Tubewhore (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tubewhore) wrote,@ 2008-04-09 20:15:00 |
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| Entry tags: | manor house, piccadilly line, turnpike lane |
Turpike Lane & Manor House
After the brush with the law at Wood Green, we press on our way to closing up the gap on the Piccadilly Line. Next stop Turnpike Lane. Upstairs, the signage to the bus station above the station is enthusiastically huge and red, the font sized for the hard of thinking, the visual equivalent of shouting in someone's face 'it's behind you, stoopid'.
I determine on circumnavigating the building...hardly an undertaking on Magellan's scale, but for a wet Sunday afternoon in North London, it's momentarily amusing, and after all it's the adventurous spirit that finds interest in the most quotidien of endeavours. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't take long - Turnpike Lane being a squat brick box of the 30's modernist variety, sitting on a traffic island...
I don't think much of the attempt at cafe culture though; tea in polystyrene cups sitting out on a damp pavement...we really don't have the hang of it over here, just don't get the weather to really have it sorted out yet. There's strange mix of envy and suspicion of the Continental lifestyle at work here; on the one hand it looks rather fun and exciting, all this sitting around outside dunking croissants into one's coffee while discussing literary theories over long lunch breaks but on the other hand, such navel gazing and general shirking of the daily grind at the office betrays a basic lack of moral fibre and stalwartness. Plus of course, it's usually too drizzly to really enjoy pavement cafes. Perhaps drizzle is the answer though - one can be everso slightly Continental and sit outside with a rapidly dampening toasted cheese sandwich wearing a fold-up plastic rain mac over one's head, and in true British style fail to enjoy it and secretly dream of a hot foot soak indoors.
Underneath, a warren of tunnels in Clarice Cliff colours. A ceiling support post becomes a rounded triangular passenger information board:
We finish wandering about the multiple choice of exits and carry on one stop further to Manor House.
Ascending from the platform, I am delighted by the bizarre ceiling. It's not exactly a high ceiling, so the large roundels do kinda of push down on you, but it does have a disco space pod feel, very sixties boutique hotel from back when moulded white plastic was the height of chic...I wonder at my sanity that an enjoyable Sunday afternoon is one that involves finding an interesting ceiling far up on the Northern reaches of the Piccadilly line.
Ascending from the platform, I am delighted by the bizarre ceiling. It's not exactly a high ceiling, so the large roundels do kinda of push down on you, but it does have a disco space pod feel, very sixties boutique hotel from back when moulded white plastic was the height of chic...I wonder at my sanity that an enjoyable Sunday afternoon is one that involves finding an interesting ceiling far up on the Northern reaches of the Piccadilly line.
Swirly ceiling with added travel information pod loveliness:
Myself andspangle_kittenhad been playing with internal gubbins taken from Manor House over at the Acton Depot the previous day - a delicious slab of toffee-coloured bakelite, all knobs and dials and aching for mad science - so strangly apt to make it here today:
Sadly outside not so exciting...one either popped out from a stairwell in merkatish alarm into suddenly dazzling sunlight:
or on the other side of the street, descended below through a very unexciting brick shed...
Myself and
spangle_kittenhad been playing with internal gubbins taken from Manor House over at the Acton Depot the previous day - a delicious slab of toffee-coloured bakelite, all knobs and dials and aching for mad science - so strangly apt to make it here today: Sadly outside not so exciting...one either popped out from a stairwell in merkatish alarm into suddenly dazzling sunlight:
or on the other side of the street, descended below through a very unexciting brick shed...
Had it not been so cold, perhaps a walk through Finsbury Park, as the station is right outside the boundary wall, but the afternoon was waning late, and there were the joys of Sunday services and rail replacment buses to negotiate yet, so homewards it was...back down to the same shaped tunnels as with the other stations on the Cockfosters extension, but this time tiled in delft blue and cream.
