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)

Slightly-less-urban flotsam

The waterfall at Monsal Dale. About as natural as a lilo

The North. Subject of much sarcastic writings by non-northerners and the origin of a great many great friends (and a good deal of my further education). 

Urban walks should, by definition, take place somewhere filled with wifi,
traffic jams or the occasional quiet stabbing. Yet a recent jaunt to Yorkshire showed me you can still get incredibly man- made flotsam in a place where you wouldn't expect it.  

Endcliffe park. Has had the builders in

 An at-times vertiginous but rather lovely yomp around Monsal Dale threw up the old bridges and abandoned railway lines you might expect from a part of the world with such a rich industrial past. 


What was more unusual was that someone had gone to the effort of creating a lovely waterfall in the middle of somewhere already rather lovely.

Bricks in the riverbed for
that jacuzzi effect

  
Later on in Hunter's Bar - a cracking bit of Sheffield that doesn't boast the kind of natural beauty that the Peak District never stops going on about - the home-made waterfalls continued with gusto.

 
Wandering through Endcliffe park, there were at least half a dozen brazenly man-made waterfalls of one sort and another. Paths were thrown alongside - and sometimes over - the stream supplying them with H2O. 

I wondered: did it matter that these supposedly natural features were entirely unnatural? Was the pleasant sight and sound of them undercut by the fact they came from a desire by the Victorians  to jazz the place up a bit? Certainly no-one else having a crisp January walk that day seemed bothered.

In the end, neither was I.

Fake but fab

Little new London

I love a map. They combine something functional with something that can, in the right hands, be really beautiful. London's had her fair share, including the ones that were on show here and are on sale here. 

I stumbled almost literally (thanks shoes) across this one as I was wandering, dazed, into work. A sprawling, room-sized scale model of London.
 
 It looked like something out of a Bond movie. Any second now an evil genius was going to explain to me his plans for turning the entire metropolis into plaid, residents too. 

I gawped happily at some slightly beige buildings and the new Crossrail track as it weaved its way insidiously around other established landmarks. A vibrant city strewn with so many evocative landmarks, all toned done into subtle shades.

Accidental close-up of
a roundabout. Pfwoar!

New or proposed buildings stood out in white, like they hadn't had the time to take on the tones of their neighbours. It all seemed a quaint, enthralling, rather British waste of time. I bloody loved it.

(For some decent camerawork and a full explanation of what this was all about, have a gander here)

Man kept in shot for scale
(and because he wouldn't move)

Social bird housing

There's this little, new park in Islington. A newly laid slither of green squished alongside the overpriced townhouses and the bustle of Upper Street. Somewhere that feels private and secluded in a London borough that's anything but.  

As I walked through it, I spotted what I thought was a giant bees nest clinging to a tree. Even from a wee way off, my brain was telling me that couldn't be it.  

Closing in, the one yellow blob resolved into lots of smaller ones. Like someone has installed two Buddhist prayer wheels a bit too high up.

Closer still and I work it out: a riot of nests for birds and insects, piled high on each other like they were nailed up in a hurry by someone with a job lot of the buggers and only one eye. 

It looks like a bulging beige tower block, or one of those ancient medieval cities in the middle east. 

I love it. 

A connecting sleeve runs out from the main body of one nest of nests. Like population pressure has forced the city is grow out to meet its neighbour. 

Or, for the more discerning invertebrate, a new complex was created - boasting  Velux skylights rather than pedestrian portholes.

Being December and baltic, the complex seems uninhabited. Surely soon this Islington property will soon be snapped up by young families and city workers keen to be near the local facilities. 


Bizarrely, I can't help wondering about the practical problems like noise or bird poo this place will generate.

Bus, interrupted

It was the nonchalance with which a random bus driver casually did a u-turn on a busy A-road in front of me that first caught my attention.

It was the thought of what the sight looked like to me that had me plunging into my bag for my camera like I was after a grenade with its pin out. Like the time I snapped a porakabin being lowered gingerly into the high-sided London mews I worked in because I felt like a witness to the world’s biggest game of Tetris. 

Now I’m a veteran Londoner: the urge to be snapped in front of an iconic London bus with two Churchill v’s up, Japanese tourist style, has long left me.


But this guy was breaking the Bus Rules.


Buses don’t to u-turns any more than they do wheelies. The rule breach (and the photo it let me take) transforms this bus into an extra from 28 Days Later or perhaps (more chillingly) that Bat For Lashes video. Hackney residents, terrified of the zombie hordes pouring in from Harringay, try to block off one of London’s arteries before the undead poison shuffle, moaning, into the heart of Stoke Newington.

Or something – it had been a long day trying to think up creative crap and boredom breeds febrile thoughts. It was still weird (and great) to see something you see every day doing something you don’t.