card, but as Tarot often requires you bring your own interpretations to the cards as a form of therapy to make the subconscious accessible, I am curious as the the stations that would suggest themselves to others. 

I'll put my suggestions up later in the week, but meanwhile, what would you chose?  The cards are:

0 - The Fool
I - The Magician
II - The High Priestess
III - The Empress
IV - The Emperor
V - The Hierophant
VI - The Lovers
VII - The Chariot
VIII - Justice
IX - The Hermit
X - The Wheel
XI - Strength
XII - The Hanged Man
XIII - Death
XIV - Temperance
XV - The Devil
XVI - The Tower
XVII - The Stars
XVIII - The Moon
XIX - The Sun
XX - Judgement
XXI - The World 

Waking up on Monday, the carnival atmosphere of the snow has changed to one of stunned incomprehension as London wakes up to the heaviest snowfall in 18 years.  I remember the previous event, as I was in London briefly to visit the Art of Angels exhibition at the British Museum, and recall walking what felt like miles through slush-covered Bloomsbury streets in the wrong shoes for the unexpected weather.  Everything was very grey, very cold and strangely muffled by the snow, the streets unnaturally empty and quiet.

This time I'm in a more idyllic setting, but as we listen to the news, and eat fresh baked muffins, it becomes clear that the entire transport system has ceased to function, which begs the question: how do I get home to snow-free Cornwall and work tomorrow?  The offhand suggestion that we pilot the boat into the Paddington basin is my favourite idea, but I am getting hard Paddington Bear stares which indicates that I am not going to get my way on this one, so instead the only thing to do is walk along the canal path to Greenford station where there is at least the choice of both Central Line trains and local rail services.  The mollification of this being that I can collect another station this morning, even if it means I'm not going to be in purple to do it. 

Overnight, the light dusting seen the previous evening had turned into several inches of proper, squeaky-underfoot snowfall.

Northolt the previous night, about 10-ish...

The overground was closed for engineering works on Sunday, so the closest I could get to passing through the tickets barriers was this:

Better photographers than me were out in force on Sunday.  Flickr has some great sets if you search for 'clown service'. Which makes me rather embarrassed to post up what I did manage to capture, but the below gives a sense of the dislocating sense of the peculiar, strange and colourful. 



failing_angel 's set is here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11561957@N06/sets/72157613244763040/

And a rather fine set from Oleg Katchinski that shows what can be done with a decent camera unlike my poor sad little box that just couldn't manage:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/okphotos/sets/72157613206163841/

...a search of Flickr will bring up loads of images from previous years as well, and more of my poor efforts under the cut. 

...ok, ok...so its an obvious title...but hell, clowns, organised religion and then snow - three things that creep me out, all in one place at the same time.  All that was missing was compulsory blood donation (needles, bleych!!!) and a driving lesson following the service and my phobias would have been complete. (oh, and spiders...but then I consider that a rational reaction to the nasty little blighters rather than a phobia...I mean eight eyes and all those legs, that's just not right...) ( The Clown Service )

Pictures and links to flickr sets to follow...

OK, so it's snowing!  Plans for the day have to be abandoned as the entire transport system has frozen to a stop.  London and snow just don't mix well - you see plenty of movies in which New York is Romantic and yet still functioning in this sort of weather, but a strange sort of  panic sets in here with the first flurries.  I guess we're just always surprised by it even happening...

Anyway, arse to my day off in town, having lunch with girlfriends and such like!  My single objective for the day will be getting out of London and back to the only county in Britain that's officially sub-tropical - even though we've had temperatures overnight on the moors of minus 12 recently and people have been wrapping their palm trees in fleecy stuff...

... no tube adventures for me today,then - instead a trek along the Grand Union Canal through four inches of arctic weather to Greenford...so that will be an adventure in itself.  I'm wearing pretty much all the clothes I've brought, so any strange gothy bag-lady bundles you see tottering along is probably me...

In other news, the clown service in Dalston was intriguing, rather lovely and bizarre.  There will be a feature on the whole thing on BBC tonight on the One Show, for which I got dragged oh-so-reluctantly in front the camera, so the one having a pink Strawberry Switchblade moment is me...also going to be in the Saturday Guardian in a few weekends' time...

Still it is a little pathetic that I've been up in London for four days and so far have collected but one station!

