"King Edward VII" (1911)

King Edward VII statue in bronze outside Tooting Broadway tube station, sculptor L.F. Roselieb (1878–1934), erected 1911.

Edward VII statue stands outside which station? A weekend quiz for you and your family (via Travel with Angela Lansbury):

Yes, I could not get this wrong. I gave a talk on the kings and Queens of England to a Toastmasters speakers training meeting in Singapore at the time of the royal wedding. I had devised a memory aid for George V and George VI. George the Fifth in the First world war (FF) and George the Sixth in the Second World War (SS).

Edward VIII was the king who abdicated. Queen Victoria did not hold her son Edward VII in high esteem because she blamed him for the death of Albert. Dear Albert had gone to rescue Edward from visiting a lady, worse than philandering - oh dear, say no more. If you don't know, look it up.

So, if you feel prudish and disapproving like Queen Victoria, you can toot at Edward VII, mentally, only mentally, because tooting with car horns is not the done thing in the UK where we flash lights as silent signals in daytime as well as at night.

The exterior of Tooting Broadway station (which I suppose includes the statue) makes it to no. 79 on 150 great things about the Underground.

Baseball Cap Girl

Spotted 7th Feb 2016

New Irony Street Art In Tooting (via London Calling Blog):

This morning we are back in Tooting, an area that is currently undergoing a colourful transformation due to the great work of The Real Art of Street Art and Irony, who have set to start decorating the Tooting Market and it’s surrounding walls with a series of beautiful murals. The project may be pretty fresh but it is already coming into its own, with there currently being some twelve works already to be seen in the area and nine of those put up since the new year. [..]

The work is most striking and really suits it location just along Tooting High Street, depicting a hyper-realistic portrait of a woman dressed in hoodie and baseball cap with a rather mischievous looking cat resting along her shoulders.

It is sometimes easy to forget how much effort, skill and artistry goes into these works, demonstrated by London Calling Blog's series of photos on a new Nick Flatt & Seeds One Collaboration in North London.