Murkier Mistical Tour / Curmudgeons Ahoy! (79/80)

Post 79 of 80. Wednesday 11 December (11/12/13) – Woodgrange Park (Square C9 on the Tube map), Wood Green (A6), Wood Lane (D3), Woodside Park (C9)

I get to Forest Hill station almost two hours later than I’d planned earlier this morning. I catch the 10.49 a.m. Overground northwards. There are a number of silver linings – the heavy murky blanket of mist is lifting, the sun is coming through, the air is fresh, the Albion Millennium Green looks splendid – all in all, the makings of a perfect winter’s day. Plus this is the last consecutively-numbered day now for ninety years – how mystical-mathematical is that!

Mist lifting over the Albion Millennium Green. ‘Labyrinth’ by Maria Strutz in the foreground.

Happy Talk (74/80)

Post 74 of 80. Wednesday 13 November  – Westbourne Park (Square C3 on the Tube map), West Brompton (D3), West Croydon (F6)

I’m viewing today as an amiable chunter around the Tube network, a day-trip to the seaside or country, if you like, except that I’ll gain not so much as a faraway glimpse of either the briny breakers or the beginning of the middle of nowhere. I’m tempted to take my AA Book Of The Seaside (First Edition, 1972) with me. As Don Quixote found, feasting on tales of chivalry is as good as, if not better than, doing the actual chivalry-business itself. But first I am using the excuse of Westbourne Park to visit nearby Golborne Road, one of my favourite London haunts. It gets better …  

Much Ado About Nothing (Dreaming The Life) (72/80)

Post 72 of 80. Monday 4 November  – Wapping (Square D7 on the Tube map), Warren Street (C5), Warwick Avenue (C3), Waterloo (E5), Watford (A2)

The rain that’s been thumping on the roof all night stops and, in an instant, there’s bright blue sky outside: a good day for TubeforLOLs. Except I don’t want to traipse round the Tube where anything might happen but nothing does. I really don’t. There’s only thirty-odd stations to go, I thought it would get easier, but it doesn’t get easier, it gets harder … harder … harder … Someone is poking me in the ribs with a stick. It’s The Inner Curmudgeon. Come on, boyo, he is saying. He’s got his gruff voice on but today there’s a paternal, concerned gruffityness about it. Slowly I swim upwards from the anxious and loathsome deeps, through the world of sleep and dreams … You can’t let this TubeforLOLs’ nonsense, get to you, Sandy, The Inner Curmudgeon is saying. It’s nothing, understand, nothing! You can’t let it get into your dreams!  

Of Beauty, Change and Loss (67/80)

Tuesday 8 October  – Temple (Square D5 on the Tube map), Theydon Bois (A8), Tooting Bec (F4), Tooting Broadway (F4), Tottenham Court Road (C5)

It’s a glorious autumn day but I really don’t want to go out. My muscles are aching from my recent over-strenuous gardening but that’s only a part of it. It’s more that I really really don’t want to drag my carcass around the Tube. Not today, not this week, not this year. Come on! I’ve visited over three hundred stations. What more is there to discover about London and its neighbourhoods? Surely I’ve run the gamut of human emotion – or as much of it as I’m going to run?

It’s his own stupid fault, Dear Readers, The Inner Curmudgeon chips in. And it’s not the first time. He’s a serial offender. ‘Over-strenuous gardening’! My Giddy Aunt!