An unexpected bonus of solitary retirement is being able to indulge passing whims or even forming and reversing decisions at will. Thus it was that when I woke to a photoshop sunrise spontaneously decided to tackle the next phase of the Capital Ring.
These westerly sections necessitate more arduous train journeys. On this occasion, I was rewarded with a strange visual pun. A passenger boarded the train carrying a clothes airer - not a common sight - and two stops later I noticed a different person wielding an identical object on the platform. It could have been an obscure coded message, I suppose, but more likely a coincidence and it reminded me of a piece I'd read explaining that coincidences are more common than we expect since we unconsciously stretch the variables. Running into a cousin unexpectedly on a visit to Vienna is declared a strange coincidence, but so too would be hearing that he had visited the week before...or the week after...or that his father had recently been there. You get the point. The only lasting impact of the clothes airer episode was to remind me that I'd forgotten to take my laundry out of the washing machine.
The station at Crystal Place is excessively grand but more importantly also features toilets, a comparative rarity in the tube network. Having availed myself of the facilities, I churlishly bypassed Crystal Palace park and its resident dinosaurs but couldn't avoid the blue-plaqued home of their creator, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. He lived on a steep hill, which shocked my legs more accustomed to easy ambles around flat Docklands and didn't bode well for my forthcoming walk along part the South West Coast Path, notorious for its endless rollercoaster ascents and descents.
In Streatham a eucalyptus tree in a front garden reminded me of the ghost eucalypts in Melbourne and my favourite specimen standing sentinel at the entrance to a park. I recalled the bark folded neatly where each branch joined the trunk, like the malleable flesh of an animal, and the delicate papery layers peeling off the trunk.
The form of transport used to traverse the suburbs largely determines the traveller's experience. Buses ply shops and the fronts of houses: this is the public face of the district. Viewed from a train, the suburbs are defined by rears of houses since railway lines intersect the ends of back gardens. The true nature of the area can be discerned by their content: nail-clippered lawns tell a different story from jagged piles of household detritus. My journey on foot enabled me to sample both perspectives. Bereft of tubes, this part of south London is covered in a skein of railway lines, which I crossed through fetid underpasses and over rusting bridges. Trudging the endless suburbs, I am suddenly struck by the disparity between London's centre where street life abounds and these dreary streets populated only by seemingly empty houses. For an absurd moment it appears as if people and houses are incompatible alternatives: you can have one or the other, but not both together.
Although there are pockets of larger well-kept Victorian houses and executive homes scattered throughout this section, approaching the more salubrious western zones there is a gradual but inescapable trend to increased prosperity. Reaching Wandsworth, it was clear that an invisible boundary had been crossed: I hadn't seen any signs requesting the public to keep off cricket squares in Woolwich.
Having read that this section was principally on tarmac paths, I'd elected to wear my Gortex boots rather than the leather ones I favoured previously. Towards the end of the day, I regretted my choice. Either the boots had shrunk or my feet had grown. Both seemed equally improbably, but I decided to revert to the other pair for the next outing.
© David Thompson 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment