Ever since Homegame, I've struggled to find a purpose for some things. Work in particular has suffered - the pointlessness and the lack of progress suddenly foregrounded, and my part in the whole process left exposed by a bunch of colleagues who are downright suspicious of my political motives. So I found this morning's trip approaching at alarming speed, with little or no planning. I'd booked some tickets to London because it had been a while since I'd wandered around up there. The original plan had been to give the Oyster Card some exercise and flit about the place, but I was anxious, irritable and distracted and decided that instead, some wandering away from the crowds might be necessary.
And so, after a pleasantly distracting journey to Paddington I found myself on a bus heading for the City. It was quiet, still just before 9:00am and the streets were only just beginning to fill with the bleary eyed tourists in the West End. As the bus filled and emptied I wondered about where to head. A coffee shop on New Bridge Street, remembered from almost a decade ago beckoned. I hopped off at an almost abandoned Ludgate Circus and made my way to the shop. A pleasant enough time was had thinking, writing and drinking coffee while I also planned my next move. The plan was that I didn't have one. I'd looked at all sorts of means of getting east, into the contested, slightly disconcerting areas which reflected my mood. Not finding a direct enough means, I set out walking east. I picnicked in Trinity Gardens, watching the groups of tourists following their professionally patient guides, occasionally straying off-piste to get their photograph taken leaping around inappropriately in a memorial to the war dead. I hid my disgust along with my empty Tesco bag and headed further east, over The Minories and into Cable Street. It had been a while since I'd been this way, and whilst little changed in some senses, I could feel an edge to the stares of the Asian men running car repair businesses as I headed by St. George in the East and pressed on. Huge drops of rain were falling now, and only the shadow footprint of the huge concrete housing blocks was providing any sort of shelter now.
At Shadwell I headed underground, using the spacious new entrance hall to the East London Line. Below it was cool and still, the tight platforms close to the tunnel mouth. I didn't have to wait long for a northbound train, and decided to head for Canonbury and thence to Stratford. It was interesting to see how the new link at Dalston Junction was now just assumed as part of the network - like it had always been there. Londoners adapt to their transport network quickly it seems. At Stratford, the chaos of the busy station contrasted oddly with the stillness of the building site. The hulk of Westfield almost finished, and the Olympic Park a little too far away to be heard. An entrance from the underpass has opened up to the new shopping centre but isn't yet used - soon it will be the busiest way in or out of the station no doubt. How long before this line, linking Shepherd's Bush and Stratford becomes sponsored? The Westfield Line has a certain privatised ring to it. Against my usual instinct I exited the station into the morass of people milling in the forecourt. People pressed flyers into my hand - clubs, jeans for sale, god - all the usual stuff. I struggled over to the bus station and negotiated a knot of PCSOs who seemed to be setting up an unofficial roadblock, to reach my stop.
My plan from here had firmed up in my mind, but the practicalities were still a little unresolved. A bus to Barking would avoid all sorts of doubling back and complications, and would get me lined up to do the GOBLIN route, cruelly curtailed by failed trains on the last attempt. The bus seethed with people, arcing between Stratford and Barking via East Ham, with seemingly endless streets of victorian terraces in between. It was good to see this zone - and it fitted an observation I'd made earlier about the Tube Map. On the map, Harry Beck compressed geography to fit - so areas with lots of stations are expanded to show clarity, while long empty stretches are condensed into mere inches of blankness. I figured we do the same with out mental maps of cities. The journey I was taking now was just such a blank zone - but by doing this bus journey I was expanding it into it's real proportions. My thoughts were disturbed by arrival in Barking town centre. A mess of traffic islands and confusion, which we negotiated until the station appeared. As I stepped off the bus, thick blobs of summer rain began to fall. I dashed downstairs onto a waiting Gospel Oak train, settling into it's pleasantly air-conditioned cocoon.
A swift run over the rooftops brought me to hot and humid Gospel Oak. I changed here for a hop to Willesden Junction, then a slow trundle north to Harrow and Wealdstone. It's an oft repeated journey which gets me back into Central London via a route I love. I pass much of railway interest, and always seem to note new things. This time, I wandered in Harrow a little, finding a plaque to commemorate where Pete Townsend first smashed his guitar when The Who played the railway hotel in 1964. The unofficial rock'n'roll tour continued later when, hopping off the bus at Edgware Road to walk to Paddington, I discovered "The Joe Strummer Underpass". It's these trivial but surprising finds which make these trips so interesting. I walked back to Paddington via a detour into the privatised space around the Grand Union Canal basin. I'd been reading Anna Minton's "Ground Control" and it was all making an eerie, worrying kind of sense. I defiantly took some pictures of a curious tubular bridge before wandering back to the station in a tremendous summer shower. As everyone rushed for cover or fumbled with brollies, I enjoyed the cool shock of rain on my back. It had been a strange day of tiny discoveries.
Lost::MikeGTN
I've had a home on the web for more years than I care to remember, and a few kind souls persuade me it's worth persisting with keeping it updated. This current incarnation of the site is centred around the blog posts which began back in 1999 as 'the daylog' and continued through my travels and tribulations during the following years.
I don't get out and about nearly as much these days, but I do try to record significant events and trips for posterity. You may also have arrived here by following the trail to my former music blog Songs Heard On Fast Trains. That content is preserved here too.
