Walking on Lavender Hill

“I commute into Clapham Junction everyday. My office is a twenty minute walk up Lavender Hill and Wandsworth Road.”

— Tim Robson - Bang The Beat!

Lavender...

The word lavender conjures up those sun drenched, hazy fields of Provence. Or perhaps some choppy, warm-toned, Impressionist masterpiece. Or is it a section of a busy thoroughfare in South Central London? Yes, it’s probably the latter. For years this road, this feeling, was my beat.

One thing you won’t find much of on Lavender Hill is, well, lavender. Maybe some discarded pizza boxes, plenty of rubbish strewn waste bags, an upturned supermarket trolley or a decaying Christmas tree thrown onto the street. But not much lavender. The shrub that gave this area its name has gone. Long gone.

The green fields of Lavender Hill. Picture TR

My entrance and exit point to this urban dreamscape is Clapham Junction railway station. Not sure what a junction is, but as to the Clapham part, well, that’s a little bit of historical postcode snobbery. A fib. It’s in Battersea. And Battersea is working class. Full of engineering and manufacturing works back in the day. Less so now. Maybe we could rename it Lavender Junction? Help shift those new million pound apartments, no?

There’s a pub. There’s always a pub, isn’t there? The Falcon is pretty special though. One of those big pubs you only get in London. The ones dripping with large baskets of flowers, partitioned rooms and back lit smoky glass. This one sports a famous horseshoe bar (the UK’s longest apparently). I don’t drink there though – nor the Slug and Lettuce next door. However, the facilities are unguarded and handy so I was pretty much a regular.

The Falcon. Piss stop.

So up we go, up Lavender Hill, ambling wistfully through these London fields. Past the retail splendour of Arding and Hobbs, sprinting past Fitness First, KFC and numerous Lebara money transfer shops where bored staff sell cheap booze and fags, whilst conducting mobile phone conversations that sound important, but probably aren't.

There was a girl once. There's always a girl, behind the memories, driving the words. We were students at South Bank University further up the A3036 on Wandsworth Road. The campus is now closed and converted into a Tesco Express and Pure Gym. I used to catch the Number 87 bus down Lavender Hill to Clapham Junction. If I was more observant, as I sat on the bus all those years ago, I would have noticed a local oddity – a genuine London eatery – the Pie and Mash shop. The historian and the Englander within me likes the fact that this relic of old London, of its working class eating habits, is still there. I like that. I’m a fan; pie and mash and gravy for £4. Treacle Pudding and ice cream or spotted dick for £3. I don’t go near the eels or the liquor (eel and parsley sauce). It's cheering though to know nestling amidst the numerous Thai, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and assorted other restaurants there is an authentic London eatery. But for how long?

Eels. Jellied. Yum.

Continuing on we get Battersea Library, the police station but, most wonderfully (and where most of the drivel on this website was written) the Grade 2 listed building that used to be Battersea town hall but now doubles as Battersea Arts Centre. They used to build beauty, those Victorians, you know, put the effort in, and make buildings things of wonder and aspiration.

“Kate and I are meeting in Battersea Arts Centre. I’m late. I scan the bar. At a corner table is a woman who bears a passing resemblance to Kate’s online dating profile.”

— Tim Robson: The Bottle and the Sock

However, money was always an issue, even in the 1880’s. None more so than The Church of the Ascension, a big, bold - God is terrible, God is almighty, repent ye sinners - church at the top of the hill. It’s a massive stone structure with Byzantine influences by way of Carcassonne. It should have been adorned with an equally gigantic phallic tower but the original architect pissed the money away, was eventually sacked and so he church was completed sans spire. Nerdishly, I own a copy of the original architectural plans from 1875 and framed, they adorn my living room.

French / Byzantine architecture meets Victorian brick shit-house, muscular Anglicanism.

“There’s a tramp whose regular perch is the low surrounding wall of the Ascension of the Lord Church on Lavender Hill. Kicking back with his can of strong lager, he likes to shout abuse at the passing world. His favourite trick is surprise; hunched harmlessly over his carrier bag one minute, and then, as though roused from sleep, pouncing like a lion the next.”

