A couple of brief Urban Wanders in and around Kensington, London

Well, another few weeks of radio silence. No one specific reason, just lots going on. Rather than this blog post being on a specific topic, it’s going to ramble around a bit.

First up are a couple of pictures I took a few weeks back of one of the disused platforms at Kensington Olympia station. I have blogged about Kensington Olympia station before, and whilst it’s still quite busy for both passengers and freight, the motorail is long gone and the station would seem to be a shadow of its former self. However, this post paints a slightly different, more colourful picture. The southbound platform has now been relocated slightly to the west, over one of the former lines, but the old platform has been left standing and is now home to the Kensington Olympia Community Kitchen Garden.

Kensington Olympia Community Kitchen Garden, London

Kensington Olympia Community Kitchen Garden, London

These next two pictures were taken at varying stages of an evening out. The first is the bar of the Bombay Brasserie in Gloucester Road, where I caught up with a former colleague and had an excellent curry.

The bar at the Bombay Brasserie, Gloucester Road, London

The second is of a classic car in a streetlamp lit mews I spotted whilst wandering back.

Unidentified mews, somewhere in Kensington, London

And finally, for some reason this week I found myself wandering through Paddington station around 11am, and saw on the overhead announcement boards, a train going to West Ruislip, a destination which is more usually associated with the line out from Marylebone. I vaguely remembered reading something about this a while back, so a few minutes of internet research later proved that firstly my memory was not playing tricks on me, and this is in fact what’s known as a Parliamentary train, or ghost train. I did not have time to take any pictures but there's plenty of information here. Not quite a bucket list activity but I am curious to travel along the line between Old Oak Common and where it joins the main line from Marylebone.

Oh yes, and my mid-life crisis (aka obsession with finding all the vinyl I used to have as a teenager) is still in full swing. Recent (re)purchases include Coming Up For Air, by Penetration, Starry Eyes by The Records, and Ghetto, by The Wall, to name but a few.

I do need to find time to get back into some serious Psychogeography but that will need to wait for a while as next week is already beginning to look a bit manic.

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I Think I've Hit My Mid-life Crisis - a Vinyl Obsession

So, as I alluded to in my previous blog post, I seem to have hit my mid-life crisis. Whilst I haven't ruled out getting a ridiculously fast car, or running off with someone half my age, my crisis seems to have centred itself around an obsession for vinyl. Having bought a replacement turntable a few months ago, I am now searching out punk, post-punk and new wave records from the late 70's and early 80's in London's second hand record shops, as I used to do as a spotty teenager. Some are records I never had at the time, whereas others are ones that I foolishly sold for next to nothing and am desperate to get hold of again.

One of the most exciting finds was Where's Captain Kirk by Spizzenergi, which was a party favourite back in the day, but that I seem to have either lost or sold over the years.

Spizzenergi - Where's Captain Kirk?

Other finds include a couple of early Human League singles, from 1979, way before they asked us Don't you Want Me Baby. I had downloaded a version of Empire State Human a while back, but had completely forgotten about Being Boiled, so was very pleased to come across this one too.


The Human League - Being Boiled

I don't know why I had never heard much of Eddie and the Hot Rods apart from Do Anything You Wanna Do. I certainly never had any of their records when I was growing up, so was delighted to find a couple of their early singles, Media Messiahs and Quit This Town during my searches.


Eddie and the Hot Rods - Quit This Town

It's hard to pick which of my recent finds gave me the most pleasure as they are all special in their own way, but if I had to choose one from my recent haul then it would have to be Gates of the West by The Clash. The version I came across was actually a two track Canadian demo copy of the Cost of Living EP, so just in a plain sleeve as opposed to the magnificently colouful sleeve below, and only two of the four tracks.


The Clash - The Cost of Living EP

So, in between my Urban Wanders, or indeed as part of my urban wanders, I shall be spending time searching through racks of vinyl over the coming weeks and months until my thirst is quenched and my crisis is a more manageable state. Stay tuned folks.

    

The Hollington loop

One of our favourite walks we can do from home is something we call the Hollington loop which leaves Woolton Hill and takes us up through Highclere (now famous because of Downton Abbey), through some wonderful copses and on to Hollington Lane before heading back towards Woolton Hill. It takes about an hour and a quarter depending on how sticky the mud is underfoot. My favourite part of the walk is pictured below. This is an open area somewhere between Ireland's Copse and Long Copse. I've often seen deer in this area but I think today we were a bit too noisy, making the most of a child free atmosphere to catch up on various things.

