I love the old and fleeting bits of London we regularly pass in the bus. We are often moving too fast to take a still shot, and even when we do sometimes manage to get the camera at the ready the window is smudged, or the sun is in the wrong place, but sometimes some of them work out.
I love faded signs on the sides of old buildings. Sometime I am going to have to find time to research some of these buildings and check out their tales: why they came to be there in the first place. And while some are simply advertising, the sign writing itself is such an art form, and we are losing it: it is lovely to see the many faded shades.
Street art, too, is changing: so quickly it is like the seasons. What was once disparagingly called graffiti is evolving, and now, some serious thinking artists are making excellent money from street art. Some London suburbs are more beautiful because of it: the works added to ugly old fences in Tooting, for example, encourage folk to stop and spend time in front of them, as in a gallery.
Springtime is just as fleeting in London. Flowers have been bursting out one day and blowing, like confetti, the next. The footpaths in our street have been a carpet of pink and white petals for days. As fast as one blossom falls another flowers. Now the paths in the Fulham cemetery are pretty in a deeper pink. Perfect, at the moment. Not a blemish. Next week they will be gone. In the same church yard there is a tiny de-consecrated church. A gem. Tucked away in a cemetery it is likely safe for a while, but needs to find a purpose to continue to exist: someone to love it enough to maintain it.
Architecture that celebrates detail is now rare and lovely. In this minimalist world where things are all glass and steel and smooth clean lines beautiful old pubs stand out. The stylis bricks of the bus terminus in the motley suburb of Micham, are simple but beautiful. As is the library in Tooting. Its portico is gorgeous, shading a couple of bag folk who live on street benches to one side: all their worldly possessions gathered close.
We visit Tooting for the Indian food and the sheer joy of photographing the busy street bustle. It is becoming a regular trek for us. And the food is magnificent. Here we eat delicious cashew nut pakoda and mysore masala dose before they, too, are gone forever from menus.
The season itself is so fleeting it is hard to capture. It is early April; the weather has been like summer. The parks we can see from the busses are literally filled with people basking in the sun on this shiny Sunday.
And we have caught some phenomenal old street lights. Parts of London still look as though a lamplighter will call soon with his ladder, his wick and his whale oil, coaxing a light. Or, in Tooting, as if gas is still ready for the flame, even though these days the glow is likely an LED lamp. All over London these treasures are disappearing and what often replaces them has little charm at all.
Still the lights on Putney Bridge when we pass are magic. A whole row of them on each side of the bridge. They cast a soft smudge of murky light over the Thames at night: changing it, making it mysterious. It is all fleeting. Charming. Beautiful.
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