— Tim Robson - About Twenty Minutes

And then we're walking downhill. Go past - hurry! - The Crown pub. One time, as I was leaving, I witnessed some ritualised urban ballet as two drug dealers squared off to each other out on the street. Held back by their various women folk screaming, "Leave it out Jon, he's not worth it!" I waited for my Uber to take me to the station as the performance played out. Don't know who won. It's probably on YouTube somewhere.

This eastern part of Lavender Hill is all shit council flats and massed ranks of mopeds parked on the pavement outside nondescript takeaways. Let me explain lest you live in a town where cuisine laziness hasn't yet set in. Every eatery on Lavender Hill - and there are many, so many - has a fleet of mopeds waiting to transport to the indolent, the obese, and the time poor banker-wankers, their genuine, wood fired Neapolitan pizzas. This, children, is what decadence looks like. Fight, fight, against the dying of the light and cook from scratch you lazy bastards!

“We continue walking down Lavender Hill keeping our own counsel. Once again, our pace is well matched and we walk together, three feet apart. As we near the old Cedar pub, she slows.”

— Tim Robson: About Twenty Minutes

Lift up your eyes. There is beauty in the most unusual places.

There are many places on Lavender Hill that offer a 'massage'. Strangely they always want to massage - for extra, for cash only - those parts that don't often get massaged in - say - more mainstream establishments. Happy endings are promised. Not always delivered. I avert my eyes, clutch my pearls, lift up my skirts, and run from these places. 

(And that paragraph - about happy endings on Lavender Hill - still sends me significant traffic to this website. I’m guessing here, but there’s probably money to be made from adult activities.)

And so, after a mile or so, Lavender Hill finishes at Cedars Road and hands the A3036 baton over to Wandsworth Road in a fistful of Tesco Expresses, coffee shops and Premier Inns in old temperance halls. We are now entering Lambeth and our story must end here.

What happened to Battersea? Abolished in 1965, apparently.

And so where does all this take us? An old London Street. Full of Victorian buildings. What signifies?

“And with clear, cold eyes
And newly acquired candour,
I sift these departing delusions;”

— Tim Robson - Delusions

Well, everything. And nothing. From the confident Victorian public buildings, to the sturdy 19th Century housing for the workers, to the bold and confident Anglicanism. To the many, many cultures that have taken root here, left their mark on the shops, restaurants, through even the pizza delivery boys that criss-cross unknowing across this urban thoroughfare. To the pubs, open and closed, converted or renovated, silently bearing witness to wars and coronations, disasters and triumphs. History shines through, hiding amongst these stones, these relics, peeping shyly from under the brim of modernity. The breath of London, old London, still blows gently in this cityscape. And if you look hard enough, you will find some lavender. Yes, even on Lavender Hill.

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Lavender. On Lavender Hill

All pictures of Lavender Hill, Tim Robson February 2017. Article revised April 2020

The Battle of East Croydon

The following is an excerpt from the diaries of The Unknown Commuter, who fought in the legendary Battle of East Croydon. He's currently believed to be somewhere between Clapham Junction and Brighton waiting for a train. The reader is advised that the recollection includes strong opinions expressed robustly.

"Rail chaos. Where am I? My 17:52 from Clapham Junction has just been cancelled. Cancelled because too many drivers and conductors pulled a sickie. Because they can’t be bothered calling a real strike and therefore lose pay. So they do this low-down not turn up trick.

The petulant bosses cancel trains at the last minute. Twelve car coaches are reduced to four. When they turn up. Standing next to some git's armpit listening to techno leaking noisily from his headphones. Wanker.

So I stop off at the pub outside the station. And have a pint. Hope the chaos has died down. My train app says the train is now on time. Run to the station. Go on the platform. My train has been delayed. Doesn’t even merit a revised time. Just delayed. That is ominous. Okay, so no direct train. Recalibrate, so; if the 17:52 has been cancelled I’ll take whatever goes to East Croydon – they all go to East Croydon – and take my chances there. I jump on the first train arriving at my platform. Travellers swirl around the opened doors. No one tries for a seat – just to get on and then find somewhere to lean that’s not on a fellow passenger. Somewhere to hold on.

