Sutton is the home of the first All Bar One.
Despite this, or perhaps because of this, it is quite well-connected by trains. Thusly, the curious and devilishly handsome urban explorer can get there with ease from, say, Kings Cross, Victoria, Blackfriars or, um, Mordern South.
Turning right out of the station [the direction, rather than necessarily with urgency] one toddles along a long downward sloping High Street, where rainwaters must cascade in those monsoon-season summer months.
One's eye is caught by a bit of suburban concrete brutalism; one might even fail at first to notice that someone had planted the first floor with shaggy grasses. Perhaps it's a tribute to the Olympic Park. But why is the floor above it partly open to the elements? Is it a car park, once you've driven through the office space behind? A Corbusier-style sun terrace with a roof? A horrible, horrible mistake?
One soon comes across a nice bit of artificial stone PoMo, which looks like it might be a shopping centre, but is actually just a facade that extends well above the two-floor shops in it.
Shortly further on, one comes across a real shopping centre. One which appears to have been modeled on the 1980s Space Lego Monorail set that I used to [/still] want.
Sutton's Times Square Shopping Centre
Legoland set 6990
Someone's putting in some valiant effort with Times Square. The Christmas decorations are rather pleasant, with blue fairy lights matching the Lego canopy, but there are a heck of a lot of empty shops.
The heads of the hanged Christmas trees were left as a warning to others.
Things are livened up somewhat by a really grim 'Happy Happy Yellow' flying walkway that links the shopping centre to the multistorey carpark out back. It looks like that acetate sheeting that shopkeepers used to stick on the inside of their windows to keep their haberdashery from fading in the sun.
Happy now?
Back across the High Street is yet another indoor shopping arcade, the one which presumably killed off the Times Square one. This sports a rather impressive bit of heroic Gill Sans bursting forth into the winter sky.
Reminds me of Nova Huta
The St Nicholas shopping centre has all the most mediocre high street brands that the low-aspiring surburbanite could want (Next, Debenhams et al). There's also a pleasingly over-the-top central dome bit bursting with bunting.
Happy Jubilee / Olympics / shopping
On the way back to the train station, one passes a pleasant example of small-town punning. One can spend the entire journey back to London proper pondering [that's 'London-proper, pondering', not 'London, proper pondering'. I don't speak like that] its hidden meanings.
A reference to 'dress to impress'?
A reference to Avis' 'We Try Harder'?
Just a bit illiterate?
