New East Greenwich...

....Now not even Old New East Greenwich but Greenwich Peninsular. As part of my ride every road project, I cycled up to the Pilot Inn, a Fullers House, on a little remnant of a road that used to be Ceylon Place, though I doubt it's still called that. Nice to note that it is a bike friendly establishment - though really bike friendly pubs should be up a good hill (work up thirst) so that leaving the pub requires the least amount of effort and the greatest amount of wheeeee....

Ample bike parkingAnd above and just to the left of the door, there is a plaque, giving the date it was built and where it was built....Ceylon Place, New East Greenwich, 1801
It was good of C17 builders to think of putting a return address on the building, in case it ever managed to get lost. Though if you look for it on maps.google.com you won't find it any more. They call it River Way, not that it goes to the river. (Much like Kay Way, the truncated mouth of Straightsmouth in West Greenwich. Shouldn't Ways go somewhere when you could call it River Close - from rue close, which gives us a bit of a clue that it's a dead end for motorised traffic? And, coincidentally, the river is close.

Rather mysteriously, though, it doesn't seem to appear on Wyld's ''A New Topographical Map Of The Country In The Vicinity Of London, Describing All The New Improvements, Metropolitan Boroughs And Parish Boundaries c1872'.'' Nor is New East Greenwich anywhere to be seen. So 71 years after it was built, all that was mapped was a couple of buildings to the east of Over Brickfield.

On the 24th day of Christmas...

...the council left a tree...
I've no idea how long the tree in Giffin Square will remain there. About three years ago, it stayed around until late March. Towards the end it began to smell really good - a rich sweet aroma of sap - which became more fragrant as the tree withered more and more. It became a personal symbol of the contempt Lewisham Council shows to Deptford - and also of Deptford's instinct for creating something attractive out of that neglect. But to be fair, this year, they haven't even taken up the Lewisham centre tree either.
I'm going to make an effort to see how long they remain in situ this year.

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Ok, I got tempted out on the bike again after 13 days without a ride, by sunshine, mild weather and dry roads. After about 3 miles and a mild hill, I realised that Santa had stolen my muscles, and decided to have a wander around around a radial route - it's part of a project of cycling on every cyclable road around where I live, gradually spiralling outwards. I noticed an old ''faded London'' type wall advert in Brockley that I'd never noticed before.
This one is next to the church car park at the bottom of Wickham Road at the junction with Brockley Road.

And because it always amused me how Lewisham Council's insecurity about its lack of history - because, let's face it, Lewisham is never going to be able to match Deptford or Greenwich - had led it to create its own fake city walls on the roundabout south of the shopping centre:Monumental pretensions....

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Back in October I wrote a post about spider flight - taking my cue from a spider's web outside my front door that looked like a propeller. After a while, I started getting Japanese spam on that thread at a rate of one message per morning - and they still keep arriving at around 4am each morning. To that thread only.

Then, this afternoon, I noticed that the same spamming was happening to one post on the Brockley Central blog. Sometimes it comes from the same website and it looks like it comes on a daily basis, though at around 8pm for them. I couldn't think why these two posts had aroused the interest of Japanese spammers when the only thing that I could find that they had in common was a reference to spiders! So, purely out of curiosity, I'm mentioning spiders to see whether it's possible to trap spiders on the web...

Here's some spider writing from just over the road from the Lewisham City Ramparts...

Wintermission

After 10 days without getting out on the bike, due to aches and pains and ice/slicks incompatibility, I'd been getting myself ready for a ride. Now that the temperature is getting milder - hell, it's not even freezing now - I thought that this could be the day for a relaunch. So, lying in bed this morning, I found myself actually planning a ride. And then I looked out of the window. Ok, the ice had mostly gone, but this morning's winter instalment was a fresh coating of wet snow. A tougher person than me would have said, ''It's only a bit of slush,'' and would have got the bike down the stairs. And that's fine for tougher people but not for me. So, instead of smoking more and more roll-ups sitting in front of the computer, I resolved to walk to Canary Wharf instead. My (nominal) reason, apart from the obvious ''get out of the house and get some exercise'' one, for going there was to get some Tewkesbury mustard from the Waitrose that's secreted away in their basement. (Mustard is becoming a big motivator this season.)

