June 01, 2005
North by Northwest: Paddington to Hampstead
In the grime-hazed windows of the buildings perched on the corner of the Marylebone flyover, family photos face outward warding off the traffic.
Church Street. A black cat raises its paw maneki-neko style.
Little Venice. The gentility achieved by force of goodwill that only comfortable money can achieve.
The smell of roses. Fashions = Men: expensive pink shirts tucked into belted jeans. Women: strangely shaped noses on screwed-up faces that turn away when you look at them. Lycra'd PAs calf-stretching against pillared porticos. A squirrel squirelling in the expensive garbage.
Surprising hygiene - a municipal operative sweeping up leaves at 6am (nb in Bow they don't even mop up the blood, they just let it drain into the canal.)
Abbey road, home of road-crossing photo-opportunists. A young fan has confusedly (or historically-consciously?) scrawled on the belisha beacon "Beatles - live forever".
Swiss cottage - one of the few places in London the prosaic truth of whose name always surprises.
A man exchanging number plates on a volvo (you never saw nuffink, right?)
Corner of belsize road and fitzjohns street the statue of freud and the tavistock clinic (presumably this is demographically-speaking london's vienna?)
And horses, 3 by 3, being led by a corps of some kind of urban cadets.
Posted by robin at June 1, 2005 05:30 AM