From my homenode:
A very, very special noder has encouraged me to say something original here. I'm not good at 'original' - I imitate constantly, and I feel my best work is that which rests mainly on existing material. But one thing I almost never do on e2 is to speak about my aesthetic impressions of things. I'll give it a go.
I work in Central London. London isn't a nice place; it has terrible traffic congestion and pollution, nasty diseased pigeons, and a near-total lack of the proverbial British courtesy and reserve. But there are moments that are different. My office overlooks St James's Park, one of the city's better green spaces. In summer, I like to go out there and eat my lunch by the lake, watching the swans and the pelicans. If I hurry, I get to see the Changing of the Guard, and the tourists running after the soliders to photograph them. All this fascinates me. The behaviour of the tourists is as regular, and as ritualistic, as the marching itself. Sometimes I feel tempted to photograph the tourists.
From the park, looking east toward the River Thames, I can see the London Eye, the world's largest Ferris Wheel. I hated the wheel when it was going up. How dare they mar the sacred London skyline with this novelty? But now it's up, and especially now I've been on it, I like it. If I stand in the right place on the north-western bank of the lake, the wheel appears to revolve around the tower on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a fascinating Indo-Classical building used almost as much for entertaining as for actual work on foreign affairs. From the bridge over the lake, with my back to Buckingham Palace, I get a different view. From there, the spires of the Liberal Club rise from behind the facade of Horseguards Parade. Together with the lake itself, they create an amazing vista.
A less romantic, but still striking, view is to be had a few hundred yards away, looking down Victoria Street. Standing opposite Starbucks, outside the huge glass front of the Metropolitan Police HQ at New Scotland Yard, you can see the London Eye, the tower on the Houses of Parliament that they call Big Ben, and the west front of Westminster Abbey, all within a small space. Victoria Street itself is a great canyon of faceless blocks, something like how I imagine parts of Manhattan to be. The contrast between that and the showy, tourist-friendly buildings around Parliament Square hits me every time.
All of these views, and a strange assortment of other things from day to day, inspire me with a great desire to break out, to shout, to change things. Something, and I can't say what, holds me back. Day after day I go past these wonders, these world-famous sites and all the rest, to sit in my hideously redecorated office and stare at databases for the government. What I want to be doing, I'm not sure. Sometimes I imagine myself walking into one of the private buildings I pass, and being let in. Sometimes I wish I could be showing the partner of my dreams these places for the first time.
I need to shout. E2 gives me a place to do that, but when I shout, all I hear is squeaking. My passions are just my own.
Webster erroneously states that the
Great Fire was in
1667. It was, of course, in
1666.
Places in London, arranged by
borough:
Barking and Dagenham
Barnet
Bexley
Brent
Bromley
Camden
The
British Museum
Camden Town
Earlham Street
Euston Road
Euston Square
Goodge Street
Gower Street
Hampstead Heath
Kenwood
The Kenwood Ladies Bathing Pond
High Holborn
New Oxford Street
Russell Square
Seven Dials
Southampton Row
St Giles High Street
Tottenham Court Road
Warren Street
The City of London
Ave Maria Lane
The
Bank of England
The
Barbican
Cannon Street
Cheapside
Cornhill
Creed Lane
Farringdon Street
Fenchurch Street
Fleet Street
Gracechurch Street
Holborn Viaduct
Liverpool Street
London Wall
Ludgate Circus
Ludgate Hill
The
Mansion House
The
Millennium Bridge
Minories
New Bridge Street
Old Bailey
Paternoster Square
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Churchyard
Threadneedle Street
Upper Thames Street
Watling Street
The City of Westminster
Abbey Road
Aldwych
Baker Street
Buckingham Palace
Cambridge Circus
Charing Cross
Charing Cross Road
Chinatown
Covent Garden
Downing Street
Fitzrovia
Haymarket
Hyde Park
Leicester Square
Long Acre
Northumberland Avenue
Old Compton Street
Oxford Circus
Oxford Street
Pall Mall
Parliament Square
Parliament Street
Piccadilly
Piccadilly Circus
Queen Anne's Gate
Regent's Park
Regent Street
St Giles' Circus
St James's Park
St Martin's Lane
Shaftesbury Avenue
Soho
Strand
The Mall
Tothill Street
Trafalgar Square
Victoria Embankment
Victoria Street
Wardour Street
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Cathedral
Whitehall
Wigmore Street
Croydon
Ealing
Southall
Enfield
Greenwich
Hackney
Hammersmith and Fulham
BBC Television Centre
The Empress State Building
North End Road Market
Queen's Park Rangers FC ground
Ravenscourt Park
Shepherd's Bush
White City
Haringey
Alexandra Palace
Crouch End
Finsbury Park
Highgate Wood
Muswell Hill
Harrow
Havering
Hillingdon
Hounslow
Islington
The Angel, Islington
Clerkenwell
Highgate Cemetery
Holloway, also discussed
here
Waterlow Park
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Commonwealth Institute
Hyde Park
Kensington Gardens
Natural History Museum
Royal Albert Hall
Royal Geographical Society
Science Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames
Lambeth
The
British Airways London Eye
Lambeth Palace
St Thomas' Hospital
Waterloo International Railway Station
Lewisham
Merton
Newham
Redbridge
Richmond
Teddington
The Borough of Southwark
Borough Market
Dulwich
Guy's Hospital
London Bridge
The London Dungeon
Southwark Cathedral
Southwark Bridge
Vinopolis
Sutton
Tower Hamlets
St Katharine's Dock
The
Tower of London
Tower Bridge
Wapping
Whitechapel Street
Waltham Forest
Wandsworth
Battersea Park
The Ram Brewery
This is a node in progress. If you have anything you'd like included, or any corrections, /msg me, but try to tell me which borough it's in. Thanks.