I'm continuing in the spirit of looking around me for things that really haven't changed in - oh, dear, this time, in something like fifty four (plus) years ... This is the telephone exchange on Wimbledon Ridgway - a listed building, I gather, though I've not been able to make the internet cough up an actual date of construction - maybe the 1930s? In any case, it's been there as long as I can remember - at least, as long as I can remember walking. Because when I was very, very small I used to love walking along this little wall - especially the bits where it went a bit higher, because then I thought I was truly brave. And then we went up to Cumberland in early 1958, and when we returned, in 1961, I was amazed how tiny the wall seemed (though I still, occasionally, surreptitiously, scampered along it). Now, it's as though the ground has risen up and nearly swallowed it - although empirically, of course, that just can't be.
Unlike the King of Denmark - one of the two pubs at the top of my parents' road, which has been shuttered and sad for a few years, and which has suddenly (so far as I'm concerned) disappeared into a flat sullen wilderness of clay and smashed red bricks (which has been the occasion for this sudden rush of Taking Photographs of the Few Remnants before they vanish ...) - unlike the King of Denmark, I don't think that this exchange is in any danger of imminent demise. But the phone boxes ... ah, they are indeed a potentially vanishing species, and are clearly not treated with much respect (not, indeed, that they ever were ...).
No comments:
Post a Comment