Australia Day (local chapter)

R. Fiddes
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Went to Nunhead cemetery on Sunday, shamed by not having been before it's wonderfully atmospheric, peaceful and wild. There's a wonderful view down to St Paul's from the top of the hill and myriad of rambling toppling graves and old trees.

There's a number of military graves/memorials in Nunhead  I chose R. Fiddes as he was sadly the youngest of the Anzacs in this group and with it being a gloomy day this young lad having traveled across the world to die (of his wounds?) barely out of school seemed extra poignant. You can imagine him not being that dissimilar to the people from down under etc we see/work with everyday. Not that dieing at age 34 like his neighbour is any good either. They are surround by the mass of everyday London folk so they are in good company.

Oddly near the entrance the entrance is another link to Oz with the Scottish martyrs monument who in 1790's got sent down under simply for campaigning for the vote! If you not been to Nunhead have a wander over. Oh and then there's the view from Telegraph Hill I should really get out more.

Against the flow

Woolwich Dockyard to Deptford (Thames Path) More picture here as usual

It seemed a little unnecessary that at the base of Viking towers there was a smouldering settee, more so that two kids where dancing round it. Moving on down to the main road a real Viking roars up on his three wheeler Hog. In effort to keep in with the natives I give him the sign \m/ and he laughs a gappy smile and returns it, his shaven haired slightly wizened shield maiden clutching to the pillion does the same as they roar off as the lights changed.

I cross the steady stream of the Woolwich rd and wander down towards the Thames. In a 60’s paved courtyard stands a chestnut tree underneath in his Sunday best is a skinny young black kid. He is intently stamping on the conkers but instead of picking up the glistening burnished nuts he just stamps on them and occasionally gobs on the nutty mush.

"The Royalist Democrat"
Right down next to the river the tides in. This bit of Woolwich is well “tooled up”; two huge guns stand ready one pointing downstream to see off any marauding “Gallicans” (“Frenchies” to the rest of us) and the other making sure Tate & Lyle aren’t getting too uppity across on the north bank. It’s a shady spot so I sit for a while watching the car ferry load, when up scampers two excitable king Charles spaniels towing behind them a puffing “Greek” guy. He fusses with them for a moment and then sits down next to me and they jump on his lap. Feeling sociable I ask their names. Holding the head of one of the dogs he gentle sort of shakes its head as if it were talking and says without any irony “dis ones Dodi” and patting the other dog “and dis ones Diana”. I praise their cuteness and get a lick for my reward. He continues “We had Dodi done“
I reply that this was probably wise
He continues “it’s nice down here now. it used t’be covered in Johnnies and broken glass but w’ complained to the council and dey cleared it up. “
“Power to the people” I reply
“Tis true it’s important to keep ‘em on der toes” he said with a chuckle
I nod my agreement
With that he slowly gets up and we say goodbye, the dogs jump down and he wanders off.
Where our royalist democrat was sitting written in marker is “I f*ckd Kaycee on this bench” underneath in another hand there’s a reply “pity your knob was small” I take this as a cue to wander off myself.

It’s a bit annoying on this stretch as you have to double back through the estate after a short distance and the only interest in the estate was to see the number of people smoking gaspers on their doorsteps it’s that sort of a day, chain smoking weather.

"No Caps or Trainers no customers"

From here through the path swerves through edges of Woolwich past a few sheds and warehouses and I came across a grim maroon bar covered in swirly plaster. On the door is a long list of what can’t be worn in the bar etc. What owners of places that have this sort list don’t seem to grasp is that the sort of drinker who goes there would start a ruck in a nudist camp. I was about to take a picture when the “gunvor” comes out and tells me I need permission, it didn’t look like the sort of occasion to argue the toss so I wander off. Funnily enough the pub just up on the corner that didn’t have a grim list of rules on the door and had a row of books for customers to read in the window was full with happy looking punters.

Further down there was another pub with amongst other attractions “exotic dancers”. Rather a coy term in this day and age when they have strippers on Eastenders and wouldn’t it be nice if they were really “exotic” like some whirling dervishes say or perhaps Balinese women with intricate hand dances or maybe just Sylvie Guillem! After taking some pictures of another sadly distressed closed pub it was time to marvel at the Thames barrier (again).

another Eden another Jordan

From the barrier upstream the riverbank is handed over to the sorts of things people like to keep at arm’s length so we have yards full of gritter lorries and another filled with the sound of stag parties racing go-carts oh and a charismatic church. Outside the chapel (housed in an old 60’s office block) a small lad was bouncing a tennis ball on the steps trying to hit each step in order, while the sound of his parents singing floods out across the empty yards and down on to the path and out onto the brown Thames.

