Sculpture at St Pancras

With Lent now at an end, time to catch up with what else has been exercising my mind over these past six and half weeks. On my way back from the UK a week ago, I passed through St Pancras station, en route to "London" Luton airport. Time to take a closer look at the controversial Meeting Place sculpture by Paul Day (below). Around the plinth, something I'd not noticed before, is a series of high-relief friezes that were added on some time after the initial unveiling.

They are full of human drama; perhaps they lack joy. Yet I find them fascinating, in particular the wildly distorted perspective and the vision of deep buttressed cuttings, soaring viaducts and lengthy platforms - Victorian brickwork, steam trains, underground tunnels. But the people - downcast, passive objects buffeted by the indignities of war, alcohol, disregard and commuting.

My 10-24mm Nikkor zoom (at 10mm) is ideal in getting in close and digging out the detail.

A historical scene: note the rushing steam trains on the viaducts

Steps, walls, passages, ordinary folk going about their business

The surging crowds, past and present, restlessly move through the friezes

Perspectives distort, viaducts open up vistas and shore up skylines 

An air of unease... who's that over your shoulder? An empty, historic platform

Strap-hanging readers on the Tube; life's small indignities

Workers rebuild the Tube after the 7/7 terrorist attacks

Gassed WW1 soldiers return from the trenches as fresh troops are waved off. A contemporary Eurostar train stands on the left-hand platform of William Henry's Barlow's cast-iron and glass train shed

A tender farewell? The mobile phone looks more interesting...

Another view showing the three-dimensional nature of the frieze

In the glasses, reflections of a crowded Tube platform - two takes on one scene

A close-up through the left-hand lens...

...A close-up through the right-hand lens

More crowds, more viaducts, buttresses and dark skies

Down in the Tube station at midnight; tired, drunk, bawdy, resigned.

From another angle. All the drama of London life - but no happiness to share.

I am sure that this sculpture, after the passage of decades, will become another icon of London. Today, the vision is still too fresh, too uncomfortably edgy. Meaning will be ascribed to individual panels of the frieze - and to the main figures towering 30ft (9m) over the concourse. Initially it was said to be banal (compared the the splendid portrayal of  Sir John Betjeman gazing appreciatively at the station's magnificent roof) - yet in time, the sculpture will become well-loved symbols of travel - parting and reuniting.

If you are passing through St Pancras on your way to London or on your way out via Eurostar or Luton airport, to take time - at least half an hour - to wander around this magnificent station - my favourite.

This time last year:
Cycling to work - the new season begins

This time four years ago:  
Five weeks into Lent

London notes

London never fails to make an impression, especially after a lengthy absence. I've not been over since April, mainly because of reasons to do with the economy - fewer companies willing to sponsor Poland-related business events in the UK.

Arriving early at Luton, I just make the bus from the airport to Luton Parkway station. I hand over 50p of the £1.50 bus fare and I'm scrabbling around in my wallet among the one, two and five zloty coins for a one-pound coin, which in the dim light I can't seem to find. The driver gives me the ticket and waves me into the bus anyway. It's more important that he gets the bus boarded than hold everyone up for a mere pound. How practical! I repay the social trust accorded to me by handing over that coin later once I'd found it.

Elsewhere, I see more examples of social trust and social harmony in action. At St Pancras station, a man in a wheelchair is asked by a member of staff (in obligatory high-visibility vest) "Can Oi 'elp yaouw, Sir?" I can't imagine surly PKP staff at Warszawa Centralna volunteering to help in such a kindly way.

The train to St Pancras is three and half minutes late. Over the station loudspeakers at Luton Parkway we hear abject, grovelling apologies for any inconvenience the delay might have caused. (Not a bit - I've have missed the train had it been on time!)

On the train, I'm sitting near four students discussing between themselves their accents ("My parents say I'm well-spoken," says one, who sounded upper lower-middle class to me. "Ah've got Black Coontreh vowels," says another). Accent is so important to Brits. With 80% of the indigenous population falling into the general category of 'middle class', it's crucial to distinguish between the wafer-thin sub-stratas therein. Quoting Carol Midgely from today's Times, 'Britain is socially immobile because its obsessed with class. It's not where you're going by where you are from." Not a problem that Poland has. As I wrote here, in Poland, accent is pretty much homogenous. It is a Pole's vocabulary that reveals much about his or her schooling, rather than it being accent that betrays the speaker's social and regional provenance.

St Pancras is as beautiful as ever, the East Midlands high-speed train that gets there non-stop in just under half and hour deposits me on the main concourse rather than in the underground Thameslink platform. Passing the glittering shops lining the lower concourse, I see something you just don't see in Poland - rich old people.

Sir John at St Pancras: my favourite poet

Entering the Underground, I see all the Tube lines are running a good service. And then a loudspeaker announcement. No service on the northern end of the Victoria Line - person under a train. And a minute later - no service on the northern end of the Bakerloo Line - another person under a train. A spate of Wednesday evening suicides is holding up North Londoners returning home tonight.

But the Piccadilly Line's still good. A westbound train is standing waiting for me, ready to whisk me on towards Ealing. Central London is still quite posh, as you can hear by the upper-middle clahss aircsents between South Ken and Baron's Court (though you'd not guess by looking at the speakers' egalitarian clothing). It's worth watching the first two scenes from the musical My Fair Lady to see that in this department, little has changed since the days of George Bernard Shaw - "An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him/The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him."
But by the time my train reaches Acton, I notice that I'm in the one-third minority of passengers in my carriage who are white (and I'd guess half of those are Polish). London's diversity makes the native English a minority in the land of their forefathers.

