Bermondsey Bletherings

Sometimes, there is so much to do in London that just thinking about what is possible sends me into a flat spin. Tuesday morning was a bit like that. I almost left the boat several times and then changed my mind about where I was going. In the end I decided to just leave and see where my feet took me.

After lunch I wandered up into Canary Wharf, past Billingsgate Fish Market. I keep meaning to go and explore Billingsgate but it is a very early morning type of place and as we have established, I am not a very early morning sort of person. I have heard that there is a magnificent cafe there where you can get a bacon and scallop butty that people wax lyrical about. I’m curious to try it, but not curious enough to get up at sparrow fart.

It’s the UK’s largest inland fish market. It’s a thirteen acre site that handles 25,000 tonnes of fish every year. When we moved here, I did wonder whether the smell might be a problem. I am delighted to say that most days we are not challenged by the denizens of the deep that wash up there. The main olfactory assaults come from when the wind blows the wrong way from the tip opposite the Greenwich Peninsula.

Tuesday afternoon was one of the rare times when Billingsgate was being a bit punchy. Everything smelled quite fiercely kipperish, and in the warmth of the afternoon sun it was chunking up nicely. It did incentivise me to be more decisive about where to go. Anywhere that wasn’t wrapped in a miasma of smoked fish seemed desirable.

Walking through Canary Wharf, the weather started closing in. Looking up, you could see the clouds massing and the sky turning an interesting gunmetal shade. Looking ahead, you could see that reflected in all the glass. Some days it looks like the purpose of the buildings is to bend the weather like it’s hinged. You could do some serious magic in that place. Reflections on reflections are powerful things.

I ducked into the tube station and took the Jubilee Line to Bermondsey, coming up into a squall of rain that nearly turned a small dog inside out. Undeterred by rain and beast, I set forth. For the first half an hour I just puttered around the nearby streets, enjoying seeing what Bermondsey was up to. It is such an interesting area and really showcases all of the things that I love about walking round London.

It’s not the Flash Harry stuff that I love best. It’s the nonchalance with which London wears its history that excites me most. Take Old Jamaica Road, which I just happened to wander down. Originally the site of a 17th century pleasure garden called Cherry Garden, immortalised by that cheese loving, sex pest Samuel Pepys, it is thought to have changed to Jamaica Road in the 1860s. That marked the time Jamaica was taken over by the British and its produce started appearing along the London docks.

Later, it went from a place where you could have a good time, to a place where you ended up living when you had fallen on hard times. During WWII, much of the area was bombed out, and what stands there now is a mix of what survived and what was redeveloped after the war. It became Old Jamaica Road when new roadworks meant Jamaica Road was upgraded to a dual carriageway, which now runs parallel to its old, namesake. That’s a lot of history to pack into one, short road.

Walking along it now, blocks of modern flats mix with buildings from all periods of its history that miraculously survived the war and the vagaries of council planners. Opposite the fake Tudor half timbers of what was the Lilliput Hall pub is the imposing memorial to the 22nd Battalion London Regiment. Railway arches march into the distance on the other side of the road, micro breweries and car respraying businesses mix with the hipster cool of Bone Daddies ramen bar. All of life is here and I love it.

Walking under the railway bridge I started moving into the more fashionable parts of Bermondsey. Home to ironically named coffee joints, dachshund owners and the tall, shuttered town houses that once housed dispossessed Huguenot weavers and now houses art gallery owners and the edgier city whizz kids. I mock it, but I'd move there at the sniff of a Farrow and Ball painted shutter if I had the means.

I dropped in at White Cube to see the Julie Mehretu exhibition, They departed for their own country another way. More of which anon. I did see Jay Jopling in there, giving a personal tour to a man who looked like a squashed version of Peter Stringfellow. I have no idea who he was, but he clearly had enough clout to get Jay Jopling to talk to him about painting. Further down the road I popped in to Peter Layton’s London Glassblowing studio and saw an exhibition by glass artist, Tim Rawlings called Sculpting Light. I finished up with a trip to the Eames Fine Art to look at an exhibition of works by Norman Ackroyd. It was a satisfyingly artistic afternoon. I came away feeling rich and none of it cost me a penny.

I did think about going to the Fashion and Textile Museum, because it is on the same street as the other galleries. They have an exhibition called The Fabric of Democracy on at the moment, showing political textiles from the French Revolution to Brexit. It looks excellent. I decided it needed a visit in its own right rather than as an afterthought. My head was so full up of art at that point it was starting to leak out of my ears. Cake was needed, for grounding purposes and I walked up to Tower Bridge where I found an Ole and Steen and a place to perch by the river to eat one of their cinnamon socials, which is a cross between a vanilla Danish and a cinnamon bun. It is a thing of surpassing beauty.

By the time I’d finished I’d had enough of crowds of tourists barging into my path so they could take selfies. I scampered across Tower Bridge and dropped down to the Thames Path by St. Katherine’s Docks, walking home along the river. I love that in order to get home I just have to find the river and follow it. It feels like such an ancient solution, and such a right one.