General Gordon Square[i], Woolwich, looking approximately south west, Jan 2nd 2025
Last night it rained in Heysham after what seemed months without water and the scent of rain gusting through the house was intensely refreshing. How much of such an impression is psychological is hard to say, but if this spring so far is, according to the Met Office, ranking as the driest “in over a century”, there must be more to it than feverish imagination.
Wellington Street, Rectory Place, New Year sun 2nd Jan 2025
Back in the winter, only days after my daughter and I took bus route 53 from Plumstead to Central London[ii], we were enthusiastic to repeat the experience. One huge psychological difference was that it was now the 2nd January rather than the “fag end”[iii] of 2024. Also, it was a bright sunny day – a misleadingly optimistic herald to a New Year.
Phantom streets above New Cross Station
Marking the turn of the year, naming the months, dividing the annual cycle into seasons and so on . . . however arbitrary, hollow or pragmatic this traditional practice remains, it appears inescapably engrained. Consciously or not, most of us are influenced. While the process obviously has its uses, it also illustrates a natural tendency to conjure significance where perhaps none exists?
New Cross Gate, 2nd January 2025
“Bugger Auld Lang Syne”[iv] I recall a drunken relative shambling when I was a kid, as though “Auld Langsie” was an irritating, blindly authoritarian judge determined to spoil his fun. Did this help lay the bedrock of my sense that New Year is essentially a non-event?
On the Old Kent Road, I think, 2nd January 2025
However much New Year as a celebration, is even more pointless than other such festivals, my entrenched tendency towards hope, encouraged by the strong sunlight, by-passed all such thoughts – not even caring that it was already the 2nd of January.
East Street, 2nd Jan 2025 – bus window befogged
I remember our second trip on route 53 as though we managed to get organized and set off early – and the low sun striking the buildings assisted all afternoon to encourage this impression. Perhaps that’s what’s so powerfully affecting about bright winter days? That the light stays so low that it continues to look and feel like early morning. The whole day remains filled with potential . . . until the sun starts to set.
The Old Vic, The Cut, Waterloo[v], 2nd January 2025
The degree to which vast tracts of non-central London still give off the atmosphere of earlier eras, can be exhilarating. Limehouse, Deptford, Bethnal Green, Bow, Bricklayers Arms and the Old Kent Road – you (or I, anyway) could explore such areas forever and never get bored. Even the murky weather during the “fag end” of 2024, couldn’t drain the exponential mental expansion of atmosphere.
Surrounded by buildings on the Waterloo Road, twilight rushes closer . . .
I would not have said that this ability – and wish – to expand into the past or rather to allow it to seep through the fabric of 21st Century ‘reality’, was nostalgic. Evidently, nostalgia (dictionary: “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past”) means different things to different people and cultural groups, but for me the sentimental aspect is entirely absent. Meanwhile, to oppose the recklessly aggressive, stupidly short-sighted and doggedly cynical direction of the inadvertent modern world, is hardly reactionary.
Decorated Brutalism: The Hayward Gallery, Waterloo Bridge, 2nd January 2025
While moving, my fascination with fleeting impressions – a kaleidoscope of present, past and future, history and imagination – can be so powerful that it wipes out the desire for a fixed home, as well as any anxiety regarding the rapidly accelerating human decline. To extend the ‘past’ into some kind of ‘future’ in the closing ‘present’ may be the nearest it’s possible to get, to escaping time’s enforced linear narrative.
Waterloo Sunset, 2nd Jan 2025
Inevitably, sunset on Waterloo Bridge brings to mind Waterloo Sunset[vi] by the Kinks. Even my 14-year-old daughter made the connection without prompting. The potential of the day was closing and in the centre of the bridge there was a chilling wind.
But I don’t feel afraid
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise
Ray Davies has said quite a few contradictory things[vii] about his song, all of which are interesting to read – particularly because, while embodying them all, the song itself can also escape them all.
The Walrus, Westminster Bridge Road under the railway, 2nd Jan 2025
By the time we reached the Strand it was dark and the day’s potential was replaced by the night’s lights – particularly exciting in my daughter’s eyes. The centre and the famous landmarks mean much more to her than my preferred “messy” suburbs, and we reversed part of our walk of a few days earlier, back in the old year, to Trafalgar Square and a cold picnic near the more westerly of the Jellicoe and Beatty fountains[viii]. Following Whitehall, I lost my daughter on a very crowded Westminster Bridge. 10 minutes felt like an hour. Eventually, I found her calmly taking photos of the London Eye. Getting away from the tourists and back to the now almost deserted Lower Marsh, I couldn’t persuade her to enter the “dingy and scary-looking” Scootercaffe[ix] – which in the evening light, resembled a fascinating remnant from 1950s Paris:
Scootercaffe, 2nd Jan 2025. I will return one day . . .
One review describes the Scootercaffe as “A bit of a hippy place really, but okay . . .” I’m not sure why my daughter wasn’t keen. She accepted The Walrus pub[x] instead which appealed to me partly for being virtually under the bridge carrying the fan of railway points and tracks widening to terminate at Waterloo station. In my relief at not losing her on Westminster Bridge, I would have considered visiting both café and pub in succession, as apart from the bus fare we’d spent nothing all day. The Walrus, “a bohemian pub under a friendly hostel”, proved another evocative time and atmosphere capsule, and I look forward to returning someday.
Lower Marsh Nocturne with Waxing Crescent Moon[xi], 2nd Jan 2025
Unlike on our first route 53 trip[xii], this time we caught the return bus from its first stop, and by the time we were passing the Horangee Pocha Korean BBQ Buffet (main building in the photo below) in New Kent Road, we’d managed to grab the front seats on the top deck, which pleased my daughter no end . . .
Stairs in the Sky, New Kent Road, SE1 6TU, 2nd January 2025
© Lawrence Freiesleben,
Heysham, January – June 2025
NOTES All notes accessed between 4th-5th June 2025
visitgreenwich.org.uk/things-to-do/general-gordon-square-p1397841
[ii] internationaltimes.it/a-strange-sandwich-and-spilt-tea-on-route-53/
[iii] internationaltimes.it/too-many-christmas-trees/ : “The Fag End of the Year has long been my dad’s appellation for Christmas, and he is relieved, so relieved, to stub it out. “Are you onto a new fag now?” I asked him on the 2nd of January, [2017] and he laughed with the light-heartedness of reprieve.”
[iv] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auld_Lang_Syne
[v] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Vic
[vi] youtube.com/watch?v=N_MqfF0WBsU&ab_channel=TheKinks
[vii] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Sunset#
[viii] londonremembers.com/sites/trafalgar-square-fountains-jellicoe-and-beatty
[ix] tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186338-d3567611-Reviews-ScooterCaffe-London_England.html
[x] thewalrusbarandhostel.co.uk/
[xii] internationaltimes.it/a-strange-sandwich-and-spilt-tea-on-route-53/
.