There's a ticket inspection between Acton Town and Ealing Common. The ticket inspector is backed up by a uniformed police officer (a volunteer Special Constable); this type of revenue protection measure would be unthinkable in Poland - what happened to the social trust and harmony I'd witnessed earlier? Indeed, I no longer recognise the land where I was born.

St Pancras - new gateway to London

I find myself passing through St Pancras station frequently these days. The trains from Luton Airport now stop here (now that King's Cross Thameslink has been closed), the Midland Mainline service to Derby, near to where my brother lives, is cheap (if booked ahead) and fast. St Pancras itself was reopened after a long refurbishment, and what a wonderful station it is, eclipsing Paddington as London's finest terminus. From here, trains rush off to the Midlands and the North, and (on the left) the Eurostar service runs to Paris and Brussels via the Channel Tunnel at speeds that beat flying for city centre-to-city centre journeys.

The detail is exquisite. The Victorian rail magnates were people who understood a profit and loss account yet also knew the importance of fine architecture. None of the ersatz shoddiness of Warszawa Centralna for them. Like the Gothic cathedrals it was inspired by, St Pancras will stand for centuries. Warm brick, cast iron and glass come together to form a magnificent and functional structure.

Below: A fitting tribute to the man who saved St Pancras from demolition in the 1960s, Sir John Betjeman, Poet Laureate, and my favourite poet. The statue captures the essence of the man admirably - raincoat, bag and trilby hat, head raised in wonder at the Victorian temple to steam. Around to the left is the Betjeman Arms (a questionable name, as Sir John was fond of neither beer nor pubs), yet the atmosphere is nice enough to spend some while waiting for your train. Quotes from the former Poet Laureate line the corridor walls.

Seeing me reading the lines of poetry prompted a member of the bar staff to offer me a selection of Sir John's poems printed specially for the opening of the Betjeman Arms earlier this year, a very nice gesture that shall ensure my return. The food was reasonably priced and unfussy, and there was a summer cider festival taking place with a number of excellent ciders (unavailable in Poland) available on tap.

And so, on time, my train departs for Derby. Modern efficiency coexisting with the timeless magnificence of fine architecture.

This time last year:

Our last visit to Penrhos?
Ar y Ffordd i Pwyll Rhydd
Mountains or sea - no dilemna

Towers of London

When in London, look up. The city is a chronological onion, with layers of history covered by subsequent layers of history covered my modern tat. Look at it at ground level and all you see are T-shirt vendors, fast food outlets, bus stops, rucksacked crowds, free newspaper distributors and shoe shops. Look up and you can see London in its majesty. Right: The Rising Sun pub on Tottenham Court Road. 'What flights of Victorian fancy', wrote Sir John Betjeman (my favourite poet); this ornate pub frontage was built in 1897. The pub window today advertises Czech and Belgian beers to passers-by. London's become Europe, but Queen Victoria's Empire is still visible, a few floors up.

London's Underground is also a multi-layered spectacle. From the early 'cut-and-cover' lines (Metropolitan - the world's first underground railway, 1863), through the early deep tube lines, privately built and operated before being nationalised, the 1930s extentions into the far suburbs, to the latest projects - the Jubilee Line, Docklands Light Railway, the whole system is aesthetically held together by corporate design of the highest order. Left: Goodge Street Station (Northern Line) with its red tiled arched facade. The station dates back to 1907; the flats above it were built later (compare to this photo from 1925). London is certainly a city shaped by the railways running through it, under it and into it.

Sir John Betjeman is often credited as the man who saved St Pancras from the fate that befell Euston Station; a great Victorian terminus that 1960s developers tore down and replaced with rubbish. St Pancras survived that ignominy and has since been reborn as the rail gateway to Europe. From St Pancras one can catch trains to Paris, Brussels, and yes, Luton Airport (more on this anon). Above: The facade of the Midlands Grand Hotel, undergoing refurbishment. Thank God it's still here. This is the essence of Victorian London, the view of Sir John's "pigeon-haunted turrets" from the Pentonville Road in John O'Connor's 1884 painting is one that's stayed with me since childhood.

A propos of Sir John; while en route from Luton Airport via St Pancras for a meeting at the Polish Embassy on Monday morning, I passed this blackboard advertising the Betjeman Arms pub on the station premises. Time prevented a visit, but surely, Sir John, who "loathed beer and liked wine", and never a fan of corporate pubs, would not have approved.

And what of Euston? All that's left is the pair of entrance gates, reminescent of Warsaw's Rogatki. The famous old arch was torn down in an act of mindless architectural vandalism. Hopefully, when the ghastly 1960s replacement is itself replaced, the Euston Arch will return. If you click to enlarge, you'll see the destinations of the London and North West Railway carved into the panels on the corners.

Two more London towers; one is BT Tower (left), formerly Telecom Tower, originally the Post Office (GPO) Tower. This building was opened in the late 1960s; I visited it as a schoolboy shortly after it opened, and a great impression it made on me too. Much later (in 1994), I attended a press conference given by British Telecom about a new technology that would revolutionise the then-nascent Internet - the World-Wide Web (www), driven by hyper-text mark-up language (HTML). How the world has changed as a result.

And finally, below, the building where I worked for 16 years before leaving London for Warsaw - Centre Point. Infamous for being left empty as a wrongly-timed speculation while homelessness was rising dramatically, the tower was designed by Sir Richard Seiffert (yes, he also did the 1960s Euston development) for a property tycoon called Harry Hyams. In the end, the squatters were moved out, the CBI moved in, and a year later, I was working on the ninth floor.


This time last year:
Cockchafers out in force
High summer in Jeziorki
Stormy night
Wild deer in Las Kabacki forest