Regenerative Breaking

It's a rare privilege nowadays to wake up in London with time to spare. In fact it's been years since I've stayed with no pressing engagement early on, or a mad dash homewards to contemplate. So this felt a bit special. More so because I was in that liminal zone between Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury, the City Widened Lines rumbling just feet beneath me - and by definition the Fleet River not far away in it's anonymous culvert. It was also shaping up to be a bright cold day - the best kind for wandering around the city. I started by retracing my steps to Exmouth Market to survey the devastation I'd witness briefly on Friday night. Regeneration has wreaked a selective kind of havoc here - some buildings remain much as I remember them, shopfronts re-used by new sushi bars and boutique bakeries. Others have developed new, modern frontages with wide doors opening onto the cafe culture outside. There was much less sunday morning detritus than I recall too. However the great loss, the Sandwich Bar wedged into the awkward angle of Tysoe Street had definitely gone. Disappeared behind a hoarding advertising the very regenerative efforts which had swept it away. A union flag still draped in the upper window defiantly. I remember writing about the imagined tribulations of the attractive but always frowning foreign owner as I watched her from across the street in Starbucks, feeling guilty I wasn't spending my money in her establishment. Perhaps too many of us did that?

I pressed on into Clerkenwell Close. Here little has changed, and only the lingering afterburn of last night's chargrilling reminded me just how much this place has transformed into a destination for an evening out. When I last padded the streets, this was beginning - Clerkenwell had undergone its most recent shift from abandoned commercial zone into loft-living and media industry offices. Now it's shifting again it seems. This bothered me less, because this has always been a centre of change - a swirling eddy of people coming into the city and others being thrown out to the suburbs. I wanted to see how the reworking of Farringdon Station was affecting the landscape too, and I was perhaps unprepared for the extent of this. The western side of Turnmill Street was an endless hoarding behind which TfL were working their magic, a new entrance to the railway taking shape slowly. Turning into Cowcross Street, I noticed the entire beautifully tiled building which mirrored the station had disappeared. A new, oddly nude view across the gulf of the track had appeared. The station building remained, dwarfed by the portacabins and temporary structures around the new buildings. There was an access, but it was clogged with builders starting work for the day. I headed for more coffee to contemplate this odd rip in my memory of the area.

Further retracing my steps I decided to head for Euston via Theobalds Road and a walk across Bloomsbury's strange boundary lands. Along Lambs Conduit Street I negotiated clumps of tourists, unceremoniously turfed out of their accommodation at check-out time and wandering with their luggage, attempting sight-seeing where there are few sights of note in their guidebooks. For my part, the walk beside the Foundling Hospital and into Marchmont Street was full of familiar and unchanged sights. The street awake and busy on a Sunday morning in all its multicultural strangeness and incongruous comfort. Passing the inexplicably plush new UNISON building I entered a flustered and busy Euston Station concourse. I had a pleasurable afternoon spin up the West Coast to look forward too, but these downtrodden travellers appeared to want to be anywhere but here. Once again I felt a little guilty to be at ease against the tide.