Surbiton: the good stuff

A couple of posts back I was up a Surbiton side street looking at the nice houses and nasty (and less nasty) flats. Round the corner is one of the main streets, Claremont Road, and very satisfying it is too to walk along from Adelaide Road towards Surbiton Station (itself a classic -- I see I haven’t done a blog on it and I must). Satisfying because interesting in its variety and some of the buildings are good.

First, welcome to our wheelie bins but behind it is the sort of substantial house that was built when Surbiton started to be a commuter suburb with the coming of the railway (which nearby Kingston, the obvious town for it, was too snooty to admit -- to its great disadvantage ever since: it’s stuck on a slow branch line and we’ve got all the fast trains and loads of them.)

 Then this:

And -- a bit of a comedown:

But this I think is a gem:

Pity we then pass on to this, though I suppose it could be worse:

Surbiton doesn't have much more of that stylish 1930s architecture, still less good post-war, but plenty more 19th century villas.  It's been saved from ruination by having the Kingston By-pass (another 1930s wonder) nearby, so there's little through traffic necessitating road widening, one-ways, counterflows, giratories and all that.  It's a backwater with a great, well-served railway station -- about which more one day.

Kingston and lime trees

Now I'm alerted to lime trees (thanks to Oliver Rackham [see Rackham ‘label’ down the side] and my trip to Berlin) I'm seeing them everywhere, and as often as not they’re big. There’s a nice bunch at the back of the Institute of Education in Bloomsbury.

And then guess what. I'm walking down a few steps this morning to get to the riverside walk on my way to Kingston, where I was (though I didn’t then know it) to have a nice German bratwurst in the market square, and noticed the stainless steel information display erected like an odd-shaped sloping table at the water’s edge and for the first time ever went over to read it. A main item on it is lime trees, evidently a local feature worthy of remark. So are the great crested grebes on the river that I've mentioned before.

There was some good history, too, that I hadn’t been aware of. I knew Kingston had at one time been the seat of Saxon kings, probably because it had the first bridge as you went up the Thames (I presume the Roman London Bridge had fallen down). But it also had royal connections into the middle ages, with the Treaty of Kingston, 1217, about which I read ‘The Treaty of Kingston, describes peace negotiations commenced between John and Louis, dauphin of France immediately after the defeat of the latter's supporters at Lincoln in May 1217. Talks broke down before a further naval defeat at Sandwich persuaded Louis to agree terms at Lambeth’ (Wikipedia).

Also, Raven’s Ait, an island (old English eyot = ‘island’) in the river up by Surbiton, was the source of osiers for the basket makers. The baskets, I guess, would be for the salmon that were the main product of Kingston.

And finally Sopwith! Tommy Sopwith had a works in Kingston -- 6 fitters and carpenters and a boy -- designing flying boats for the First World War. The prototypes were tested on the Thames until the Thames Conservancy objected, so Sopwith moved down to Richmond where the Port of London Authority, who control the river up as far as it’s tidal, were more hospitable. Sopwith’s colleague in the venture was none other than Hawker, Harry Hawker, later of Hawker Siddeley.

So fancy living in a place like that. The sausage was nice, too.

Parakeets, Capello and Cruddas

10.00 a.m. Not very nice now, grey, damp and a bit chilly. But it was brighter when I got up and by going out before 8 I may have had the best of the day. Since it’s clear I'll never go to a gym again, and running’s not for me (a hip’s beginning to go, though it’s left me alone for months), I've been trying to walk for exercise, i.e. faster than I normally would and with ‘technique’ -- a recent Guardian guide purported to tell you how to do it -- take off from toes, land on heel, roll through the foot, hips level, arms at 45%, max distance earlobes to shoulders. There was a video but I've no idea if I'm doing it right; I need the lady to come and watch me.

Anyway, at least I do more walking and this morning, being Saturday and nice, I bused to Kingston and walked up the other side from Kingston Bridge to Hampton Court. The small birds were being birdish and springish; a parakeet perched on a spray in fine close-up view; rooks cawed, swans swanned; fours were training, first some lads in a big canoe, then some middle-aged men rowing, then some younger men, probably Kingston University students, then some girls ditto. Actually the last two, now I think of it, were eights. Cyclists and runners shared my path, which was fortunately wide and firm; the river’s on the left, wide and active, and across the other side moorings and the occasional boatyard, ugly flats and then, further up, more picturesque houses and a couple of pleasant pubs; then some posh school’s playing fields. On my right a hedge with some trees and beyond it parkland, the estate of Hampton Court. And finally the palace itself, through gilt-tipped railings: first a swanky classical country house with formal garden, then, when you’ve rounded a corner, the Tudor brick original with those chimneys.

