Bliss Cafe - Dalston

Three Parks We Know

Talking of Haggerston Park, you'll be pleased to know nothing much has changed. The city farm still lends the air a comforting mucky scent as you cycle past; the Astroturf is in use by the schools across the road and the other day I saw a middle aged man jolting round the BMX track on a rickety old racing bike - his son strapped into a safety seat on the back.



Every park in East London still seems to have a crew of dossers who congregate around a single bench. This morning I passed three such groups, the first in Ion Square Gardens. The Ion Square Gardens group seem to be the saddest in all three parks; this morning I saw a man who'd clearly been sleeping rough sitting on the bench with two sports bags, as though he had been kicked out. Not last night – a while ago. Ion Square also has the most spooky types. There is a distinctly druggy vibe not noticeable in the other two parks. Late at night there'll be a solitary figure standing in the orange street light glow in the middle of the square. People make hurried visits along the paths to meet him. He seems to represent the square’s centre point and its extremity – the magnetic north. There's also a strange sectioned off corner of the square, which I am wary of – it is too quiet a spot. Perhaps what I imagine happens there is much worse than the reality- but I never go in that corner, although the council has recently landscaped it. Perhaps the people in Ion Square are influenced by the place... Ion Square is by far the bleakest park. It’s really nothing more than a sloping patch of grass with straight paths, burnt out bins and shitting terriers.



Next, there's the Haggerston Park crowd, who hang out with the dragonflys around the nature pond. Sometimes they appear to be having an idyllic picnic amongst the wildflowers, like hippies. Once I went past and a red faced man waved and called me to come and join in. They were carousing and dancing round the pond. On a sunny Saturday it looked like fun - pretty much the same as what we were intending to do outside the pub on Broadway Market. This morning there were a man and a woman unpacking their first carrier bag of beer in bright sunlight. The pond was surrounded by long grass and it was quiet. To be up so early, and in place, ready to drink, made me think maybe one of them had had a horrible night or big row and needed comforting. Or maybe it was a regular routine that they arrived punctually for, like a job.



London Fields has a marginally more merry band of dossers - smarter clothes and no sports bags of belongings. They were also in place when I cycled past at 8.30 this morning, on their usual bench next to the disused paddling pool. They seemed quite cheerful and smiled at me, except one who was being plagued by a wasp. Here there are a number of shaggy dogs that sit by the bench panting patiently all day. The bench is ideal for spectatorship – it not only looks over the cricket field but also has the social aspect of being near the entrance gate, so everyone coming in and out can be seen going past… and commented on I suppose. The Cat and Mutton, on the other side of the park, is in a similarly good spot for people watching.



I can't decide whether it is wholly sad that people get up bright and early to get their first drink, or whether there is an inviting element in it too. It seems like there is companionship on the benches that could be nice - comforting. And perhaps there is some kind of admirable rebellion in taking life at such a different pace. Sitting on a sunny bench with your cronies, drinking beer and watching the world go by definitely has its attractions. Lots of people do it at the weekend. And in Croatia, most of the men over 45 seemed to spend their days doing exactly that, as though it was an expected and natural part of their retirement. But I suppose, wherever you are, there’s only a few people who drink before 9 in the morning and maybe they would rather they didn’t.

Dalston Mill Article

A friend just sent me a link to an article by Madeline Bunting about the Dalston Mill.

Agnes Denes' original 'Wheatfield - A Confrontation' (1982)

The Dalston Mill

An installation is being erected just down the road from my work at the Dalston peace mural. The Barbican Centre, as part of their current exhibition - Radical Nature – Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969–2009, and as part of their ongoing bid to raise their profile in the East End art scene and get some more trendy punters through the door, have created a ‘rural space’ in Dalston, including a 20m long wheatfield and a windmill.

There are a series of events going on, organized by experimental architecture collective EXYZT, many of which have slightly annoying wacky names but could be interesting.

Click here for a link to the schedule of events, which run from today, 15th July, to the 6th August.

