Brewfest - Bank Holiday Weekend August 2015

Yesterday I went to check out Meantime Brewing Company's Brewfest 2015 in the shadow of the O2 on the Greenwich Peninsula. The event continues today and tomorrow too and I recommend it. Even in the rain!
Going to a beer festival is a bit like a taking a test as much cross-referencing in the catalogue is required to read about the different beers. But it makes it more fun and you get to chat to the staff and swop feedback with other customers.
I tasted/tested/supped some lovely ales (avoiding lagers and stouts) and can report that of the ten I tried (calm down; these were little 1/3 pint glasses and I was with a friend!) my favourites were Rogue's Hazelnut Brown Nectar (from USA), and Schönramer Dunkel, St. Bernardus ABT and St. Bernardus Blanche (all German).
There are also spirits, cocktails and even alcoholic iced tea available plus a few tempting food stalls.
It was such a shame that the weather kept the punters away as earlier in the day we'd enjoyed lazing about on the grass and listening to the live music.

So, wet already, we went for a stroll in the rain around the Thames Path all the way to Greenwich....

Top: the event itself looking damp and grey
Middle: Pic1 in places The Thames Path around the O2 feels like a prison enclosure.  Pic2 the most 'interesting' cladding on the peninsula.  Pic3 a view of the Dangleway (prob not the best day to get a good view!).  Pic4 intrepid dome walkers on the roof of the O2 (again, prob not the best day for it!)
Bottom: Pic1 it's art Jim, but not as we know it. WTF is it supposed to be?!  Pic2 birds on the foreshore.  Pic3 why? do they?  Pic4 view to the Isle of Dogs 

What's the time Mr Wolf? Damaged clock faces in Holloway Road

Directly above No.296 Holloway Road, just north of the tube station, there are two angled clock faces under a lovely old eight-sided windowed cupola. It harks back to a time in the 1890s when this area of Holloway was affectionately known as the Oxford Street of the North and lined mostly with outfitters' shops.
For over a hundred years these two clock faces remained intact, albeit telling the wrong times, but over the past few years both have suddenly deteriorated.

Top left: the 1970s. Top right: March 2006
Bottom: two pics from November 2010

Top: March 2013. Bottom: February 2014

Friday 29th August 2015

As you can see from the pics above, chunks started falling out of the right hand one sometime after March 2013. But the speed of this deterioration confuses me – if you assess the earlier pics you'll see that there were no cracks on that face, so how did the breakage occur? Note also how the left hand clock was still completely intact 18 months ago.
This week I noticed with sadness that the pair are now in a terrible state with practically all of the central white areas on both clocks empty apart from one little triangular piece hanging on in there.
Some people tell me they think this is just general wear and tear over time. Perhaps the seal around the circles had reached the end of its lifespan? But, to me, it seems odd to me that these sections would break and fall off in such a short space of time. I wonder if this damage could have been caused on purpose, either by people who have got up inside the cupola and damaged the clock faces by hand, or they have been used as some kind of target practice from a vantage point somewhere across the road, in which case, it's vandalism.
Let's hope the clocks can be restored; it can't be that difficult.

Read more about it here in the Islington Tribune.

The title of this post refers back to a post I wrote last year about children's playground games.

Birthday fun at London Zoo (ZSL)

I share my birthday with many people including Princess Anne, Ben Affleck, Oscar Peterson and Napoloeon Bonaparte but, best of all, with my friends' lovely daughter Dorothy.
This year she turned six and I began another in my prime and we spent the afternoon with Dot's parents at London Zoo (ZSL).
What a great day – giraffes, reptiles, penguins, lemurs, gorillas, pigmy hippos, hunting dogs and more.

I always thought Peter Gabriel sang "Dotty plays with Jane". But having just checked, it's Lotte. The song then goes on to say that Jane played with someone else and is happy again. Fnar.

Brunswick Square and Hornsey Road

Compare and contrast

I took these snaps within Brunswick Square because I like the patchwork quilt effect and geometrical shapes:

Walking along Hornsey Road near the junction of Tollington Way last week, I noticed a similar effect:

That's it.

