Yesterday I promised Richard a copy of the photograph of him shovelling shingle. I printed it A3+ size today, and am very pleased with it.
Jackie drove me to Southampton Parkway after lunch. I then took my usual route to Carol’s, involving a train to Waterloo and a walk across Westminster Bridge and down Victoria Street.
On the south side of the River Thames The London Dungeon drew its usual crowds. At the top of the entrance steps stands a barrow loaded with human corpses wrapped in sacking. 
The occasional hand escaping from its primitive body-bag no longer twitched, unlike those of a visitor anxious to venture inside to feast her eyes on further gruesome spectacles. Perhaps the dead bodies had once entered with rather more trepidation.
Rainclouds gathered above Westminster Bridge and the silhouettes of some of the most photographed buildings in the world.
Flocks of pigeons lazing and foraging in a now much reduced little green at the Victoria Street end of Broadway, suddenly disturbed, periodically took flight and arranged themselves on safe perches in the plane trees above.
The green is Christchurch Gardens which has a history probably unknown to the millions passing by. There is no surviving evidence of either of the two chapels or the Church of Christ Church Broadway which have stood on the site at different times.
A chapel dedicated to St Mary Magdalene had occupied the area then known as Tothill Fields as early as the 13th century. By 1598, according to John Stowe, the building was ‘now wholly ruined’.
A new churchyard of St Margaret’s, known as The New Chapel was consecrated by the Dean of Westminster in December 1626. During the Commonwealth period it was used as a stable by Parliamentary soldiers and as avail for Scots prisoners captured at the Battle of Worcester. Twelve hundred of these prisoners were said to have died and been interred in the fields.
In the 19th century the New Chapel was demolished and replaced by Christ Church Broadway. Less than 100 years later, this in turn was destroyed by German incendiary bombs in the early morning of 17th April 1941.
Sadly, as in many London public spaces, this one now bears a sign telling you what you can’t do in them.
On one corner is situated a tribute to those who suffered in the suffragette movement which fought for votes for women in the early twentieth century. The body of their leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, is buried in Brompton Cemetery. Her gravestone in the form of a celtic cross features in ‘The Magnificent Seven’.
After visiting Carol, I returned to Southampton where Jackie was waiting to drive me home.
Noticing my reflection in the window of the 507 bus to Waterloo as it passed St. Thomas’s Hospital, I was reminded of the keen observation skills of Jackie and Judith Munns in August 2012. I had posted a photograph of the Sigoules boulangerie on an afternoon following a morning visit to the hairdressers there. ‘Good haircut’, Jackie had texted from England. How, I wondered, had she known? The answer was that I was unwittingly reflected in the baker’s window.
On the return train journey, I amused my fellow travellers, most of whom were engrossed in laptops, by commenting that ‘when I commuted everyone read books’. ‘Times have changed’, was a young woman’s smiling reply.
When we arrived home we dined on superb sausage casserole (recipe); green beans; orange carrots; red cabbage with chillies; and yellow swede, potato, and onion mash.
Tag: commuting
I’m Only Borrowing It
Probably because it is slightly less cold today, snow began to fall as Jackie drove me to Ashurst for my trip to London. I was then presented with the problem of buying a ticket. We should perhaps be grateful that there is a railway station at this village. Unfortunately there is no person employed to dispense tickets or to help in any way. This task is performed by a machine. As usual when I fail to obtain what I need from one of these, I didn’t know whether the problem was the device or me. I could not find a way of getting it to allow me to apply my Senior Railcard which gives me a thirty percent discount. Fortunately we had anticipated this eventuality and Jackie had waited in the car, ready to drive me to Southampton Parkway if necessary. This she did. On the way there I speculated that the time of purchase might have been the problem. It had been 9.25. The train was due at 9.40. Railcards operate from 9.30. Maybe the robot was set not to issue my kind of ticket until after 9.30, despite the fact that the train would not come along for another ten minutes.
As it turned out, I caught the same train anyway, and the guard on it confirmed my supposition. He said the thing to do was to board the train without a ticket and find his counterpart who would issue a suitably discounted ticket. Of course, the machine would presumably have provided such a service at 9.31, or even a few seconds before that. The only person inconvenienced this morning was Jackie, who, in attempting to deliver me to a nearer station, found herself having to drive round to Southampton after all.
It was a splendid day in London; clear and bright with no snow. I walked my usual route from Waterloo to Green Park where I boarded a Jubilee Line tube train to visit Norman for lunch.
Reflected in a three-dimensional four-sided sculptural construction alongside Sutton Walk opposite the main entrance to Waterloo, a young couple photographed themselves. As they inspected the result, one of them seemed to have disappeared.
The low winter sun shone through the parapets of Westminster Bridge.
Waterfowl walked on the frozen surface of the lake in St. James’s Park.
Norman fed us on roast chicken followed by trifle. We shared a bottle of Chateau David Bordeaux superieur 2010. I then travelled by underground to Clapham Common to visit Wolf and Luci bearing gifts bought yesterday in Shaftesbury. Luci produced welcome slices of her tasty pumpkin pie.
My return journey to Southampton was uneventful, except for a memory it prompted. A man struggling down the carriage seeking a seat on the crowded train enquired after the occupancy of a berth which contained two bags. He was told the position was taken, and moved on. It was ten minutes before the female occupant returned to take up her place. Some twenty years ago, when commuting between Newark and Kings Cross, I had been without a seat of my own. As I stood in the aisle studying the other passengers, it dawned on me that every time one of them visited the buffet car their perch remained vacant for some fifteen to twenty minutes. I therefore spent upwards of an hour hopping from one temporarily unoccupied location to another. When other adjacent travellers pointed out, some rather indignantly, that the seats were occupied, I suggested that they were not at that moment, and ‘I’m only borrowing it. I’ll give it up when your friend returns’. This I did and found another vacancy. It seemed a better option than standing the whole way.
When Jackie collected me this evening, the morning’s flurry of snow had given way to the more familiar rain.