Stormy Weather

[eighthobstruction]

I remember a piece we used to play in the school brass band [cornet] called Indian Summer....

....we've got to stop these lot on the other thread, dowsing with hazel wands for autumn....lovely summer day here, chestnuts still perfectly green, 16*c, not enough cloud to make a kerchief, beck clear, rusty pebbles....birds [finches ] not yet flocking....ages to go till autumn....

[Stillhomewardbound]

Excellent and very thorough Wiki entry for 'Indian Summer'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Summer

[mercia]

a kerchief

haven't seen/heard that word since I was a little boy scout and we wore them round our necks

[BBMmk2]

Quite agree SHB. The description very good. I like the picture of those trees in their autumn colours!

Eithobstruction, ah yes, fond memories of that piece, 'Indian Summer', by that master of brass band music Eric Ball. In those days, to, I used to fin the EEb Bass part tricky :) Then years later, played it again and I thought, hmm, nothing difficult here!

[Serial_Apologist]

well done indeed
erm, in true journalist style I shall ask the obvious question .......... which was the hardest bit?
bit hilly round Crystal Palace I would think

Thanks mercia!

Funnily enough, there wasn't really a "hardest bit", Mercia. I had thought it would be the climb up Frognal to conquer the heights of Hampstead Heath (440 feet above sea level, and second (?) highestspot within London boundary); but the incline was gentler than the OS map suggested and I didn't even need to dismount.

I suppose I could be accused of "cheating" with the 3 breaks; but it's actually more painful re-mounting after resting ones legs. Where I live is on the north-facing slopes of the Crystal Palace ridge, with amazing views from this window (lucky me), but at 250 feet above sea level 120 feet below the, er summit, where the radio mast lords it over S London; and of several options, I selected the easiest last mile home, rather than sluggling it back up College Road.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well done, you, SA ...

I've been experimenting with a new route to work this week (normally Blackheath to Greenwich 7.45m).

Rather than keep South of the river upto to Tower Bridge, I've been going through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel - Isle of Dogs up to Limehouse and then along the blue cycle route along Cable Street to Tower Hill.

This alterntative is well away from the traffic but the tunnel bit losese one at least five minutes and the route can be a little meandersome. Also, these new blue lines are inclined to provide the wrong kind of green light for what I can only describe as the cylce stasi, who literally think there on a cycling equivalent of the M1.

BTW, are you aware of the statue of Guy the Gorilla in Crystal Palace. It's always been something of an intrigue to me. Why it's there and the artist (I think I did know who it was once). I believe it's a replica of one at London Zoo.

SHB

Yes, the big Guy!

Five minutes would be neither here nor there for me being a "leisure" cyclist, Stillhomewardbound. I have wanted to use the foot tunnel in the recent past, to avoid going across Tower Bridge and then navigate the Whitechapel gyratory which is a real bummer for cyclists wanting to get to Docklands from S London; but last summer when I reached the Greenwich end, the lifts were out of operation, and the notion of carrying my bike all the way down and then up 2 flights of spiral staircase gave me second thoughts. Are the lifts operating again, then?

[mercia]

Crystal Palace

until they were bombed out, my father's family lived in Hawke Road, Upper Norwood and he used to tell of watching the Palace burn down in 1936

[Serial_Apologist]

until they were bombed out, my father's family lived in Hawke Road, Upper Norwood and he used to tell of watching the Palace burn down in 1936

Hawke Road, with its 1920s council-built houses in the country vernacular style, is on one of my circular walkabouts mercia. One or two writers have written off S London, but the area is really visually stimulating, architecturally and landscape-wise. With views into central London on one side from CP Park and out to the countryside the other, and good rail/bus links, I always claim this is London's best-kept secret! - friendly in terms of both the older local yokels and many ethnic groups who have settled here; cool comparatively-speaking on the hottest of days; and remarkably cheap in terms of London's property market. You can still get a decent 3-bed flat like I have, surrounded by gardens, for less that £300 grand. I thought I'd landed in paradise when I moved here from a rapidly socially declining part of Essex in 2004!

[salymap]

Mercia, I saw it from the garden of one of my mother's sisters in Shortlands, near Bromley. I was only five but it's a vivid memory.

[eighthobstruction]

Here you are S-A , you can have this floating around as you walk.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Fdn...F6EA9A9DDC7D29

[Serial_Apologist]

Mercia, I saw it from the garden of one of my mother's sisters in Shortlands, near Bromley. I was only five but it's a vivid memory.

How I would have loved to have seen the Crystal Palace - and been able to attend one of the concerts held there! I bought several illustrated books including pictures of it inside and outside, and of the inferno, as part of familiarising myself with a district I'd kind of fallen in love with. Ironically - and ignoring the area's perennial traffic problems - - the ethos today is probably a lot more "villagey" than it was when the palace still stood on what is now a nature reserve. In its hugeness it would have been pretty overwhelming even to our eyes, accustomed as we are to the City and canary Wharf. A campaign among local businesses and shopkeepers, now half-hearted, was underway to try and get CP reconstructed. It would have been on a smaller scale, about a quarter of the original dimensions length, width and heightwise; but all this seems now on the proverbial backburner as what is to be done with CP Park goes through never-ending wrangles as to whether to build on at all or not.

Local history lesson over!

[Serial_Apologist]

Here you are S-A , you can have this floating around as you walk.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Fdn...F6EA9A9DDC7D29

That's an idea 8th! I still haven't heard last night's Fitkin premiere on the iP!!

[mercia]

I read somewhere that some people thought the Palace conflagration was God's punishment for the Abdication !!

[eighthobstruction]

That's an idea 8th! I still haven't heard last night's Fitkin premiere on the iP!!

Missed the Fitkin last night....maybe you were here....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0D62...deo&playnext=3

[Stillhomewardbound]

Are the lifts operating again, then?

SA, no, they are still out of action and likely to be for about another ten months. I'm not the fittest 48 year old but my bike is relatively light so I don't struggle too much.

My latest bete noir are the road works which have partially closed Moorgate for the last four months or so. Ocasionally I need to get from Great Eastern Street down to Kennington via Southwark Bridge. It's almost a straight line, but I had to walk around the road works ... fair enough, but then just when I'd got going again Prince's Street leading down to Mansion House was closed, so tried to resort the to the side streets only to find by the time I got to the end - closed. Aaarrgh!! Then I got lost round the Castle, didn I!!

Have you ventured through the Rotherhitche Tunnel at all?