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Any attempts to brush my teeth in the sink are meant with baleful stares and a mean left hook...
Eventually, after a negotiation on bathroom space and a fine breakfast from
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velvetdahlia I'm trundling down the road to find somewhere to buy a travelcard. I pick a newsagent at random and am flabberghasted to find the person behind the counter is someone I used to work with at the cinema in Fulham. There's one of those 'staring open-mouthed in disbelief 'moments as she also can't believe I've just walked into her shop in Boston Manor far west on the Piccadilly Line. There's much squealing and hugging across the counter as we just repeat each others names as though we've summoned each other by incantation - especially ironic is that I am going to metmidnightxpress this morning who is also an ex-Fulham UGC compatriot. She's so flustered by my materialisation that she nearly stamps my travelcard the 14th November 2006. London is supposedly this vast metropolis where everyone is a stranger, and yet I regularly bump into old friends and acquaintances - school-friends from Cornwall, people I worked with decades ago, people I know who don't live in London...even
vodex of this parish (IIRC) was in a tube carriage with me an overheard my conversation about this art project before he found this blog...life is a series of astonishing co-incidences. I suppose that given the size of London and all the variations on chance encounter that are made possible by the sheer number of people sloshing around the city that we shouldn't be surprised at the frequency of bumping into people we know on the street, but it is still an ever-amazing occurence when you crash into someone you know from Bodmin on St Martin's Lane, or find yourself in a train carriage with an ex-boss.Still slightly dazed, I then spend the next 40 minutes waiting for a bus, and wonderment has time to settle into annoyance at the morning slipping past. Transport woes increase when I realise that my planned route is impossible due to engineering works taking out the whole Circle line and the Edgware Road branch of the District line. Further hopes of a clever alternative are quoshed at Hammersmith when the PA system reminds us that there's no service on the H&C from Hammersmith today - so effectively any direct route into Paddington from West London is frelled. I travel all the way into Piccadilly Circus and back on myself via the Bakerloo to eventually arrive at Paddington nearly an hour late. I'm more than a little fractious, so after leaving baggage at left luggage G and I settle for a soothing cup of tea to imporve my disposition before renegotiating today's plans now that we are behind schedule and I'm in a bad mood. Tea helps...time with my friend to chat about frivolity helps even more. We hatch a new plan and set off underground to conquer a few more stations. I leave you this clue to deduce where we emerged:
We finish mucking about and get the train two stops up to West Hampstead. Hampstead is in my head as 'a bit posh' but the rear walls of these houses have been redecorated and not by Lawrence Llewellen-Bowen.
( West Hampstead )
Finchley Road is also above ground. I've been here before visiting friends who lived nearby, but had never noticed that there was a Freud Museum nearby - mostly because I was on autopilot remembering the way to A&D's place...might be worth a return visit.
( Finchely Road )
We return to Paddington in time to finish the day as we started it having tea in a cafe and talking about movies...I trat myself to a Weekend First upgrade on the train home...
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
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. ( terra incognita )
( terra incognita )
( terra incognita )
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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...
Guess where?
His little bronze nose has been rubbed shiny by the hundreds of passengers passing through. Bless.