Having not tasted or at least not learnt from the tree of knowledge I took a bite of little apple from a riverside tree. To say it was sour is an understatement it was like oral smelling salts. The fruit curiously brought me wide awake even while I was hacking up bits of its gritty flesh. Suitably enlivened I stroll along the bleakly atomic Nagasaki and Hiroshima Ways (god bless nuclear free Greenwich!) to the Hope and Anchor (a cheery un-reconstructed pub).
On the river terrace large plates of lunch where being brought out, the sort of roasts with an excess of veg and dark sticky gravy they looked good. Sitting in the sun next to the river was wonderful, all the benches around were filled with a happy mixture of dressed up families, chatting locals and people walking/riding the Thames path (they even had a turn on). Revived by an icy cider the path heads into a dramatic alley hemmed in with metal fences separating huge mounds of gravel and Sainsbury’s sheds. It’s a recycling yard and it’s all quite impressive with flying conveyors and teetering mounds of chewed up asphalt. On one of the path’s dog legs there’s a guy painting he’s perversely chosen the yachts on the river for his subject, get with plan mate rubble is where it’s at.

Keep on running
After that I pass up the chance for a flat gin and tonic at the yacht club open house day and watch a 3 master slide past on the unlikely named stretch named Mudlark Boulevard which is over shadowed in by a row of post modern millennium flats and Mr Posh Spice’s footy school.
A bit further down towards the Dome I take a pew to have a look at the Gormley sculpture when up jogs a female runner. Almost immediately she’s does the annoying thing all runners do which was to do a stretchy thing with her legs and then tell me she’s just done “7 k”. As usual I never know what to do with this piece of information should I leap up and grab her and parade around the path in triumph, or strike a medal or maybe castigate her for not doing 12, what? In the end I did a sort of head shake/nod thing that sort looked impressed I hoped. She obviously didn’t care and waving 2 donuts shaped pink drinking bottles she adds apropos nothing “rehydration, amazin’ how much a few extra pounds adds to your work out”. I fear she didn’t want to hear about my throbbing feet so I do the head thing again. She then switches to straighten the other leg and without another word is off again. Off to run back to her flat to skype her boyfriend in Geneva and then to have something prawny and coconutty for supper while finishing “that” report while listening to Coldplay. She’ll be getting excited for when Swiss boys firm flies him in next weekend and they can go running together and then go out for prawny coconutty food and maybe come back and listen to Keane this time or have I just defamed the lead singer of Charlton’s only femcore agit prop salsa band?

The Dome

In a bit of grump I trudge off (resisting the temptation to stop people to tell them how far I’ve walked and that I’ve just had a drink of water).I’m on the tip of the Peninsular now and The Domes is busy with people taking down Ben Hur extravaganza. I’d hoped to see straining slaves loading a galleon with elephants but in the end it was bored looking blokes in big gloves and hi-vis vests loading up artics with cheap looking chariots.

It’s a bit of shame about the Dome I use to like it when it was all weedy and empty it was a nice hubristic monument! The next bit of the path is still however reassuring messed up full of broken concrete, piles of sand and big muddy puddles. There’s even a gas plant that makes the most horrendous stink, it is remarkably smelly. Sadly they are building more flats next door and have started to tidy up the ramshackled old shipyard. (These new flats must be for the olfactorly challenged presumably).

Dusk and more cider
Back in the chi-chi terraced streets of east Greenwich I am in need of more cider so I stop at the “Georgian free house” named after a Scottish witch and have a pint.

After that it was past the tube power station and on to Trinity Alms House. In front of which a beautiful Asian girl is having her picture taken by her boyfriend. She’s radiant in a blue and white sari and a million of shiny bangles her long black hair framing a beaming smile. I go over and offer to take their pictures and she tells me they’ve just got engaged so I offer my congratulations. She’s so excited she’s bouncing on the bench her bangles jingling a way. Her beau looks less than impressed in the close up I take (which by the way shows “must be a professional”) so the boyfriend gets a dig in the ribs (the first of many to come!) and eventually we both get him to smile and I hand the camera back and wish them luck again, as I turn the corner she’s still bouncing up and down.

