Slightly-less-urban flotsam

The waterfall at Monsal Dale. About as natural as a lilo

The North. Subject of much sarcastic writings by non-northerners and the origin of a great many great friends (and a good deal of my further education). 

Urban walks should, by definition, take place somewhere filled with wifi,
traffic jams or the occasional quiet stabbing. Yet a recent jaunt to Yorkshire showed me you can still get incredibly man- made flotsam in a place where you wouldn't expect it.  

Endcliffe park. Has had the builders in

 An at-times vertiginous but rather lovely yomp around Monsal Dale threw up the old bridges and abandoned railway lines you might expect from a part of the world with such a rich industrial past. 


What was more unusual was that someone had gone to the effort of creating a lovely waterfall in the middle of somewhere already rather lovely.

Bricks in the riverbed for
that jacuzzi effect

  
Later on in Hunter's Bar - a cracking bit of Sheffield that doesn't boast the kind of natural beauty that the Peak District never stops going on about - the home-made waterfalls continued with gusto.

 
Wandering through Endcliffe park, there were at least half a dozen brazenly man-made waterfalls of one sort and another. Paths were thrown alongside - and sometimes over - the stream supplying them with H2O. 

I wondered: did it matter that these supposedly natural features were entirely unnatural? Was the pleasant sight and sound of them undercut by the fact they came from a desire by the Victorians  to jazz the place up a bit? Certainly no-one else having a crisp January walk that day seemed bothered.

In the end, neither was I.

Fake but fab

Little new London

I love a map. They combine something functional with something that can, in the right hands, be really beautiful. London's had her fair share, including the ones that were on show here and are on sale here. 

I stumbled almost literally (thanks shoes) across this one as I was wandering, dazed, into work. A sprawling, room-sized scale model of London.
 
 It looked like something out of a Bond movie. Any second now an evil genius was going to explain to me his plans for turning the entire metropolis into plaid, residents too. 

I gawped happily at some slightly beige buildings and the new Crossrail track as it weaved its way insidiously around other established landmarks. A vibrant city strewn with so many evocative landmarks, all toned done into subtle shades.

Accidental close-up of
a roundabout. Pfwoar!

New or proposed buildings stood out in white, like they hadn't had the time to take on the tones of their neighbours. It all seemed a quaint, enthralling, rather British waste of time. I bloody loved it.

(For some decent camerawork and a full explanation of what this was all about, have a gander here)

Man kept in shot for scale
(and because he wouldn't move)

Social bird housing

There's this little, new park in Islington. A newly laid slither of green squished alongside the overpriced townhouses and the bustle of Upper Street. Somewhere that feels private and secluded in a London borough that's anything but.  

As I walked through it, I spotted what I thought was a giant bees nest clinging to a tree. Even from a wee way off, my brain was telling me that couldn't be it.  

Closing in, the one yellow blob resolved into lots of smaller ones. Like someone has installed two Buddhist prayer wheels a bit too high up.

Closer still and I work it out: a riot of nests for birds and insects, piled high on each other like they were nailed up in a hurry by someone with a job lot of the buggers and only one eye. 

It looks like a bulging beige tower block, or one of those ancient medieval cities in the middle east. 

I love it. 

A connecting sleeve runs out from the main body of one nest of nests. Like population pressure has forced the city is grow out to meet its neighbour. 

Or, for the more discerning invertebrate, a new complex was created - boasting  Velux skylights rather than pedestrian portholes.

Being December and baltic, the complex seems uninhabited. Surely soon this Islington property will soon be snapped up by young families and city workers keen to be near the local facilities. 


Bizarrely, I can't help wondering about the practical problems like noise or bird poo this place will generate.

Bus, interrupted

It was the nonchalance with which a random bus driver casually did a u-turn on a busy A-road in front of me that first caught my attention.

It was the thought of what the sight looked like to me that had me plunging into my bag for my camera like I was after a grenade with its pin out. Like the time I snapped a porakabin being lowered gingerly into the high-sided London mews I worked in because I felt like a witness to the world’s biggest game of Tetris. 

Now I’m a veteran Londoner: the urge to be snapped in front of an iconic London bus with two Churchill v’s up, Japanese tourist style, has long left me.


But this guy was breaking the Bus Rules.


Buses don’t to u-turns any more than they do wheelies. The rule breach (and the photo it let me take) transforms this bus into an extra from 28 Days Later or perhaps (more chillingly) that Bat For Lashes video. Hackney residents, terrified of the zombie hordes pouring in from Harringay, try to block off one of London’s arteries before the undead poison shuffle, moaning, into the heart of Stoke Newington.

Or something – it had been a long day trying to think up creative crap and boredom breeds febrile thoughts. It was still weird (and great) to see something you see every day doing something you don’t.

Russian doll's house

Walking to work in the autumn sun beats chittering home in the pitch black, these days. One route to the Victoria line takes me past a house like the ones I'd draw when I was little - door in the middle, windows scattered round it, with a stubby chimney poking out the roof. It makes me smile.

What caught my eye is that the owners have placed an identical doll's house in the upstairs-middle window. Brilliant!

I found myself cackling in the street like a mental when I first spotted it.

To me it begs the question: is there a smaller house still perched proudly above its mini front door? Does this pattern go on and on, spiraling down to the microscopic (and unhinged)?


I've never got closer than when I took this photo, so I've no idea. I'm happy not knowing; it's better having this child's house half-drawn in my head. 

London's littlest building site

Covent Garden can be an odd place to work. Andrew Lloyd Webber has offices there and is often seen pottering about. John Barrowman did a book signing the other week too. (Crap, eh?).

Most of the time though it's tourists, touts and media twits like me who occupy her streets.

Recently some new workers have appeared: throwing up a temporary wall around Seven Dials while they give it a bit of a spit and polish. The whole site measures a whopping three meters across, covering up the toilers while they do things with hoses and hammers.   





One recent sunny morning I spotted a fine mist rising over the top of barricades and out over the Dials. It gave the place an eerie, otherwordly feel - like a UFO sighting (or a Bon Jovi concert).


A pretty, temporary water feature.

Seven Dials, pre-hosing

 

Sometimes, when you live in a city, random stuff seems to appear out of nowhere. Things discarded by people. Things discovered by people like me. Things that are a little bit special or mysterious.

This blog (for better or for worse) bungs them into random order, with a bit of chatting. 

I dare say I'll post anything else that springs to mind too.