I’ll definitely be going down to have a look this lunchtime – so if you don’t have time I can tell you what its like! Wish I had a camera to take some pics but ours got lost on a Terravision coach in florence - boo. maybe work will let me borrow theirs.

X Dot

The Trains in Florence

Via di Barbano! Crap crap crap. She was lost again. She must have overshot the turning by walking too far down the Via Nazionale. Clenching her jaw she turned back down the narrow street towards the piazza with the horse and rider statue - this square she recognised. A few day-trippers sat on benches feeding the pigeons, which were climbing over each other’s backs to get to the crumbs in a heaving, verminous mass. She looked away, disgusted. Now which turning was it out of the square? Straining her eyes, she scanned the buildings and corners for the right turning. Jeez! It could be any of them. Why were there no signs in this city? She’d have to walk around and check every darn street.

Two weeks and she still couldn’t find her way back to the hostel alone. It was so frustrating! She could feel a lump rising in her throat – pathetic embarrassing tears. Fight them down. Sweet Jesus! Some girls would kill for a summer in Europe!

There was no-one about on her corridor when Brittany got back to the hostel. She opened the door of the room she shared with three other girls: Lauren, Kirsten and Lucy.

It was dark and stiflingly hot inside. The shutters and window were closed to keep the mosquitos out; people back home had warned them about the risk of catching malaria overseas. Besides, the window didn’t have a view, opening onto a dirty light-well and the back wall of the hotel next door.

The four unmade beds were strewn with summer clothes – brightly coloured shorts, polo shirts and dresses. There were photos stuck on the wall behind to each girl’s bed – boyfriends from back home and cheesy family shots. The single vanity table was densely crowded with objects; hairspray and mousse cans, nail polish and sun cream, make up, and half empty water bottles – they didn’t risk the tap water. Brittany crossed the room to the bathroom, picking her way through the litter of damp towels, dirty clothes and shoes lying on the floor. The girls had been shocked to find that their ‘ensuite’ had a shower and a sink but no toilet. Were they meant to squat down on the tiles? Disgusting!

The bathroom was still steamy. Condensation streaked the mirror, to which a few blonde hairs were clinging. She must have just missed them. Probably they’d gone to get a pizza or something – maybe at Franco’s, the pizzeria where the American students congregated most nights.

Brittany turned on the TV. Italian MTV was better than nothing. She sat on her bed and ate the packet of potato chips she’d bought. It would be too weird to go down to Franco’s on her own – they might not be there anyway, or there might be some students from another corridor – then she’d have to tag awkwardly onto their group. She tried out what she’d say, ‘Hey, I’m Brittany, can I hang out with you guys?’. Jeez, it sounded lame! She grimaced at the thought, and shuddered, stuffing another handful of crisps into her mouth.

Later, folding her clothes carefully and stacking them on the chair in the corner of the room, Brittany couldn’t help thinking about her mother – how kind she was. Her Mom had saved up for this trip and spent a lot of money buying Brittany nice clothes to wear in Italy. It was so sweet. Thinking about Mom working at the store and saving up money from her paychecks to buy the clothes made Brittany feel upset. It made her chest ache. She swallowed hard. Mom had been so keen for Brittany to go – and convinced that her daughter would have the time of her life in Florence. Florence! The word had held enchantment for Brittanny and her Mother.

She lay down on the bed in her pyjamas and closed her eyes. It was stiflingly hot. How did people deal with this kind of heat, all summer, every summer? You couldn’t live in it! No wonder everyone in Florence acted like someone had taken a dump in their breakfast. Heat at home was nothing like this – at home you could prop the screen door open and a cool breeze would refresh the house. Brittany couldn’t leave the door open onto the corridor here. The American students had been warned by their teachers about the foreign men staying at the hostel.

The sound of giggling and a loud shushing just outside the door woke Brittany suddenly. ‘Get the keys? Whose got the keys? Kristen! Oh CRAP!’

There was a clatter as the keys fell on the floor, accompanied by a fresh outbreak of giggles. Then, ‘Oh my God, Lauren you’re so drunk. Let me do it!’.

