The demon drink

Pubs are great. Like bunions, they come in all shapes and sizes. Unlike bunions, they're a good venue to meet your friends, shoot the shit and imbibe. I want one of my own (a pub, not a bunion). 

Pubs are one of the best of British inventions to 'go global': up there with the internet and concentration camps, in my humbles. The Swan and Edgar is no exception. 

A bit poncey for some, not quite poncy enough for others, I was introduced to this particular London boozer by my friend Stuart, co-coordinator that day of a fine stag do for my friend Alex. The pub was good then and it was even better the other week, starter as it was for one of those 'just the one drink' meet ups turned into a mild session that ended up with Spanish dancing at 1am, drinks aloft. 

This is a great pub for many reasons: I like the sign - it has a beagle with a cravat on it. This is good. I like how they don't really piss about on their website (although a map probably wouldn't really go amiss, chaps). It's as small and unfussy as the place itself.  Most of all I like how they like words. The pelmet (that's not the word, but go with me) above the bar is made out of hardbacks. The bar itself is formed out of paperbacks, all stacked up side-on. Books are scattered about too, as are papier mache-styled chairs to perch on. They've even got scrabble floor tiling in the lavvies. Marvellous.

The bar, badly shot

Oh, and there was a shiny metallic green mini outside that day. Like a nose piercing on the Mona Lisa in that bit of Marylebone, but it seemed to fit well. No jukebox, smelt a bit of drains at one point and there was no fit barman but you can't have it all. 

Camley Street loveliness

I think I spotted it on a map a couple of years ago. A green Trivial Pursuit wedge of land caught between Kings Cross and St. Pancras stations, both currently at different stages of their (long overdue) olympic makeovers. 

A while back, me and Kelly decided to stock up on culture points at a Euston museum. Stalling at the cafe, neither of us could really be arsed 'improving ourselves' indoors on a sunny spring day. We decided the Camley Street Natural Park was a much better option.


Battling through the traffic, tour buses and concrete lorries the entrance to our destination reluctantly revealed itself. For a countryside-reared boy, it looked an unimpressive spit of land (god knows what the girl from Vancouver must have thought) but we gamely waded in. We were rewarded for keeping any initial misgivings to ourselves: it was two acres of loveliness - little paths leading the curious hither and yon into the foliage, dripping with woody odours, bright insects and recent rainfall. 


Like a lot of inner-city outdoors stuff, the place was geared towards education. Fair enough when you consider the average London kid might not have had as many cow parsley fights or pet caterpillars as I did. Question cards and information signs were littered about, with stacks of clipboards and kid-sized chairs stacked up in a corner. The sign to the 'mini-beast' led me, guttingly, nowhere. 

Even at a cake-filled crawl, we'd done a circuit in under half an hour. Cresting a little bluff halfway round, the skinny fingers of a nearby disused gas tower poked sclerotically into view. A step more revealed heavy plant pirouetting round it and each other, reduced to a tonka toy scale from our perch. It was like being in a Greenpeace video.  

Only a couple of weeks later, I got an unexpected second glimpse at the place. I took the new Highspeed one train from St Pancras to see dad in deepest Kent. Killing time by trying to find the flux capacitor under the bonnet I realised we were overlooking that little slice of green again. It's good (in the main) when nature has a chance to sneak up on you. 

Secret Smile

Soho

 Someone's been leaving a smile all over London. It happened, seemingly overnight, a few months back (apologies: the lag between photoing and blogging is stretching to a piano-wire thinness). Nothing new perhaps - some bloke sprayed the word 'Evlish' across Manchester for most of the late 1990s - but in this case, to me at least, it was done with a certain charm. 

Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Our dauber would tag random stuff in random ways. Sometimes you get just a mouth or eyes, other times the whole drippy face. It became a game to try and spot where the mystery dauber had left their mark as I walked into work.

Centre Point

Centre Point

What was always easy to spot was the sense of humour that lay behind the not-so-mindless vandalism. What motivated them was somewhat harder for this blogger to spot. Since these shots have been taken, grime and time have made our erstwhile street artist's message even more indistinct. 

I hope he comes back soon and shows his face.

Brick Lane

Cloud unbursting

There's not a lot of sky in London. Buildings are too high or squooshed together. I think sometimes there's too much going on at ground level for eyes to look up that far. 


Then the other day on the way to work, the sky jumped out at me. Some weird atmospheric event meant the contrails that normally get blown away had, weirdly, been preserved. 

Suddenly the sky had gotten interesting. It was like someone had been ice skating on the sky.  