A walk along Kings Road (part 2) – The Chelsea Potter, RSoles and The Pheasantry/PizzaExp

This continues from my post on July 24th

An Art Nouveau-esque typeface on the optician's sign uses a cut of Arnold Böcklin by Otto Weisert harking back to the 1960s when this kind of retro look was very 'in'. Think Biba.
Next, The Chelsea Potter's ornate railings and pub sign.
On the next row, hints of the road's distant history can be glimpsed when looking at the lovely old house, home to RSoles boots and shoe shop. Note the  quirky cyclist art for sale above the ground floor. Possibly sold by the time you read this as I took these pics in March.
And then we have the splendid Grade II listed Georgian frontage of The Pheasantry, so called because in and around 1865 George Samuel was breeding pheasants, cattle and foxes at this site. Three plaques on the building show that the site was occupied by Amédée Joubert & Sons (1880-1914) who seemed to be masters of a multitude of trades including upholstery, cabinet making, wood carving and gilding. They also manufactured bedding and furniture and imported and restored tapestries and carpets. It would have been during this period that the triumphural entrance, the courtyard and architectural mouldings and details were added. AJ&S produced and sold not only full size items but miniatures for dolls' houses.
After 1914 the building became the home of a dance studio/ ballet academy, and was used as studio space by artists. In the mid 1930s the basement was turned into The Pheasantry Club and for decades was a popular haunt of artists, actors, writers and the like. It closed in 1966; the basement became a nightclub and the upper floors were converted into apartments.
It has been a branch of Pizza Express for as long as I can recall (date to be checked).
I can't find any info as to who the two people depicted in the roundel on the main gate are (shown in the pics bottom right). Possibly it's Monsieur Joubert and his wife? ... any ideas?

Tour and Lunch at Middle Temple Hall

I cannot believe I haven't posted about this earlier as it was way back in April that I did this.

Hidden away between Fleet Street and The Embankment is an area where it feels like time has stood still for centuries. In amongst the legal offices is the magnificent Elizabethan Middle Temple Hall.
Guided tours are available and these include outer rooms and offices.
A fantastic buffet lunch is served most weekdays. You don't have to be a member of the Inns of Court or on a tour to eat there; just pre-book through the website, but note that there is a dress code of sorts (no jeans or trainers) and no photos are allowed during meal time.
If you want to go on a guided tour, where pre-meal photos are allowed (as you can clearly see from here) then again, please check the website.

Top left: the exterior of the building.
Bottom right: a close-up of the wonderful hammer-beamed Tudor ceiling.
The other three pics show tables being laid ready for lunch.

All around the walls, around the main hall and all along the adjoining corridors, are members' coats of arms laid out in chronological order. I was amused to see that many of these were loosely inspired by the surnames, such as Field-Fisher, Lilley, Shelley, Hollis, Elverston and Swan.

I was also captivated by the stained and coloured glass and the standard of craftsmanship that went into the making of them. Note the close-ups above showing some very amusing lions.
  

More things that caught my eye.Top row: A very long table made from one piece of wood; interiors from two of the other rooms; a rare painting of Queen Elizabeth IIMiddle row: James II and William II showing off their fashion sense; The Queen Mother; The Right Honorable Charles Abbot Baron Tenterden wearing a truly marvellous wig; Sir Henry Montague in a wonderfully deep ruffle collar, which makes me wonder... surely this is a fashion device that has yet to recur... you read it here first, dear readers... The big designers will have these in their collections very soon.Bottom row: George I's fabulous ankle boots; a painting of The Judgement of King Solomon, though why these women felt it necessary to have their breasts on display like that I don't know.
And finally, bottom right, a round table that confused me... what shape are the drawers in this piece? Are they all 45 degrees such that they swing/angle out rather than pull out straight on runners? Or perhaps only four are real drawers and the alternate ones are fake. Hmmm. But there were keyholes on all sections. I had a surreptitious pull on the knobs but it was locked. Any ideas?

