Euston Road – derrickjknight

Up The Cally

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After yesterday’s violent deaths on Westminster Bridge, over which I have walked many a time, it has been difficult to take my mind off London. I’ve always found a productive routine task to be therapeutic. It seemed therefore appropriate to continue yesterday’s North London perambulations through the medium of scanning the next dozen of my Streets of London images made in August and September 2004.

I begin with this corner of King’s Cross station on Euston Road, N1. Purely by coincidence the picture contains a reminder of another disaster experienced on 18th November 1987. An accidental fire in the Underground cost thirty one people their lives. The following month I began daily trips through King’s Cross when I would use those underground lines. The walled commemorative area in the foreground was filled with floral tributes over the following days.

Alongside the station, Caledonian Road runs up towards Holloway. During the late ’80s and ’90s, when, in sports gear, carrying my working clothes in a back pack, I commuted from Newark, I would run up The Cally, as it was known to the locals, for a few hundred yards, turn into a pocket park on the left, and continue along the Regent’s Canal towpath, past Camden Lock to my counselling room in Little Venice.

The first turning on the right is Omega Place N1. Tony’s Organics, at 10 Caledonian Road, in 2009, was considered one of the best raw food cafés in London. It is now reported to be closed.

The next turning is the one-time picturesque Keystone Crescent. At that time, a plastered wall with bricked up windows unwittingly invited graffiti.

Beyond the above-mentioned pocket park lies Twyford Street. Cally Pool has its entrance further up Caledonian Road. I hope the gentleman in the foreground didn’t have a cold.

On this particular day I must have been walking up to Parents for Children in Islington, for I continued on along Richmond Avenue on the right. Tarmon Free House is at 270, Caledonian Road. Perhaps the same florists decorated the establishment as did The Exmouth Arms featured yesterday.

At the far end of Richmond Avenue we find Cloudesley Road N1. As with a number of our 19th century buildings, this one bears the freshened up slogans of a shop that once operated on its site.

In nearby Dowrey Street, shadows of leaves do their best to take our minds of an uninviting stairwell.

Lonsdale Square in Barnsbury needs no such distraction,

although, just around the corner, Liverpool Road, one of the main routes from Holloway Road through to Islington, could have done with a facelift at this point.

allinlondon.co.uk’s page on Alan Cocks’s shop demonstrates that it has received one. London’s central area telephone numbers are now prefixed by 020 7, so if you need a quotation don’t forget the addition to the prominent number in my photograph, which remains otherwise unchanged.

This evening we dined on pork chops marinaded in mustard sauce and coated with flaked almonds, piquant cauliflower cheese; sauteed potatoes, carrots and cabbage. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Collin-Borisset Beaujolais Villages 2015.

There’s Always Work Going On

Having, yesterday, mounted the Brick Path section in the first volume of garden album, I decided to leave the last four sheets blank for subsequent updates. Each of the previous sets of entries has been divided by a similar virgin page. Today I printed up the Phantom Path section with which to start volume two.

I then scanned another set of the Streets of London colour slides from April 2005.

It is not possible to walk these streets without some work going on. Examples of this include:

Scaffolding in Wyndham Place, off Crawford Street, W1,

and in Duke Street;

roadworks in Devonshire Place, W1;

and redevelopment of Warren Street Station subway on Euston Road NW1.

As far as I remember, that hole in the pavement remained for many months. I never saw anyone working on it. Similarly, I think Warren Street station users were actually inconvenienced for quite a while.

Perhaps this rubbish on the corner of Cabbell Street, NW1 was left legitimately by Panini Sandwich Bar around the corner.

On another corner of Wyndham Place stands the Duke of Wellington pub, with its eponym keeping watch from an upstairs window.

The Iron Duke is not exactly represented by a mural, but our capital does sport many, some commissioned, some not. The plaque affixed to the building in Noel Street, W1, informs us that Louise Vines painted its mural, ‘Ode to the West Wind’ on behalf of London Wall in 1980, when their phone number was still valid.

This street trader in Stratford Place, on the corner of HMV in Oxford Street is one of many tucked into this major thoroughfare. Even ten years ago, the mobile phone was much in evidence.

Among this batch of slides were some of the shrubbery in Lindum House garden, from that same month.

