The Cutest Little Kiosk In Town
Friday, July 29th, 2011Here’s a little place that has fascinated me for years. I love that it must be a piece of happy serendipity arising from a gap in between two houses that today would be gobbled up for a garage (actually, it looks like it might once have been one) or even, given property prices, micro-apartments – they’d probably squeak about eight into a gap that size. Instead it’s a teeny-tiny ice cream / snack kiosk to sustain visitors trudging their way up to the park.
There weren’t many takers on the day I snapped this; it was one of those days we’ve had rather a lot of recently where the gaps between torrential rain were few and far between. I guess it’s a bit of an odd, all-or-nothing profession – hot, sunny days yielding queues round the block, cold, rainy days requiring a pack of cards and some matchsticks.
I don’t know how long it’s been here; I only know I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t. If you look at the architecture (a grand word, perhaps, but apt, I feel…) it’s got a very old, make-do-and-mend style of construction that’s utterly charming:
Nothing more to add really, except that for me this is the sort of little quirky corner that makes Greenwich what it is. With a bit of luck it will survive the upheaval when the university builds its new architecture school…
BTW. Never be swayed by the ice cream vans that hang around outside sundry Greenwich Park gates. I succumbed once and bought a 99 which, about thirty seconds after I bought it, totally collapsed, it was so full of air. Pah,