Bloomsbury

Apologies for the blurred image.

Evening outdoor soiree in a communal garden in Bloomsbury. There are hundreds of institutes, learned societies, and professional associations in the area. Social interactions of this kind combine a surface urbanity (and apparent indifference) with the exchange of gossip and the discussion of very serious obscure ideas.

Although the gardens are communal to the terrace, they are railed off from from the public. There are many of these gardens in Bloomsbury. Most are private, some are public.

A few words of praise or damnation at these gatherings can decide professional careers.

The Fog of Games

Above: the lecture at the LSE.

Last night I went to a very interesting public lecture at the London School of Economics.

Entitled The Fog of Games: Legacy, Land Grabs and Liberty - Reporting the London Olympics the two speakers (film maker Mark Saunders and photographer/writer Martin Slavin) talked about the negative impact the Olympic Games is having on the East End, including destruction of the beautiful Lee valley and its wildlife (this environmental impact will be permanent - the landscape will never recover its original beauty).

"In the press the story has been about the fantastic transformation of the East End, but academic studies have begun to highlight significant negative impacts... Our own government in 2002 produced a document called Game Plan which identified five categories of benefits and said they would be more about celebration than economic benefit... It represents strategic misrepresentation by politicians seeking to appropriate scarce resources..."

"How did London win the Olympics? They were a reward for participation in the war on terror... The IOC is among the world's least accountable organisations, non-representative and insular... The IOC doesn't pay tax anywhere in the world..."

"The benefits so far announced have been double accounted - they were going to happen anyway... We're not looking at any meaningful green legacy, just golf-course style development that looks nice but isn't really green... The speed of the approaching deadlines overwhelms the planning process..."

"The Olympics is a television event not a sporting event - in Australia during the Olympics television-watching rocketed and never dipped down again..."

Big Brother tactics: "Use of anti-terror laws will be stepped up during the Olympics, for instance to log onto the site for the Cultural Olympiad you have to tick a box saying you will behave in a certain way..."

Seemingly unaccountable individuals running the 2012 Olympics: Dennis Hone - "it's a huge area, it's an important part of London, and this guy is making up policy on the hoof"; Ray O'Rourke - "he is at the centre of control of every single contract, a massive transfer of public money into private hands"; mystery sponsor Atos Origin needs investigating.

Population issues: "the people being moved off this site will not be moved back... thousands of volunteers will put themselves forward and Atos Origin will benefit from this free labour... there is a big scandal over the payment of living wages to all those who are working on the Olympics..."

More: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/LSEPublicLecturesAndEvents/events/2009/20090312t0857z001.htm

More: http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/

Westminster Abbey

Above: Westminster Abbey - I like the way the grey stone merges with the grey sky.

Sometimes you can walk past the same place hundreds of times without realising its true significance. How important is Westminster Abbey to our culture? In every sense of the word this is Valhalla, the place of meanings (if you can spare the time to unravel them all).

Another view: http://www.ltmcollection.org/posters/poster/poster.html?_IXMAXHITS_=1&IXinv=1990/48&IXsummary=results/results&IXsearch=westminster&_IXFIRST_=17&IXenlarge=1062-55

London Fashion Week

Above: the Fashion Retail Academy was set up in 2005 to enhance the standard of merchandising in the British fashion industry (the United Kingdom excels at designing, but is not so good at selling - there is a residual idea that selling is somehow...).

It is worth considering the impact fashion has on the United Kingdom economy. In the exotic caravansarai that is London Fashion Week the world creative forces that shape how people look (and look at each other) will be briefly gathered. London has always been a reliable wellspring of original designs / ideas / concepts.

As well as giving, London also receives a considerable amount of support from world-fashion decision makers. A few words of endorsement from Anne Wintour or Karl Lagerfeld will easily negate the gloomy verdicts of Howard Schultz or Jim Rogers among investors looking for sectors that can make them money. The industry makes money and is an engine of growth, but hardly anyone takes it seriously.

More: http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/

Le Caprice

On Friday I met friends at Le Caprice in Arlington Street. You would think that with the recession / depression no-one would be able to afford to eat at Le Caprice, but the place was packed. To add to the sense of recherche indulgence, our party included an unrepentent City person - and he paid the bill for all of us, which was generous.