Apart from the general quietness brought on by the acoustics of snow, Docklands as a whole seemed almost deserted and definitely muted. I imagine hushed conversations along the lines of ''If the bank relocates to Geneva, I'm going to have to take a big hit selling the apartment....'' and such forth. Of course, they're probably all just talking about Premier league fixtures and the Winter skiing trip but, as it seems such a world away from Deptford, I can only try to imagine.

On the way back, I took a detour round Asda (no complaints about their cycle parking - because although Asda do not seem to have a green sign for bikes, the stands are numerous and unmissable). I discovered, in passing, that they also have an ''Extra Special'' brand of Tewkesbury, and couldn't help buying another two jars. From there, I went round Mudchute farm. Some of the Mudchute area is almost rural - it seems both miles away from the financial centres and miles from the pretty urban parkland of Greenwich. You could almost imagine yourself in the (almost) countryside.
And here a llama stands before a cloud-shrouded city skyline with little care for the textiles futures market.Finally, on the way back before the 100 steps of the south lift of the foot tunnel, here's a photo of Trinity Hospital, looking as under-sized and dainty as ever next to the oversized brutishness of the old power station. And it's got itself a white topping for the day.

Winterlude

In Greenwich Park today, a squirrel shuffled up to me in the snow, sniffed my boot, and began to climb up my trousers. I ended up brushing him off by the time he got above my knee. I was afraid he might be after my nuts.

One way of looking at it is to say the park squirrels are very tame. Another way of looking at it - probably equally valid - is that they have learned that the humans are very tame.

Anyhow, here's a bin-robbing robin...
And while the fauna's behaving strangely, here's some flora trying something even stranger...
This tree is growing above a first floor window of the Deptford Arms. No idea why. It's a tree of paradise, which somewhat flatters the Deptford Arms. And immediately over the road...

You can get boxes of anything here - but how can you ask for a box of COW FUKU without offending?

Cycling Limited Destruction

I have this strange cycling routine: whenever I come back from a ride I take in a new road or two so that I end up having ridden every ridable street for miles around. And then I realise that I haven't been up this cul de sac or that close. Here's one that I came across yesterday in East Greenwich - Peterboat Close, just by the Tunnel Approach Road. Virtually nobody will have cycled up it because nobody would have any reason to. And yet it's precisely up this sort of dead-end street that they're planning cycling destruction. Or at least they were.

Yes, obviously it started life as Summatoruvver Recycling Limited*. But the gate must have started falling apart at one stage and, true to their word, they've recycled the gate itself. The bit that was on the left has been re-welded to the right, with a spare panel thrown in for good measure. So what was the italic writing? What ends with -ial? Special Destruction? Facial Destruction? Racial Destruction? Given the general feel of the area, though, I'm going for Terrestrial Destruction. And, all in all, they've done rather a good job.

--0--

Down by the Thames this afternoon, I saw these waders. I got home, leafed through my AA Best of Britain's Birds (£3 from the remainders shop opposite the picturehouse) and failed to decide which kind of bird it was. To judge by the long, straight two-tone beak, I'd pencil in snipe, but as my ornithological knowledge doesn't even go as deep as these birds, I am therefore going to call it a Lew for the simple reason that it looks a bit like a curlew without the curl.**

*I just did my own research! If you take the last bit of the telephone number and stick it on the front plus an 020 to kick things off, and then google it, you end up discovering that it's Lombard Recycling Limited. It's still Cycling Limited Destruction to me though.

**I've just got round to reading my mail in Yahoo! and there was a reply from someone who knows a lot more about birds than me - they're black-tailed godwits.

''No photos, we're a supermarket''

Supermarkets, what are they like? Very often, my choice of supermarket is governed by some small item that I want to buy and then the rest just sort of arrives in the basket. Very often this means mustard. I'm a bit fussy with mustard: the Colmans English has bite but not a well-rounded flavour, Dijon is ok as a standby but I prefer German- or Jewish-style mustard. I once got stopped at Geneva airport because of the tubes of mustard (Swiss mi-fort mustard comes close) in my hand baggage. Apparently, if they'd let me through with the mustard I could have applied it to my body and blown the plane up. Confiscated. But all this is another subject...

