Tea Time in Wonderland

Stations are eternal waiting points.
One stomps their feet, waiting for that damn screen to finally show the platform number, only to have to dash there, olympic-sprint like.
One tries to kill the time while waiting for friends, victimes of the tube or life maze.

Waterloo is my usual one. Touring the shops does not take much of your time. It lacks more elegant cafe, as you could find in St Pancras, smarter lines, a little design, a little gloss. You could got to Southbank and indulge at Giraffe or Foyles but you feel it is a bit too far. Why did you decide to meet here? It seemed logical at the time.

Street art lovers will love going to Leake Street, a tunnel only 5 mn away. Banksy launched his Cans festival there in 2008. It remained one of the rare legal wall for graffers who just make the most of it. A tag will rarely stay more than a few days. Sometimes even hours. Yarnbombing even stopped there for a while. You’ll often see artists in full creation. The atmosphere is completely unreal with, very often, classical music being played by the speakers – don’t ask, the council’s idea to underline the peacefulness and artistic dimension of the place, I guess, and refute the idea, for once, of vandalism.

But if your heart beats for murals, try the Tolsky Century, again 5 mn from the station. I can see you frown, This Polish artist settled in London in 1935 and quickly becomes a war-artist-reporter. He’ll travel all around the world, from India to Arctic via Lybia, China… He has this amazing talent, which I love in Hippolyte Romain to transform a few splashes of paint into a picturesque chronicle.

In 1951, Prince Philip commissions him -  a mural for Busckingham, depicting Elisabeth II’s coronation. This gets him ticking. He first assembles a number vof drawings in a book. In 1974, he sets up his workshop here, under the bridg arches, a few steps away from Waterloo… and starts documenting the century history, his century, in ceiling high paintings. He dies in 1989, still working on it.

You’ll meet Gandhi, Picasso, Martin Luther King, Hitler, Mao, the Black Panthers… The memory of times in motion. I find his characters’ emotions intense. All this for £2. Well, you’ll be the one to be late this time…

Topolsky century
150 Hungerford Arches
Concert Hall Approach
Waterloo
London SE1 8XU

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