Le Caprice is more of an institution than a restaurant. It is a favoured dining place of the media world. The glossy interior consists of an L-shaped room decorated with black and white photographs by David Bailey.

The restaurant is currently owned by Richard Caring who is a major donor to the Labour Party. A recent magazine caricature portrayed Richard Caring as the Bond villain Blofeld. Having bought Le Caprice he intends to "extend" the brand (in other words, dilute and corrupt it).



Above: I started with eggs Benedict, which is one of the Le Caprice specialties.



Above: for the main course I had a salmon fishcake, which again is a renowned Le Caprice dish.



Above: orange pudding with custard for dessert, followed by coffee.

We talked about media issues, politics, economics. Sancerre to drink. At one stage the City person became very agitated and talked about what the government should be doing - I made notes as he talked:

"It is okay to bash the bankers but do not confuse their actions on CDOs and other derivatives in the wholesale market as being about market failure. In fact most of the toxic waste that these banks have on their books is a result of bi-, tri- or quad-lateral agreements that they had with mortgage brokers or others. There was no market for these instruments when they were bought. Some smart ass simply gave a projection of revenues which the rating agencies signed off on. The key point is that the market was never in operation - there was no exchange for these things. Some are only now beginning to emerge. The government can help by supporting a market where this paper can trade. The solution to the current crisis is more markets not less! The Government needs to encourage the exchanges in the City - the LSE, or maybe better would be LIFFE - to set up a market where toxic waste can be traded publicly during normal trading hours. The Government should help finance independent rating analysts who can work towards getting information about all of these products into the public domain - this is a big job and needs government backing. That way not only can the government be seen to be doing something, but they can also begin to see the value of the assets in the banks that it has invested in. Plus the government gets to poke a snoot at the rating agencies. London needs to take a lead in creating a market for these instruments."

Well there you are. I didn’t understand a word of it. But I reproduce it here as the semi-drunk slurred ramblings of a fallen master of the universe down on his luck.

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

I am really enjoying the new dramatisiation of Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, serialised on BBC1 at the moment. I had my doubts at first, especially as Little Dorrit herself seemed a bit too perky and modern. But all those doubts have gone now - this is an excellent dramatisation, with lots to say about the inadvisability of getting into debt.

One night recently, on the way home, I made a diversion to Doughty Street (despite the rain) just to stand outside Charles Dickens' house (picture above - the building is now a small Dickens museum). Doughty Street is in an area difficult to get to by the tube. I got soaking wet and went into a cafe (Starbucks) to dry off - only to get soaking wet again when I came out.

To the end of the line

Above: A slim little book bought cheap from a stall (although not as cheap as its original cover price). It's the story of a half-forgotten railway that still runs (a shadow of its former self) through dingy parts of north London. Possibly the Pooters would have known it in its heyday.



Above: I looked at Camden Road station in the afternoon sun. The Ventian Gothic architecture is much-admired (everythign about the little railway was uniquely designed - locomotives, staff uniforms, tickets etc). If I hadn't had to get back to work I would have liked to have bought a ticket and travelled to the end of the line (which is no longer the magnificent terminus of Broad Street - destroyed in the '80s in an act of vandalism).

The distraught cyclist

Above: even on the busy Pentonville Road cycling is in vogue.

British cyclists won seven gold medals at the recent Olympics. Tory leaders David Cameron and Boris Johnson routinely cycle to work (I sure there must also be Labour politicians who cycle, but none came up on a Google search). A new multi-million pound cycling circuit opened at Redbridge last week.

London roads seem more full of cyclists than ever before. The Mayor of London wants to see a million Londoners regularly using their bicycles. We even have someone in the office who cycles in from Clapham (he keeps his work clothes in a cupboard and changes when he gets in – being an exhibitionist he doesn’t mind doing this).



Above: the distraught cyclist.

The downside of cycling in London (which I have never been foolish enough to attempt) is that the roads are full of maniacs. I was walking in west London recently, at about six o’clock in the evening. The roads were busy.

