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July 24, 2005

Last look at Folk Archive

That diesel-powered elephant

It should be taken as a paradoxical vindication of the two curators' success (or perhaps a gauge of the minimal extent of their contribution to the show's success?) that, after the vivacity and humour of the exhibits themselves, their talk on the motives and ideas behind it seemed singularly flat and uninspired. The same can't be said of the final performance related to the exhibition, which brought together the Whitstable Hoodeners and the Harthill Tuppers for a couple of entertaining performances: the latter more so because of the relative novelty of seeing a sheep (tup) rather than a horse as the animal at the centre of the musical folk-drama.

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July 21, 2005

More Hercules

Posted by robin at 09:13 PM | Comments (12)

July 20, 2005

Hugging the Hog's Back

Topsfield Parade
Weston Park

Ferme Park Road

Mount View Road The apex: covered Reservoir from which you can see Canary Wharf and the Dome
Crouch Hill

Ella Road White Van Man Cinema
Oakington Way
Tregaron Avenue
Elm Grove
Womesley Road
Cecile Park
Crouch Hill
Haringey Park
Hatherley Gardens
Topsfield Parade

Posted by robin at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2005

Chris Chamberlain, who is part of the current production of Children of Hercules discussed below (and also Treasure Island, which the company are admirably playing side-by-side with Hercules four nights a week, with scarcely time in-between to run to Marks and Spencer for a sandwich), has a blog describing the experience of acting in a concrete amphitheatre in the shadow of City Hall, in all weathers, before a predominantly non-theatre-going audience.

And should you doubt the authority of my word, Chris has also collected some press reviews of the productions. Time Out's review in particular captures something of the strange coincidence of circumstances that for a few moments make London the weird twin of Marathon -" a city beset by danger, questioning its principles and identity -" and also rightly commends the staging for achieving those hackneyed municipal goals of 'accessibility', 'multi-ethnicity', and 'relevance', without condescension or compromise.

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July 18, 2005

Euston Road
Pancras Road

Goods Way
York Way
Crinan Street
Wharfdale Road
Killick Street

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Caledonian Road

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July 17, 2005

Sheer bardic brilliance from Robin Williamson at the Barbican

Posted by robin at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2005

Rumpole and reflections

Strand

Posted by robin at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2005

New Road
Park Road
Wolseley Road
Birchington Road
Crouch Hall Road
Stanhope Gardens
Northwood Road
Archway Road
Winchester Road

Tile Kiln Lane abstract graf map

Hornsey Road Don't do it!
Dartmouth Park Hill
Whittington Hospital Smallpox and Vaccination Hospital...Female Receiving Ward

Highgate Hill Dick Whittington's cat immortalised in stone
Junction Road Big double room for a person. A girl from Slovakia is looking for a job. I'm 20 year old and know very good english -" speaking and also writting. One room for give girl to let. Mature lady local dom/sub watersports/feasting A+O levels special
De Marcos!An old man whose first language is not english, but whose communication problems clearly extend to a more fundamental cognitive level than this, accosts me with a tale somehow concerning a pair of headphones, which boasts multiple ritornellos and a great many incomprehensible passages punctuated by regular delighted 'thumbs-up' expressions.
St Johns Grove
Holloway Road

Fairbridge Road Modern day whittington cat
Hornsey Road
Beaumont Rise
Sunnyside Road

Hornsey Lane sinister document found on the pavement. Written on the reverse side of a photocopied note apparently intended for a supply teacher:
He is small
Hes got a
big head
but ba(n)by
I always
sleep in his
mums
bed
---
sunshine from
his bean head
he is so dump and
I choped his
mum

Less of a literary success than this compressed saga with its oedipal echos, if more muscular in its language, is the scrawl on the other half of the page:
mary hairy mary the vigin mary of steven
Jakie smelly Jakei stinks like a paki
Tina the cock cleaner works in
spirmint rino
Sharon sheep shaging sharon welsh sheep staaaing shaon
Who lives in a caravan in Regents park
S S
whos got 4
brothers and
1 sister
S S
who lives in
a caravan and sells
carpits
-----
S S
who mums got
mustash and
and got small tits
looks like a [illegible]

Stanhope Way
Avenue Road
Coolhurst Road
Montenotte Road
Glasslyn Road
Tivoli Road
????view Crescent
Park Road

Posted by robin at 05:50 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2005

Spavined Gaits and Ancient Asylum Seekers.

