Eventually crawling into Victoria discover that most of the Victoria line is closed for essential engineering so what was to be a simple 10 minute journey up to see the new St Pancras station becomes a battle through heavy crowds back to South Kensington on the District (also with some closures) and up the Piccadilly.  The Victoria was created to increase capacity back in the 70s, which is why it interchanges with so many other lines, and even though it is early afternoon on a Sunday, the underground is heaving as I  wade through the tide of humanity to pop out at Kings Cross. 

OK, St Pancras isn't strictly a tube station, but I'm nosey so see how it's changed.

Despite the journey to St Pancras being frustrating, once I'm there the interchange from Underground to Mainline station is a breeze.  I am happily surprised as I remember it being a struggle over busy road junctions overland rather than gentle passage through clean, well lit corridors to emerge into the new station itself.  Plenty of better writers than myself have waxed lyrical over the redevelopment at St Pancras, and indeed it is lovely - warm brickwork  and clean masonry against sparkling plate glass to front cute little shops and eating places, freshly painted spandrels of Victorian ironwork, and the over-arching, grand vaulted ceiling to frame a cathedral space dedicated to the adventure of travel.  After poor, drab and functional Clapham Junction this really is about the romance of trains. Upstairs people sit in the brown leather banquettes of the champagne bar flanking the carriages of the Eurostar.  I am envious...   



The John Betjeman statue:

I really should make an effort to actually read some Betjeman.  I have simply no idea of whether he's my sort of poet or not, but as he wrote on trains and Metroland a great deal, I keep brushing against him on this project. This stirs up childhood feelings of reluctance which may turn out to be completely unfounded. Growing up in Cornwall, and especially Wadebridge, home to the Betjeman Centre housed in the old railway shed, school tried to force feed him to you, and like any contrary child being offered things adults have decided are good for them, I would petulantly refuse to be interested.  

I discover

failing_angel in the pub and we take more pictures.  Unlike the Betjeman statue, I find The Meeting Point to be Bad Art.  It's ugly.  I don't like the scale and find it clumsy.  Close to all you see are arses and ankles, and there's always the temptation to stare up her skirt...but I suppose it fulfils its function it being easy to spot.  But then so is a big red arrow pointing to an 'x' on the floor  and I think that would equally aesthetically sound.