College Street and Little Green Street, NW5

Tucked away parallel to Highgate Road, between Kentish Town and Highgate, behind The Vine public house, is a lovely little footpath called College Lane.
Starting at College Yard it runs northwards past pretty little workers' cottages where it's hard to believe that a bus route is a stone's throw away.

Walking northwards from Somerset Road (top left)

The path then continues through a foot tunnel under the railway line and eventually becomes Grove End and then Grove Terrace.

Before the tunnel is the junction of Little Green Street:

With just eight houses on one side and two on the other, all of which were built in 1780 and are Grade II listed, it harks back to a bygone age of carts and flat caps. The street was the inspiration, and featured briefly in the video, for The Kinks' Dead End Street*. More recently the road was threatened with demolition in order to create a gated driveway for 30 new properties being built at the rear. Read more about that evil plan here. And here for a 2012 update.

* which surely inspired this great video by Oasis

Update on Harpers of Holloway ghostsign

A few months ago I noticed that scaffolding had gone up all around the Harpers Building on Holloway Road and was covering the old sign for Harpers of Holloway Pianos. The building is currently being converted into swanky new flats. I kept my fingers crossed that the sign would not be tampered with.
Last week I noticed the scaffolding had been removed from the side section and I am sad to report that elements of the old hand-painted sign have been have scrubbed away:

The top two photos show the sign in 2008, and the bottom two snaps show how the sign is now thinner with many of the old white words removed; see how the word 'OF' that used to be in the middle has gone completely.
Note also the bad patching in of the bricks where modern machine-made ones have been used to replace the old London stocks.
The decorative moulding of a woman's face on the front corner (and all the way along the front of the building) have since been reinstalled

Below is a view of the whole Harpers building, taken earlier this year before the scaffolding went up, and a close up of the 1893 date stamp at the centre:

More news on this renovation when the full scaffold is removed.

Gone but not forgotten – G. Smith & Sons, tobacconist and purveyor of snuff

The first of a new series remembering shops and businesses I have known or used myself that have closed down or been demolished in the last few years.

Today I'm rembering a shop in Charing Cross Road. It sat within a long line of antiquarian bookshops, that used to run from Cambridge Circus down to Leicester Square Station.  

G.F Smith & Sons at No.74, was a beautiful old tobacconist's shop with a lovely old mirrored frontage and hand-painted gilt lettering showing they were purveyors of fine cigars and smoking paraphernalia. The shop was established in 1879 and used to be able to claim that it was one of the oldest/longest-trading shops in the Soho area. It was also the meeting place for the The London Snuff Club

I took these pics in 2008 when the shop was a garish orange (it was soonafter repainted royal blue – you can just make out the scaffolding in the mirror).

But, sadly, the shop closed in 2012 or 2013. I can't seem to find a definitive date or what exactly caused the shop's demise but I suspect the revised smoking laws of 2006 had a huge effect on sales – see above for their adaption of My Way that was in the shops' window in August 2008 – the pink highlights are mine (grr!). And I suspect that the humidor at the rear of the shop fell foul of the regulations against indoor smoking within work premises. Some products and reference can be found on Google here.

As you can see by this screenshot, from Google Streetview (July 2015), the shop can be seen with original woodwork painted a soft beige colour, but I wonder what became of Smith's lovely hand-painted glass, the tobacco stock and and all the advertising ephemera?

Charing Cross Road used to be lined with bookshops of all kinds and has been the inspiration for novels and films etc. The larger shops were at the northern end (Foyles, Waterstones, Blackwells etc) and smaller independents specialising in certain fields especially, art, maps, second-hand and rare antique books could be found south of Cambridge Circus.
At the time of writing, this specific section of the road mentioned above has only about three bookshops remaining, the others having been replaced with cafés and coffee houses, souvenir and clothes shops; crushed under the wheels of high rent and homogenisation. It's called progress.
More antiquarian shops can be found a few minutes' walk away along St Giles Court and St Martin's Court, (both further down Charing Cross on the left just after Leicester Square station) where you can still while away the hours amongst books, prints, maps, coins, stamps, medals and more.

