Vauxhall and Waterloo

Following on from last post . . .
One and a half days in London: part nostalgic wanderings and part book-research.
As I'd not managed to get south of the river and visit my imagined underground premises of the Vaux-hauler gang the day before, I took the tube to Waterloo, stashed my case and walked to the embankment to follow the river Southwards.
All those years of London life, and there's still so many places I've never seen . . .
Ensconced mainly in my farting old Morris Traveller and zig-zagging across the city in search of props (life as a stylist) I'd rarely done what I do now - walk with a vague trajectory which inevitably shifts as I glimpse something intriguing at the end of a street.
I did the Lambeth Walk and then sat in the garden of a café attached to the Garden Museum (near Lambeth Palace) and drank the best hot milk, ever. This is a rare, peace-inducing spot with vast plane trees challenging the hight of nearby steel and glass edifices. I must have stayed there for at least half an hour imagining the changing landscape from fields to paving slabs, tarmac and concrete. Do trees recall the sounds and smells from across the years recorded within their sap and bark?


        

A hotel made of containers

 

Continuing Southwards, I encountered a tweed-housed man looking rather lost. I noticed his arm band that announced 'Tweed Marathon' and said,
'Bit hot for walking miles in such cloth?' To which he told me it was a cycle marathon and that he'd lost the rest of his party, but he looked happy enough. I forgot to ask what sort of bikes they were on, imaging a fleet of penny-farthings.
The backstreets on such a blue-sky day are sculptures of line and shadow; over-looked buildings wonderments of the city, equal in my eye to the tourist monuments.

Brick behemoth 

                        

I meandered happily towards Vauxhall's messianic new bus station that I had only seen on Google Earth and was duly impressed, and slightly disappointed, having conjured up images of silver space-pod buses to go with the structure, not the usual red vehicles lurking about its perimeter.

shadow of the seldom seen Vauxhall egret

Boat seats on the embankment

Realising the morning had disappeared and a train had to be caught, I walked back to Waterloo with a brief stop for a cup of tea in the shadow of a semi-constructed office building that may have been inspired by a penguin - head yet to be added.

  

Roupell street (had to be in B and W)

Perhaps my favourite discovery of the morning was Roupell Street - again, how had I never seen this preserved road, which sadly - really sad! is possibly under threat of partial demolition due to the enlargement of a school. It cannot happen; there are so few historically perfect examples of old London. I hardly dare go back on my next trip . . .

And, someone was obviously a collector of my most-desired car - Citroën DS, and the King's Arms looked most inviting, but no time, so a quick look around, photos taken and a less meandering route back to the madness of Waterloo station.

Ohhhh!

Our day out in Bram

Last saturday dawned manky and damp. I would like to have been about to explore the streets of Miami or Valetta perhaps but instead we were going to have a trip out to wander around the train station at Bram. Ezra's choice, and to be fair, quite a good deal really: half an hours worth of petrol, some sketching and a cup of tea if we could find a café.
I refused his first plea for a mooch around the station at Castelnaudary (see previous posts) as it was further and we'd only just been there.
So, for anyone looking at this blog who is under the happy impression that the South of France is all espadrilles, lavender and dawn to dusk sunshine, here is the reality . . . February in the middle of a windy plain somewhere between Toulouse and Carcassonne.

The old fire station of Bram (Centre de secours = centre of HELP) not sure where the new one is, or if they have one?
Thinking someone was attacking a Citroen DS with a broom, I was about to go and ask if we could have it (car, not the broom) but then realised it was just a way of holding the bonnet up.



                               

A rather moving, and uncared for, monument near the train station, stating that it was here that 159 Jews (of which, 21 were children) who were resident in the Aude department, were taken in a raid, by order of the Vichy government and delivered to the Nazis. They were sent from Bram station towards the extermination camp at Auschwitz.

While I was standing in probably a rather stupid place, a memory slipped into my mind of my first encounter with PERSPECTIVE. Drawing that is, not an angle on life - that came a bit later.
I was in a tea room in Muswell hill with my mother, at the age of about seven, and I was drawing something as usual. A man sitting on the next table asked me if I would like to know how perspective works. On a paper napkin he drew something very like the scene above and I suddenly understood a little of what Uccello became obsessed by. All my drawings for a short while were full of lines zooming towards vanishing points. I wish I had kept the napkin.

A slightly menacing building, hiding behind a factory.

A sad building next to the railway. I wondered who owned it and why it had been abandoned - perhaps in favour of one of the box-like pink villas dotted around the outskirts of the town.

                                                 

The highlight of the trip - a cup of tea in a time-forgotten café in the centre of town. A typical French version of a 'nice cup of tea': cup, containing almost hot water and 'yellow label' teabag on the saucer. At my request for milk, the café owner disappeared for ten minutes, returning with a gravy boat of milk, by which time the tea was cold. Not quite the National Trust experience I was lusting after, but it sort of did the job. 

    The café itself was one of those places that was put together in the early 70s and never touched again. The bowed Constable-type prints in their rustic wooden frames hung lopsidedly in the dull light from several suspended cartwheel lamps, and in the window sat a dining advertisment of a small table, candles and faded orange plastic chairs. Wonderful.

We did find the church, which was in need of more illumination in its central areas. The only church I've ever been in that smelt of toast rather than the usual musty damp stone.

And so, back to the car with hungry dogs and slightly disappointed Ezra - again we hadn't witnessed a TGV passing at 200 KM an hour. 

I'm sure there are some more scenic parts of Bram, but it was the semi-derelict buildings, each with their ragged collection of pigeons, that were the stars of the day.