Thursday, October 18, 2012
St Lukes (failed)
Today was to have been the first visit to the St Luke's autumn season of lunch time concerts, but it was cancelled at such short notice that I got to do the margins anyway.
Got to Waterloo while still puzzling how they were going to take down the tower crane strapped to the side of the tall tower going up on the upstream side of St George's at Vauxhall (http://www.stgeorgewharf.net/). Far too tall for a mobile crane to reach it - at least so I would have thought - so all I could think of was that the upper sections folded down, from which position they could be lowered down the side of what was left of the crane. If each section of the tower was secured to the one below by four suitably complicated bolts, one at each corner, undoing the two inboard ones ought to make this possible. Clearly taking down would be a good subject for a televised web-cam. There must be lots of frustrated senior builders like me out there to watch it.
Bullingdoned from Waterloo to St Luke's. First stand on arrival was full, second stand also full. But I learned how to ask it where a not-full one was and got an extra 15 minutes for my trouble. The third stand was indeed not-full and turned out to be conveniently near Whitecross Street where I was able to buy my usual tea and bacon sandwich. I was entertained while I ate it by a rather broken down gent. who explained to me that he was 72, a veteran of both Royal and Merchant Navies and that he had visited 46 countries in his time at sea. He was born in Portsmouth which gave me the entrée with my naval connections there and I was pleased that the young, busy and foreign waitress was able to give him time as he flustered about.
For once the bacon sandwich was supplemented by something from the lunchtime food market in Whitecross Street, in the form of a considerable wedge of bread pudding for £2.50. I was attracted to it in the first place because it was whiteish rather the the brownish one gets from regular bakers, but it turned out to be rather damp, rather free of fruit and rather oddly flavoured. Some spice which I did not recognise but did not much care for. But I got it down OK.
After the concert that wasn't, taxied back to St. Batholomew the Great with a pleasant and talkative young taxi driver who told us all about her two daughters, her ambitions to get them into a forthcoming academy (a spin off from the Olympics it seems) and the lack of decent night life in Stratford. Which last is odd given my understanding that the place is crawling with youth from all over the globe. She wasn't too sure where the church was but between us we got ourselves to the entrance arch in West Smithfield. Church just as impressive as last time (May 12th) with a novelty in the form of a memorial tablet on the wall, the head in which was supposed to weep, although the trusty told us that weeping was now off as the radiator which had been placed underneath the tablet had dried up the tear ducts. I wondered whether, if it did weep, that would count as a miracle, given that whoever erected the tablet (ever so many years ago) had had the intention and expectation of weeping inscribed on the base. I thought that maybe miracles had to be surprises; disqualified if you planned for one.
On exit we were treated to the sight of a paramedic on a bicycle heading into the nearby Barts.. A bicycle with very large baskets and with both it and its rider decked out in full green, yellow and blue glory. One comes across policemen on bicycles quite often, so all I need now to complete the picture is a fire fighter's bicycle, perhaps with a little trailer as their stuff is both bulky and heavy.
Bullingdoned back to Waterloo where I had another opportunity to try my hand at the W. H. Smith express (DIY) checkout with a copy of the Economist, with which I have been getting on rather well. Maybe it will topple the TLS off my top spot. And my first opportunity to walk the length of the fine new mezzanine level, which I rather liked, even if the shops selling things like shirts masquerading as luxury shirts were not all to my taste. There were also a couple of decent looking snackeries.
Home to Epsom, with the train thoughtfully stopping just outside the station so that we could admire the antics of the large dump truck as it failed to dump its load of rubble into the large skip, the edge of the skip being slightly too high for comfort. And the lumps of rubble were a bit too big to be wanting to poke them into life with a shovel from the edge of the skip; far too much chance of going down with them.
Got to Waterloo while still puzzling how they were going to take down the tower crane strapped to the side of the tall tower going up on the upstream side of St George's at Vauxhall (http://www.stgeorgewharf.net/). Far too tall for a mobile crane to reach it - at least so I would have thought - so all I could think of was that the upper sections folded down, from which position they could be lowered down the side of what was left of the crane. If each section of the tower was secured to the one below by four suitably complicated bolts, one at each corner, undoing the two inboard ones ought to make this possible. Clearly taking down would be a good subject for a televised web-cam. There must be lots of frustrated senior builders like me out there to watch it.
Bullingdoned from Waterloo to St Luke's. First stand on arrival was full, second stand also full. But I learned how to ask it where a not-full one was and got an extra 15 minutes for my trouble. The third stand was indeed not-full and turned out to be conveniently near Whitecross Street where I was able to buy my usual tea and bacon sandwich. I was entertained while I ate it by a rather broken down gent. who explained to me that he was 72, a veteran of both Royal and Merchant Navies and that he had visited 46 countries in his time at sea. He was born in Portsmouth which gave me the entrée with my naval connections there and I was pleased that the young, busy and foreign waitress was able to give him time as he flustered about.
For once the bacon sandwich was supplemented by something from the lunchtime food market in Whitecross Street, in the form of a considerable wedge of bread pudding for £2.50. I was attracted to it in the first place because it was whiteish rather the the brownish one gets from regular bakers, but it turned out to be rather damp, rather free of fruit and rather oddly flavoured. Some spice which I did not recognise but did not much care for. But I got it down OK.
After the concert that wasn't, taxied back to St. Batholomew the Great with a pleasant and talkative young taxi driver who told us all about her two daughters, her ambitions to get them into a forthcoming academy (a spin off from the Olympics it seems) and the lack of decent night life in Stratford. Which last is odd given my understanding that the place is crawling with youth from all over the globe. She wasn't too sure where the church was but between us we got ourselves to the entrance arch in West Smithfield. Church just as impressive as last time (May 12th) with a novelty in the form of a memorial tablet on the wall, the head in which was supposed to weep, although the trusty told us that weeping was now off as the radiator which had been placed underneath the tablet had dried up the tear ducts. I wondered whether, if it did weep, that would count as a miracle, given that whoever erected the tablet (ever so many years ago) had had the intention and expectation of weeping inscribed on the base. I thought that maybe miracles had to be surprises; disqualified if you planned for one.
On exit we were treated to the sight of a paramedic on a bicycle heading into the nearby Barts.. A bicycle with very large baskets and with both it and its rider decked out in full green, yellow and blue glory. One comes across policemen on bicycles quite often, so all I need now to complete the picture is a fire fighter's bicycle, perhaps with a little trailer as their stuff is both bulky and heavy.
Bullingdoned back to Waterloo where I had another opportunity to try my hand at the W. H. Smith express (DIY) checkout with a copy of the Economist, with which I have been getting on rather well. Maybe it will topple the TLS off my top spot. And my first opportunity to walk the length of the fine new mezzanine level, which I rather liked, even if the shops selling things like shirts masquerading as luxury shirts were not all to my taste. There were also a couple of decent looking snackeries.
Home to Epsom, with the train thoughtfully stopping just outside the station so that we could admire the antics of the large dump truck as it failed to dump its load of rubble into the large skip, the edge of the skip being slightly too high for comfort. And the lumps of rubble were a bit too big to be wanting to poke them into life with a shovel from the edge of the skip; far too much chance of going down with them.
# posted by Jim @ 9:38 AM 
