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2026-02-11

Week 266: Dreich days

I cycled past someone else on a bike with a child on the back just in time to hear her say to the child, “It’s a dreich day”. And it was. In fact, there have been a lot of them, though it’s not a word you hear too often down here.

I was soaked riding home on Tuesday, but the cycling wasn’t all bad this week. I improved my route to Peckham slightly. Instead of going along Meeting House Lane, which is fairly busy, clogged with parked cars, and imperilled by people coming in from perpendicular roads without properly giving way, I diverted onto the road to the north along Studholme Street and Fenham Road, through a modal filter that blocks motor traffic. It feels more relaxed.

Things are happening at the long-foretold Surrey Canal Road station site. A week or so ago I saw people clearing out vegetation from the concrete box under the bridge that was built to form part of a future station, and now a small container with some kind of equipment has appeared next to it. As I cycled past on Monday and Tuesday mornings I saw a gang of surveyors clad in fluorescent orange taking measurements with theodolites.

According to the plan that was approved by Lewisham council:

7.1.Subject to receiving the full package of funding for the design works, this would commence in early 2026 and complete in early 2028.

7.2. The main works would commence following this and last for approximately two years (subject to TfL securing funding to meet the current funding gap).

This would just be the design works, then, and an actual station isn’t likely this decade. But it’s a start.

Meanwhile, the new entrance to Surrey Quays station seems to be getting close to completion. That will be a huge improvement: we won’t have to cross the road to get there, and access to the northbound platform will be upgraded from the single narrow staircase that currently serves it.

L— was getting her hair cut in Peckham on Wednesday evening, so we had a drink and dinner there before going home. As we waited at Peckham Rye station, a freight train went past on the other track hauling two brand new train sets. The colour scheme instantly made me think of the Tyne and Wear Metro, and when I looked it up that seems to be exactly what they were: new Metro trains passing through London on their way from the builders in Switzerland.

My grandparents’ house in Gosforth backed onto the Metro depot, and even after the decades, changes of livery, and different rolling stock, it seems that there’s still something that’s instantly recognisable to me about a Metro train.

I picked up an empanada for lunch on Thursday, from Rustic, the Chilean-British vegan restaurant in Rye Lane Market. It was delicious, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that by four o’clock I was feeling dizzy, and had to go home and lie on the sofa with my eyes closed until the world stopped spinning. It was very disconcerting: I felt like I was drunk, but it didn’t last as long as a hangover, and I felt normal again by dinner time.

We had too many parsnips so on Friday I baked a spiced parsnip cake with ginger, cardamom, coriander, cloves, and cinnamon. I adapted a recipe using the ingenious Elements of Baking book that I asked for and received for Christmas. It explains exactly how, depending on the type of baked good, you can adapt it to remove gluten, dairy, or eggs, or (my particular interest) to make it vegan. It came out very well.

No links this week as I’ve apparently been too busy working, trying to understand how assets work in Rails 8, or gazing in horror at the news.