Reeves Corner, Croydon

Today wasn't too exciting. I went to the dentist and had to have yet another filling. My dentist reckons it may be related to clenching my teeth in my sleep. At least it's not a lack of hygiene causing my teeth to fall apart in my 20s but it is still concerning and expensive.

I stopped off in Croydon on my way back. It was a sunny afternoon and I'd spent most of it on buses or indoors so I wanted a chance to get some photos. I went into Centrale shopping centre and decided to check out the roof top car park. I struggle to take the escalators up the glass side of the building sometimes because of my fear of heights. Today I braved the escalators and the top of the building has a decent height wall running around it. There were numerous posters advertising the services of The Samaritans on the wall though. I thought I might get challenged by security for loitering/being a suicide risk but nobody bothered me. There was a queue a mile long of people trying to pay for their parking so there were lots of bored kids running around.

I took a lot of photos. The sun on the horizon and tall buildings of Croydon being a couple of examples. This photo is looking down on the Old Town of Croydon. You may well remember the famous photo from the summer before last of the aerial view of the raging fire in the furniture store and the woman leaping out of the window into the arms of a fireman. Those were taken at this site. I know the area very well and on the morning before it was destroyed I sat bleary-eyed on a bus which drove around the building. The next morning, there was no option but to walk to work and I took a lot of photos, including this.

Over 18 months on and the site is still empty. They demolished the building and put up hoardings around it and the council paid to put photos of the history of the shop and also of the fire on the hoardings. Today they had balloons tied to the fence as well. I'm not sure what the plan is for it. I got the bus along London Road in West Croydon and the Royal Mansions there were burned down and the site is still empty, some of it hasn't even been demolished yet. Going back to this photo, the bus stop in the bottom left corner was also burned down along with a double decker bus on the night of the rioting and bits of rubble were left in the road for a couple of weeks before finally being cleared.

There is a lot of history in one view. I could go on to tell you about the Parish Church or the shops and how many of them have changed in my life time. For a long time, since I was born and spent my early childhood elsewhere in London, I didn't identify as from Croydon and I couldn't wait to get out of the place. But I suppose it grew on me so that when it was attacked, I felt hurt and saddened by the loss of buildings I'd never fully appreciated. It also saddens me that for a lot of the world, the overriding image they'll have when they think of Croydon is of a burning building, and not an accidental fire - a fire started deliberately for no real reason. I hate the thought that my town, which lets face it has never had a great reputation, gets judged on the basis of one night where some idiots thought they could burgle and vandalise and get away with it.