The train, almost deliberately, crawls to East Croydon. I mean, I could walk faster than this fucker. It must know there are whispered reports of mythical connecting train that will take me home. Leaving in ten minutes from East Croydon. So my train goes slow. Very slow. Stops at Purley and just chills for ten minutes. The conductor says something about there being congestion which means we’ve missed our slot to get into East Croydon. Fucking comedian. They’ve cancelled half the bloody trains! What congestion can there possibly be? Congestion at the bar in the striking drivers local, perhaps?

A feeling of bleak despair grows in me as I keep checking the time. I know, yes, I know, I’ve missed my connection. Gone like the wind. Unlike every other train tonight, my connecting train will be promptitude itself. Arrive on time. Leave on time. Of course.

So I join the chaos at East Croydon looking for another way home. Need a piss. Hey – I’m at a railway station. Need a piss. I know there is nowhere to go. When did that happen? When I was younger, I can still remember - though it’s pictured in sepia - you could take a piss at railway stations. Where did they all go those public conveniences? Maybe it was too many junkies shooting up or too strangers giving each other hand jobs but toilets in stations disappeared. So now what we gonna do? Hold it in while we wait for some fantasy train that will take me home which has fantasy functioning toilets.

The platform signs are in on the great swindle. Part of the con. Constantly changing, they show an ever changing landscape of fuck ups. Seasoned travellers, world weary and pissed off, stand up the stairs ready to run wherever directed. Just cause a train to the South coast is always on platform 2 or 3 doesn’t mean they won’t pull a surprise on you last minute. Platform 5! Leaving now. Run plebs! Too late.

So I stand on the concourse. Bladder full to fuck, ready to run, run wherever the electronic scoreboard predicts a train going my direction might be. Flashed up – it will arrive in ten minutes on platform 3. We all run down there jostling for space, for a place. Then the platform scoreboard flashes up that this train has been cancelled. Lots of shouts and swearing. Some of us go back up again. The scoreboard upstairs still says the cancelled train will arrive, er, well, about three minutes ago.

The station announcer employs a world-weary voice. Fed a diet of bullshit and nonsense by the train companies he reads out the ever changing deployment of fantasy trains he knows won’t make it. His bosses just want us off their platform, out of their station. Pass the problem further down the line. Get East Croydon passenger free, demob the mob on someone else’s patch. So they get the announcer to try and parse our journeys – push us to smaller stations with promises of legendary connecting trains. Some fall for it. We see them hours later, mournfully sat at Balcombe or Three Bridges helplessly watching the non-stopping Brighton trains pass them by. Idiots. Novices!

As to my own train, it’s now got a time, eight minutes hence on Platform 3. Hang on. No, it’s now twelve minutes away. No it’s cancelled. No it’s just late the announcer says. Might be at Clapham Junction. Might be further ahead. Who knows. Information is power.

Silently, below us on platform 2, a train pulls in unannounced. Suspicious, some passengers edge towards that platform. I hear a shout – it’s our train – just as the announcer tells us that it is indeed the train we want but it is now getting ready to depart. Shouts and swearing as three hundred people rush towards platform 2. Exactly ten seconds later an announcement says that we should move away from the doors as the train is preparing to leave.

Fuck off.

We rush the train, rush the doors, the rail people on the platform tells us to move away but we’re an unstoppable, feral force of nature. They’re concentration camp guards, and collaborators. Fuck off. To the sword with them!

We storm the train. Push the guy with the folded bike out the way, edge past the confused old couple who had a day’s shopping in London and now rather wish they didn’t. The seats are all taken. Naturally. So we’re packed in, standing, holding onto whatever we can. The LCD sign in the carriage boldly displays that we will be going back up to London Victoria – the wrong way FFS. Can’t these monkeys get anything right? The conductor comes over the tannoy and announces that we should stay away from the doors. Cheers mate, but where are we actually going? This way or that? Not until the doors have shut and we start to crawl away – packed, overweight, angry – and it’s too late to change – does the conductor announce that this train is indeed going south.

