One of the commonest searches on my site is for Tooting swimming times: when DCL at last published them online, I did a page about it, but the link is dead, and the brochures available either are out of date, or they don’t include the pool times. So here you are, fellow Tooting swimmers, I’ve scanned the sheet and posted it here. Don’t blame me if it’s wrong, but it’s better than not publishing it at all.
Click here to get the latest Tooting-swimming times
Heron in Tooting
This wonderful heron visits our end of Tooting now and again. It’s a wonderful sight. The only one I’d ever seen before moving here was a concrete one in the back garden of our house in Dorset. Funnily enough, I’m going to Heron Quays just now…
Here’s a blog after my own heart: Tooting Top Ten, a list of, guess what, the top ten things about Tooting.
I like this guy’s writing. If you do, his new blog is at SavidgeTales over at Wordpress.
Man Holding Ram (1988) by Mark Folds
I’ve passed this statue hundreds of times in the 20-ish years I’ve lived in Tooting, without ever knowing what it was, or who made it. I’ve watched it decay, and fall to pieces, and now achieve a kind of dignified weather-wornness that’s almost more interesting than how it was when it was new. And finally, I found out what it is: it’s called Man Holding Ram (well, thanks to woodworm, he’s dropped it now) and was done by Mark Folds in 1988. Apparently, it’s made from timber that had fallen in the hurricanes of 1987. So now we know.
My grandfather's shop in Garratt Lane, late 1930s, I think.
Happy Christmas! Today’s revelation is not strictly a musical surprise, except that it vaguely concerns me and I’m a musician. But it’s quite surprising all the same, and I love it. I came across this old photograph of my paternal grandfather’s cornchandler’s shop at 759 Garratt Lane a couple of years ago. The site doesn’t exist anymore as it was bombed in the blitz, but I believe it was at the junction with Franche Court Road, opposite Summerstown. Isn’t it slightly weird that after being born in Bournemouth, moving to London, and over 20 years of adult life, working my way down a succession of residences on the Northern line, I should end up where I live now, which – entirely by chance and without knowing about it – is only a few minutes walk from where my grandfather had a shop?
If there’s a point it’s this: this Advent Calendar has often been about pointing out the realities behind abstractions, ideals and false unities in music. So it’s rather appropriate that I point out the realities behind the author of these posts. I rather like the idea that this blog, however metaphysical at times, is just the ramblings, from Tooting, of the grandson of a Tooting grocer.
And a few more:
Cyclists on the London to Brighton bike ride passing through Tooting this morning
Watching them cycle past up Garratt Lane this morning is as near as I got to taking part, but it’s on the to-do list.