1.
A superb reading from Molloy by The Godot Company, who are bravely adapting the novel for the stage.

2.
The Steam Industry's powerful production of Euripides' Children of Hercules complete with ingeniously interwoven musical accompaniment, and a haunting reconstruction of mystery rites, reminiscent of The Wicker Man and John Fowles' The Magus. Politically pertinent, and in a production faithful and direct enough to provoke culturally humbling reflections, as Greek tragedy ought (especially in contrast to exemplary elements of the Friday night audience who spend the whole performance staring moronically at mobile phone screens, guffawing like lobotomised swine, and swigging Stella -" better go on a weekday). This would be highly-recommended if it were on in a theatre, but free, and in the open air in this incredible location....wonderful

nb. There is a spider who lives in a small web at the centre of the revolving doors of City Hall.

Posted by robin at 09:00 PM | Comments (2)

July 11, 2005

Timeless Money

St James's
Ryder Street
Park Place
St James St.
Blue Ball Yard
St James St.

Pickering Place
Pall Mall
Crown Passage Chubby's Sandwich Bar
Bury Road

The Economist Plaza
Duke Street St. James
King Street
St James Square
Charles II Street
Suffolk Place
Suffolk Street

Hobhouse Court
Whitcomb Street
Orange Street
National Gallery

Posted by robin at 07:30 AM | Comments (0)

[Kings X]
you terrorist!
are nothing.
but, Scum of the earth
you are cower's
you are Rat's!

Posted by robin at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2005

Death in July

Perfect day out: Open day at "London's foremost necropolis", including a catacomb tour -" a welcome escape from the infernal heat of the sun. A parade of hearses, from traditional horse-drawn to silver 4x4. A clown performing to a bored group of children. Presiding gasometers. A variety of stalls selling homemade jams, cakes, and funerary accessories. Many overdressed sweaty goths collapsing from heat-exhaustion in crypt doorways. A nice fairground organ. And the only working hydraulic catafalque in Britain.

Followed by an unsuccessful visit to the Barbican.

Posted by robin at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2005

Hampstead Heath

A pair of cormorants, a heron, a pair of swans and a duck with ducklings all gathered for a heronbone-style avian extravaganza within a 5 metre radius.

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The Inevitable

"...this chap who came in...he's an accountant, lives just down the road...he gave me a big hug before he left. I could smell the dust on him...I says, as long as you're alive, that's the main thing..."

Posted by robin at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2005

De Marco – Ice-Cream Paradise in Formica

De Marco, Junction Road N19

An italian enclave just over the road from Archway station, on an interesting wedge-shaped plot uniformly fitted out in lovely formica, with a fast turnover of wisecracking and/or demented clientele, and run by a prizewinning ice-cream dynasty...

The current proprietor is a third-generation member of the same extended family who have been running the establishment since it opened over 60 years ago. Business is "up and down" these days -" their biggest selling-point used to be their ice-cream, which is still home-made today (and delicious, I might add). The ice-cream isn't so much in demand these days (although there is still a serving window onto the street, adorned with the poignant notice Would you like any "Desserts"). But they still proudly display on the walls a certificate from the Ice Cream Alliance for the Diploma of Merit won in 1957, along with photographs of the trophy and of the winning entry alongside the circular mirrors that adorn the interior.

I am told, proudly (and reassuringly) that despite the newcomer caffs springing up all around, they have no plans to 'renovate': "We try to keep it just as it was -" just add a few things, a new sign maybe...". The whole caff is beautifully decked out in twotone floral-pattern formica, a light colour below, a rich orange on the upper walls. A gigantic illuminated yellow menu covers a whole wall.

Pay them a visit, soak up the ambiance, support this living classic, and don't forget to ask for ice cream.