And we crawl there. Two toilets out of three are out of action. The one I go in looks blocked. I don’t care. Shut eyes and leave quickly.  Ah the relief. My station is announced. As I get off, tired, sweaty, battered, the station tannoy says that the 19:54 train to Brighton is ten minutes late. It’s taken me two hours of stress to get here. Should be fifty minutes.

Wankers. Truly wankers.

The battle begins anew tomorrow."

This repost from 2016 is dedicated to the morons who are striking all through December on South Western Trains. Tossers. 

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Lavender Hill

“I commute into Clapham Junction everyday. My office is a twenty minute walk up Lavender Hill and Wandsworth Road.”

— Tim Robson - Bang The Beat!

Lavender...

The word lavender conjures up the sun drenched, hazy fields of Provence. Or perhaps some choppy, warm-toned Impressionist masterpiece. Or it's a section of a busy thoroughfare in South Central London. Yes, it’s probably the latter.

One thing you won’t find much of on Lavender Hill is, well, lavender. Maybe some discarded pizza boxes, plenty of rubbish strewn waste bags, an upturned supermarket trolley or a decaying Christmas tree thrown onto the street. But not much lavender. The shrub that gave this area its name has gone. Long gone.

The green fields of Lavender Hill. Picture TR

My entrance and exit point to this urban dreamscape is Clapham Junction railway station. Not sure what a junction is, but as to the Clapham part, well, that’s a little bit of historical postcode snobbery. A fib. This is Battersea. Not Clapham, which is posh and a mile away. Battersea is working class. Engineering and manufacturing back in the day. Less so now. Maybe we could rename it Lavender Junction? Help shift those new million pound apartments, no?

There’s a pub. There’s always a pub, isn’t there? The Falcon is pretty special though. One of those big pubs you only get in London. The ones dripping with large baskets of flowers, partitioned rooms, and back lit smoky glass. This one sports a famous horseshoe bar (the UK’s longest apparently). I don’t drink there though – nor the Slug and Lettuce next door. However, the facilities are handy so I’m pretty much a regular.

The Falcon. Piss stop.

So up we go, up Lavender Hill, ambling wistfully through these London fields. Past the retail splendour of Arding and Hobbs, sprinting past Fitness First, KFC and numerous Lebara money transfer shops where bored staff sell cheap booze and fags, whilst conducting mobile phone conversations that sound important, but probably aren't.

There was a girl once. There's always a girl, behind the memories, driving the words. We were students at South Bank University on Wandsworth Road. I used to catch the Number 87 bus up and down Lavender Hill to Clapham Junction. If I was more observant, as I sat on the bus all those years ago, I would have noticed a local oddity – a genuine London eatery – the Pie and Mash shop. The historian in me likes the fact that this relic of old London, of its working class eating habits, is still there. I like that. But I don’t go in. Not a fan of eels unfortunately. But it's cheering to know it’s still there nestling amidst the numerous Thai, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and assorted restaurants.

Eels. Jellied. Yum.

Battersea Library, police station but, most wonderfully (and where this drivel is mostly written) the Grade 2 listed building that used to be Battersea town hall but now doubles as Battersea Arts Centre. They used to build beauty, those Victorians, put the effort in, make buildings things of wonder and aspiration.

“Kate and I are meeting in Battersea Arts Centre. I’m late. I scan the bar. At a corner table is a woman who bears a passing resemblance to Kate’s online dating profile.”

— Tim Robson: The Bottle and the Sock

However, money was always an issue, even in the 1880’s. None more so than The Church of the Ascension, a big, bold - God is terrible, God is almighty, repent ye sinners - church at the top of the hill. It’s a massive stone structure with Byzantine influences by way of Carcassonne. It should have been adorned with an equally gigantic phallic tower but the original architect pissed the money away, was sacked and the church was completed sans spire. Nerdishly, I own a copy of the original architectural plans from 1875.

French / Byzantine architecture meets Victorian brick shit-house, muscular Anglicanism.

“There’s a tramp whose regular perch is the low surrounding wall of the Ascension of the Lord Church on Lavender Hill. Kicking back with his can of strong lager, he likes to shout abuse at the passing world. His favourite trick is surprise; hunched harmlessly over his carrier bag one minute, and then, as though roused from sleep, pouncing like a lion the next.”

