Last Monday England won the Ashes.  Did you hear about that?  Did I mention it?  Maybe yes.  Anyway, yes, England won the Ashes.  I reckon they were extremely lucky that they won the Ashes.  Two very narrow wins (one of them very narrow) for England to one thrashing of them by Australia does not “outplayed” make, even though you have to say that if you are the losing captain, because saying “we nearly won but we were a bit unlucky” is not dignified.

But despite all that, I am very glad that England won the Ashes, and my way of celebrating is to blog about it a lot, while all the while admitting that England were very lucky.  To win the Ashes.

To be a bit more serious and cultural about it, during the final game of the series, at the Oval, I couldn’t help being impressed by the new stand they have built there, which was making its test match debut.  They showed aerial views of it from time to time during the game, done from the Betfair Blimp, and I took some snaps of my telly of some of these shots.  None of my pictures were technically pretty, but this one gets the message across okay.

And here is what it looks like from ground level, this being a picture of the celebrations at the end:

As it happens, I live only a walk away from the Oval myself.  It’s just across the river from me.  So late this afternoon I went there with my camera to see what it looks like from outside the ground.  One of the things I like about London is the way these big, futuristic new structures, like the Wheel or the Dome or the Gherkin hover above the mundanity in the foreground.  What kind of effect did this new Oval stand make on its surroundings?  Could you even see it from outside the ground?  If so, how did it look?

Click to get these bigger.

The face presented by the new stand to the outside world is rather strange, not what I expected at all.  All those curves, sticking up like a huge rib cage on its side, looking as if the bones are made of chipboard, and with vegetation growing out of it.  And in truth, when you get right up close to the roof structure itself, as you can at the right hand end as you look at it in the aerial photo, it all looks rather out-of-town-shopping-centre-ish.  The lines at each end don’t join smoothly.  Instead they kind of kink inwards, in a rather ungainly fashion.  This is the new Norman Foster late modernist style, but done by people who don’t have money to burn, which can be a real disadvantage.

But, imperfect though it may be, this thing certainly makes its presence felt.  The area around it is somewhat drab and down-at-heel, with boarded up shops and seedy pubs.  A landmark like this adds a lot.  Maybe the new stand is already raising the tone of the place, and the drabness is phase one of redevelopment process.

UPDATE: I’ve just found a truly excellent photo of this stand, here.  It is becoming clear to me that the way to make this thing look good is to get above it.  In case it goes away, I’ve decided to steal this photo for here.