This agreeable piece of whimsy sits in the Cafe Torrelli outside Kew Gardens tube station. I don’t do advertising on here but lunch was pleasant, and I ate better than this guy seems to have recently.
I am back in London for another stint rooting around the National Archives. So, as with the last time I was there in February 2023, I get to walk to work along the banks of the Thames. This particular stretch seems very popular with rowers. Personally I doubt I could comfortably adopt this form of exercise due to freaking out about the travelling backwards, not seeing where I was going thing, but obviously they don’t care about things like bridges.
“Who’s this guy then?”
“No idea. Another tourist with a thing for pigeons I suppose. Like London’s the only place that has them.”
“Pervert. Perhaps if I scowl at him he’ll go away.”
On my regular visits to London I have been walking past this statuesque chap since 2016. The sculpture is of Sir Nigel Gresley, designer of the famous Mallard locomotive, which still holds the speed record for a steam locomotive. The statue is about 7 feet high — Sir Nigel wasn’t, though. Apparently, the design was to have originally featured a duck (that is, a mallard) as well as Sir Nige, but this was left off in the end, after, and I quote the Guardian (via Wikipedia) here; “possibly the most acrimonious argument in the long, pedantic history of the railway hobbyist”.
Judging by the number of ads that covered his pedestal (you see only a small portion of them here), this is what this guy does, full-time. But we all have our social media presence, don’t we.
Queen’s House in Greenwich, London was built by Inigo Jones in the 17th century. As he was rather good at this kind of thing, it turned out to be an architectural masterpiece, bringing classical style to English architecture for the first time. The Great Hall is a perfect cube and this staircase — the first ever built in the country that lacks a central pillar — is just gorgeous. (Although not quite perfect, do you notice? There is a wider step up there forming the landing of the next floor up, and the spiral ‘kinks’ as a result.) Apparently it ‘holds itself up’, meaning that the steps cantilever out from the wall and the weight of each is supported by the one below, and eventually the ground.
It’s a bit of a shame that only a decade or so after the house was finished, the English Civil War meant there was no Queen for a while. By the time the monarchy was restored, they never used it much. But it remains a very nice house. With paintings in it.
The last night of the trip was spent on the 12th floor of the Walthamstow Travelodge, from which this was the view on opening the curtains in the morning, the first rays of light just catching some of the buildings and, in the background, the smoke or steam rising from the industrial area over there.
This afternoon, four weeks and five hours after leaving, I arrived back home. Time to rest for a little while…. well, a couple of weeks anyway.
I went to two football matches today. In the evening, one at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, a vast construction of steel and glass and with all these escalators that make it look like an airport. In the morning, here — Hackney Marshes, with none of those things. I have to say, I preferred the morning.
This trip started in London on 6th January and ends here too. But it’s time to go home.
Landed at 5am at Heathrow. Just over two hours later I was here, looking for a cup of tea, which was surprisingly difficult to find in Leicester Square at this early time in the day. But one could still enter the casino, which two guys in the middle distance are seriously considering. And so ends the monstrously long month that has been January 2025: did it really only have 31 days this year? I don’t believe it.
I don’t entirely do the Cult of Celebrity but tonight I’m making an exception. I think most of the audience of The Tempest — with Sigourney Weaver as Prospero — stuck to the rules and did not spend the whole performance taking pictures (and she was on stage throughout every minute): but no one said anything about the curtain call. It’s not often one gets to see a movie legend in the flesh.
Being 42 