Always loved the phrase 'Hyde Park Corner'; it's another Olde London Place name that reeks of Dickensian streets scenes and pea-soupers. It's also one of the stations collected on a disposable camera back in December 2006, that turned out to be little but grey fog, so this seems a fortuitous chance to collect it again properly. I was sad not to have had the pictures I took of the tiling come out in any usable form..
HPC is one of those stations that doesn't have a surface building. Instead there's a portico into the netherworld, and because this is a nice part of London there are graceful leaves carved into the walls and it doesn't smell of wee.
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...
Once I return to the depths of the Underground, in need of an earlyish night after all this walking, an obsessive thought crept into my head - it was only one stop down the Northern Line to Euston...that would take out both the Euston Stations...before I'd really thought about it, I found my feet taking me on the Northern Line escalator.
At Euston there's no name marker to say 'Euston', just a bloody great roundel in the ceiling; that will have to suffice.
I bother woman who isn't as harried looking as the others that rush past to the escalator. She seems baffled by the request but dutifully points the camera and as she takes the shot I see she presses the 'off' button rather than the shutter. I see the camera switch itself to sleep...however, duty done, she seems eager to get on her way and stop having to deal with the pink haired nutter so I just smile, take the camera back and say 'thank you'...I then get an attack of nerves; all around me people are rushing homewards, or stand about finishing phone calls before they go out of reception underground. It must take me a good three minutes to summon the nerve to ask someone else, but even though he too seems baffled that I should want such a thing as a picture of me under the Euston Underground roundel he does the job, even getting down on one knee to frame a better shot.
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midnightxpress today to see how many stations we can collect in a day. This will be a guerilla affair, of dashing between platforms surface and station, so naturally I wear a corset and heels...nothing like wearing practical clothing for such endeavors, and indeed this is nothing like practical clothing.However, due to general fidgety malaise I am awake early. In the bath, I hatch a plan: if I stop wallowing about in the bubbles I could head up the Piccadilly Line to where it joins the Victoria at Finsbury Park and still get back down to Kings Cross in time for our rendevous. Occasionally, back when I was commuting from Welwyn Garden City into New Cross for college I would have to change at Finsbury Park (although looking at the map I can't remember why) and I remember there being balloons on the platforms.
Time to see if my memory is failing me...
( Time to investigate my misty rememberances (image heavy with lots of balloons) )
Finsbury Park is indeed the pastel disco station, or at least it is if you come in on the Piccadilly. In contrast the Victoria Line platforms are terribly drab. Pity the Victoria Line, it must feel such a poor relation when the Piccadilly Line Platforms look like they were decorated by the Circe Du Soleil. There are indeed huge, glittering mosaic balloons - I run between both North and South platforms to get pictures of them all, each different and spectacular. I think manical cackling might have been involved.
Upstairs, the station building is a squat ugly thing, it hides it's prettiness beneath a concrete bunker; like wearing fine French lingerie under a boiler suit. It's grey and overcast above...there are various squat little shops, but all is a little dismal. I look for someone to bother for the picture and chance upon a pair of chaps making diary plans.
I make my introduction and the chap I've picked on not only agrees, but says 'would you like to hold my badge for the photo' . Joy!!! He's a revenue inspector! The badge is very US cop...'step away from the gap, sister'...I am delighted. He probably thinks I'm insane but I trundle on my merry way a happy bunny after this encounter.
I arrive back at KX, via the Victoria this time as it's a few stations shorter, exactly on time.
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...
