Canary Wharf

There really is a Canary Wharf where the river buses dock as this photo I took on my trip last Thursday shows. The buildings above are of course the place where the power of the money markets now resides. Are they now our real masters? It's not my pun but it nicely sums up the results of the election and I can't resist quoting it: We are all Con-Dem'd!

On the River

This is a photo I took on Thursday as the Thames river-bus was about to pass under Tower Bridge on the way down to Greenwich. I was surprised to find that I had taken 50 photos in all when I came to transfer them to the computer. Of course, most of them were not very good. I must get round to putting the best of them onto my Flickr page, which I've been neglecting for some time. I also got quite a good one when the boat stopped at Canary Wharf en route.

Perhaps I should add the results of the election. The sitting Labour MP, Michael Foster was defeated by the Conservative candidate Amber Rudd. On the other hand the Labour Councillor Jeremy Birch won, and in fact Labour took control of the Council.
Here is a report from the Hastings Observer website.

Visiting My Old School

I'm rather stiff and tired after a long and busy day in London yesterday. It began at 7:30 when I went to the polling station to vote. In the end I decided to stick to voting for the people I know, which happen to be the Labour candidates, Michael Foster for MP and Jeremy Birch for Councillor. The trouble with a PR system it seems to me would be getting to know all the other candidates so that one could make a considered choice, rather than making a vote purely on the party line, not knowing what the individual candidates were like, never having met them.

The main reason for going to London was for the chance to look round the bulding that used to be St Olaves Grammar School which I attended from 1951 to 58. It proved to be somewhat dispiriting to see it in it's current condition. It is now owned by a property company, Berkley Homes, and there are plans to convert it into a hotel. The playground at the back has been dug up, the exit to that area having been bricked up, and a wing where the art classes were held has been demolished. All the rooms were empty of furniture and decorations, so it was really rather sad to see. The photo is of the assembly hall. The white spots are probably reflections of the flash from specks of dust in the air.

Some parties of boys from the new school in Orpington also came to see the building, but they seem to have had very little time to see anything, and I doubt if they learnt much from the experience. Some of the Old Olavians who were taking them round seemed to me to be spinning them tall tales, and reliving their childhood conflicts with the headmaster, Dr Carrington, rather than explaining anything of genuine historical interest.

There was to be a Commemoration Service in Southwark Cathedral from 2pm, but since it was such a lovely sunny day I couldn't face the dark interior of another building and instead took a trip on the river-bus down to Greenwich, which like to visit at least once a year. More on that perhaps in a separate diary entry.