Brittany heard the key tapping at the lock as one of the girls tried to poke it into the slot in the door. Then there was a frantic tugging and twisting at the handle. ‘Holy CRAP! What is wrong with this door?’

She got up and opened the door, drawing a slice of orange light from the corridor into the dark room. Lauren, Lucy and Kirsten looked up at her with flushed cheeks and dilated pupils, caught out like a gang of naughty children. They struggled to keep straight faces – a grin kept almost escaping from the corners of Kirsten’s mouth. ‘Sorry to wake you Brittany,’ Lauren apologised in a stage whisper, exaggeratedly tiptoeing into the room. The three girls undressed noisily in the dark, hopping around and tittering as Lauren stumbled over a towel, cursed and fell gawkily onto her bed.

Brittany took off her pyjamas before lying down again in her pants and bra. She turned on her side with her back to the other girls, for privacy, and so they wouldn’t be able to make out her tears. It was still too hot to sleep properly. They needed Air con for Christ’s sake! What was wrong with this place? She couldn’t help it. She hated this country and she hated this city. She hated Florence. She hated Florence – it sounded ungrateful and wrong even in her head. This was one of those things she should just never admit out loud. She shut her eyes. Maybe it’d be better tomorrow – she’d definitely try harder and practice her Italian.

‘Buongiorno. Una Latte pervavore,’ she asked the man at the counter, smiling.

‘Latte?’ he repeated, raising his eyebrows at her.

‘Yes please. I mean, si, perverore,’ Brittany smiled. Keep smiling, she told herself. They hate Americans because they think we’re rude. It’s all about showing good manners.

‘Okay. One Latte per la bionda americana!’ he shouted to another member of staff, avoiding her eye and beckoning to the next customer over her shoulder. It was hard to stay friendly, Brittany thought, counting out Euros onto the glass surface. ‘No! No! There!’ the man snapped in English, dismissing her attempt to pay him with an impatient gesture towards the woman at the cash register.

Jeez! Even getting coffee was hard work, Brittany thought, joining Lauren and Kirsten at a table on the terrace outside. As she sat down she realised her jaw was clenched, tense with the anxiety of the encounter. The remaining coins clutched in her hand were hot and sticky. It was strange – she was never this awkward or self-conscious at home. Here, she was hyper aware of everything she did. Of being watched, judged, sneered at. And they did sneer at her. They sneered at all the American students.

Being abroad made her feel like a stranger to herself, Brittany decided. She was constantly imagining how she must look in other peoples’ eyes and this made her uneasy and anxious - on edge – afraid of doing something clumsy – of saying something stupid - of getting it wrong. And there were a million opportunities to get it wrong in Italy; she only had to open her mouth.

It hadn’t taken the American students long to work out that the Italians didn’t like them. Old ladies tutted and shook their heads as the students walked past in a group; skinny young Italians in trendily distressed clothes shoved them rudely off the narrow pavements; café owners and shop assistants rolled their eyes, clicked their tongues, overcharged them and cut off their hesitant attempts to speak Italian abruptly, clarifying orders in fluent English. Their Italian teacher had laughingly revealed to the students that the locals called them ‘trains’, because ‘you can hear American students coming before you see them’. But it was no joke, Brittany thought. Even The Florence Gazette, an English paper for expatriots was hostile. The lead article on the second page was entitled ‘Show Florence Respect’. Britanny had scanned through the article at Franco’s: ‘In the early hours of Thursday morning two American students were arrested by Italian police in central Florence for urinating in one of the city’s beautiful stone fountains. It was thought they had been drinking. Residents of the historic city have once again spoken out in outrage at the disrespectful behaviour of American visitors.’

‘Brittany, look out!’ Lauren warned her, as a steaming cup was placed on the table in front of her. ‘What did you order? That doesn’t look like coffee.’

Brittany stirred the bubbly white drink and sipped it. ‘It’s just milk!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s weird, I definitely asked him for a Latte’. Kirsten raised one eyebrow and Lauren, trying to be nice after waking Brittany last night, laughed awkwardly at the mistake. ‘Brittany, latte just means milk!’ Lauren explained. ‘You should have said a Café Latte – a coffee with milk!’

