Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "waterloo-station"

As we strolled along the Thames one day I wondered where musicians, writers, filmmakers and artists would be without rivers and bridges. We walked from Waterloo Station along the South Bank to Tate Modern, stopping to enjoy the views from Waterloo Bridge. Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks, Waterloo Bridge, a 1930 play that became films in 1931 and 1940 about a couple who meet on the bridge.
‘Our Mutual Friend’ by Charles Dickens is set on The Thames, a lot has changed since then, but at low tide you can walk on the mud, perhaps pick up a fragment of clay pipe and get a feel for Dickensian riverside.
The Millennium Footbridge by Tate Modern has appeared in numerous television thrillers and films during its short life. The bridge is always thronged with people, walking to and from Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the City of London.
Busy places are a gift to authors, our characters can make secret assignations or escape from dangerous individuals into the crowds. Anybody from anywhere could be in these well known places, so the plot is believable. Waterloo Station, the busiest station in England by passenger numbers, features in all my novels. In the Brief Encounters Trilogy the slow train to Salisbury takes characters to an anonymous little station in an unnamed village in Wiltshire. With the vast departures board flickering constantly, what reader can challenge the destinations and train times for a fictional person?
A short walk from Waterloo brings you to the South Bank, all life is here. You can ride on the London Eye giant wheel and gaze down at Westminster, go to a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, walk along the river or walk across the Jubilee Bridges, alongside rattling trains on their way to Charing Cross Station. Plenty of scope for writers and this part of London features in the trilogy and some of my short stories.
Next time you are out and about, strolling across a bridge or rushing to catch your train, remember, the people you brush shoulders with may be fictional.

Sandscript in Step

We are staying at The Lying In Hospital, Waterloo; it has been here since 1767, but only a Premiere Inn since 2013. If you want somewhere to stay a few minutes walk from Waterloo Station and the London Eye big wheel, if mauve and purple are your favourite colours and if you want to visit some locations from my novels and short stories – this is the place for you.
Inside are the familiar purple carpeted corridors and mauve uniforms to be seen in Premiere Inns all around the country, but here the rooms are smaller, the windows even smaller and ours looks out onto a wall one foot away. But the staff are friendly and in the restaurant below on Floor -2, purple striped blouses and shirts flash by as the waiting staff serve dinner and breakfast at running pace.
London is at our feet and we walk everywhere, except when we go nowhere on The Wheel.
The unexpected is always welcome and at Piccadilly Circus we are amazed to find four floors devoted to M&M World – M&M the sweets, not some kind of sexual deviancy. Life sized plastic M&M characters in primary colours depict iconic human scenes. There are cuddly M&Ms and souvenirs of every description. We buy the cheapest – a plastic clip to seal your bag of M&Ms; the initials make it an appropriate gift for a young couple called Michael and Michelle.
In contrast we descend many steps down into the Criterion Theatre to see ‘The 39 Steps’, the hilarious and clever play of the Hitchcock film, of the novel by John Buchan written a hundred years ago… so many incarnations of one story and a reminder to authors how important it is to choose a memorable title for your novel.
In Trafalgar Square we see part of The Tweed Run, a tradition since 2009 – riding penny farthings or the oldest bike you can lay your hands on while dressed in tweed.
Our various wanderings around galleries are punctuated by coffee and lunches, mostly taken in the ‘Café in the Crypt’ below St. Martin’s in the Field, a pleasant retreat from the bustle above ground. In ‘The Gallery in the Crypt’ we visit a photographic and biographical exhibition of forty people, ‘Outsiders in London’ - http://www.outsidersinlondon.org/Outs... - ;
it gradually dawns on us that the man chatting to us about the pictures is the photographer himself, Milan Svanderlink. We enjoy an interesting discussion and I toy with the idea of telling him that the hero of my novel ‘Three Ages of Man’, very much an outsider, takes sanctuary in the crypt restaurant, but perhaps he would get confused if I launched into a description of my Brief Encounters Trilogy.