Update Dec 2025: whilst tidying up a stack of books just now, I rediscovered Eccentric London by Tom Quinn, published in 2005. I haven't looked at it in years and I now see that it includes a whole page about tobacco/snuff shops headed by a marvellous of GF Smith's by Ricky Leaver. At that time the shop was painted a gorgeous shade of deep red, later painted orange as per my own pics above, and then blue. I'm sure I recall it was a shade of blue in the 1980s. The book is packed full of curiosities and oddities, most of which are still intact 20 years later, unlike this shop.

Hmmm... thinks... Smith the stationer, Smith the umbrella maker, Smith & Nephew the chemists and Smith the tobacconist and snuff seller... any more?  

Stoke Newington ghostsign palimpsest recalled

I was walking down Canonbury Road last week and I spotted this food trailer parked up on the pavement:

It reminded me of this lovely ghostsign palimpsest on Stoke Newington High Street advertising the things that used to be available at N. Robey & Co.:

That's it!
Have a nice day,
Jane

Whittington Park's hidden mural

Whittington Park near Upper Holloway Station is just a short walk from my house. I often go there to sit, meet friends, relax, attend events or just people-watch.
I met a friend for some tea and cake at the park's cafe recently and then showed her the little wooded area that abuts the back wall of Yerbury Primary School. Walking through there in the past I had half-noticed that there was paint on the walls but hadn't ever taken a closer look. Jen always has a camera hanging round her neck and so we investigated further.

The first two rows show the mural.
The images in the bottom row show the construction of some hideous container-style apartments being built along the Wedmore Street side of the park, some lovely meadow flowers and thistles, and a tree with a face.

On closer inspection we found, hidden behind the climbing plants and graffiti, an old well-painted mural depicting people partaking in different kinds of sport. The only ones we could identify easily were table tennis and football. A woman in a striped dress and hat may have been intended as a spectator or just a park-goer.
I have no idea how when this mural was painted but suspect it's at least 20 years old judging by the Gary Lineker style shorts on the footballers.
Any info welcomed.

A Walk Along Kings Road

The groovy shops and cafés of the King's Road in its 1960s heyday have all disappeared but there are a few interesting details along the street that hint at this might have once been a road fit for a king.

Starting at the corner of Sydney Street by Habitat and walking east towards Sloane Square... 

The Curzon Cinema and some of its Art Deco details 

Opposite Habitat and the cinema there's Chelsea Town Hall, the Scottish Methodist Church and a lovely Shoe Repairers' sign
And then there's 'Antiquarius' the lovely Grade II listed Arts and Crafts billiards hall constructed by The Temperance Movement*. By the second half of the twentieth century the balls had been packed away and the building had been converted into small retail spaces, home to many boutique shops and antique dealers. These days it houses some big name High Street brands.  

Actually, I think I'll save the rest of this walk for some future posts.

Meanwhile check out this link about Kings Road in the 1960s.

* Ha ha... hope you enjoyed that diversion.
Here's a link to the 'correct' Temperance Movement.

Dirty Millennium Bridge – here we go again

Just like the Golden Jubliee Bridges, the Millennium Bridge's handrails are the only clean bits to be found along the structure as people take in the views left and right.

View from Millennium Bridge looking east

Beneath the rail, previously shiny areas are now really grubby, and dirt sits tight in the textured metal underfoot. Filth! 

Chewing gum has been trodden into the grooves onto which Ben Wilson paints his wonderful little designs. Indeed, he was busy creating a new one on the evening I took these photos.

And now they calculating the cost of a bloody garden bridge... what kind of state will that be left to get into?

Oh... re chewing gum, and the disposal thereof... #GUMDROPLTD have come up with this clever recycling solution which turns discarded gum into plastic receptacles for disposal. There are many pink recycle points across central London already.