— Tim Robson - About Twenty Minutes

And then we're walking downhill. Go past - hurry! - The Crown pub. Last week, as I was leaving, I witnessed some ritualised urban ballet as two drug dealers squared off to each other out on the street. Held back by their various women folk screaming, "Leave it out Jon, he's not worth it!" I waited for my Uber to take me to the station as the performance played out. Don't know who won. It's probably on YouTube somewhere.

This part of Lavender Hill is all shit council flats and massed ranks of mopeds parked on the pavement outside nondescript takeaways. Let me explain lest you live in a town where cuisine laziness hasn't yet set in. Every eatery on Lavender Hill - and there are many, so many - has a fleet of mopeds waiting to take the indolent, the obese, the time poor banker-wankers, their genuine, wood fired Neapolitan pizzas. This, children, is what decadence looks like. Fight, fight, against the dying of the light and cook from scratch you lazy bastards!

“We continue walking down Lavender Hill keeping our own counsel. Once again, our pace is well matched and we walk together, three feet apart. As we near the old Cedar pub, she slows.”

— Tim Robson: About Twenty Minutes

Lift up your eyes. There is beauty in the most unusual places.

There are many places that offer a 'massage'. Strangely they always want to massage - for extra, for cash only - those parts that don't often get massaged in - say - more mainstream establishments. Happy endings are promised. Not always delivered. I avert my eyes, clutch my pearls, lift up my skirts, and run from these places. 

And so, after a mile or so, Lavender Hill finishes at Cedars Road and hands the A3036 baton over to Wandsworth Road in a fistful of Tesco Expresses, coffee shops and Premier Inns. We are now entering Lambeth and our story must end here.

What happened to Battersea? Abolished in 1965, apparently.

And so where does all this take us? An old London Street. Full of Victorian buildings. What signifies?

“And with clear, cold eyes
And newly acquired candour,
I sift these departing delusions;”

— Tim Robson - Delusions

Well, everything. And nothing. From the confident Victorian public buildings, to the sturdy 19th Century housing for the workers, to the bold and confident Anglicanism. To the many, many cultures that have taken root here, left their mark on the shops, restaurants, even the pizza delivery boys that criss-cross unknowing through this urban thoroughfare. To the pubs, open and closed, converted or renovated, silently bearing witness to wars and coronations, disasters and triumphs. History shines through, hiding amongst these stones, these relics, peeping shyly from under the brim of modernity. The breath of London, old London, still blows gently in this cityscape. And if you look hard enough, you will find some lavender. Yes, even on Lavender Hill.

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Lavender. On Lavender Hill

All pictures of Lavender Hill, Tim Robson February 2017

The Battle of East Croydon

The following is an excerpt from The Unknown Commuter, who fought in the legendary Battle of East Croydon, summer 2016. He's currently believed to be somewhere between Clapham Junction and Brighton waiting for a train. The reader is advised that the recollection includes strong opinions expressed robustly.

"Rail chaos. Where am I? My 17:52 from Clapham Junction has just been cancelled. Cancelled because too many drivers and conductors pulled a sickie. Because they can’t be bothered calling a real strike and lose money. So they do this low-down trick.

The petulant bosses cancel trains at the last minute. Twelve car coaches are reduced to four. When they turn up. Standing next to some git's armpit listening to his techno leaking from his headphones. Wanker.

So I stop off at the pub. And have a pint. Hope the chaos has died down. My train app says the train is on time. Run to the station. Go on the platform. My train has been delayed. Doesn’t even merit a revised time. Just delayed. That is ominous. Okay, so no direct train. Recalibrate, so; if the 17:52 has been cancelled I’ll take whatever goes to East Croydon – they all go to East Croydon – and take pot luck there. I jump on the first train arriving at my platform. Travellers swirl around the opened doors. No one tries for a seat – just to get on and then find somewhere to lean that’s not on a fellow passenger. Somewhere to hold on.

The train, almost deliberately, crawls to East Croydon. I mean, I could walk faster than this fucker. It must know there are whispered reports of mythical connecting train that will take me home. Leaving in ten minutes from East Croydon. So my train goes slow. Very slow. Stops at Purley and just chills for ten minutes. The conductor says something about there being congestion which means we’ve missed our slot to get into East Croydon. Fucking comedian. They’ve cancelled half the bloody trains? What congestion can there possibly be? Congestion at the bar in the striking drivers local, perhaps?