I was approaching a crossroads where two main roads crossed and was passed in the road by a man (aged about twenty-five, mixed-race, casually dressed) riding a cycle. He turned left at the crossroads, and a few seconds later I heard the sound of car hooters and a screeching emergency stop. When I turned the corner myself I saw that the cyclist had been hit by a car, the rear wheel of the cycle completely crumpled.

Splayed over two lanes, the cyclist (who seemed unhurt) and Volkswagen car brought the traffic to a complete stop, a huge traffic jam immediately forming. Stopping to watch (there were lots of onlookers at a bus-stop) I noticed that the cyclist had a child as a passenger, presumably his son. The cyclist and the female driver of the car were in a very heated discussion about whose fault the accident had been.

Ten minutes passed. The cyclist rang people on his mobile ’phone while the driver threw up her hands in exasperation. The child looked frightened as motorists sounded their hooters and shouted.

Eventually the car driver and cyclist moved their respective vehicles across to the central barrier, and the traffic resumed. After a few more minutes the car driver (unilaterally it seemed) decided to drive off. The cyclist was left stranded, still talking into his mobile ’phone, his son looking worried.

MI6

The MI6 building on the Albert Embankment (I took this photo from the other side of the Thames.

Although put up in the early ’90s, Terry Farrell’s post-modern design is an example of the 1980s break with modernism and eclectic revival of previous architectural styles (in this case art deco, although the building has neo-classical and gotham-gothic elements).

The building extends five storeys into the ground, comprising a bunker that is safe from external attack.

When it opened the building housed 2,500 staff, although this number is supposed to have doubled since 2001.

Self-consciously playing up the security service’s James Bond image, the building has actually appeared in James Bond films.

It was so different from everything I was used to...

Above: 9 Hanover Street in London. The anonymous looking green door is now the Paragon Lounge bar and nightclub. In the 1980s it was a nightclub called Prohibition, as one of Kim Blacha’s interviewees explains:


“Inside it was really tiny and absolutely packed. It was known as the poser’s paradise. It was a place you just had to go to… I was twenty and my boyfriend was twenty-six so I always felt a bit out of my depth with his friends. Looking back he didn’t take good care of me. He used to go off and talk to people and I didn’t know anyone… It was a place where everyone knew everyone else, so I was a bit left out sat on my own. At the time I didn’t mind, but looking back I would have expected him to be a bit more considerate. I was just excited at being there so I didn’t complain or anything. It was so different from everything I was used to. The clothes were incredible and the way people looked. You felt everything was new and beautiful and you were right in the middle of it…

“We went to lots of parties - this must have been eighty-one, eighty-two. There were parties and discos every weekend. The funny thing is, now I look back I didn’t enjoy any of them. I was always too nervous. I felt this is my life about to begin, so I mustn’t mess it up. I had to get things right - the right clothes and hair and everything. I remember there were two records in particular - Open Your Heart by Human League and Just Can’t Get Enough by Depeche Mode. Whenever those records played everyone went on the dance floor. It was as if it was a secret code. Everyone seemed to know what to do except me. Everyone knew what it meant except me. Even today I hear those records and they make me feel sick with anxiety…

“I stopped going out with him in eighty-four. Then I got married in eighty-five and that’s when the eighties came to an end for me. All the London nightspots came to an end for me, and I settled down in Reading…”

Note: this idea of the 1980s coming to an “end” in 1985/86 is a recurring comment. Possibly the cultural innovation was over by the middle of the decade and from 1987 became a parody of itself (formulaic music by Stock Aitkin Waterman, innovative fashions turning into fancy dress and “big hair”, individuality giving way to more collective instincts). By late 1988 a new and more democratic youth culture was on the way in.



Above: “Even today I hear those records and they make me feel sick with anxiety…” Just Can’t Get Enough came from Depeche Mode’s Speak and Spell LP (1981), Open Your Heart came from The Human League’s Dare LP (1981). Records from Kim Blacha’s private collection.

PS this “series” on the 1980s is not going to be all fashion and frivolity (which reflects Kim’s interests). I plan to introduce some political and socio-economic background to introduce an element of dull seriousness. There might even be footnotes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhg8D8MVYxQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c24-zoTlLiQ

London Labour and the London Poor (1)

One of books that changed my life is Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor. It is a fascinating ethnographic examination of the working class and underclass in Victorian London. It makes me think about “the working poor” in London today.