So, this was a great start to the day. Unfortunately things went a bit downhill after that with my son's football team being totally out played this afternoon, but hopefully a learning experience. Back home now though and looking forward to a nice hot bath followed by beef casserole, and maybe a glass or two of red.

Only 15 working days left until the Christmas break for me, and to be honest it can't come soon enough. Not because I particularly look forward to Christmas as such, but more because I need a decent break from work which has been manic, often pointlessly so, over the past few months. My vintage postcard advent calendar is up again this year - take a look and see what's behind each window throughout December.

Thanks to BBC radio 6, 6music, I have "discovered" a band called Public Service Broadcasting and have just downloaded as many of their tracks as I could find. Basically they take 1940's/1950's audio recordings and set them to a soundtrack ... can't recommend them enough !!

    

California Dreamin'

Having spent the past 3 weeks in California, I must admit to being slightly shell-shocked on my return to the UK. My body clock is all over the place which, combined with the mini-heatwave we appear to be having, is causing me no end of sleeping problems. It's about 6:45 am here on Sunday morning, a time which I never knew existed, and I must have been awake since 4 am. I'm also trying to adjust my body's expectation with regards to being fed ... no more huge american breakfasts for a while, but somehow a bowl of Cornflakes is not the same.

I do love visiting the US, and San Francisco in particular which, along with Boston, are the only 2 places I have ever visited outside the UK where I could seriously consider moving to. For our first week we hired a mountain cottage in a place called Midpines near Mariposa. Temperatures reached 100 degrees most days, which meant that we had to get up early to do any form of serious walking in the Yosemite Valley. Our second week took us to a house about 10 miles from Santa Cruz, in a place called Aptos. The weather here was considerably cooler, with refreshing sea mists most mornings. Our final week was spent in San Francisco where we had an appartment in the Castro district. Needless to say I have 100's of photographs which I could share, 10's of descriptions of fantastic day trips, restaurants, etc., but for now I'll stick to the briefest of summaries and 3 of my favourite pictures, 1 from each of the 3 weeks.

 Half Dome, Yosemite, California

Santa Cruz beach

 Golden Gate Bridge, looking back across to San Francisco

I now have to face up to the reality that I return to work tomorrow. Although many of my team and colleagues have also been on leave, I am sure my email count will be in the hundreds. I also need to do some exercise and the Californian cuisine has taken its toll on my waistline.

Having said I won't go into any more detail about my trip, I will however relate the visit I paid to what I consider to be the world's best record shop Amoeba on the Haight in San Francisco. I visited it on a business trip several years ago and was a bit concerned that it may no longer be there, or may be a scaled down version, but I was not disappointed and it was still there in all its glory. I didn't have a great deal of time to browse but was very leased to pick up a copy of Dr Strangely Strange - Kips of the Serene which I'd been looking for for a while, plus a few CDs by the Charalambides.

    

More holiday tales, and various other musings in my Search for Space will follow.

Stop Making Sense

As the Talking Heads soundtrack plays in my head as I read my way through David Byrne's excellent Bicycle Diaries, I am inspired to listen to some of his solo material that I've probably not played for several years. The first challenge was that much of it is on vinyl, and some has unfortunately been lost, so I've embarked on a rediscovery fest and downloaded a much extended version of the first solo album I heard, Knee Plays. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard this - in a second hand record shop in the market in Swansea. I don't remember the name of the shop and I have no idea if the shop is still there (I hope so) but as a student it provided me with some great music that the normal chain stores of the day simply didn't stock.

I also seem to have some holes in my David Byrne back catalogue where releases came out which completely passed me by. Having been a massive fan of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, I was aware of his recent collaboration with Brian Eno but was somewhat nervous in that I didn't believe it could ever better their first one. I finally took the plunge yesterday and downloaded Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Very pleased to say that my fears were not realised, and although it's nothing at all like Bush of Ghosts, it is still nevertheless a fantastic album ... and it also made me realise that I had in fact already heard some of these tracks when I saw him play live in Oxford a few years ago ... think I'll have to put that one down to old age.

So what next? Probably time to reacquaint myself with Songs From the Catherine Wheel.