I have holiday time to use up, in a 'take it by the end of February or lose it' sense, so myself and the other supervisor are desperately dancing around the calendar trying to find space to take off our remaining hours.  There are few days that are of practical use for college deadlines, so instead I find I have from today until Monday to entertain myself in London.  In recent months, my free time has been on the slim side - I've become proficient at juggling the day job, college, college projects, commissions, getting the laundry done and volunteer things, so it's quite peculiar to wake up this morning with nothing particular to do!  

This trip to London was supposed to combine a research visit for some of the pieces I'm making but there was a bit of a snafu and that's been put back at least a month, so suddenly I have no plans for today.  It's utterly delicious - a whole damn day to fill with anything at all!!!  Oh, the luxury; time, the one commodity you can't buy more of...and even better if I want I can do absolutely nothing at all and not feel guilty about it as I am well on track for the variety of looming deadlines, I'm even, for once, ahead of the game.

What to do?  What to do?  Exhibitions, shopping, chazzing, sewing or just a wandering derive around the city and see where my feet take me...stick a pin in the tube map? Put all the names of uncollected stations in a bag and draw one at random - leaving things to chance?  I'm giddy with the choices...in March I had a week in the city and I was vaguely paralysed by the sense of possibilities - the collapsing of the field of choices potentially blocking out the best solutions to the point where I couldn't chose anything, so did nothing instead.  By not deciding, the days slipped past unused.  Better to be the leaf on the wind and see where the universe floats you than try to plan too much...

...so I throw it open to fate...

...if I get lost in the depths of Zone 9, send lawyers, guns and money...

This is how the poster is looking atm - just needed the paint to dry so I can finish the other leg wot had gone a bit wonky so painted it out to be able to start again - that now done, and various other bits have been tweaked... now need to put the bunting together...but that will have to wait until tomorrow, and can even be done at college on one of their sewing machines.  I'm annoyed that I didn't space some of the wording out more elegantly, but that's all part of the 'hand-madeness' I suppose...and I can't change it now!

There is a philosophy behind the images - as you'd image from the brief to represent our personal design manifestos - more of which of mine is expressed through the slogans on bunting - but without saying too much I'd be interested to see my dearest readers' initial response.




Have also tidied up the black detail to the face, as the grey had smudged into the black lines a little too much...



And one of the six images to be used as bunting:


Opinions???

,,,taking a break from ironing screen-printed images needing to be made into bunting before tomorrow.  Have yet to make up a corset for a fitting this afternoon and finish painting a banner for a manifesto display at college being pt together tomorrow - so, not busy much.  Started in on the pile of laundry and washing-up too as rapidly running out of clean undies and tea cups - this work/college combination is testing my time management skills to the limit...  

Still, it's a good day - the sky is clear and bright for a change, and I didn't have to get up at 5am to clean up after the charity bash at work last night, which I call  distinct win!  I have a DVD of Bowie's greatest hits playing and all of a sudden I fancy dying my hair bright orange and wearing far too much blue eyeshadow, but then this is just getting me in the spirit for next weekend's clown service.  I am having trouble deciding what to wear - I feel no matter what I chose I shall by overshadowed by middle-aged chaps in baggy polyester satin jumpsuits... My head is stuffed with jumbled ideas of textile ideas - mixing up what I need to finish for setting up the exhibition at college, clown clothes, pearly queens, pom-poms and weird crocheted forms...I guess this is what college is all about; sparking ideas and stretching your thinking - all I need now is the bloody time to get the stuff out of my head and into the world.

  ...back to sewing things together and singing along loudly to the soundtrack of my teenage years...

It's only once we've arrived at Liverpool Street that we realise we have no idea where we need to go to find the Dennis Severs House - this has been my suggestion for the afternoon as P wanted something cultural and with tea sandwiches to follow before she flies back to the US on Monday.  I partake in the digital revolution by using a phone box to access the internet - things that were the stuff of science fiction movies - Until the End of the World - only a few years ago.  I don't know why I should still be so astonished that this sort of facility exists.  However, past the now bleeding-edge tech, the keyboard is made of brushed metal, and the buttons surprisingly stiff making the device not too easy to use - how things degrade from space-age marvel to free-with-your-morning-cereal-mundane.