‘Oh! Whoops!’ Brittany grinned to cover up her embarrassment. She hid her red face in the steam and said unconvincingly, ‘Umm. Lucky I love milk!’ It wasn’t yet midday and she’d already made foolish blunder! Brittany forced down the panicky emotional feelings. ‘Calm down. Calm yourself down. It’s not a big deal’, she told herself. She had to be less sensitive – and not get teary at every little setback. It wasn’t surprising things were hard at first. It would take her a while to fit in, to figure things out. Luckily no-one had noticed her getting stressed. Lauren was texting the Californian boy from the corridor downstairs at the hostel. Kirsten sipped her coffee, and stared across the square - blasé, continental, uninterested.

The American students had no Italian lessons on Saturday afternoons. They hung out in the piazzas and sat cross-legged in circles on the stone pavements chatting, flirting, laughing loudly, shrieking and teasing each other. If they sat on the pavement outside a shop they’d be moved on eventually by the shopkeeper. They retaliated with loud comments: ‘Oh no! We forgot this isn’t OUR pavement. We made a BIG mistake sitting here. This is an ITALIAN pavement and we are RIGHT in the way. Better move you guys! You YANKS are blocking the entrance to this lady’s VERY busy shop.’

Brittany cringed at these encounters. The open animosity between the locals and the students was nasty. How could you enjoy yourself when you knew people were sneering at you? The others responded to the hostility outside themselves by turning inwards, to each other. They banded together into tight cliques with thick skins and a detachment from the Italians. If they hated Americans so what? The Yanks liked being Yanks, liked each other and had fun together. They weren’t going to apologise for being American! In fact, if anything they’d be even more loud and act even more American because they were proud of it and noone should have to cover up who they were!

To the American students Italians became part of the scenery, part of the European backdrop, like the churches and squares and sunshine. They were no longer part of the narrative of their experience. Yes, the Italians were a part of the scenery that they didn’t like that much. It was inconvenient to be disliked, an inconvenience like the uncomfortable heat and stinking medieval drains. But, it was an inconvenience that didn’t really shake their confidence or factor high in the stories of their personal lives. Lauren flirted with a Californian boy from the corridor downstairs. Kirsten and Lucy had a row about Lucy copying Kirsten’s style and they wouldn’t speak to each other for two days. The gang all hung out on Saturday night. Lauren got drunk on Heineken and kissed the Californian boy outside Franco’s. These were key events in the narrative of the summer. And so much had happened in the first two weeks! It was just like summer camp, but in Europe.

Brittany knew she was being overly sensitive but she hated the feeling of being unwelcome. The problem was that she wasn’t satisfied with sitting on the pavement in the afternoons with the other students. She genuinely wanted to see the beautiful old buildings and artwork her Mom had told her about. They didn’t have anything like that in the town in America where she came from. In fact, she thought they probably didn’t have anything like that in all the 50 American states put together! Brittany loved art classes at school and she could draw a little bit. She preferred the Impressionists to the old paintings in Florence, but Titian and Botticelli were wonderful. In the first week Brittany, Lauren, Lucy and Kirsten had queued for hours to get into the Uffizi and the Academia, but the three hour wait for tickets at each gallery had exhausted their enthusiasm for the art of Florence. They didn’t want to go up the tower of the Duomo – it too hot for heights. In order to get to know the city Brittany had to venture into the streets on her own.

It was Saturday afternoon and Brittany had made the decision to visit the Ponte Vecchio and maybe walk around the area south of the Arno, instead of drinking beer with the other American students outside Murphy’s Irish Pub. Deciding on this plan had made her feel okay for maybe the first time in two weeks, she thought. She realised it was the first time she’d decided to go and visit something in Florence on her own, away from the group of American students – the ‘trains!’.

