Arthurian Legend

"Once back here I got to thinking - 'how do I get out of this?' Perhaps the really haunting spectre is that I would have to turn my back on the lake, and the prospect of the sword." Alan Clark, Diaries - 19th May 1999

Tuesday 27 February 2007

Islington: The Nice Bits

Out with Mrs. Legend on Sunday afternoon for lunch and a stroll round part of the borough.

There are some very attractive streets - constructed long before the socialist/Nazi/Lib Dumb menace blighted this part of London.





















Then there are some lovely squares:



















And some highly elegant houses




















...and then we have THIS monstrosity:



















Commissioned and designed by someone with an aesthetic lobotomy.

Anything, surely anything, could be better than this.

OK, if the Conservatives were ever to get in, perhaps it wouldn't be the FIRST priority to raze. But replacing this hideous eyesore with somthing other than what David Blunkett splashed down on paper after a tab of E could perhaps feature somewhere on the list..?

9 comments:

Newmania said...

Well it would be nice if we all lived in mouthwatering Georgian Opulence but I cannot see how even the magic of conservatism can dilver us to that Nirvana.

Nice pictures , you were wise to leave yourlsef out of them/...Mrs Legend would have beena welsome ornament though

Anonymous said...

Is the "elegant house" on Canonbury Square? i think it is a former spook house where they used to debrief defectors _ think Gordievsky stayed there for a while actually. It was sold off a few years back.

Jacob Gaffney said...

Good to see you last week, hope you enjoyed the tasting. Thanks for grabbing the factual error in my blog, I responded to your comment.

BTW, if you think THAT intersection is an eyesore, I invite you to come up to my part of Islington, where Labour is relocating problem families into nearby estates, and cancelling sure start programs...

Arthurian Legend said...

Anonymous - Yes, Canonbury Square it is. Fascinating detail about the house - thank you. I wouldn't mind coming in from the cold there myself...

Jacob: my sincere sympathies. The family relocation problem is a particular gipe of Newmania's. I think I recall once seeing Frank Field interviewed on Channel 4 News about this issue. If I recall correctly, he had the right idea: huddling under a motorway bridge on the M6 is probably where the worst offenders belong. Can't make too much of a nuisance to many people there...

If that wasn't Field's idea, I claim it for my own.

Newmania said...

former spook house where they used to debrief defectors _ think Gordievsky stayed there for a while actually

REALLY! How fascinating I have always noticed how attractive that house is .
( Evelyn Waugh lived in Canonbury Square at one point with his wife Evelyn .
)

Newmania said...

former spook house where they used to debrief defectors _ think Gordievsky stayed there for a while actually

REALLY! How fascinating I have always noticed how attractive that house is .
( Evelyn Waugh lived in Canonbury Square at one point with his wife Evelyn .
)

Arthurian Legend said...

Newmania: Evelyn Waugh lived in Canonbury Square at one point with his wife Evelyn...

Quite sure about that one, N?

Anonymous said...

"...I invite you to come up to my part of Islington, where Labour is relocating problem families into nearby estates..."

Has Newmania moved?

Ladyhihi said...

Millipede was on R4 the other day trying to defend the scheme, saying in his typical nulabour way how it was great that the Givernment got involved in this thing in the first place (after several hundred millions wasted) but how "we" now had to reform the system (thus undermining his first assertion.


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