A cherubic view

As you know, I like to look at the details on buildings. The top deck of a bus often affords a better view and a chance for a few dodgy snapshots complete with window reflections, greasy marks and blurring.

There is a lovely frieze along the terracotta gothic of the Prudential building on High Holborn, and a marvellous view can be obtained from the bus stop directly outside the front door, especially of the little cherubs below the window. 

But look closely... check out the little fella who is kneeling; his arms don't look to be the only thing that's stretched out.

It's just not right!

I do love an old launderette

And here's one on Cardwell Terrace, Holloway N7, that always makes me smile.

See also this lovely old blue-tiled laundry.

Westminster Cathedral, the mother church

I expected it to be an embarrassing admission telling my friends that up until early June this year I had never before set foot inside Westminster Cathedral*. But most of them said they hadn't been in there either. That's what happens when you live in a big city with so much to see and do; you are always going to do it next week, next month, next summer, after this, after that. Or we wait until out-of-towners come to stay and then go out on a mad tourist trip.

I have often admired the cathedral sitting on its piazza like a very showy Neo-Byzantine Battenberg cake, reflected in the glass windows of Victoria Street.

But go inside and Oh My (Catholic) God!
It's just wonderful in there. Bare walls and intricate mosaics – a glorious work in progress. My phone camera wasn't really up to the job, but this gives you some idea what to find in there:

Suffice to say I need to go back for a longer visit and it's now sitting quite high on my list of 'things to see and do' (just after RA Summer Show and Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty). And I must go to the top of the tower there as I hear that's quite an experience too.
Westminster Cathedral's website here.

*More admissions...
I haven't set foot inside Westminster Abbey either. Or Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Churchill's War Rooms, Hampton Court Palace, HMS Belfast, The Guildhall, The Bank of England, The Cutty Sark, The Fan Museum and Malcolm's home.

Temperance. Temperance.

From a No29 bus last month I snapped a few pics of the abandoned Temperance Hospital in Hampstead Road, NW1:

May 2015

This group of once-proud and important buildings has been empty for deacdes. I am pretty sure the hospital was only partly being used when I worked around the corner in Stephenson Way back in 1996, so that's almost 30 years of neglect. What a sad waste of space.
I was half-heartedly thinking about making an effort to do some research and, lo and behold, I discover that Caroline has conveniently done some sleuthing about the hospital for me. Read it here.

These pics were taken in June 2008 – back then I was completely about the details and I didn't take wider archive shots – these four pics are all I have. 

The old St Pancras Female Orphanage, the southernmost of the hospital buildings has, in the last few years, been spruced up – and the ghosted lettering above the entrance has been repaired and replaced:

May 2015

The other buildings await the fate of HS2 – see here for more info about the proposals, specifically the section sub-headed Euston.

UPDATE from kentishtowner: http://www.kentishtowner.co.uk/2015/11/04/national-temperance-hospital-back-business-jan/

The coal holes of Warwick Square

I was wandering about between Victoria and Pimlico hunting for a bench on which to sit and eat my take-away sandwich and had rather hoped that the garden in the centre of Warwick Square might be accessible. But no. So I stood to eat and pondered how sad it was that none of the key-holders were within the railings enjoying the lovely flowers and benches. Sigh.
I crumpled up the packaging and, whilst searching for a litter bin, I noticed how almost all of the coal holes that serviced this impressive terrace of 1840s town houses along the long south-west side of the square, were still intact. This is rather at odds with the facing side of the square where there are only about three left.
Many of the cover plates were the same design depicting the same companies, such as the the ubiquitous Hayward Brothers and a few Luxfers. But I was quite impressed at the diversity of designs in such a short stretch and noticed quite a few names and makers that I hadn't seen before plus a couple with name I already know that makes me chuckle.

Lots different Hayward plates, a couple of Luxfers and two different Burt & Potts.
I particularly like the Charles's one, and this is my third Smellie (pfff!)

