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Victory Place, LONDON, SE19 3FE

The outdoor grill/snack van is a fixture in Victory Place.

This was taken a couple of days after the death of President Hugo Chavez, and the flag appears to be flying half-mast, in so far as an almost horizontal flag can (compare its more usual position in Image). In Venezuela mourners were wearing red in tribute to Chavez; inside this cafe the man behind the counter was sporting a red baseball cap.

On the extreme right, a weatherboarded building creeps in which was the last surviving remnant of the original White Hart inn on the corner of Church Road and Westow Street. The White Hart itself was replaced in the later nineteenth century by a fanciful Gothic construction designed by Sextus Dyball, but a small portion of the earlier building remained, possibly a stable : see Image for the "new" building, where the last remnant of the old can be seen peeping, painted white, around the left side of the Gothic brickwork. The last portion of the original pub was knocked down in early 2015.

Busy Westow Street has mostly independent shops and eateries, with a moderate-sized Sainsbury's set back behind landscaping. There is more information about the war memorial (right of centre) at Image

Looking down Westow Street from outside Sainsburys. The spire belongs to the Orthodox Church of St Constantine and St Helen.

At the time that this photograph was taken, this run of former cottages now in commercial use was scheduled for demolition in a few years' time: a retail development is planned in the medium-term future on Victory Place, which will swallow them up. The interior of the Upper Norwood "Triangle", formerly inhabited largely by cabinet makers and light engineering works, has been slowly redeveloped since the 1970s and this planned mall is another step in that, though it remains to be seen, in late 2019, whether that will ever take place. Of the three former cottages, two are occupied (and have been for some years) by Way Ahead hairdressers, which has involved knocking two properties together and consequently a rather labyrinthine interior.

Considering that links between the UK and Venezuela are scarcely intimate, I always wonder what the odds were that I should both live and work near buildings proudly flying the Venezuelan flag (the consulate and cultural centre on Grafton Way are close to my workplace - see Image).

Paxton Mews, an area of workshops and small businesses, lies behind the shops on Westow Street.