Posted by robin at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2005

Lena Gardens
Sulgrave Road
Minford Gardens
Rockley Road
Lakeside Road
Blythe Road Notable amongst other things for its candlemaker's equipment shop, with sleeping cats in the window.
Masbro Road
Hofland Road
Sinclair Road
Olympia Way
Hammersmith Road
Colet Gardens
More Close Where would you like to live? More Close.
Gliddon Road
Talgarth Road
Pallisser Road
Margravine Gardens

Hammersmith Cemetery
Margravine Road
St. Dunstan's Road
Fulham Palace Road Just round the corner from the hospital, Luigi's Pizza Parlour offers "10% discount for students, hospital staff, and patients with more than 30 stitches"
Hammersmith Station Mall Hell
Queen Caroline Street
Crisp Road

(detail) Richard Ayoade and Matt Holness as Dean Learner and Garth Merenghi try out new material at Riverside Studios. Retaining characters popular in previous show, randomly adopting chatshow format, high ratio of dick jokes = somewhat lame, unfortunately.

Posted by robin at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

July 02, 2005

Hornsey Carnival Parade...hard to find anything to say about this strikingly bizarre event, featuring majorettes, flagwavers from Koblenz, robotically-waving fixed-grin beauty queens from various outlying boroughs, and many patently insane people driving strangely dressed-up motor vehicles very slowly past bemused locals. A failed attempt to bring the spirit of 50s America to Crouch End? Certainly Rio need not worry unduly.

Posted by robin at 03:00 PM | Comments (2)

K.T.'s cafe, Hornsey High St.

(detail) The classic Beckettian combinatorial menu: "desimplified in the course of its production" by numerous ancillary additions, and with euphonious departures, as discussed below.

A long conversation is struck up about whether it's going to rain, harking back to the glories of droughts past ('The fishes were all belly up in the canal, dead'; 'Out on Romney marshes there's dead sheep everywhere'; 'The last time we had a water shortage they appointed a minister for drought, an' as soon as ee's appointed it didn't stop rainin' til september').

Italian chef: "Leesten, if eet rain or not, dey still gonna put up our water bill, so what deeference does eet make".

A fat man encumbered by several large musical instrument(?) cases paces about outside. The proprietor's husband (assuming the proprietor to be KT, shown in the photo) casts a wily eye to the exterior where the shower shows promise of becoming a deluge. "'Ee's bin out there all mornin'." Two minutes later, as he pushes the considerable bulk of his luggage and himself through the small doorway: "I knew we'd 'ave 'im sooner or later."

Posted by robin at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2005

Fantastic old-school ride-on pig carousel at the ubiquitous Carter's Steam Fair.

Posted by robin at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)

Archway Photo/Caffology Special

Crouch End Hill
Hornsey Rise
Hornsey Road
Fairbridge Road
Holloway Road
Stopping at every caff along the way for research purposes.

Local Newspaper Headlines : Listed Flats Melt in Heatwave;Forgive me, says Teenage Pizza Killer; Burning Pensioner Saves Own Life with Glass of Orange Juice

From the top of a bus the streets around Archway seem like an archetypal grimezone: too much traffic, filthy shopfronts packed too tightly. On the ground it's a paradise for someone whose major vices are greasy caffs and charity (thrift to US readers) shops.

Note: even the world of charity shops is riven by a minor-key parallel to multinational corporate takeover, with the large chains (those who deal with universal, big-name causes -" cancer, famine, etc.) becoming gentrified, working up flash new logos, creating specialist sections for 'collectors' books and records (destroying the -" illusory but energising -" potential for turning up surprise fortune-making bargains) and hiking prices. The real deal is found at one-off shops that collect for local churches and hospices, where prices remain within the reach of misers like myself. A superb example in Archway, collecting for the church, even offers tea at 35p a cup. Its' catering to both major seedy vices under one roof surely means that it qualifies as an anti-mall. The shift in values by major operators changes the function of the charity shop; where once it served two constituencies, being a valuable resource for poor or cheapskate consumers as well as for the eventual recipients of the proceeds, now it loses much of its valuable recycling function and joins both the ranks of lifestyle-consumer-snobbism and lifestyle-charity-snobbism. Both of these factors contribute, along with Tesco's steamrollering of the entire British high street, to the underclass's reliance on dirt-cheap new clothes from supermarkets, ripping off the penny-waged chinese seamstresses who make the garments, and themselves since they continually have to replace this planned-obsolescence substandard rubbish.