I hope this photo essay will be the first in a series.

Obviously these are candid photographs, taken from “real life”, so if anyone objects let me know and I will take the image down.



Above: construction workers have uncertain job security. Employment is often on a casual basis. Henry Mayhew wrote “The first contractor, who does the least of all, gets the most of all; while the poor wretch of a working man, who positively executes the job, is obliged to slave away every hour…”



Above: street cleaners. Usually today they will be employed directly by borough councils and receive proper payment, including pensions. In Henry Mayhew’s day things were more casual and he write of the classes of street cleaners as being “scavengers, nightmen, flushermen, chimney-sweeps, dustmen, crossing-sweepers, “street-orderlies,” labourers to sweeping-machines and to watering-carts”.



Above: drainage workers. There is nothing glamorous about this job, but it is absolutely essential. Henry Mayhew helped expose the scandal of poor housing in Bermondsey without adequate drainage “any one who has ventured a visit to the last-named of these places in particular, will not wonder at the ravages of the pestilence in this malarious quarter, for it is bounded on the north and east by filth and fever, and on the south and west by want, squalor, rags and pestilence.”



Above: lighting engineer (Mayhew writes of the gas lamp lighters of Victorian London).



Above: Mayhew writes extensively about “barrow boys” and their unique culture.



Above: kitchen workers. Again a precarious occupation, now as in Mayhew’s time (the shouting and bullying of Gordon Ramsay would shock Henry Mayhew). Mayhew recorded the experience of kitchen and domestic servants into unemployment, destitution and thus into far worse means of existence.



Above: I am sure this is actually a highly-paid surveyor, but there was something about the way he went along the pavement daubing paint on cracks and potholes that seemed Dickensian.



Above: casual labourer eating a makeshift lunch (probably brought from home) while laying on the grass of a London square. These labourers have no rights and can be dismissed on a whim. In one of the richest cities in the world they subsist on a pittance.



Above: sandwich-board men. It must be humiliating to wear this advertising paraphernalia. Mayhew records “the Street-Advertisers viz. billstickers, bill-deliverers, boardmen, men to advertising vans, and wall and pavement sticklers”.



Above: the “shirking classes”. Whenever the sun becomes hot you suddenly see people in the middle of the working day, in urban areas, dressed as if they were on holiday. I don’t mean to judge these people, nor do I think they should be “forced” into working if they don’t want to - if they can get by on benefits good luck to them (but young idlers were around in Mayhew’s time and he writes: “without judicious treatment, the restraint may be entirely thrown off by the youth, and the labour be discarded by him, before any steadiness of application has been produced by constancy of practice”).

More on Henry Mayhew: http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/25

Canteen culture

The Feathers pub in Broadway. I went there yesterday lunchtime with an old college friend who is now in the police. Not surprisingly it is popular with police who work at New Scotland Yard (“A big group of police got involved in a fight at the Feathers with some squaddies from around the corner - the landlord was yelling I’ll call the police and they told him We ARE the police!”).

Afterwards we went into New Scotland Yard for a cup of coffee in the canteen. I was surprised at how little security there seemed to be - no-one searched me or asked me what I was doing there. The canteen was a big room several floors up, almost entirely empty.

“Canteen culture” is an important determinant of police attitudes to the outside world. Almost uniquely among British institutions, everyone at the top of the police has started at the bottom. The canteen culture now prevalent will decide police policy ten or fifteen or twenty years from now.

Scarsdale Villas

Walking along Scarsdale Villas in the late summer evening (hot, arid, airless) I was impressed by this front garden on the corner plot. Filled to bursting with old-fashioned flowers (in old-fashioned colours), just to look at it was a refreshing tonic. Roses, hollyhocks, foxgloves, geraniums, a spiky white flower I couldn’t identify, green foliage grown for its own sake.

In his (revolutionary) 1919 book Garden First in Land Development William Webb argued that the working poor created cottage gardens for their sustenance, the aristocracy created pleasure gardens for their private enjoyment, but only the middle classes created showy front gardens to share with the world.

Increasingly front gardens in London are being tarmac-ed over to provide parking spaces for four or five car families. It’s a selfish and self-defeating trend. Community covenants need to protect the gardens that remain.

