Things to do in Victoria part 5
Take a train journey. Victoria Station serves the towns of Kent, Sussex and Surrey. Trains have chugged in and out of Victoria since 1862 and the London to Brighton line has always (and still is) the busiest. Before I moved to London I spent a year living in a lovely Kent village called Westerham and Victoria was the London terminus for my weekly jaunts into town. I had a job as a live-in barman at a country pub and on my day off I would stroll three miles from Westerham into the next town, Oxted, where I would take the train into London. London seemed magical back then (mid 80’s), the GLC, rock against racism, Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues (still going!), BatCave, The Wag, NME & The Face, scooter parties at The Greyhound in Fulham, boys with flat-tops and tartan shirts, Hampstead ponds, Kensington market, Kings Road and the Scala cinema (thank god for their all-night programming). I particularly remember one perfect summer day when I came into town with friends from the pub and we saw a gallery exhibition featuring a new photographer called Bruce Weber and then got lucky at the Royal Festival Hall box office by grabbing tickets for a gig that night by an unsigned (but very press hyped) singer called Sade (she deserved the hype and Malcolm McLaren sat near us!) and then saw The Evil Dead and several other trashy horror films in an all-nighter at the Scala before catching the 6am train to Oxted and grabbing 4 hours sleep before work. If I attempted an evening like that nowadays I would need at least four days off work to recover.
So, I’ve always had a soft-spot for Victoria Station and that’s before I’ve even mentioned my trips on the boat-train to Calais, Gatwick Express services (the starting point for brilliant Florida holidays with Darren), architecture that evokes episodes of Miss Marple and Poirot and the Krispy Kreme donut shop on the station concourse.