Jack

On another lovely spring day I walked through to Wimbledon and up the hill to Wimbledon Village and back.

In Mostyn Road a Range Rover was decanting a young family.  As the children spilled out a small boy admonished his sister with the words: ‘You’re wrecking my part of the car’.  This was reminiscent of the claim to a chair he had been sitting in previously by my grandson, Malachi when aged just 2 3/4. It  was further evidence of the importance of territory even very early in life.

Passing St. Mark’s Place at the bottom of Wimbledon Hill Road I embarked upon the long, steep climb up the hill thinking of Jack.  Jack was not one, but several successive generations of carthorse, similarly named, stationed in St. Mark’s Place for the first half of the 20th. century.  So difficult was the hill for horses pulling carts up that they needed assistance.  Jack was accordingly hitched to the wagons lending his muscle to the task. There is still a trough at the top of the hill, although it is many years since it saw any water.

This evening we had a beef casserole cooked by Jackie and I had half a bottle of Marques del Romeral 2005 reserve Rioja.

The Village Shop

Another fine spring day saw Jackie and me driving down to Upper Dicker in East Sussex for a family meal with our son Mathew and his wife Tess.

In the sunlight the suburban roadside crop of dandelions rivalled the yellow splendour of the countryside’s fields of rape.  Trees were now fully plumed with fresh green leaves and all was bright and clear.

We stopped for a late lunch at The Barley Mow in Selveston.  This is a large friendly pub serving real ale and excellent food.  Jackie had a tasty omelette with scary chips and I had a first rate ploughman’s.

Mat and Tess live in a pretty Edwardian terraced cottage the gardens of which are filled with flowers.  It was warm enough to sit outside until time to eat the wonderful salads, home made quiches and pizza meal Tess had prepared.

Desserts and coffee were taken in the village cafe/restaurant/general store which Tess runs.  The desserts, like the cakes, pasties etc served in the cafe, were all home made.  Since taking over this previously run-down establishment about 5 years ago the couple have transformed both the shop/cafe/restaurant and the life of the village.  What was once little more than the tuck shop for St. Bede’s school opposite is now a well stocked shop, thriving cafe and meeting place for residents and often passing visitors.  In the recent past if you wanted eggs, bread, or even milk after 10 a.m. you’d best drive elsewhere.  The place was bare and drab.  Now it is well stocked with everything one could possibly dream of in a village shop and more.  Fresh local produce is a speciality and meals are well prepared and cheerfully served. It is well decorated; has tasteful, interesting, pictures on the walls; and always has characterful music from all over the world playing unobtrusively in the background.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m proud of them.

Driving back through sunset over the Sussex downs was a delight.  Jackie drove and, as usual, I nodded off about halfway, coming to about 10 minutes from home. You see, I am perfectly relaxed when she is driving.

The Railway Path

Yesterday I wrote of Kevin Lydon’s observation about the pretentiousness of my choice of cinema.  This needs a little clarification.  He thought I should be satisfied with the films on offer at the three circuit cinemas and one fleapit in Wimbledon, or the independent one in Raynes Park.  He had a point.

Today was a very pleasant day for a walk, being warm yet cloudy with a cool breeze.  Perhaps reflective of the change in the weather there was a great deal of scaffolding going up en route.  My walk was to Wimbledon then on to Raynes Park along the railway path which links the two towns.

The railway path is much better surfaced than in my youth; snickets have been opened up to the various turnings off the parallel Worple Road, offering access to their residents and a path through to Worple Road itself; and a high stout metal fence is now in position preventing access to the railway embankment.  The area fenced off from the public has been widened and the wasteland consequently reduced.  Throughout the two mile stretch every available wall or fence is covered in graffiti, the materials for which were not available in the 40s and 50s.

A crowd of lads from a local school shambled along listening to music downloaded on various items of equipment at which my teenage mind would have boggled.

I paused for a while outside the back of my childhood home in Stanton Road, reflecting on the fact that the upstairs maisonette for which my parents cannot have paid any more than perhaps £2 per week, now fetches £1,400 per month in rent.  The railway land at the back having been narrowed and more securely fenced, it is no longer possible there to build dens; light bonfires; weed and flatten areas to make sports fields; or scale the traditional iron railings to mess about on the embankment.  Because Stanton Road is on the ‘right’ side of the railway it is, according to Estate agents, now in West Wimbledon.

On my way back through Wimbledon Chase I was hooted and waved at by a car driver who turned out to be my old friend Dominic Birtwistle.  I had just bought some of the ingredients for the sausage casserole I will make this evening.

Contrasts

Coffee this morning with a friend in SW1, followed by lunch with another in NW10.  I began with a walk to Colliers Wood, mostly through Morden Hall (National Trust) Park and Merton’s Wandle Trail.  The boundary between the two is a modern tramline.  The Wandle is one of London’s lost rivers; the trail being a stretch of wooded land alongside the water.

Most of the people in the congested High Street running through South London past Colliers Wood and on through Clapham must be oblivious of this pleasant walk.  I suffered such oblivion when, as a teenager in the 1950s I regularly walked from Raynes Park to Tooting to visit an art-house cinema. I had the 1/9d for admission, but not the extra few pence for bus fares.  Kevin Lydon, a schoolmate, thought this was pretentious.  When I think of how many unintelligible subtitled black and white films I sat through I’m sure he was probably right.

