Home

Obsession...

  • Nov. 29th, 2006 at 7:13 PM
map, time, south ealing, way out, south ken
I have a compulsive tendency towards things.

While in London I found myself planning my trip in terms of the stations I could 'get'. If I hadn't overslept on Monday, I was considering riding out to Heathrow to wave[info]speedlime on her way back to America and finishing off the bottom spur of the Piccadilly in the process. This is silly. I'm imposing on my friends. Late the night before I had sat up with a pocket map tippexing out the stations I had collected.
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Perhaps people here less fraught then Earl's Court, but then, up here they don't have to be worrying about which branch of the District the fickle finger of fate will select next:

 Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting Outside the District Line ticket hall is a bank of phones with deco lettering and eau de nile glass tiling surrounds; a forgotten monument to fifties futurism. Signage say 'turn right at the lights and pass under the flyover'. It does not also say, 'oh, there a charity shop here too, that you've never been in, but you have a train to catch so just keep moving...Flyover is ugly, and the Bakerloo station nestles beneath the concrete ribbon. The original oxblood exterior has a newer blue awning stuck onto it, obscuring the lovely Edwardian tiles, but inside the tiled Ticket Office surround remains.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

These fragments are such a delight to find, the odd details that survived a hundred and forty odd years. I am quite giddy with excitement at finding the nouveau styling, squeeing over the architectural fabric. My hopping about in glee cause great amusement for smiley staff member, who not only doesn't mind me taking pics of the above, but takes my pic for me. Sadly, very blurred. Would be rude to make him do it again, so it will have to suffice for the Edgware Road Bakerloo proof:

 Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

One stop up and I'm back at Paddington. The tiling here is newer, but has a pattern of fragments of engineering plans across it. No-one else is looking at it. Until I started this project, neither would I have done.

 Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Upstairs, I try the ever popular 'straight arm self portrait' technique, but am saved from horrible results by friendly girl in black tights and cut off denim skirt, who asks if I'd like her to take a picture for me.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

And so I get my train home, happily saited at getting four more stations knocked off. As I wait for us to pull out of Paddington, I get the tippex out and remove Earl's Court, Edgware Road x2, and Paddington.

Baywater now bothers me irrationally, standing as the last station on that section of D&C as yet ungathered. It taunts me. I'd passed through going up to Edgware Road, and debated hoping out, but, on sticking my head out the carriage door, as there were no other through trains listed on the platform indicator I'd decided not to risk a long wait, and missing my train home. I stare at it on the map, as though by will alone it willl have the good grace to not exist.  I remember that there is a Patisserie Valerie there, and that you can walk easily between it and Queenway, so I can thread in and out via the Central Line on a later jaunt...

Profile

map, time, south ealing, way out, south ken
[info]tubewhore
Tubewhore

Latest Month

May 2008
S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Tags

Page Summary

Syndicate

RSS Atom
Powered by LiveJournal.com
Designed by Tiffany Chow