 It was really weird - there must be dozens of the planes flying overhead every hour. What made these ones special? Why, when it was a bit gusty a ground level could it be so airless up there?


Central London had the same story. I wandered round town with my neck craned up. 

Work intervened and life continued and it wasn't until an hour or two later that I thought to look out the window again. They'd gone.

London always has had the ability to entertain and delight in unexpected ways. Once again, it had done me proud. 

 

Untitled Spaces

The London borough of Camden is as varied as it is huge: Covent Garden to the South, the tourist-trap market in its north and my location one night in its neglected middle. 

My mate Andy has been working with a friend on a project called Untitled Space. It's aims are noble, myriad and best described by the man himself. In a nutshell, they take empty, unused spaces and make them useful in interesting ways.

That night an old tailors had been converted into a gallery of sorts, smack-bang in the middle of a huge Camden estate. 

Several artists had work on display for people to peruse and, if inclined, purchase. There was a Dutch auction: bids put in under (or over, if you fancied) an asking price that slowly slid downwards over the lifespan of the gallery. Best of all was the where local kids had done their own (not for sale) pieces, egged on by enthusiastic curators keen not just to put on a poncy 'no-locals-please' event. It felt laid back, quite spontaneous and dead interesting. 

There are more London events planned soon. Word has it that jewelry, photography and a ping-pong contest will nestle alongside art and photography, all battling for attention. Hoping and, if this night was anything to go by, succeeding doing something a bit different to the usual, largely profit- or promotion-driven pop-up shops that are dotted over London like urban acne.

Marching for the alternative 2011

People walk for all sorts of reasons, but rarely is it for a cause. My walks - and this blog - were no different. Then I went on my first protest March on March 26th. Most of you know why it happened (and those than don't can find out here). Others have, more eloquently than I ever could, stated their opinions about the whys and the what-it-all-means. I just wanted to paint what it was like, as a contrast to what others (or the media) might choose to focus on. 

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting it to be so fun. Yes it was full of classic left-wing stooges, preserved in amber from the 1980s. It was anti lots of things (anti-cuts, anti-government, anti-Libyan intervention, etc.) but it was also done, in the main, with so much disarming warmth and charm that you were bowled over by the strength of positive feeling more than the strength of any particular argument. 

As we wandered up to the rear of the already miles-long march, various groups had left little groups of placards; propped up like cardboard canapes for us to peruse and use as we saw fit. Little tents en route gave out free leaflets, helium balloons, tabards(!) and even food for marchers to read, hold, don or eat. Sandwiches were unwrapped from foil or scooped out of Tupperware to be shared with friends.

 

 There was music - brass bands, reggae sound systems, middle-eastern bands and pop music to let people shuffle, march and sashay their way to the main rally at Hyde Park. You didn't want for noise - whistles, klaxons, hand clakers and the oh-god-when-did-they-become-ubiquitous vuvzelas all honked in an incoherent, happy din. Sometimes, like when the march actually started moving forward after two hours, it would come together in one glorious roar that surged back from the front like a slow-moving sonic boom. It made my heart race and my fingers tingle. That sheer weight of humanity, the sheer excitement of being there and doing something, however futile, however tokenistic. Of making a point about making a point of where the UK was in 2011. And what we thought of it. 

I've stood in large crowds of people at music gigs - a giant mass of humanity cheering on a band and 'sharing something'. But I've not felt anything like this before. It was a buzz. It was scary/amazing. It was impressive. 

 

It was why I've written a longer blog than normal, telling you about it. 

Thanks for reading.

one perch, two worlds

You see some odd things as a smoker. Being rightly consigned to the outdoors to huff on a cancer stick gives you pause at spots where others don't tend to linger. 

Up the Arsenal!

Up the tambourine mike, Tarquin

I had the good fortune to recently be invited to dinner in Highbury, a heartbeat away from the Arsenal stadium and a world away from the £500k houses that surround it. 

This was underlined as I stood sucking on a Marlboro light on my friend's doorstep. Ahead of me, the local pub shook with the shouts of fans, screaming as their side spectacularly failed to make any headway in Europe. 

Simultaneously, to my right, a twee band rehearsed furiously (but rather less noisily) from the first floor of their flat. Plectrums, pigtails and plimsols a go-go.

It's not that the band were spectacularly posh (although I don't think even four giros would have stretched to cover the rent in N5), it was just great to see two very different Tuesday evening activities lit up and put cheek by jowl.

(apologies for the grainy, dire photography in this post)