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An unexpected delight after the inter-dimensional misery suck-fest that was Clapham North. We are mightily spoilt for choice of things to muck about posing with in the cheeriest of ticket halls decked out in cricketing motifs. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Douglas Adams might find this tasteless to alien visitors, but we giggle and prat about matching up actions with the cricketers in the tiling.
Looking at these pictures now, I am suddenly aware of just how many cameras there are. Perhaps this is because Bad People Want my Shuffle
From the platform, you'd never have guessed that such a fun ticket hall was just above. In the lift, the backing to an advertising panel has been scratched into. I find the pattern appealing, like the wax pictures I did at school wear you overlaid black crayon over a base of coloured crayon and scratched into it to reveal the rainbow colours underneath.
Outside trees are black scribble against the lead sky, but there are signs of Spring around the corner as cherry blossom explodes into bloom. I post tubwhore postcards...
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
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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...
