One major advantage of being over 60 is the wonderful Freedom Pass that offers older people – and those with disabilities – free travel the length and breadth of London. Those who reached 60 before April 2010 got them automatically – but the threshold is being incrementally increased so that eventually you’ll need to be 65 to qualify. This upper age was originally going to be reached in 2020, but last year’s government spending review plans to bring it forward to 2018.
Before getting my Freedom Pass I had a standard Oystercard with auto topup – itself a brilliantly hassle-free way of getting around the capital. Since I’m still in gainful fulltime employment, it was morally a tad dubious to take up this chance of free subsidised travel. So by way of a sop to my conscience, my old Oystercard has passed to an old friend in straitened circumstances whose travel around London I now pay for instead of my own.
After all, as that fine songwriter TV Smith (formerly of The Adverts) once put it – and as I well remember from signing on in the 70s – it’s expensive being poor.
TV Smith. Photo by Tales from Bradistan
Pic: taken with Instagram
A team of chuggers with collecting boxes emerging from the tube onto Oxford Street ready to take up their stations for yesterday evening’s rush hour.
Urban Dictionary‘s top definition of “chugger” is scathing:
Paid “charity” street worker (read: student) who has been trained to believe they are improving peoples’ lives by conning Joe Public out of their money for this week’s Good Cause. Usually an agency worker – where the agency takes a hefty cut of the hourly rate the charity in question has paid for – while at the same time selling on details of those foolish enough to actually stop and sign up to said Good Cause. If you really want to support a charity, do it through their website, not a chugger.
Wikipedia is more balanced:
Paid street fundraisers are sometimes known as chuggers because usually fundraising is viewed as aggressive or invasive – a portmanteau of “charity” and “mugger”. It became popular after negative articles appeared in several British newspapers*. However, those in the charity sector see street fundraising as an invaluable method of raising brand awareness, and recruiting younger donors under the age of 35 who are “like gold-dust for a charity because they will give over a longer lifetime.”
*the term first appeared in print in the free London newspaper Metro in its SAY WHAT [New Words Around Town] column by Keith Barker-Main on 26 June 2002.
Pic taken with Instagram
Threw back the curtains on a Winter Wonderland this morning: the overnight snow had settled on trees and bushes in neighbouring gardens, though it was already melting on the pavements.
Pic taken with Instagram
After a long-overdue haircut from barber Chris Loizou in Southfields, headed up the road to catch the tube into work, where “a normal service” was “operating on the District Line” according to the station announcer.
Though most of the snow had gone, an arctic wind was still sweeping the length of the platform – while the indicator boards simply said “District Line” with no train expected – presumably that’s what they mean by “a normal service”.
When the train finally came I took a picture out of sheer relief.
The tube station at Balham received a direct hit during the London Blitz at 8:02pm on 14 October 1940 killing 68 people.
Nick Cooper’s London Underground at War blog has a comprehensive account of the aftermath drawn from official sources, together with a series of vivid photos. This shot of the Northbound platform shows the platform clock, stopped at the moment the bomb exploded:
“At 20:02, a 1,400 kg semi-armour piercing bomb struck the road surface on Balham High Road, just north of Balham Northern line station. Penetrating deeply before detonating, the bomb then exploded, causing a massive crater on the surface, whilst simultaneously breaching the northern end of the north-bound platform tunnel. The bomb landed only a few yards in front of a northbound number 88 bus, and the driver was powerless to prevent his vehicle crashing into the crater…” [read more]
Taken with Instagram
Anxious looking tourists sit down on the Northern Line tube at Waterloo, hoping they’re on the right train. They got out again at Leicester Square looking pleased and relieved…
In October 1967 I saw blues guitarist
Freddie King perform here with
Chicken Shack - who were both his opening act and backing band. Freddie himself is long dead - killed by a heart attack in 1976 according to Wikipedia at the age of 42. Chicken Shack continues to this day, fronted as ever by guitarist
Stan Webb. Their keyboard player back in 1967 was
Christine Perfect, who subsequently married
John McVie, joined
Fleetwood Mac and moved to LA in the early 70s. The rest is legend.
The gig was rammed and took place in the upstairs room at the
Manor House pub - after which the nearby tube station was named. Today, a sign is offering that first floor venue on leasehold as a standalone nightclub. It was something of a shock to see that the main pub premises is now a
CostCutter supermarket. Similar oblivion has overtaken nearly all the other legendary
London venues of the 1960s -
the Marquee,
Speakeasy,
Scotch of St James,
Crawdaddy,
Bag o’ Nails…
Even the last survivor - the venerable
100 Club, slap bang in the heart of central London - has only just been reprieved thanks to a last minute intervention by
Sir Paul Macca. It makes me wonder whether there’ll be similar campaigns to save the
Camden Barfly,
Lexington,
Buffalo Bar,
93 Feet East,
Dublin Castle and
The Old Blue Last in another 40 years’ time, fronted by the likes of
Sir Mike Skinner or
Sir Pete Doherty.
We’ll never know. Well, you might - but I won't.
Like the magnificent Freddie, I’ll very definitely have left the building by then...
