First stop St James's Park - note the apostrophe. No apostrophe in Barons Court, but there is one in Earl's Court. I am baffled.

St James's Park is station for Westminster schoolboys, Petty France for passports - and I remember with annoyance sitting in line to get my sister's passport processsed for four whole hours, only to discover when I finally got to see an official that she'd got the wrong person to sign as her referee...I was not a happy bunny - and of course, on top of the station itself is the LUL headquarters at 55, Broadway. The station has a Bertie Wooster charm, being largely wood-panelled.



Above, the building boasts sculptures by Gill, Epstein and Moore and was designed by the same architect who did Senate House, the main library for the University of London. In fact until Senate House was built,westminster,  55 Broadway was the tallest building in London. It is a marvel of deco design - inside faced in warm toned marble with striking period details in the form of the clocks and lettering. I had a job interview inside once, which was a marvellous excuse to nose around a building I've always been fascinated by. I wanted to work there as much for the decor as the job itself I was already bored to tears with my job at London Buses, so figured would be much more existentially amusing to be bored to tears in a Kafkaesque institutional hive, like working in a 'Brazil' style deturnment. And indeed it is all leaded lights, doors with intricate panelling, marble hallways expanding warren like...it was built to last - no particleboard partitions or open plan office spaces.

When a student, I used Senate House a great deal, and always referred to it as the Ministry of Information Retrieval. As much as these buildings are imposing, the Terry Gilliam fan in me just loves their Orwellian bluffness; their confident, stark futurism.



From St James's we walked the short distance to Westminster, through empty streets. Looking at the trees in Parliament Square, with red London Buses trundling about, I actually felt Christmasessy. Mostly because the lights weren't sponsered by 'Happy Feet' as per the Oxford Street lights this year which I find truly upsetting. But then, I have sentimental feelings about Westminster being as it's where B and I first kissed after lunch at the Parliament staff restaurant. As we kissed and kissed, an Evening Standard seller had yelled 'Oi, love, how's he 'sposed to breathe', to which I yelled over my shoulder, 'through his ears'.


Since then, Westminster has been modernised, as part of the Jubilee Line extension. After years of it being a building site, it's now another cathedral space underground, all brushed steel, concrete and clean tiling.

From Westminster to Temple. L mentioned 18thC graveyard at the Temple, but sadly, it's cold and dark and were under time pressure, so will have to return another day for photos there. The station has some fun individual details though...I peek out from behind colonnades of painted pillars




Outside:


From Temple, up to another of my traditional temping grounds, Blackfriars. I spent far too many evenings as a student photocopying in law company basements in the City of London. Don't feel any need to explore old haunts.


The City of London is a very specific entity. I can't be arsed to discuss it right this minute, but only a very small geographic area is actually 'The City'.  Hence the lamposts have griffons, or somesuch, and there are large shields as per below on the wall.


By now we're running out of time, so head on further eastwards to Whitechapel...