Caffs around Archway are exemplary in ambiance and food quality, all run by middle-eastern immigrants, more 'al-salaamu alaykum' than 'alright me old china'. Each is invariably a quarter-full with family, whether kids running around, brothers plotting the next investment property, or an old tortoise-like relative insisting on helping clear the tables ('no, it's OK george, really...yes, thankyou george'). Strange arabic twists in the menu ('Knickerbouker Glory' !!) amongst the usual combinations (and some unusual : 'gammon, mash and cabbage'?).

It's notable that caffs run by the english are far more likely (with honourable exceptions among proud longterm proprietors) to be criminally inattentive to food quality whereas your italians, cypriots, turkish, etc manage to take pride in the most humble dish. Thus 'English Cuisine' seems to be, if not the invention of immigrants, or at least only kept alive by them (dismissing of course the all-too-middle-class-english nouveau school of fryup with organic fennel and venison sausages etc.). It's something along inverse lines to the way in which 'Indian' food emerged in the British Isles as an invention substantially unrecognizable to anyone from the subcontinent

Although at first caff menus have the appearance of a crazed mechanical combinatorial exercise, worthy of Murphy or Watt, closer examination will reveal consistent inconsistencies; we often find within these beautiful litanies telling concessions to euphony, revealing that caff culture is primarily oral rather than lexicographical: for example the intermittent but non-random inclusion of '&'s in the following (courtesy of the excellent KT's cafe, Hornsey High St. of which more later), taking advantage of every opportunity for nursery-rhyme musicality (each item to be read separately, or all in sequence, with or without delayed redeparture):
EGG BACON MUSHROOMS BLACK PUDDING
EGG BACON SAUSAGE BEANS
EGG BACON BUBBLE AND BEANS
EGG BACON SAUSAGE FRIED BREAD
LIVER EGG BACON
BURGER BEANS EGG AND BACON
LIVER BACON BUBBLE ONIONS


De Marco's - a real find. [see following entry]
Bacon roll with bread from local bakers: these things matter. I recently saw a caff owner carrying back three carrier-bags full of bread from T**co's. The traitor was shot at dawn. Please, everyone, if you have any love for the universe, not to mention yourself, don't use supermarkets.

A care-in-the-community case stumbles in, plonks herself down and declares too loudly to no-one: "it smells fishy in 'ere dunnit?".

Although Classic Cafes eulogises the Gaggia and the social transformations effected by its arrival in London, we prefer the more traditional machines, mysterious tea engines with crazy stainless-steel piping (an engineering collaboration between Heath Robinson and Solla-Sellew-era Dr Seuss?), gentle frothing and spitting sounds and periodic steam eruptions: they have something of the army barracks and the hospital ward about them -" probably as close as the English get to comfort.

After the third caff and concomitant large mug of strong tea, I'm lapsing into a tannin coma, and the endless string of double-deckers crawling past the window appears to me as the product of a sinister urban sausage machine. George knocks over a pile of leaflets. Someone makes a joke about inviting the owner to do a bank job with him. "Don't you wanna make some fast money?", "No I don't".

St. Johns Grove
Junction Road
St. Johns ?
Holloway Road
Whittington Park A beautiful wildflower meadow randomly placed

Holloway Road (possibly the ugliest church in the world?)
St. Johns Grove
Junction Road

Bickerton Road (Message to Satan(detail))
Junction Road
Pemberton Gardens
Holloway Road
Fortnam Road
Kiver Road
Marlborough Road
Hornsey Road
Hanley Road
Stroud Green Road
Crouch Hill

Posted by robin at 10:30 AM | Comments (1)