A stroll in South London

The stroll taking place on the day of trolley 84, noticed at reference 1 a couple of weeks ago now. A stroll which I used to take quite often, along a road which I came to know quite well. So a stroll to poke old memories.

One of the reasons that I took the stroll on this occasion was that the platforms at Waterloo were in the throes of their summer refurbishment, so in order to get to Tooting, a train to Balham was indicated, rather than the more usual train to Earlsfield. So we start with a new to me advertisement on the Victoria platform at Epsom.

Perhaps it is to do with the online gambling which has been causing much concern in the Guardian. A righteous cause, with the morality of the companies concerned being on about a par with those of the tobacco companies which enhance the addictivity of their already addictive product.

Out at Balham to notice the Wetherspoons there, again a place which I used to know, but on this occasion I was walking the other way, that is to say south. To get to the White Eagle club.

A place at which I once, in my student days, tried to disrupt a meeting being addressed by Michael Heseltine. After that I contented myself with using their restaurant, noted for its Polish food. I was pleased to see it was still up and running, although one assumes that the generation which started it have now moved on, in the way of the continental groceries noticed in the previous post. Perhaps the white eagles of today are rather younger than I am, rather than rather older.

Next door we had Fusilier House, home to a Territorial regiment, and sporting the rather grand front door illustrated. I believe that the broken pediment used above it was an architectural device first introduced by Michelangelo, in a library he built somewhere in Italy. This door should, perhaps, have earned a place in my series of fakes (see, for example, reference 2) on account of its upper decorative motif, originally derived, I believe, from the ends of the timber roof beams resting on the stone walls of temples, usually in Ancient Greece, and retained for ever in this stone form. But not a building with which I ever had any traffic, beyond passing by.

Next up, what used to be the municipal bath house, from the days when municipalities were proud and competed amongst themselves in the matter of provision of baths for their workers. For some time now, I think, some kind of a temple mainly used by people originally from somewhere in what used to be our very own subcontinent. Perhaps they aspire to purpose built, rather than recycled: if they can do in Neasden, perhaps they can do it in Balham.

While the Mayfair Tavern was a different kind of temple, round the back of what had once been a rather grand cinema, patronised mainly by the Irish and devoted to the consumption of pints of Guinness and to the playing of pool, rather than to the worship of something less tangible. English suits such as myself were tolerated so long as we sat at the back and kept our traps shut. I passed on this occasion.

I also passed a number of butchers, including the one from which I used, occasionally, to buy shoulder of goat with which to make a curry, a curry called rogan josh. I did not like to peer, but I think that I saw the small, unguarded band saw behind the counter, which they used to use for cutting up the frozen meat. The health and safety people had not got to them.

Having dealt with the trolley mentioned at reference 1, I felt the need for cash and tried my luck at this machine offered by Lloyd's bank. The dirtiest machine I had come across for some time, but it did seem to be working. In fact working well enough to get me more or less through to the end of the transaction, but then, at the last hurdle as it were, the trap door through which one collected the folding stuff remained firmly shut. There was too much of a queue inside to complain and I resorted to the Halifax machine across the road. When I last checked, Lloyd's bank had not taken any money from my account, their machines being clever enough to roll back the transaction.

Last stop the Wetherspoons at Tooting, to be impressed by the meal deal of the day.

Hard to see how they could do it at the price, less than it would cost me to buy the stuff for myself at a supermarket, let alone a proper butcher. But then, rump steaks come in all different sorts, with some of them being scarcely edible, at least to those of us with older teeth. I passed.

While I passed, a young lady managed to get herself barred by breaking a glass and then being rude about it. All handled smoothly enough by a young management person, as it happened an even younger lady. We noticed also evidence of a general softening of the clientèle, evidence in the form of a cubic metre of air conditioning unit, on hire from Brandon, standing outside the kitchen door.

I then discovered that we had somehow failed to go to the show called 'Travesties', a must for all true Joyceomanes, among whose number we now count ourselves, after the expedition noticed at reference 3. A show which had been put on at the Apollo a few months previous. Can't think how I could possibly have missed it, given the volume of promotional email I wade through from theatreland.

Back at Balham, on the way home, the aeroplane game was confused by low flying, western sun and low flying cloud. The sun dazzled while the clouds acted as camouflage, visual clutter in which it was hard to keep the aeroplanes in focus. The best I could do was a two.

PS: today's image of the day from bing is a rather striking picture of a small castle up a big mountain in Romania. Just imagine the poor saps who had to carry the building materials up to the building site. Probably half starved as well. But at least there was a good supply of fresh timber, ready to hand.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/trolley-84.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/fake-9.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/earwig-redux.html.

Reference 4: http://www.brandontoolhire.co.uk/en/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travesties.