This one shows, on the left hand edge, the grid of a wooden arch I constructed with Mike Kindred, spanning the path through the orchard, seen her in full blossom. To the right is the roof of the bungalow John built himself on a plot of land that had once formed part of our garden. The story of how our neighbour saved our drawing room ceiling is told in ‘A Screwdriver Comes In Handy’.

This evening we enjoyed further helpings of the Hordle Chinese Take Away meal. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and I drank sparkling water.

Stalking The Starling

Queuing to get on the blog this morning were:

This pink rambler that has come through the recent rains somewhat scathed;

the clematis Marie Boisselot;

more alliums, one with a sentinel spider, less than usually reluctant to be noticed. Click to spot it.

By popular request I have returned to the Streets of London Series. I scanned another dozen from April 2004, of which I offer:

Firstly Church Path, NW10, in the London Borough of Brent. St Mary’s Church, dating from 938, has featured in a number of posts, such as that of 15th February 2013, when I found its grounds ‘Surprisingly Picturesque’.

A younger, rather more splendid, church is Saint Pancras Parish Church on Euston Road, NW1. Its website describes what I have photographed, thus:

‘The church is a prominent landmark. Built by public subscription in 1818-22, it replaced the derelict Old St Pancras as Parish Church. Old St Pancras was rebuilt in Victorian times as one of the 17 subdivisions of the Ancient Parish of St Pancras. St Pancras Euston Road is Grade 1listed as a fine example of the Greek Revival style. Its external features, based on temples in ancient Athens, include an octagonal spire and an impressive front portico with 6 huge columns. On either side at the rear are our famous caryatids – statues of Greek women supporting the porches over the two entrances to the crypt. Traditional iron railings enclose the churchyard, where the annual parish picnic and other celebrations are held on the lawns.’

Midland Road NW1, was still closed at the time of the London bombings of 7th July 2005, my 63rd birthday. The whole of Euston Road, and many of the side streets around were cordoned off, and people were pouring out of the underground system, as I took my normal walk from Beauchamp Lodge in Little Venice to North Road, a mile or so behind Kings Cross station. Midland Road is now incorporated into the development area around that station. On the morning of the bombs, oblivious of what was happening, on a forced pedestrian diversion, I came across an assembled swarm of many hundreds of men in the yellow hard hats shown in this picture.

The building against which the construction workers are leaning is the British Library, at 96 Euston Road. Opened in June 1998, its Brutalist architecture, designed by Colin St John Wilson, can be seen to better effect from Ossulston Street, NW1.

The proprietors of M.S.Tyres on the corner of Roundwood Road NW10 find it necessary to batten down the hatches against the ubiquitous graffiti that decorates this area of North London. At least the windows are protected.

It doesn’t matter where you are in our capital city, it is very risky to leave your bicycle unattended. Virtually outside Baker Street tube station leans an example of the skeletal remains that litter many of our streets.

Either from familiarity with my presence, or from a desperation to feed its brood, I was able this afternoon successfully to stalk the parent starling squatting behind our kitchen facia board.. The bird, carrying sustenance, now lands on our roof, a speculative distance from the hidden nest; gingerly makes its way along the eaves; stands on the corner fidgeting and uttering sharp cries, either of warning or encouragement; then drops down and makes a dash for safety.

Watching the poor creature dithering, popping its head down, lifting it up for a quick shufti, and eventually taking the plunge, was fascinating.

The skies were overcast today, but, it seeming to be the season for awards, the sun popped into my e-mails. I have now been nominated for:

Thank you very much, rameshwarir at https://rameshwarir.wordpress.com/page/2/ for nominating me.

You have asked me these rather profound questions, which I answer as follows:

Do you believe that there is someone watching over you, someone you can just feel & not see? I do
What is the purpose of life? As best I can to make other people as happy as I would hope to be
What is the one thing that you would go to or do to relieve your heartaches? I have found it and have no more
What makes you happy? Refer to my answer at 2 above
What do dreams mean to you? Those we experience through sleep are a way of working through timeless issues. In another sense, dreams are what we wish for
What about Nature do you adore? Its constant variety
What is the one element, off the 5, that you would associate yourself with and why? Earth because I like to think I am pretty well grounded
What is your take on birth & death? Birth is an opportunity to begin a good life. Death is a time of reckoning
What have you learnt from Nature? That it is there to be admired; and that we can control none of it
What part of the tree would you associate yourself with? The trunk