From Colliers Wood I travelled on the tube to Victoria and on to my friend’s flat in Rochester Row.  After coffee it was off to Harlesden for lunch.

Turning right out of Neasden tube station the contrast between the High Street there and Victoria Street, SW1 was marked.  The wind gusting up the hill on a less rain sodden day would have carried blinding and irritating dust from the commercial recycling depot at the bottom of the hill.  The pavements were so uneven as to be bearing pools of water which it was difficult to avoid.  The older, smaller, St. Mary’s Church with its graveyard seemed a world apart from Westminster Cathedral; and The Burren in Roundwood Road, a friendly Irish pub, humble in comparison with the grand Victorian pubs, such as the Windsor Castle in Francis Street, which are to be found in Victoria.

Victoria’s buildings are mostly enormous; commercial ones usually modern and with walls of glass, residential ones usually older stylish and elegant blocks of flats.  It’s all rather grand and overbearing.  The only large modern building in this part of NW10 is the Magistrate’s Court.  There are blocks of less opulent looking flats, but most dwellings are terraces of small family homes, the older, larger ones often converted into two flats.

Victoria Street is well populated by modern shops, including a large department store, and City Hall itself.  Church Road, the local shopping centre for my friend Norman, is full of small shops which have seen better days and which are constantly changing hands.  Many of these latter shops are run by immigrants, the latest of whom are from Somalia.  The Road has a strong sense of community and the shops are stacked with produce attractive to those who live there.

As a schoolboy I had to walk because I didn’t have the busfare.  As a pensioner I only walk when I want to. Thanks to the Freedom Pass I am able to travel free and freely using any form of transport in the 6 London Transport zones.  This includes overland railways.  It is a marvellous facility which really lives up to its name.

Helpful Passer-By

Jackie tells me that when she went out this morning she encountered a passer-by helpfully picking up all the foxes’ leavings which had been strewn over our lawn (from a neighbour’s black bag!) and helpfully putting all the bits of rotten food into our not yet emptied, carefully packed, recycle bin!  The young woman said she didn’t mind doing it and called upon God to bless Jackie.  What could she say!!

Rubbish

Today’s walk was the Mostyn Road, Kingston Road, Cannon Hill Lane, Martin Way quadrangle.  Passing Rutlish School in Watery Lane I remembered Mick Copleston, my boyhood friend who attended the school during the 1950s.  A contemporary of his was John Major.  In the photograph of the school cricket team which adorned all the newspapers after John Major’s appointment Mick stands next to our former prime minister.

I enjoyed a fry-up at the Martin Cafe.

I bought yet another birthday present details of which must be concealed from a potential reader.

Today being refuse collection day I am going to talk rubbish ( OK. OK. I know, I know…..)

Bin collectors no longer go round to the back of the properties to drag out and empty dustbins.  Those days are quite rightly long gone.  What we do is leave black plastic bin bags out at the front.  This means that the foxes have a field night and the residents and/or unfortunate street cleaners have to pick up the pieces.  In the morning therefore gardens and streets are strewn with food packaging and bits of food even foxes and magpies reject.

Merton’s recycling containers are open plastic bins into which everything is placed together – paper, cartons, bottles, etc., etc.  If it rains, as it has done continuously throughout this month, everything gets very soggy.  It is surprising what the contents of these open bins tell you about the residents.  Newspapers and magazines are one indication of interests, politics and taste; bottles can be very revealing; and it is easy to tell whether people cook or eat precooked food.

What is common to almost everyone in Merton, it seems, is a total rejection or ignorance of guidelines about what to recycle and how to present it.  Cardboard containers are never flattened; tops are left screwed on drinks containers; nothing is rinsed; slices of pizza, chicken bones, rancid vegetables and suchlike are all left in their containers, most of which are of the wrong material to recycle or so soiled as to be of no use to anybody.

This may seem like a rant.  It is merely descriptive.

I am not foolproof either. Each Local Authority has its own requirements, and when in someone else’s home I am often unsure.  When living in W2 in Westminster I faithfully bagged up shredded paper for recycling until we got a notice saying it was not required. I don’t suppose confetti is much use either.

As someone who doesn’t know what happens to this stuff after collection I wonder ‘am I wasting my time trying to to my bit’?  What does happen to it?  How much is actually useful?

Who knows?

This evening we are having Lamb dopiaza from the freezer.  Another one I made earlier.  The rice is courtesy of the Watch Me leftovers from last night.

Hello World!

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Happy blogging!

Postscript:

It has taken me all this time to realise that I can do what it says above.  For that reason I have left it as it stands.

I started this blog because I had begun to use Facebook to tell about my day. Several friends and family members encouraged me to go further, and Alex Schneidemann told me about WordPress.

I hope to tell anyone who is interested the story of my life, in the present through walking or whatever else happens in the day, and of the past through what is triggered off in my thoughts.  Rambling in two senses of the word.

A diary has always appealed, but it is only in retirement that I have had the time to devote to one, in an age where communication is so easy.