If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?
I have met so many people in my life, a few who have or will become historical figures.
Just as you should not judge a book by its cover. Historical figures may not be as fascinating as history depicts them. Just like all humans historical figures can be a mixed bag.
Honestly I can’t reliably make a decision. Obviously this is a personal opinion.
Were I to randomly meet a historical figure that would be just fine and rather fascinating. A chance to interact as equals, perhaps on a long train or aircraft journey. Somewhere that we are unable to escape one another until our book or a podcast lets us off the hook.
I suppose what I fear is not only managing my expectations but also the historical figures’ perceptions of me.
Would they give me, a non historical figure, just 30 seconds of small talk and move on when someone of more interest, to them, appears on the horizon.
As a family I have walked this area all my life. My parents were great supporters of the Festival Hall and the Southbank Centre.
Even until fairly recent times it was possible to find free or very cheap parking spaces close to the South Bank of the River Thames.
Tate Modern a Contemporary Art Gallery occupies Bankside Power station. The point at which my walking commute took me over the river towards St Pauls Cathedral and Barts Hospital behind it.
My childhood walk was not as glam or easy as the South Bank currently is. Much of the area was still quite industrial and there were many bomb sites following the Second world war.
My favourite house location in all of London are rare 17th century survivors of redevelopment and Hitler.
When Hugo was young we trained him to walk off the lead along the South Bank. The Globe Theatre was a favourite spot for a wee.
Unusually he did not wee here yesterday, but still chose a location with a similar theme.
The South Bank has also seen us on numerous riotous work nights out. Not for us the dark nights around Christmas. A mid-Summer pub crawl started at The Founders Arms not far from Waterloo Station at about 7pm and ended at The Globe Tavern about 12 hours later. There were many detours and adventures on the way. The Globe was chosen as it operated Market hours and was open to refresh the market porters of the wholesale market. Open at 6:30 in the morning.
Interesting blog below. I suspect this is the work of a blogger who did the same blogging course as me .I must check.
The problem with a walk that I have done almost all of my life but with some big gaps of not walking it, is that my points of interest are entirely personal, not even particularly blog worthy I realise.
I will do better next time.
Below curvascious concrete at Tate Modern.
And a smelly reminiscence.
The old fragrance of a Power Station can be caught in the air here, a vestigia of a past life.
Quite by accident my birthday became a bit of a Royal event.
To start with I celebrated by having a bath, I am not sure I remember when I last had a bath . I was reminded by a friend that Queen Victoria only bathed once a year, regardless of whether she needed it or not.
Then my breakfast destination of Marias Cafe in Borough Market had a picture of King Charles having a cup of tea with Camilla at Marias. The cheek of it, I already share my birthday with the King , our breakfast destination was always a little more exclusive and a little rougher round the edges than normal Royal destonations.
We hit Borough market early and enjoyed it without huge numbers of people. If offered the opportunity to do anything in London I doubt many people would choose to replicate their morning and evening commute from their last job. However, my commute was so interesting, but like all commuters, I couldn’t give it the time it deserved. Praising myself when I completed the journey in record time.
We took four hours and 10,000 steps to cover the same route that I habitually did in about twenty minutes especially on the inward journey to work. We were curious wanderers, and our curious wander will fill two blogs not one.
For starters please read this link for the market history.
1000, years of history written by a much more competent narrator than me.
My relationship with Borough Market began as it rose like a Phoenix from a sad decline in the 1970’s and 80’s.
In the eighties I was living in Brighton on the South Coast and my commute into London by train,for courses, delivered me to London Bridge Station. I was used to passing a wholesale fruit and veg market as I walked to and from nearby London Teaching Hospitals.
In the late 90’s I started to study Fine Art and noticed that the previously down-at-heel market had a bright new buzz about it as I walked past on my trips to galleries and art institutions. And so began my tourist years. Joyful weekend visits to a bustling market filled with food and humans. My relationship with the market may have stayed at the frantic weekend tourist level were it not for an unplanned career change while I was living in London and the market was just a twenty minute train ride away.
I would happily have worked until retirement at University College, London, but fate had other ideas. My department was moved to a huge Cardiac Department at Barts Hospital in the City of London. My commute swapped from Central London, not far from Oxford Street and Marylebone, to the City. London Bridge once again became my station of choice, and I experienced the market’s quieter moments from six in the morning until midnight as I commuted for changing shift patterns and on-call commitments. The reason we decided to go early yesterday, we had the dogs with us and the crowds at busier times would not be good for them.
It is only in writing this blog that I have created a chronological understanding of my 40 year relationship with this fabulous place. I will be back at Christmas at full on tourist season, either way it is a very special place.
The coolest thing I ever found was knowledge and love of our capital city, London. My parents who lived 50 miles away always made sure I visited several times a year. Times were different but I was encouraged to confidently travel there alone and navigate public transport from about the age of 15.
What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?
November was always a favourite time to visit and as I write I am sitting in a hotel room in my former home town of Crystal Palace overlooking the city where I lived and worked for 12 years.
The dogs have already done one of their favourite walks in Dulwich Village where we lived when we first moved to London.
Next one up is a circuit of Crystal Palace Triangle. Another home town we loved living in.
Tomorrow Borough Market for breakfast. But to finish an arty farty image from our London flat. It feels a little odd not to be there, but the new owners might not need two women and two dogs being all nostalgic in their home.
Some of you may notice that 3 blogs have appeared in just over 24 hours. This is because Autumn proper finally arrived in the West Country and with only one planned task of the day we couldn’t give up on a cold crisp day with blue skies, bright sunshine and sharp shadows. We were out for all of the 10 daylight hours that November gave us yesterday.
