TOTTERING IN TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD

 I’ve been walking in London, nothing too fancy.  It was tiring but I was tired BY London, not tired OF London, a distinction Dr. Johnson would surely appreciate.

 

I used to live and work in the area and I always find myself there any time I'm in Central London. 

 

Of course large parts of Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross Road are barely recognizable from even just a few years ago, though fortunately those twin Brutalist peaks of the St Giles Hotel and Centre Point are still in business.

 

There was this wonderful bit of idiocy on a building site just north of the St Giles.

 

You know I suspect those lads up on that gantry have never so much as skimmed Derrida’s Writing and Difference. This is the fun-loving man himself, walking:

 

 

Much as I like the Tottenham Court Road/Charing Cross Road nexus, I’m not sure I’d take anybody there to try to impress them with the wonders of London, but as I was standing on the corner waiting to cross Oxford Street I saw and overheard two young women, teenagers I suppose, maybe out oft owners  though they didn’t look like innocents, and one of them was saying to the other, ‘I’ve never been to this part of London.  It’s really NICE!’

 

This pleased me enormously.

I'm not in the business of giving advice to tourists but if I were I'd have suggested they pop up to Whifield Gardens, now supposedly improved as part of the 'greening' of Tottenham Court Road.  I'd have suggested they savour the fact that this used to be a graveyard associated with grave robbing, and very close to the spot where the last V2 fell on London.

It looks like this:

TOTTERING IN TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD

I was meeting a friend in the big open area inside Tottenham Court Road tube station, which has a big, rather fabulous tiled wall.  The friend was “running late” as they say, which is clearly very different from just “being late,” so I took this photograph of the wall while I waited.  

And then, being the aesthete that I am, I thought obviously it would be better if there were some figures walking in front the wall – to provide a sense of scale, drama, variety of shape, and whatnot. So I took maybe ten pictures none of which turned out to be all that great.  

But as I was snapping, a recorded female voice boomed down from on high, only just audible, which said something along the lines of, “The taking of photographs of children is strictly forbidden in this tube station.”

Now, I can’t swear this was addressed specifically at me. though I don’t doubt that I was being watched and filmed by security cameras, but it seemed an odd thing in any case.  First, there were absolutely no children around, and if there had been I certainly wouldn’t have taken been taking pictures of them.  I don’t much like children.  I used to be one and I was forced to hang out with other children – god, it was awful.