the time is now...

'can't stay still' day, 'walking off heartbreak' day.

Left the house as imposing a pointless meaning on my meanderings, as though it was then less of a waste of time, went via South Ealing - baffling tourists on the way by asking them to do a pic of me on the station - to South Kensington. Should have got out at Gloucester Road, but was lost in book and Thoughts.

Wonderful sky - took pics of the Natural History Museum against the shining cloudscape and walked to Gloucester Road. Wide open streets - 'a 'good' part of town; must be to have a Waitrose actually on top the station, rather than the usual 'Food And Wine' .

Photo in front the world time zones map at Oxford Circus which I can honestly say, I'd never stopped and looked at ever, before today. It's suitably goth, as it marks that It's Always Midnight Somewhere. So, South Ealing, South Kensington, Gloucester Road and Oxford Circus in one afternoon.

A picked Gloucester Road as a destination so as to get pics of the Platform Art on display there - gently beautiful dreamscapes of faces in buildings and landscapes.

We stood and watched trains going past, and people shuffling on and off - how many looked out the window? How many glanced up from a newspaper to see a smear of colour and beauty wash past them as they left the station? Something magical breaking through the trance-state necessaary to avoid madness in commuting. I hope enough of this magic, this wonderful glamour does smudge up a few London souls, make them open to the wonder of the world again.

After the consternation at South Ealing and South Ken, this a high point in the collection so far.

Oh, but then it's so much easier to wax bucolic when one doesn't live there anymore. I can be a tourist, I can be the invisible flanuese with detached amusement...I am not desperately rushing anywhere to a deadline today. I have time to stand and stare.

 

On my return from The Big Smoke there was a fat envelope of Dr Who stickers. Spent a happy few minutes putting them in the album - only three to go...this new obsession with tube stations to replace the void that the completed Dr Who Sticker Album will create. Moving on, have decided to try to get the album autographed...to add another layer of collecting on to the now finished item...where does this need come from? What drives people to explore, to hoard, sort and create sets of things - from children picking pebbles from the beaches to philanthropists amassing vast art collections...the same desire behind it...

My new haul included several doubles, which I put into numerical order and collated in with the other doubles. Made me feel peaceful, this indexing and sorting of things. It's simple, it makes sense, it can be controlled unlike the chaos 'outside'.

Sitting in a supermarket trolley...hot and sweaty following the Bauhaus gig. Pubs full of goths and street hawkers selling t-shirts and posters. Staff at the tube station alternating between baffled and blase

A sunny morning at the far end of the Central and District lines, after a hearty breakfast at the rather wonderful Walpole Cafe with velvetdahlia, artnouveauho and psychonomy.  Stuffed myself with mash, bubble and squeak and lashings of gravy.  There's an elephant buried under one of the streets we trundled our luggage past.

Tube line used to go all the way out to Slough in earlier years.