The divide between high finance and slum has always been little more than a matter of crossing a street in this district.  Financial institutions in exhorbitantly modernist skyscrapers back onto brick garrets.  It's down one of this narrow turnings we find the house.( ...Dennis Severs House, city pictures...  )The perfect end to the afternoon is holing up in a corner as dark really draws in outside, fellow customers come in from the chill, stamping feet and blowing on hands.  I stuff down a smoked salmon bagel and a cream tea...I'm sitting with some of my favouritist people, and for that moment I actually feel really Christmassey, full of love for my fellow man, as well as full of warm scones and jam. It's like finding the cafe of legend, just exactly the place you need to find, just when you need to find it...

...a frosty morning, walking the frozen canal edge...even the litter made sublime through a sugar coating of ice crystals...

Before meeting withspeedlime and artnouveauho for a cultural afternoon, we have time to visit the new stations around Shepherd's Bush.  Wood Lane has recently opened, marking a completely new station to funnel people to the new shopping centre.  The Shepherds Bush station on the central line has also been completely re-made in toughened glass and steel,  and now connects to the London Overground, and Shepherd's Bush on the Hammersmith and City has been re-named Shepherd's Bush Market.  Lots to explore. 

It's one of those stunning winter mornings, of blindingly bright sunlight, that dazzles but fails to warm.  Cold, clear light, crystalline air, leaving everything seeming especially brittle and sharp-edged, as though you could cut yourself on the knife-edge of the shadows.



White City:

If there can be no colour without light, this flooding of pure white sunshine bleaches everything to contrasts...




We walk up the road from White City to Wood Lane.



 

 

( Wood Lane pictures )

We stroll down the Lane towards Shepherds Bush Green, past the building site that's the tail end of constructing the new Westfield Centre, because what we need is another souless shopping mall.



I collect interesting signage (previously posted).  At the Green we briefly visit the re-named Market stop:



And then our morning derive takes us via Goldhawk Road - fabric shops closed, mercy to my bank balance - past a funfair on the green. 

It seems wrong somehow to see it in the day, the flashing neon ecclipsed by sunlight, gaudiness shabby and deflated, deceived into stark honesty in this unforgiving light.  Magic never survives close scrutiny. Glamour a spell of concealment of the true surface. The sky the most perfect cloudless blue, all colours primary, slightly unreal in their clarity.  I take loads of photos - more to follow...





In contrast to the fairground: shopfronts of  plastic tinsel and pound-store shopping, the artificial colours pop and intrigue under a bright sun, all borrowed brilliance, their cheapness momentarily denied under the gliter of the sunlight. What disappointment once home, when the goods are revealed to be tawdry, banal, lowest common denominator, small.



 

( Shepherds Bush )

White City Roundel.



From Shepherds Bush, we head to Liverpool Street to met L & P.
 

Advance warning - the best excuse I've found so far to collect Dalston Kingsland is that it's the nearest station to the Holy Trinity Church in Dalston, which on the first Sunday in February every year holds a special Clown Service in memory of Joseph Grimaldi. 

Following the service many of the clowns who attend put on a special show for local children and the nearby Clown Museum is open specially (usually only open the first Friday of every month).  As clowns come from far and wide, all in costume, I personally can't wait to see an entire church filled with grown men in face paint, baggy pants and oversized shoes.  Even if I do find clowns incredibly creepy...please do join me if you can.  Just think of the dressing up...

In 2009, it will be on Sunday  Feb 1st, which is also Chinese New Year in Chinatown. 

Waking up on Sunday morning, it had remained cold enough for the last few days for the canal to freeze over.  I've read of The Big Freeze of the 1890's, with London experiencing a mini Ice Age, so seeing something of the kind for real is utterly entrancing, even if the beauty of the scene marred by the frozen litter and tin cans stuck in the ice.  However, to make up for the deitritus, on the opposite bank, a heron poses briefly before heading off in search of an easier breakfast, slow gliding with an impressive wingspan:




Talking with one of the other MA students recently, following a tutorial she'd been asked to think about how to demonstrate the intangible - to make it 'real in the world'; visible - and dashing outside in borrowed sweater and big boots, the cold air a stinging slap on the legs, there for me in the frozen surface were the scratches and scars of forces acting on the water, forces that are unseen in the stilled surface but felt in the pull of currents made by the passing of other craft, suddenly captured as a moment of time in the ice.   