With the radio on the phone (via earphones) I listened to the Today programme. Interesting stuff about brain scans establishing communication with a proportion of patients thought to be in a vegetative state -- but now judged to be, rather, ‘locked in’. As they said, poses deep questions about what it is to be human, minded, with intentions etc. Reports too of the chorus of approval for Fabio Capello’s decisive dismissal of the England captain (Capello being the Italian manager of the England football team): I sense a longing for leaders like him, old-fashioned, unshowy, clear about his values, severe, strong on discipline. The nation feels (or so you’d think from the press) like a class that’s had a succession of ineffective young teachers who long for a strict older one. Capello for Prime Minister? Naive dream: he’s not a politician, we know nothing of his ability to negotiate and do deals or compromise or cope with complexity. The football scene is complex but at least it’s a contained zone, in a way that national and world politics and economy aren’t.

From Hampton Court the way back is by train, for which I had a half hour wait so went and had a coffee and croissant and read the New Statesman interview with Jon Cruddas, potential Labour leader. He has some of the Capello qualities -- dignified, honest, intelligent, learned -- but, similarly, how much of a politician is he?

Now for the ironing.

Signs along the Thames

I wrote this one before the world collapsed and wasn’t able to post it. It’s strikingly out of date now the season has truly changed, earth is hard as stone etc., but anyway here it is...

SURBITON, where I live, is boring but the river, ten minutes from the flat, compensates. Along this side a ‘promenade’ (wide asphalted path with seats bearing plaques naming dead Thames-lovers) goes down to Kingston-upon-Thames, 15 minutes away. If you cross Kingston bridge you can walk up the opposite side to Hampton Court.

This morning [a couple of weeks ago] I did this side, but it was cold, damp and uninviting. The other day, though, [even longer ago] late in the afternoon it was exhilarating. Most of the photos I took aren’t worth showing. The tall trees (poplars and horse chestnuts) the line the other bank are wonderful but I've never got a good shot of them. Against a winter sky they were magnificent, one with a single crow perched heraldically on the topmost branch.

The last good time along there was earlier in November, when autumnal mistiness reminded me of the smoky days around Plot Night (November 5th, Guy Fawkes night) when we kids were out gathering wood for the bonfire (chumping, it was called). This week it’s winter, the trees are bare and the skies and water dramatic.

My only sub-half-decent photos:


Whenever a scene in nature seems charged with significance (that crow was clearly a sign), a response learned no doubt from Romantic poetry (though what about ‘the crow makes wing to the rooky wood’…), I think of the poetry of Peter Huchel, translated by Michael Hamburger. I found it in the 1960s in, I think, a Carcanet anthology, East German Poetry in Translation, or perhaps in the journal Modern Poetry in Translation, and used it in teaching. One of my favourites (from the new Anvil Peter Huchel: The Garden of Theophrastus) is ‘Swans Rising’. I don’t read German but love reading it opposite Hamburger’s translation.

Out of the woods

New hard drive, new internet provider, new phone, the lot. I think I'm finally back in business, thanks to efficient help from both the public sector (Saif, the IT guy in our department at King's) and the private (Apple, Carphone Warehouse). In main Apple Stores you can book a session with an Apple Genius (yeah, I know). I don’t know if they’re geniuses but as well as being intelligent and knowledgeable they’re uncondescending, helpful and nice. In stores like the one at Kingston you can observe with hope the reversal of the usual education scene: at the long tables down the middle middle-aged and older people attend deferentially to the advice of young men and women in Apple t-shirts.

Carphone Warehouse (and the mobile phone companies generally, I gather) have terrible systems that make life difficult for their staff, but the people in the Surbiton branch, and one I've used earlier on Tottenham Court Road, are, like the Apple guys, smart, understanding, cool and friendly. It’s actually a good experience going into one of these places, unlike, say, Marks & Spencer or Ikea (no staff to be found).

If only what Apple and Carphone (and King's at times) knew about appointing the right people for customer (and employee) relations could be taught to all public and private organisations, how much pleasanter and easier modern life would be.