More on the development of this corner of London: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50321

It is an addiction

Above: Charing Cross Road, from near Leicester Square, looking towards Centre Point.

When I go to see my West End clients I usually walk rather than get the tube (although the recent sudden showers make this risky).

Charing Cross Road is famous for its bookshops. I must have spent a fortune on books from these shops over the years. I have calculated that I now have more books waiting to be read than I could possibly get through in the years ahead (assuming one book per two weeks and that I live another fifty years). And yet I am still buying books (and being given books). It is an addiction. I can’t even check into somewhere like the Betty Ford Clinic for help.

It was in a bookshop in Charing Cross Road that I bought the Short Stories of E Phillips Oppenheim. And Derwent Miall’s Strange Case of Vincent Hume. And The World of Marcel Proust by André Maurois.

Charing Cross is marked at its south end by a statue of heroic nurse Edith Cavell (who features in Gordon Brown’s book on Courage). At the northern end the Centre Point building (designed by Seifert and described by Pevsner as “coarse in the extreme”) was constructed at the end of the 1960s property boom and remained empty during the subsequent crash, attracting many conspiracy theories. 84 Charing Cross Road is no longer a bookshop.

“A wafer dipped in a wine drop is the Presence the angels hail”.

Thursday. The Festival of Corpus Christi (Corpus Christi is Latin for “Body of Christ”). Since medieval times processions have taken place in towns and cities, with the Consecrated Host carried through the streets in elaborate monstrances.

As the county is predominantly rural, there were no Corpus Christi processions taking place actually on Corpus Christi Day (although there is one in a town in the north of the county this coming Sunday).

However, there were several processions taking place in London.

The Corpus Christi observance was developed by the Dominican Friars in the thirteenth century following visions by an Augustinian holy woman. At the same time the appearance of a bleeding host gained widespread cult following and was proclaimed as a miracle, leading to official sanction by the Papacy (Thomas Aquinas wrote an official liturgy for the day). Both Friars and Augustinians were based in towns and cities (unlike monks and nuns who were based in secluded monasteries and convents) which is probably why the Corpus Christi celebrations acquired an urban characteristic.



Above: taking a late lunch, I went down to Cannon Street and into Dowgate Hill (which runs up the side of the station) where the Skinners livery company has been located on the same site since the fourteenth century. The Skinners guild was originally dedicated to Corpus Christi, and on this day each year they elect their new master. The road outside Skinners Hall was cordoned-off by security and two police on horses waited to escort the Skinners Company’s Corpus Christi procession (watched by construction workers).



Above: being a semi-religious fraternity, the Skinners first met in City churches, but soon became wealthy enough to build a permanent Hall on Dowgate Hill. As well as rooms for feasting and ceremonial, the design of the Hall included a courtyard for the marshalling of the annual procession (an example of function shaping architecture which then continues to shape function). Here you can see, slightly late, the procession starting to emerge.



Above: there is very little publicity about this annual ceremony, which has quietly taken place year after year. The first recorded procession took place in 1327. In the later middle ages, when intercessory religion was in vogue and the guilds were at the height of their importance, the procession included hundreds of clergy and civic dignitaries (many carrying ornate wax torches).



Above: the master and wardens, wearing fur-trimmed robes and carrying posies (anyone who has read Huizinga will realise how quietly exciting this sight is). The guild elects its new master each year by a ritual trying-on of a cap (the origin of the saying “if the cap fits, wear it”). The health of the new master is then drunk from special silver Cockayne cups, made in 1599 in the shape of cockerels.



Above: during Corpus Christi processions the Host is carried in elaborate monstrances. The Victoria & Albert Museum has dozens of medieval and renaissance monstrances on display - they used to be in line after line of dreary glass cases, but now they have been rearranged more artistically (but less amenable to scholastic study). I’m really pleased with the way in which this photograph turned out, as I took the picture through glass using a flash (the shadow effect was unexpected).



Above: after work I decided to attend one of the Anglican Corpus Christi services. I really wanted to go to the service in Kentish Town, but it didn’t start until 7.30 and would have meant not getting home until eleven o’clock (I am a long-distance commuter). So I went to All Saints in Margaret Street, just round the corner from the BBC.