Our early morning quest was to visit a farm cafe, that we always manage to miss,on our travels into the area known as South Hams. We like to have a small portfolio of places we have visited to take friends to. As I write this I realise we have never even taken our friend whose name is Hams to the South Hams.
Ironic really as his partner’s surname is Curnow the old word for Cornwall and he gets to visit Cornwall every time they visit us. Note to self to resolve this ommision.
Our target cafe of the day was Heron Valley. The orchard and fields overlook Heron Valley. As if to signal the beginning of a perfect visit a Heron rose into the air just in front of us and flew into the trees on the horizon to the right of this picture. Honestly!
Also perfect was the day bed provided for weary travellers. I was a traveller but hardly weary at 10 am. But needs must, for a photo opportunity.
Breakfast was fab. The dogs got chopped up sausage and a roaring fire to gaze at.
The cafe also has a small showroom for homewares made from recycled plastic water bottles. Autumn colours were everywhere.
And sharply defined shapes in the outdoor eating area.
It was at breakfast we decided to extend our day and visit a garden centre.
This week I have taken delivery of two rambling roses. The yard has proved it can grow roses well, it has nurtured an old rose that has been there forever and a cutting that was gifted to me. I bought three rose plants from the London 2012 Olympic sell off . They failed to thrive in our back garden I don’t know if it was me or the clay that killed them off. They were the roses that provided the medal winners bouquets and may just have been exhausted plants. Whatever the reason I have become timid about buying new rose plants until this year.
Going to a garden centre did not alleviate my timidity. Too much information. We retreated to the cafe and I resolved to take advice from the growing advice provided with my two new climbers.
Autumn colour was everywhere. Some of it on my plate.
Some great colour combinations just in the texture of gardening sundries.
Two cafe stops in the first 5 hours of daylight suggest that the next 5 should perhaps be spent doing some exercise. Slapton Sands was our choice of location, just beautiful sea and sand with no tempting cafes. I think the words bracing and beautiful best sum up our beach walk.
There was another plan for our afternoon, more painting of walls at home. By staying out until sunset we quite naturally cancelled this plan.
And to finish, a pretty public washroom. I love a pretty loo.
Hardly had the ink dried on :-https://theoldmortuary.design/2024/11/12/1103-theoldmortuary-ponders/
Where I bemoaned the anticyclonic gloom. Moments later the anticyclonic gloom lifted, revealing the most perfect autumn day. Bright blue sky, sunshine and a temperature 5 degrees cooler than yesterday. We filled all the daylight hours with gadding about in the South Hams.
An unplanned trip to an unusual War Memorial at Slapton Sands.
After all the music, marching and speeches of Remembrance Sunday. We took a quiet morning walk at the Plymouth War Memorials. No crowds and some lovely family flowers just quietly laid among all the vivid redness of the more iconic Poppies.
One statue returned to being the favourite perching place of seaward looking seagulls.
Lets see what the shape of the world will be like in a year’s time. We may well remember but we don’t learn. It’s all a bit shit really.
In the mid seventies I occasionally took a trip from sleepy North East Essex to Dewsbury in West Yorkshire to experience Northern Soul in the North. A friend’s dad, who was from Dewsbury, would drive us up after his work and our school on a Friday ( 3 hours drive) drop us off at a club, go and visit his mum and then drive us back some hours later in time for our Saturday jobs. It all felt other worldly and exciting. We were extremely fortunate that 70’s Disco was very available to us locally and 60 miles away in London. Northern Soul in the North felt edgy and niche to us.
50 years later I mentioned this to a friend from Yorkshire, who had not experienced Northern Soul, even though it was on her doorstep. Her family probably were aware of the reputation of some of these clubs . Also she was 9 when I was 15 We ‘Essex Girls’ were blissfully unaware, it was just fab music, great dancing and men with exotic accents. Definition of an Essex Girl below. We did not conform to the stereotype in Yorkshire or at home.
Since then the four of us ( 1 Essex, 1 Hong Kong, 1 Oxford and 1 Yorkshire) living in the far South West have all become a little hooked on watching Northern Soul Dancing on Youtube.
Then inexplicably we found a Northern Soul Club night in Plymouth.
There are a couple of links below to show how Northern Soul should be done and what it is. And that perhaps is the best place to stop this blog. It is harder than you think and older knees, not so forgiving.But there were older knees than ours there, giving it their best effort.
English was my favourite subject by a long way. I went to a very normal State school with an excellent English department. The staff there encouraged my natural love of creativity and communication using language.
In this week of a puzzling, to many, decision by nearly 51% of the American electorate to give Donald Trump a second crack at being U.S President, I was sent a copy of a letter by an old school friend. He is equally obsessed by English. Below is his letter to The Age, an Australian Newspaper.
In the Charles Dickens novel Martin Chuzzlewit, (1843), one of the characters asks,: “f I was called upon to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?” His companion replies,” Paint it like an eagle, I suppose.”
“No that wouldn’t do for me. I should want to draw it like a bat for its short-sightedness,, like a bantam for its bragging, like an ostrich for its putting its head in the mud. And like a phoenix for its power of springing anew from the ashes of its faults and vices and soaring up into the sky.”
While the American electorate were acting like bats and ostriches, Donald Trump somehow managed to transform himself from a bantam into a phoenix. Except as everyone but the American people know, the phoenix isn’t real it’s a myth. Meanwhile the American Eagle’s future is more uncertain than ever.
David Pullen
Martin Chuzzlewitt, fictional character created by Charles Dickens could have made this observation yesterday. From abroad it feels like a cousin ( The U.S) has entered into a relationship that outsiders can see is not healthy.
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