Sunday 3 May 2015

Tooting trivia

I share some trivia from a couple of recent visits to Tooting.

Started off the first visit by being irritated by a large Hiscox advertisement at Epsom Station, an advertisement featuring a large hamburger and which seemed to me to be a celebration of greed. Oddly, while google has lots of Hiscox (see reference 2) advertising images it does not have this one. Did I make a mistake? Must check at next visit.

Then there was a loud young man with his telephone, who kept it up all the way to Earlsfield, where I got off. And a young lady who frequently said 'pudden' for 'pardon' and clearly thought that her friend should call in sick rather than arrive late at work, her upcoming flight into Heathrow being slightly awkwardly timed. To think that I probably took quite a lot less than forty days sick leave in forty years at work.

Down Garrett Lane and past the nearly redeveloped  Deepak site, more or less opposite the redeveloped Fountain site - with there being no further movement on this last since my last visit, beyond deciding that the pillar was probably cracked by a vehicle crashing into at some point, not an engineering failure at all. See reference 1. There are several more large retail units in the bottom of what was Deepak, so will Mr. Deepak restore his once thriving store, notable for cheap booze and sacks of dry goods such as rice? Will the new units stay empty as long as the corner shops in what was 'The Fountain'?

A couple of scrawny affordables with a brace of shiny & fit looking fighting dogs. Were they drug dealers? Were they walking the dogs for their drug dealers? Were they just trying to buy into the status & respect afforded to such people? Hard to think of any better reason for wanting to buy such an animal.

And so to Wetherspoons to find that the team there has been improved by a couple of pretty young Bulgarian sisters. They must be fairly fresh off the boat as, despite their good English, they were far too cheerful, not yet worn down by the soaks of Tooting. I am pleased to say that I managed to work out where Bulgaria was before my sister got back with my change. Close run thing, but I managed it.

Entertainment continued by a couple at the next table at their Friday fish deal. The wife was eating her fish deal, while the husband was listening to his phone, talking to her and dipping the odd chip in some of the goo provided. I didn't get to see whether he ever ate what must have been his cold fish. To think that Wetherspoons are usually better at fried fish than baked chips.

An inconclusive debate on the motion that 'this house believes that the fact that the UK as a whole is running at a stonking great loss and is heading for bankruptcy is more important than the fact that, within the UK, the top quarter is stuffing the bottom three quarters'.

Then there was the cheerfully mult-racial bus back to Earlsfield with cute small children providing entertainment for all, particularly one very small boy feeding his slightly older brother his biscuits.

On the first return to Earlsfield, I scored no aeroplanes because the sun was setting right over Heathrow, making checking anything out in that direction impossible. How on earth do the pilots manage - hand the whole business over to their computers? Then on the second, I was defeated by a combination of low cloud, leaves on trees obscuring lines of sight and light. This last meaning that the aeroplanes were not illuminated against a dark sky, which is easy on the older eye.

Alternative entertainment was provided by a magpie busy over a nest, with much jabbing movement of the head. I decided that the magpie was feeding its own young, rather than feeding on someone else's.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/the-library.html.

Reference 2: http://www.hiscox.co.uk/.

PS: judging by the Bulgarian pictures offered by google, yet another interesting looking place which I am not going to get to visit.

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