Too good to skip over

I know little of the north; not much of the south, and far less of the east. "From the Mile End Road to the Matchsticks, Becontree," sang Ian Dury in Plaistow Patricia. The Mile End Road I know, but Becontree and Plaistow are places that I have never been to.

My London is Central - City and West End - and West. Below: Kingsway - a thoroughfare built at the beginning of the last century; it was unique for having under it a subway for trams - double-decker trams. Sadly, it closed in 1957; cars now use it. Tuesday 21 January - a beautiful sunny day!

Below: mystery location - a beautiful tympanum, replete with meaning, over a church door. Anyone know where it is - and what the church is?

Back in the suburbs... below: approaching Perivale station on the Central line.

Below: the lychgate outside St Mary's church, Perivale, its tower visible in the distance, down the footpath. Corpses en route for the church for burial would be kept under the roof overnight, before the funeral service.

Below: the sun sets over the Gurnell Grove estate (visible on the horizon), the river Brent flowing through Ealing Golf Course in the foreground.

Below: Meadvale Road, Ealing, soon after sunset. Pitshanger Park lies behind the houses to the right of the photo.

Below: Cleveland Park bus stop - a 297 and an E10 bound for Ealing Broadway pass.

Back to Warsaw via Heathrow. Although my TfL Rail train from West Ealing to Heathrow Central also known as Terminals 2 & 3 was on time, there was a problem with the (free) connection to Terminal 5, provided by Heathrow Express. For some reason, it was cancelled, the next one would be in half an hour. No good. So I made my way to the Piccadilly Line station, also named Heathrow Terminals 2 & 3 (formerly known as Heathrow Terminals 1, 2 & 3 until Terminal 1 was closed in June 2016). The TfL station and the Tube station are about a ten-minute walk away. Here, I could catch a Tube train to Terminal 5 (also for free). And while here, check out this beautiful mural of Concorde tails (below) by Tom Eckersley, dating back to when the station was opened in 1977.

This time two years ago:
The Hunt for Tony Blair
[Apologies to UK readers - the YouTube link is geo-blocked there]

This time four years ago:
Lux Selene

This time seven years ago:
David Cameron, Conservatism and Europe

This time eight years ago:
Citizen Action Against Rat Runners

This time nine years ago:
Moni at 18 (and 18 months)

This time ten years ago:
Building the S79 - Sasanki-Węzeł Lotnisko, midwinter

This time 11 years ago:
My return to skiing after an eight-year break

This time ten years ago:
Moni's 15th birthday

Britain for Christmas

Muted, emotions mixed - a new chapter - what it will offer I have not got a clue. No one had a clue as to what would happen at the ballot box; would a youthquake and tactical voting used on a vast scale deprive Johnson of an overall majority? No. Those who predicted a slender majority for Johnson were also wrong.

Now what? Probably neither a descent into fascism, nor a great national revival. It's down to the British Civil Service to keep life normal. My distrust of politicians, my cynicism towards their cynicism, is born of the past four and half years. But here we are, 67 million people trying to get on with their lives in a different climate. May it not be as bad as predicted by some.

Below: flying in. The Thames cuts across, with Cube Ridge carrying the A205 South Circular that snakes its way down to the bottom of the frame. North of the Thames, the dark patch is Gunnersbury Park, Ealing is in the top-left corner of the frame.

Below: the following morning - Cleveland Park, drying out after a heavy fall of overnight rain.

Below: essential suburban London; Perivale Gardens W13. Where once might have stood a Hillman or an Austin, there's now a Nissan and a Mercedes.

Below: the River Brent is brim-full, after last night's heavy rain. Here it flows, the border between Perivale to the left and Ealing to the right.

Below: the mighty Western Avenue slicing communities apart with ceaseless traffic. This might look like a weekday rush hour, but it's actually Sunday lunchtime.

Below: across the A40, north of the Central Line, a more rural scene, surrounded by suburbia; Horsenden Hill Lane North meets Horsenden Hill Lane South.

Below: climbing Horsenden Hill - a useful amenity for walkers.

Below: suburbs rising. Looking out south-west from the top of Horsenden Hill towards Southall and Hayes.

Below: portrait of a tree, on the northern slope of Horsenden Hill. In the distance, Harrow spreads out up the next hill.

Prayers for the nation please.

This time three years ago:
IT frustrations
[And right on cue, my Huawei smartphone battery starts dying, aged three years]

This time four years ago:
Wałbrzych's Gold Train - the dream ends

This time six years ago:
Kitten football

This time seven years ago:
The drainage of Jeziorki

This time eight years ago:
The Eurocrisis - what would Jesus do?