I remember a physics lesson where we made experiments with waves in trays of water, and when the water was being pushed at both above and below at the same time, it was in fact, still.  That stillness concealing the opposing, equal tensions disguised beneath a quiet surface, stillness not as null but war... the concept that a smooth surface could be the result of pitched forces has obviously stayed with me all these years...I think of people working through terrible grief but showing nothing to the world but this same stillness, and I've known it myself, times when I've been doing the mundane, standing in a queue in the supermarket, and inside I'm screaming in the most appalling pain, and yet I smiles as I'm handed my change and make banter, and found a detached amazement that no-one could see the lie or penetrate that facade to the vastness of the concealed anguish, that we accept daily this surface as the sum fact, and so we must be surrounded by this, all these frail envelopes concealing terrible truths under a blank surface.  How do we not all just run mad?

G has seen the canal freeze over before - the most unnerving thing, apparently, is when other boats go past, and their approach is preceeded by the sound of the ice cracking. I think of Frankenstein, and boats stuck fast in ice, nestled stories of man's daring and the dire consequences of science penetrating Nature's secrets...and it's only just Sunday morning, and I decide that perhaps I think to much and should put some clothes on and have breakfast instead...

(*box of Jaffa cakes to the first comment to name the reference)

On the tube from Hanger Lane back to Northolt, there's a chap sitting opposite us absent-mindedly playing with one of those odd squashy 'stress toys' - the kind of stretch-Armstrong gross-out things that you pull and squoosh into disgusting shapes to stop youself from squooshing a fellow travellers instead, especially the really irritating ones listening to their iPods loud enough to drive you crazy with the 'ch-tish, ch-tish, ch-tish' sound bleed from crappy earbuds.. 

I brought my nephew back a squeezy rat and eyeball from Hong Kong - you splat them on a hard surface and they pull themselves back into shape in suitably icky manner.  This chap's one was a green ball with netting across it, and as he squeezed it it blossomed into orange polyps; fascinatingly vile, like visible infection, toy cancer, Leontes squeezing brains on stage....  Naturally, I sparked up conversation and the four of us cackled with childlike squeals as he grossed us out mutilating the poor green ball into a variety of sickly, tumorous growths...delightfully horrible...one never grows out of a love of body horror and contained nastiness, picking scabs, looking at your own snot in the hankie when you blow your nose, especially the really unpleasant stuff during a bad cold - the stuff I was hacking up when I had pneumonia last was compellingly vile...see, talking to strangers on trains can be huge fun...

...blurry pic due to train movements...

Apparently he bought it at the florists at Ealing Broadway if anyone wants one of their own...and can you get me one while you're there?

G, P and I hop out at Northolt, only once we reach the ticket barrier I realise I've lost my Oyster Card.  I turn out every pocket - discovering there's a large hole in the one I've been keeping my card in, so fish around inside the jacket lining as well - no luck.  I turn out the bag and every garment of the stash from the Angels sale, scattering stockings and petticoats on the station floor.  I check all my pockets again - still no card.  It's absolutely, definitely gone.  Arse. And not only does this mean I can't get out the station without possibly a fine, I've wasted the tenner I just topped up with, and best of all, my return ticket to Cornwall is in the little flap pocket of the card wallet, so that'll be seventy quid down the pan to get another ticket for same-day travel.  Double arse, with a side order of bollocks...

G & P are of course on the other side of the barrier, and my frantic searching and turning out of bag, and turning inside out of jacket has attracted the attention of station staff.  Thankfully she - name badge says Trudie - takes pity on me, but then you get to know who's genuine and who's a fare-dodger.  She lets me through the barrier, and I explain our journey and topping up at Hanger Lane.  Trudie phones Hanger Lane in case I've dropped the card on the platform there - no luck - and it's not on the station here.  She calls ahead to West Ruislip where the train terminates to ask if the driver can check on the train itself when it arrives, but the chances of finding the small blue wallet in the wilderness of where it could have been mislaid are very slim.  It'll take a few minutes for our train to arrive at West Ruislip, so we shuffle about in the station entrance, despite there being little hope.  That's the tubewhore Oystercard, with all my journeys on it gone...G &P are marvellously supportive and I try to be stoic and not a total killjoy about it...