Clean up of Hanley Road HOVIS ghostsign

Another ghost sign demise.

An old faded hand-painted HOVIS advertisement sits above The Old Dairy public house at the end of Hanley Road in Stroud Green.

June 2008, December 2014 and June 2015

The picture on the left shows that there had been two versions of this sign painted one over the other; note how some words and phrases look to be repeated. However, this is just a fading over time such that the older sign starts to visibly seep through the newer one.
The decipherable elements were:
    J T TURNER
    BAKER & CONFECTIONER
    SHOPS & SCHOOLS SUPPLIED
    HOVIS
    BREAD
     (overprinted with)
    SUPPLIED TO HM THE KING

At the end of last year I noticed with sadness that some idiots had graffitied a wobbly indecipherable tag (defily?) over the bottom half. On closer inspection I realised that the sign had for some unknown reason been previously scrubbed clean. 

Well, here is an update: it's now free of graffiti but has been scrubbed even cleaner to remove the spray paint and, as you can see, we have now lost the word HOVIS altogether and the bottom section is a pale greeny-grey splurgy mess.

The brand name HOVIS came from the winning entry in an 1890 competion to name the then new bread. Herbert Grime won £25 by shortening the Latin "HOMINUS VIS" which means “the strength of man”.

St James's Market, Piccadilly, SW1

Last week I was wandering down towards Waterloo Place from Piccadilly and noticed that the area that once was St James's Market is surrounded by hoardings and in the process of being renovated.

So I looked up The Crowne Estate's site hoping to find that a street market might be included in the plans. Nope. 

However, this pdf (from the Useful Docs section) includes some interesting information about the plans plus some history of the site. 

For your delectation I am here including the lovely pics and historical info that can be found on page 7.

Job done

Junction Road ghostsign repainted. Grunt.

Every now and then some ill-advised or mis-guided muppet with a vague idea that he/she is preserving history sets to with brush and paint and has a half-arsed attempt at touching up an old ghostsign; a ghost of the past.

This sign in Junction Road, N19, has also been attacked, sorry... renovated. 

Before (top) and after (below)

The original wording for Auction Rooms & Depository sat within or on top of an old panel (see the top right corner where it doesn't quite fit). Another [later?] sign that ended with 'furniture' can be seen at the very bottom. Note how all the chunky black letters were outlined with white and had a 3D-effect drop shadow which, I think, being as it has faded faster, was probably in another colour.
Now compare that with the revised version which has all the words rendered in the same flat grey with no attempt at 3D, and the area in the middle has been scrubbed clean/ painted flat, thus losing any hint of what the rest of the lettering might have said. 'Furniture' on its own means nothing. What exactly has been achieved here?

Two prime examples of this kind of repainting abuse can be found in Covent Garden (left) and Stepney (right).

Advertising spaces have always been updated and repainted as new signs for new products or businesses have been over-painted onto them over the decades. And this is still happening today. For example, in Upper Street Islington, an old sign for the Hare and Hounds Garage was scrubbed back and overlaid with a modern pastiche to advertise the bar and restaurant below. I was initially sad to lose the old sign, but realised that it made sense for the new owners to utilise the advertising space. It has subsequently been altered again by the latest owners.
But, back to my main point; I just do not understand what is achieved by just tarting up and repainting an old sign when the business or product is no longer relevant. Leave it alone. Let it fade. Don't touch!
I'd rather see the whole wall painted over with block colour rather than this kind of considered damage.

Another example of poor workmanship can be found on this hand-painted wall sign above Leverton Ltd opposite Mornington Crescent tube station. It is, to my eye, truly awful. The sign was probably originally commissioned by the owners of the company over 100 years ago. Levertons is still trading today (people don't stop dying!) and has at some time in the last decade engaged a contractor to clean up the sign (google streetview shows it has looked like this since at least 2008). But oh dear, as with Flegg (above), this most surely is not the work of anyone who has an inkling about letterform – just look at the inconsistent letter shapes, specifically the bad centres on the Rs, the lumpy bits, the wobbly curves, the thicks and thins, the mis-aligments and the general slap-dash thic-is-best attack. Need I go on?