A feeling of bleak despair grows in me as I keep checking the time. I know, yes, I know, I’ve missed my connection. Gone like the wind. Unlike every other train tonight, my connecting train will be promptitude itself. Arrive on time. Leave on time. Of course.

So I join the chaos at East Croydon looking for another way home. Need a piss. Hey – I’m at a railway station. Need a piss. I know there is nowhere to go. When did that happen? When I was younger, I can still remember - though it’s pictured in sepia - you could take a piss at railway stations. Where did they all go to, those public conveniences? Maybe it was too many junkies shooting up or too strangers giving each other hand jobs but toilets in stations disappeared. So now what we gonna do? Hold it in while we wait for some fantasy train that will take me home which has fantasy functioning toilets.

The platform signs are in on the great swindle. Part of the con. Constantly changing, they show an ever changing landscape of fuck ups. Seasoned travellers, world weary and pissed off, stand up the stairs ready to run wherever directed. Just cause a train to the South coast is always on platform 2 or 3 doesn’t mean they won’t pull a surprise on you last minute. Platform 5! Leaving now. Run plebs! Too late.

So I stand on the concourse. Bladder full to fuck, ready to run, run wherever the electronic scoreboard predicts a train going my direction might be. Flashed up – it will arrive in ten minutes on platform 3. We all run down there jostling for space, for a place. Then the platform scoreboard flashes up that this train has been cancelled. Lots of shouts and swearing. Some of us go back up again. The scoreboard upstairs still says the cancelled train will arrive, er, well, about three minutes ago.

The station announcer employs a world-weary voice. Fed a diet of bullshit and nonsense by the train companies he reads out the ever changing deployment of fantasy trains he knows won’t make it. His bosses just want us off their platform, out of their station. Pass the problem further down the line. Get East Croydon passenger free, demob the mob on someone else’s patch. So they get the announcer to try and parse our journeys – push us to smaller stations with promises of legendary connecting trains. Some fall for it. We see them hours later, mournfully sat at Balcombe or Three Bridges helplessly watching the non-stopping Brighton trains pass them by. Idiots. Novices!

As to my own train, it’s now got a time, eight minutes hence on Platform 3. Hang on. No, it’s now twelve minutes away. No it’s cancelled. No it’s just late the announcer says. Might be at Clapham Junction. Might be further ahead. Who knows. Information is power.

Silently, below us on platform 2, a train pulls in unannounced. Suspicious, some passengers edge towards that platform. I hear a shout – it’s our train – just as the announcer tells us that it is indeed the train we want but it is now getting ready to depart. Shouts and swearing as three hundred people rush towards platform 2. Exactly ten seconds later an announcement says that we should move away from the doors as the train is preparing to leave.

Fuck off.

We rush the train, rush the doors, the rail people on the platform tells us to move away but we’re an unstoppable, feral force of nature. They’re concentration camp guards, and collaborators. Fuck off. To the sword with them!

We storm the train. Push the guy with the folded bike out the way, edge past the confused old couple who had a day’s shopping in London and now rather wish they didn’t. The seats are all taken. Naturally. So we’re packed in, standing, holding onto whatever we can. The LCD sign in the carriage boldly displays that we will be going back up to London Victoria – the wrong way FFS. Can’t these monkeys get anything right? The conductor comes over the tannoy and announces that we should stay away from the doors. Cheers mate, but where are we actually going? This way or that? Not until the doors have shut and we start to crawl away – packed, overweight, angry – and it’s too late to change – does the conductor announce that this train is indeed going south.

And we crawl there. Two toilets out of three are out of action. The one I go in looks blocked. I don’t care. Shut eyes and leave quickly.  Ah the relief. My station is announced. As I get off, tired, sweaty, battered, the station tannoy says that the 19:54 train to Brighton is ten minutes late. It’s taken me two hours of stress to get here. Should be fifty minutes.

Wankers. Truly wankers.

The battle begins anew tomorrow."

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