Back to supermarkets: Somerfields in Greenwich used to sell German mustard. They stopped. Sainsburys used to do an own-brand German-syle version. They stopped. Tescos in Surrey Quays used to sell a German mustard until a couple of years ago. They stopped. I've all but given up now, though I now tend to cycle to Waitrose in Beckenham just to buy their Tewkesbury mustard, which is usually a 10 mile journey. So I tend to buy 2 jars at a time. (Ok, I could go the the nearer Canary Wharf Waitrose, but that wouldn't be as much fun.)

And sometimes I just stop at any old supermarket on the return leg of a little ride. Just before Christmas I stopped at ASDA at Charlton. Now, there's absolutely no chance of getting decent mustard there - but there are also no hills or stairs before I get to the foot of my incontournable 67 stairs at home. Anyhow, having previously looked around in vain for a proper place to lock the bike and noting that their customers are generally the fattest I have ever seen - I decided to avail myself of the camera I had with me for evidence of their lack of facilities. So I took this one, because although the railing is not meant for bikes, it's all I'd ever seen.And then I set off round the corner where I'd seen a sign for motorbike parking and a very tidy smoking shed but nothing for cyclists. And I took 2 pics of that. However, some ASDroid having a ciggie took exception to me taking photos. He emerged from the shed and informed me that ASDA do not allow photos to be taken of ASDA facilities (OR LACK OF) or of ASDroids. Not being interested in the photo that he could conceivably have been identified in, I deleted it in front of him. I then told him that I was taking photos of ASDA facilities (LACK OF) and that if he wanted me to delete the previous photo he'd have to restrain me and call the police. At this point, he got out his phone out to call the police.

So I said, ''Are you going to restrain me?''
''No,'' was the reply.
''Oh well, I'll be on my way, then.''

And on my way I went. Here's the photo:So, scanning from right to left, there's a Disabled Parking sign with another sign attached ''Strictly no parking....Emergency Vehicles Only.'' Accompanied by strictly parked vehicles. Then there's the smoking shelter. Then there's the motorbike sign. And finally I discovered ASDA's bike facilities: a row of ''wheel benders'' beneath the motorbike sign. Note that they're being used in direct proportion to their utility. No one knows they are there and no one will ever use them - but they're not there to be used, are they?

Strange, if you go to the ASDA website, they have lots of stuff on how open they are - they even have a webcam of people wandering around the foyer of ASDA house, they have nothing, NOTHING at all about not allowing photos and menacing customers with calling the police for testing that much-vaunted openness.

Window into Asda

Openness and access - we don't want to do everything "behind closed doors"

Oh, well, there's another store on my ever-growing veto list. Come and get me, ASDA!

Writing on the wall

Here's a little seasonal graffiti from behind Telegraph Hill - I'm not quite sure where it is really - it's not quite New Cross, not quite Brockley and not quite Nunhead either. (Foxwell Street) Is it just me or should the 'Xmas has come' bit be underneath?

And here's some slightly older wall writing...it's fairly well known because it's still in pretty good condition
4/- is 20p in modern money. Paying back £40 at 20p a week must have taken forever. (Clarendon Rise, SE13)So what would happen if I asked for Daren Bread? (Or, considering it's been repainted ''askask for Daren Bread''). This one is on Avignon Road, SE4 - or is it SE14? - and I do not recall ever knowing that it was there even though I went to school just 100 yards up the road. A lot of the streets in this area were built by the Haberdashers' Company and many of the end houses still bear the metal plaques. Maybe it's Hatcham....

It's an almost old-fashioned area - a little removed from any major shopping centre, there are still a good number of corner shops/off licences that have survived where many others in London have been converted back into housing. And there are also a fair number of car repairs places still surviving even though it's a mostly quiet residential area.


To judge by the old garage sign on the house wall there has been a garage here for some time. Just below the M.O.T. sign on the house front, there is a small Haberdashers' Company plaque painted over in white.