It’s dusk now and Greenwich is winding down a bit, the ice cream van is packing up, the last tin of Highland shortbread is being sold in M&S. On Creek road a fresh gaggle of students are wandering in from Deptford presumably to spend their loans on breezers and noodles. So as the lights come all I have to do is dodge some fleeing “Hoody” lads on the high street and wander through the park past a couple chatting and drinking quietly on a bench. In the orange light the smell of a wood fire is wafting over a nearby fence. Turning into my road and into our block I gratefully and little wearily climb the stairs and turn the key

So Red or Brown Sauce?

Load of old Flaneur
aka BLTP's Excellent A-Z adventures:
Volume 12 (probably).

I spent Saturday doing weekend stuff; washing things, buying things, watching “a kid for 2 farthings”. It’s a good film spoilt only by Carol Reeds insistence of choosing the posh kid ever to play a cockney urchin.

Anyway maybe this film (based if not shot in Petticoat lane) or a photo I saw somewhere reminded me that there’s a Bacon street in the East End. With the way that my mind works I thought that it would be good if there was a Sandwich Street near by and after a quick look at the A-Z it showed there was one in Holborn. So I decided to walk between to the two.

Beigels, bacon and bhajis
So this morning in the increasingly heavy rain I “bussed" it round to Brick lane.
There’s no place in London like Brick lane, where the ineffably cool and the ineffably down at heel rub shoulder. In the space of a few yards you’ll see highly excited modishly attired Japanese art students (madly tall fake fur cossacks hats) fighting over off cuts of leather in a skip, just down from an elderly Asian man hawking his wares in the rain. The man’s cheap anorak was sodden and he had a light orange hat fashioned from a Sainsbury bag on his head. He was morosely stood in front of a meagre square of things for sale; the most saleable being a chipped Whitbread pub ash tray. He may have other sources of income but none of them looked good.

Elsewhere in the market you can buy more fruit and veg in scoops than even Jamie could swallow or maybe 30 spanners for 3 quid.

Funnily enough Bacon (the street crosses Brick lane) is probably the hardest thing to find in the lane what with the curry houses and beigel shops. The beigels always seem ridiculous good value at £1.20 for salmon and cream cheese and not much more for salt beef (they are also bloody lovely).

Why don’t you just foccacia somewhere else then….

Anyway after a “light” bite and a mooch I headed off for Sandwich street. The rain however was quite heavy so I only got as far as Old Street and then got buses the rest of the way.

Sandwich Street I only realised, when I got there was close to one of my old flats, round the corner from the Brunswick centre (in Holborn).
The area around there has been gentrified since my time or should that be re-gentrified as in Victorian times it was quite “well to do”, the recent influx of money is just the cycle coming round again.

Complaining about gentrification in London is rather futile; after a while it’s really a case of choosing which sort of middle class person you like. The type in Brunswick centre with its Waitrose, Giraffe, and branch of Office do seem to leave a bland trail behind them though. The busy shopping parade that replaced the threadbare charity shops and retro cafes in the Brunswick centre is just so dull. The fact that the shops are packed doesn’t excuse their dullness.

Good luck to the families eating in Giraffe it’s just that the orange café that was in the parade before Giraffe came along still sold fish finger sandwiches except the ketchup wasn’t organic and they were half the price.

The whole place was quite strange almost like a parallel world, the Renoir cinema was still there but the good cheap Chinese café was missing and the book shops have been shuffled round the corner. The planners and councillors will point to the 3 wheel prams and expensive overcoats as proof that they’ve done their job, it’s just, it’s just well you know, you sometimes just want a chemist that sells night nurse and plasters not face cream at £40 a pot, Waitrose is nice but it’s not cheap.

Oh, I don’t know good luck to them all.
I was glad to see the Valencia café was still going round the corner. Its’ staff were always pleasingly gruff, the coffee was good and the food was fine if not quite what the American students from the halls of residence round the corner were was use to. I was never sure if it was trick or not but they use to put the salt in a sugar shaker which wasn’t good when you had a hangover.

Anyway it was interesting visit I may not be back soon

Oh and I still haven't answered the ultimate question, so on a breakfast butty is it "Red" or "Brown" sauce?