Formerly: schoolteacher, academic editor, helpdesk operator, database designer, project manager, crate-catcher & tree-surgeon's assistant.
Interests: #classicalmusic (esp. #StringQuartet / #StringQuartets), #physics, #biology, #fiction, #trees and #ideas.
All photos (if not credited separately): @wibble, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
| Also procrastinating at: | http://www.simonwilks.co.uk |
#TodaysWalk was to Tooting, where it wasn't sunny, and specifically to St George's Hospital.
There I found a heraldic lion and unicorn stuck in a flowerbed at the end of the car-park, presumably to remind us that, though some may get orbs and sceptres, we'll all get something nasty.
They were completed, apparently, in 1953. Which is odd, because St George's Hospital, Tooting didn't exist until 1954. So there's a historical, and possibly criminal, puzzle for those that can be bothered.
I was feeling a bit down, so #TodaysWalk was all uphill to Crystal Palace, where I found the horse chestnuts blatantly waving their pink pagodas.
Irises are out, too. As are the hawthorns, rhododendrons, lilacs and tulips. Even the oaks have given up and stuck out some leaves at last.
Above, swifts were squeaking across the sky, scythe-like harbingers of rain and midges.
On account of forecast rain #TodaysWalk was a hurried stroll in an underpromised fragment of sunshine.
Still, the hawthorns and lilacs were blossoming nicely and, on one windswept hill, so were the tamarisks.
#TodaysWalk, the result of received inspiration, was to #Penge, one of south-east London's most notorious tourist traps, where they'd hung out the bunting for the Coronation within a stone's-throw of one of Bromley's Millennium Rocks.
The rocks, of which at least a dozen are scattered around the Borough of Bromley, were a gift from the Highland Council of Scotland who presumably hadn't found a use for them, either.
For #StandingStoneSunday here's one of The Stones of Croydon.
This example, representing the Ward of Bensham Manor (a ward which, like the manor, no longer exists) has stood for more than eight years in the formal splendour of Trumble Gardens, an open space created in the mid-20th Century by anti-social action.
A tasteful plaque on the sunnier side of the stone gives further details, but not many.
#TodaysWalk was to New Beckenham, a suburb built in 1864, once people had lost patience with the old one.
1864 appeared almost exactly 27 years after the Coronation of Queen Victoria, so I went there to see how they were planning to mark tomorrow's celebrations.
If pictures work for you, then the snapshot below neatly encapsulates the simmering joy I found beneath the stormy clouds.
#TodaysWalk took me along a footpath that starts in Nunhead, runs between the Nunhead Cemetery and the Nunhead Reservoir, finishes near Peckham Rye and is consequently called the Brockley Footpath.
It might have led to Brockley, once. Though it's not really long enough. And there's a railway and crematorium in the way. And it points to Crofton Park.
Now it just goes from the Peckham end of Nunhead to the Nunhead end of Peckham. And vice-versa. Even so, it doesn't seem much used.
As it's Tuesday, here are some pictures from #TodaysWalk last Wednesday, when I visited Thornton Heath.
There, while admiring the historic and doubly-arsonised clock tower, I stumbled across one of The Stones of Croydon.