This time nine years ago:
Orders of magnitude

This time ten years ago:
Jeziorki in the snow

This time 11 years ago:
Better news on the commuting front

This time 12 years ago:
I no longer recognise the land where I was born

Perivale Tryptych

Perivale! Where I left to go to Poland in 1997. Unremarkable 1930s suburban sprawl, sliced through by the railway (Central Line and Great Western Railway), by the road (the A40 Western Avenue), and, more gently, by the River Brent.

Below: looking westward towards Greenford station, an eastbound Central Line approaches Perivale. Above the train some rare relics of the GWR, some semaphore signals.

Below: the footbridge over the Western Avenue. In the distance gleams white the Hoover building, a gem of Art Deco architecture. On the horizon to the left, Wembley Stadium

Below: the River Brent dissects the Ealing Golf Club, the right bank (to the left in this photo) being in Perivale, the left bank (right) being in Ealing.

It might look pretty in the sun, but Perivale had lost its semi-rural charm to urban sprawl back in the 1930s. As far from the centre of London as Jeziorki is from the centre of Warsaw, I know where I'd rather live!

This time seven years ago:
Cycling and recycling

This time eight years ago:
Winter still holding out in the forest

This time nine years ago:
Little car, huge price

This time ten years ago:
Old school Łódź

Polish Perivale

In Tesco Hoover yesterday bulk-buying stuff for Xmas at my father's. Had to put up with It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas played repeatedly for over half an hour before staff changed it to a more varied medley of Yuletide slush (a relief for the chap dressed up as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who stood in mortal danger of ending up impaled on a pointy Xmas tree). Anyway, Perivale being Perivale, with its diverse mix of humanity, I'm still shocked me by how many Poles were shopping there. I left Perivale 20 years ago after 15 years living there. Back then, there were a few Poles, second-generation like me, and some newcomers, but all in all, not in the least bit visible.

Today there are many, and they most certainly are visible. From young families pushing laden trolleys hither and yon to men in hi-vis jackets placing słoiki of bigos or flaki into their baskets. Polish food is no longer in the 'Food of the World' aisles, but present across the entire store mixed in with other ethnic foods for ethnic groups who are no longer a minority in Perivale. Parents would speak among themselves in Polish, to their children in Polish - who'd reply to their parents in Polish, but speak to their siblings in English - without a trace of foreign accent.

When you see a white face in Perivale, it's likely to be Polish. According to the 2011 Census, 22% of its population are 'White, Other' (read: Polish), while only 20% were English; 'Indian' came third at 15%. I heard one or two middle-aged couples in Tesco (and I was there for nearly an hour and half) talking in native English to one another. To them it must seem strange, to say the least, to have become a minority, but the same process happened in Southall, just down the road, at the other end of the E5 bus route, some 40 years ago. Whereas Southall is south Asian, Perivale is extremely diverse, with peoples from all corners of the world in evidence.

Outside in the car park, vehicles with Polish number plates so exotic, you'd not see them in Warsaw - RRS for example, or RT, or LJA (that one I know to be Janów Lubelski), although of course nary a car on Warsaw plates. Many Poles in Perivale have long settled down, sending their children to the Catholic John Fisher primary school on the Western Avenue, and having bought properties before their reached their current high (half a million pounds for an ordinary three-bedroom terraced house) are paying off mortgages. The ones that run their own businesses, in the construction sector in particular, are doing well. Unemployment is low and hard-working skilled tradespeople are in demand.

Perivale UB6 is downmarket of West Ealing W13, which in turn is downmarket of Ealing W5; clawing one's way up the property market to reach the (literal) peak of Edgehill Road or Hillcrest Road will take some doing, but I can sense the determination among many Polish business owners and self-employed people.

The London Borough of Ealing, which also includes Perivale and Southall, voted 60.4% to stay in the EU, on a turnout of 71%. Given the large immigrant population in the borough - far higher than most Vote Leave districts, one can only surmise that a long-standing exposure to migrants has made Ealing less nativist with the passing of time.

POSTSCRIPT: Round the time I pressed the 'Publish' button on this post, a young Polish man died after being stabbed on Bilton Road, Perivale...

I am troubled by the prospect of the murderer being revealed as an English racist, a Islamist fanatic... but it seems that this was Polish-on-Polish violence. A 23 year-old Polish national was arrested in Edinburgh on Saturday 16 December charged with the murder.

This time last year:
Power in the vertical

This time five years ago:
And still they come [anomalous flashbacks that is]

This time six years ago:
Classic glass

This time seven years ago:
What's the Polish for 'pattern'?

This time ten years ago:
"Rorate caeli de super nubes pluant justum..."