Trudie calls West Ruislip back, my card has been found! Astonishment!! She pops out of the station office saying 'Well the stars are shining on you this evening!' 

How wonderful!  I am over-joyed and very thankful.

She grins, 'see', she says, 'sometimes the system does work'.  I take this as small proof of the karma of good manners for saying 'thank you' to bus drivers that hold the door for me.

My card was on the floor of the first carriage - must have dropped from my pocket...oh lovely card!  We are to be reunited!!! What luck! However, we do have to go pick it up from West Ruislip.  But it's only a few stops, and I've not been there yet.  G&P pop back through the barrier and we head north.  

The nice chap at West Ruislip tells me again how lucky I am that the card was found, and I agree with him effusively and thank him for the trouble, and we've collected a story of Christmas luck into the bargain.  It's now too dark to get all but the smudgiest of pictures...West Ruislip to Epping is the longest single journey one came make without changing, which is a journey I intend to make, so I will be back one day to explore properly in daylight...


...and back at Northolt, I beg the indulgence of the lovely Trudie for the last picture of the day (I'd already explained that I was working on an art project about he tube and which made losing the card I'd made all the project's journeys on even more upsetting):

   
...and that small detour aside, we head off for tea at G's place on the canal and from there a feast of gossiping over good curry to the soundtrack of Shirley Bassey mangling pop tunes...a happy end to a day's adventuring in the cold of London's industrial estates.

Random bits of street furniture, signs and symbols gleaned from the weekend's travels...

Through the tube window:


( semiotic thickness... )And finally, wonderfully tenticular graffiti at Shepherd's Bush market:

 

I couldn't resist putting myself on a pedestal...and hey, what's not to love about stripy socks. 

Light rapidly diminishing, the remaining three travellers bade farewell to K and set of to explore the wilderness of the Junction and hopefully a bus towards Northolt, and tea and warmth, and possibly even curry... Looking at the transport map if we want to get to Northolt, it's not a good idea to be starting from here. 

It's an odd way to show London to a visiting friend from the US, but speedlime  bears up as we set off on the considerable trek to the bus stop, across the concrete expanse of bus turning circles, puddled street light amber and steel blue on the wet tarmac, feeling small under a huge sky, along roads over shining tracklines. 



Junctions, by their very nature as places of passing and transference are themselves nowhere places - places on the way to somewhere else,places to switch tracks and stable rolling stock. My immediate impression of Willesden is of a strange transient wasteland, unclaimed by community.  Maybe this is just the romanticising effect of a winter twilight against urban decay, buddelias struggling against graffiti, sky filled with cabling and vast slabs train-moving machinery, like something from oil fields or docklands.   

The station has been through changes, and abandoned bits remain in rail ownership for potential redevelopement; wikipedia has this to say: 'part of the station was demolished but space for its restitution remains should any of the plans for outer-suburban services to call here come to fruition.'  Which means in practice that there are derelict sections of land, land in waiting for a function, collecting litter, and overlooked unlovedness of shelved purpose.


Willesden Junction is one of those place names that seeps into the mind through repetition, but lacks the romance in popular culture of somewhere like Clapham Junction.  I hadn't really thought about what would be here.  It's another of those places names that exist to me only as parts of an oft-heard list platform announcements to unvisited destinations, merely part of the litany of travel. 



Lost-time barbers:



P falls asleep on the bus, snoring gently.  As the bus waits to pull back into traffic after servicing a stop, someone bangs on the door for admittance.  He's allowed on.  The doors close.  The bus judders but doesn't move off, having missed the traffic lights.  Another person bangs on the door, and is allowed on.  The bus finally finds a gap and pulls away.  Neither of the two chance travellers bothers to say thank you to the driver.  For some reason I find this unreasonably rude.  Once a driver has signalled to other traffic, he's under no obligation to open his doors again, as it could be confusing to other road users to change his signal.  The least the two people saved a wait in the cold could do is express a little common courtesy.  A small gesture of fellowship against the anonymity of the inhuman city.

We get out at Hanger Lane, debate the possibility of a cab as it's dark, and it's been a long day of standing in queues in the cold, but with no sign of a cab office, we head for the Central Line.  I charge up my Oyster Card.