Observation

I  must have got off the train at Earlsfield many times, perhaps hundreds of times. but I do not recall ever noticing the trim to the roof of the small parade of shops next to the station, perhaps built at the same time as the station entrance which was recently swept away - taking with it a useful secondhand book shop, kept by an older gent. who used to smoke out the back when things were quiet. I think he took the money to quit and retired; the very gent. who had sold me a number of very cheap copies of 'Jane's Fighting Ships' over the years.

But last week this trim caught my eye. Fake Mediterranean, the sort of thing you get on the stands they put up at shows like the Ideal Home Exhibition - and inside Spanish, Mexican and Italian flavoured restaurants. Perhaps decorating the bar. A variation on the fake fronts you put on garages in suburbia to soften the edges of their flat roofs a bit, to make them sort of match the pitched roofs of the houses proper.

Probably of the same generation as the asphalt of reference 1.

I shall keep an eye out for more of the same. While trying to remember that this sort of fakery in architectural detail, this harking back to techniques and fashions of other times and places, has been around for a very long time, having first kicked off big time during the Renaissance. Or as the Preacher said a very long time ago, there is nothing new under the sun (see Ecclesiastes Chapter 1).

PS: on this occasion google's Streetview made a better illustration than my own snap, taken from outside the Half Way House and offering a view of a loudly fascia'd boutique offering Indian and Italian style pizzas. Round the corner to the right.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/snippet-2.html.