 

I'll stop now. I don't like criticising. I wish I didn't feel the need to. But sometimes it needs to be said.

Thanks for reading. See you soon.

The Walthamstow Fragment – an Ionic Conundrum

Outside Vestry House Museum in Walthamstow Village there sits a short column with an Ionic capital.
Its irregular shape kept me intrigued for quite some time because I noticed that no two corners are the same – one corner is a true right angle, the next an acute angle, the opposite one has a corner cut into it and the last is an obtruse angle. Oh, and for some reason the one true corner is angled at the very top edge.
And, rather than all four side faces being the same, giving the illusion of a scroll falling on a column when viewed from any angle, this one depicts a scroll cut and flipped through the diagonal, such that faces A and B are alike with the usual egg and dart design, but faces B and C have some central foliage.
It's rather hard to explain so here are some photos:

It's an architectural conundrum; a stone mason's nightmare.
Intrigued, and thinking it was an art installation, I looked for an information plaque, but could not find one.
Having just researched it online, all I can find is that it is a relic of a GPO building demolished in 1912. But it doesn't say which GPO building or where exactly it stood.

. . . . .

I wrote the above and hit 'save' rather than 'publish' and went to check out porticos with ionic columns. And I now see that it's all very simple...
This Walthamstow fragment must have been the left corner of a portico. For example, see St Pancras Church opposite Euston Station – for the corner columns of the adjacent outward-facing sides to both depict a scroll they must have a common protruding angled corner piece, and the opposite internal corner needs a chunk 'missing' so that it aligns with the flat scrolls on the interior sides of the other columns (are you following this at the back?!).
Blimey, that was hard work, but I do now feel enlightened.
As for the irregular obtruse and acute angles I noticed on the Walthamstow fragment, I am now wondering if I didn't see that at all; the mind/eye can often play funny tricks... Or maybe, if I observed it correctly, the GPO building was, indeed, a bit out of true or built on a strangely-shaped plot of land.
A return visit is needed, or if anyone lives nearby, perhaps they could go and have a look for me and report back.

Accentuate the positive – three rather nice places to get off the No.19 bus

Fancy a pint?

Theobalds Road

 St John Street

Highbury and Islington

Three nice things – a series by Jane's London

Holloway Hullabaloo and The Big Day out in Whittington Park

My local arts festival is now in full swing.

On Sunday, 7th June, there will be a vibrant street party called The Holloway Hullabaloo (try saying that when you're drunk!) in Hornsey Street (at the side of Holloway Road tube station) and I will have a table there selling some of my photographs as prints and greeting cards, plus a small range of my clay pipe jewellery, accessories and cards.
I will also be at The Big Day Out in Whittington Park, near Upper Holloway train station (map), on Saturday 13th June where there will be stalls, entertainment, a dog show and much more.
Hope you can come along.
Here are some pics from last year:

Hornsey Street on the left hand side and Whittington Park bottom right

Centrepoint

I have always liked Centrepoint. In comparison to all the plain sheets of glass to be found everywhere else (or Renzo Piano's hideous hi-rise Toytown just around the corner), this tall tower is distinctive and, therefore a true icon of its age (just like me cos we were both born in the early 1960s!).
The 33-floor tower was a controversial topic from the day it was built. At 385 ft high it was tallest building for miles. For many decades it stood mostly empty.
The fountains stopped gushing in about the 90's, I think, and their mosaic'd pool sat empty and unloved until Crossrail came in and bulldozed the area around the tower, along with a lot of other much-missed buildings (in particular The Astoria boo hoo), to make way for a new modern Tottenham Court station and piazza. For this we can assume bland and flat with and square corners  – faster to build, see.

At I write this Centrepoint is being converted into 'luxury' apartments costing approx £3million a pop. It is clothed in a kind of trompe l'oeil rain mac.
This all seems a bit at odds with this other Centrepoint.