Snippets from the South Bank

Double rainbows on the Thames. 

When I used to go to London to stay with my friends R & G in their Walnut Tree Walk home, I would leave their black front door and turn right. It would take me to the river, close to Lambeth Palace and the start of the wide pavement,  that follows the river from bridge to bridge until I ended up at  Southwark Cathedral.
In foul weather or fair, it was an unhurried walk away from the streets with their taxis and buses and delivery boys on motorbikes. The fastest vehicles were the boats in the Thames and nobody knew where they were going. When the tide was very low, one could climb down stone steps to the small banks of sand that would appear on the southside. Pure Dickens. Looking for the un-named bodies of Our Mutual Friends.
As I passed by Westminster Bridge ( 1862) I could see the landing platforms, presumably for Henry VIII to scold Thomas Moore, at the Palace of Westminster, I would pass by the old Shell Building, which is no longer owned by Shell and is now dwarfed by the largest of Ferris Wheels, called the Eye.
I would have seen the buildings that we always believed housed the secret Service on the back side of Whitehall and walk under the Hungerford Bridge  (1864) which carries the trains out of Charing Cross. I could see the Savoy with it's distinctive stepped roof and tell the time by it's clock before I espy Waterloo Bridge (1945)  and the shape of Somerset House on the northbank which used to house all the records of all the people born or died in the British Isles.
On the south bank is the festival Hall, built I think in the 50's and the Hayward gallery, not known so much for the art in it's galleries, but the skateboarders who have created a kingdom in it's concrete underbelly and covered it's walls in graffiti art.
Literally under Waterloo Bridge, is the BFI and it's weekend book sellers with their thousands of Used books.

hip hop dancing outside the National Theatre

Breakfast at the BFI with David

And then, be still my beating heart, there is the National Theatre with it's red shed, built to hold shows whilst the smallest of it's three theaters was out of action and now it just sits there. It is concrete, it is ugly, but sitting in it's purple seats have given me some of the thrills that have made my life so good. .
and all along this section there are pieces of the limestone pavement that have poems inscribed into  them.

Glide gently, thus forever glide,
O Thames! That other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! Come to me.
O, glide, fair stream! Forever so
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds forever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.

William Wordsworth
Remembrance of Collins

On the north there is the old Guildhall , the College of London, where my father went to school.Before he got evacuated to Marlborough, before he lied about his age and got into the RAF. (But that is another story)  Both ancient and red brick. There is the red paint on the Blackfriars bridge ( 1869), and the modern station they have now built alongside,that spans the entire river.

blackfriars bridge

 I would have walked by the New Tate and seen the small pockets of Silver Birches that feel like they belong in a Chekov play. The Oxo tower and the millennium Bridge, ( 2002)  where I would have been able to have had a clear view through to St Pauls Cathedral. The most unlikely survivor of the Blitz Bombing. The millennium bridge that was opened by the Queen and after she walked across it they promptly closed it down because it was deemed unsafe. Oh the beheadings at might have ensued if she had tipped into the Thames.
 On the right there are the start of the tall wharf houses and the sight of the odd glass structures of the new City behind them. And on the right the Globe Theatre taking me down to the green and yellow bridge of Southwark. And the Cathedral tucked in beside it. Where Shakespeare is buried.
God bless his wordy soul.

Southwark Bridge