I got to the church only a couple of minutes before the 6.30 service began. I had not been to the church before, which is one of Butterfield’s finest, praised by Ruskin. Inside it was packed, the congregation of several hundred encased in a big town church of porphyry columns, pictures formed from encaustic tiles, and polychromatic bricks.

It was unmistakably “high”. Not just “high” in the tracterian sense, but the sumptuous chancel was physically high, like a stage (three tiers of candles on the high altar). The mixture of High Church furnishings, fading evening light and office workers interspersed with elderly ladies made me feel I had entered the world of Barbara Pym.

Because of the importance of this service clergy had been brought in from neighbouring parishes. The clerical entrance procession was one of the largest I have seen, the senior clergy wearing vestments. From my seat on the right edge of the nave I could see additional clergy in a sort of back area by the organ (metal ladder leaning incongruously against the wall), sitting in a line like the substitutes’ bench at a football match.

Clerical intonations, choking amounts of incense, Tallis anthems sung in Latin. The vicar, with Tyneside accent, gave a sermon on the three bodies of Christ - physical, Eucharistic and The Church. We sang the Creed.

As so many people were in the church the Communion took nearly half an hour. The church is famous for its choir, and throughout the Communion they half turned towards the nave and sang the Agnes Dei. As I walked up the chancel steps towards the altar I felt I was passing through a wall of sound created by this choir.



Above: after Communion the clergy, choir and congregation lined up in Margaret Street for the Corpus Christi procession. Several banners were carried, including this one which shows the Host and Chalice (“a wafer dipped in a wine drop is the Presence the angels hail”). Behind the banner you can see a brass band from one of the local Church of England schools.



Above: among the choristers were young girls wearing flower garlands. In the medieval period houses along the Corpus Christi route would be hung with tapestries. The road would be strewn with rushes, and temporary wayside shrines would be set up, decorated with roses and sweet woodruff.



Above: preceded by censors (you can see the clouds of incense) the Host was carried in a monstrance under a canopy. You can see the monstrance just above the shoulder of the nearest attendant (if you click on the photo you can enlarge it). Although it was past eight, the sky was still light.



Above: the congregation followed on behind, singing processional hymns, the entire procession about three hundred yards in total (274 metres). The procession turned right into Wells Street then right again to go along Oxford Street. In the medieval period the population would kneel as the Host passed, but now the people stared with uncomprehending eyes and took photos with their mobile phones.

More about the Skinners: http://www.skinnershall.co.uk/
More on All Saints Margaret Street: http://www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk/
Corpus Christi carol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Christi_Carol

A pub I know well

I left work early today and so got to hear Eddie Mair’s PM show on Radio 4. The programme had an item on Europe Day (which is today) and went to the Albert pub to ask drinkers what they thought (“don’t care” was the typical reaction). The Albert is a pub I know well - it has many original Victorian features, including etched glass windows.



Above: the staircase leading up to the restaurant is lined with portraits of Prime Ministers (the one of Margaret Thatcher was personally unveiled).

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pm/

You can tell I am busy

I am horribly busy at the moment. By “horribly” I mean I have taken on a project that MUST be finished by the 26th March, and yet even if I work all day and all night I can’t see that it will be ready. Plus I am having to ignore all the important “usual” stuff I need to do.

You can tell I am busy when I go to see one of my clients and walk back along The Strand without going into Stanley Gibbons for twenty minutes to look at the stamps (I only look - I have far too many interests at the moment without starting stamp-collecting).

More on Stanley Gibbons: http://www.stanleygibbons.com/home/index.asp

At the end of a platform at Kings Cross

Train-spotters at the end of a platform at Kings Cross station in north London. Notice the characteristic SLR camera. And yes, one of them IS wearing an anorak!

One of the great hobbies that Britain gave to the world is train-spotting. Also known as ferroequinology. The classic train-spotter (called disparagingly “anoraks”) will aim to “spot” all the components of a particular locomotive class and mark them off in special handbooks published by Ian Allen (the pages are just columns of numbers).

As I have taken a photo of train-spotters does that make me a train-spotter-spotter?

More on train spotting: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7179030.stm

More on Ian Allen: http://www.ianallan.com/group.html