Today has been Murder

I wasn't intending to work today, but my agency phoned and asked if I could do a day's teaching in a school they'd just taken on. It's a part-residential special school in a country setting.

I knew where it was, as I'd had an interview here on two occasions. The first time, though I didn't get the job, the Head asked if she could invite me to work on supply for them. She never did.

She remembered me when I went along a couple of years later for the second interview. The advert had not been clear about the nature of the teaching, and I asked at the end of the interview. It was partly primary age, and I know I pulled a face. I don't do primary. Not surprisingly I didn't get the job.

I should have known it was a bad idea to give a third attempt to teaching there. I left home and then in the next street, there was an area that had been taped off as a crime scene - right opposite the local primary school. I found out later that there had been a murder.

The school, when I arrived, asked me for ID and my CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) statement. I have two. It should have been no trouble. Except that I had not been told I would need it. My ID was all at home, as I had emptied it out of my handbag yesterday when I was going to teach some autistic kids, and I know they often love to delve into your bag when your back is turned.

The agency tried to fax them stuff, but the school said the quality was unacceptable. Even though an ex-pupil from my current school could identify me, nothing suited the school. So I made a 25-mile round trip, for no pay, at my own expense, through no fault of my own.

I decided to run some papers up to the agency at London Bridge, as one or two bits needed updating anyway. While I was there, I realised the area had some great blogging potential. There is so much juxtaposition of old and new.

This is an old wharfside warehouse (only it's not even wharfside any more).You can just see the address - Clink Street. It housed the Clink Prison, from which comes the phrase being "in (the) Clink", meaning being in prison.


And right next door ...


This is the oldest part of Guy's Hospital -


-and this is one of the newer parts. Yuck.

This rose window is in the only remaining wall of the medieval Winchester Palace,London home of the Bishops of Wincester.


Here is the scaffolding that keeps it up now that the warehouse next door is gone. See how the old wall abuts the new building behind.

If you were a fan of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, you will remember the shape shifter, Odo.That was the name of one of the earliest and most famous Bishops of Winchester, William the Conqueror's brother, who took up his post soon after the Norman conquest of 1066.
This is a full-size replica of The Golden Hinde, the ship in which Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the world in the late 16th Century.





The world has moved on around this old warehouse, with the railway built on one side of it, and a Victorian building on the other.The door is very low, so I imagine that the pavement has been raised since it was built.


The George Inn existed in Shakespeare's day, though this particular incarnation is a bit later.





We don't always do Art Deco well in the UK, and the entrance to Borough Market, which is housed under the railway arches, is a case in point.Of course, anything so popular and useful has to be destroyed, and it fights a constant battle with the authorities not to be closed down,


I had afternoon tea at an old tearoom. I couldn't believe it when the waitress brought out one of these little tiered trays. Very country house.

Southwark Cathedral is London's oldest Gothic church, started in 1220. In its history it has been an abbey, a parish church (St Mary Overie), a priory, then was created a Cathedral in 1905.

Today it was impossible to get close to the building. There was a memorial service taking place for Damilola Taylor, the 10-year-old boy who was murdered 8 years ago today by thugs who stabbed him in the leg with a broken bottle and left him to bleed to death in a stairwell. The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Mayor of London attended. There was a general call for an end to knife crime at the service. If only.