Sad Sights.

So sad to see at 1pm Thursday the once flourishing Carriageway alongside south of Hyde Park those 350 acres once home mid 19th Century of the Great Exhibition. Today we see the Great Inhibition founded by successive London Mayors bent on emptying these streets for what ?

The Carriageway once alleviated the congestion on Hyde Park corner featured in a previous blog and under the great Bowater house a route into the south, gone at the expense of a faceless , barely occupied monument to mammon mansion called One Hyde Park where working man could not afford the service charge let alone the price. Next door the once famous Hyde Park Hotel now the Mandarin Hotel an over the top ‘ yes sir no sir service stay for those only that can’t afford not to be seen.

The road is empty, nothing there hanging out like a sad sidewalk, a once buzzing moving scene now sad and lonely. The odd jogger and the cyclist with a rucksack. Is this really the London we wanted or have those politicians gone nuclear nuts.

The tower in the top photo is in many an opinion gross architecture matching the mammon mansion yet some like it and the Basil Spence arch perhaps saves the home of the Household Cavalry whose horses can discharge themselves freely on the wide centre aisle free of traffic alone and away. At first when you glance upon it all you are reminded of Ghost Town during Covid but you need to pinch yourself as those Mayors pinched our London away from us in some carbon neutral moment. The only vehicle in sight is the horse manure pick up truck which breaks the silence and steals away the smell.

Is sad the acronym for Steal and Destroy or is it an emotion experienced in a moment of nostalgia and a longing for our London lives back. I don’t know but sad I feel.