She smiled. It made her feel independent – a bit adventurous. No, she, thought. She couldn’t pretend not to be interested in this stuff. This was her and she was abroad in the most beautiful city in the world. She wanted to be able to tell her own daughter about the incredible summer she had experienced: getting to know the city like the back of her hand; learning to speak Italian fluently; dating a handsome Italian who drove a Vespa… etc!

She headed straight down the Via di Tornabuoni towards the Ponte Vecchio. The famous bridge! In the guide books Brittany had read that all the other original bridges were blown up in the second world war. Tourists crowded the narrow pavements on the streets leading to the Arno, taking photos of one another in front of the landmark. They milled in a jostling crowd on the bridge itself, which was lined with shops selling gold jewellery. Brittany averted her eyes from the gold shops; their displays were too dazzling. Chains, bracelets, rings – heaps and heaps of gold displayed on velveteen trays, angled towards the windows for a better view. A better view! She was almost disgusted with the women who stood gazing into the windows. What were they here to look at? People were strange. Fixated with odd stuff. She shuddered; sometimes she felt detached from other people and she knew it wasn’t a good way of looking at the world. But still, who would come all the way to Florence and then spend their time buying bits of gold on this bridge?

Brittany studied the crowds. So many people. Where were they all from? What were they all doing here? Just ogling things and buying things? Buildings, art, gold jewellery, views of the Ponte Vecchio. And where did she fit in with them? Not quite a daytripper, but worse, in the Italians’ eyes– a noisy disrespectful American summer student; an American who couldn’t even order a coffee in Italian, but could be heard shouting and laughing a hundred metres away; one of the hundreds of hated ‘trains’ in Florence. Then she thought of the girls last night, giggling in drunken fun, while she miserably opened the door to let them in. She wasn’t really part of that either.
A single rower in a boat as thin as a blade sliced smoothly under the bridge, pulling away up the molten river with the sun beating down on his back and the wind in his hair. Brittany felt a sudden cool breeze run down the shallow river, like a pleasurable shiver on the city’s spine. The water wended its way slowly, serenely, through the ancient city with a calm detachment. Overshadowed by the leaning rooftops, domes and spires rising on either bank; overlooked by the many jostling, red-faced tourists peering curiously down; overpriced by the hoteliers, restaurant owners and shop assistants who sold goods with a riverview premium included, the Arno passed quietly on. For a moment Brittany could see that to the Arno, the city, the churches, squares and sunshine, the art, the architecture, the gold displayed in the shops and the people, all the people, were backdrop, were scenery. The river was the real narrative, the only enduring narrative here.

Brittany felt a tap on her shoulder and turned back to the crowds on the bridge. ‘Hey, are you American?’ a sweating middle aged lady wearing a visor asked. ‘Can you just take a photo of my husband and I here?’ Brittany nodded and accepted the camera.

The couple posed, arm in arm, grinning. The river retreated behind them – back in its place – a backdrop again – a scenic setting for their story. ‘Just switch it to portrait mode and tell us when to smile!’ Brittany took two pictures before checking the digital screen. The couple’s pink faces were perfectly in focus; they grinned, popping out in lucid detail against the softly blurred river landscape behind them. ‘Thanks so much! It’s so nice to meet you!’ the wife shook Brittany’s hand hurriedly. She had the slightly frantic look of a tourist with a tight schedule. ‘Can you tell us how to get to the Duomo? We have to get up it today as we’re leaving tomorrow!’ Brittany pointed the couple in the right direction. ‘Thanks so much!’ the wife said as they left, ‘It’s so hard finding your way around when you don’t speak Italian.’

Brittany felt a rush of gratification at being able to offer directions – she of all people, who couldn’t find her way home in Florence! To them, she was a kind of local. They had three days to see Florence – she had been here for two weeks already, and had another month stretching out in front of her.

Suddenly, there was a stir at one end of the bridge. One of the African vendors selling plasticized posters of Renaissance paintings gestured frantically to his partner. They shuffled their wares together as swiftly as if they had been handling a pack of cards and whisked the protective cloth beneath into a pocket. Brittany saw two Italian cops, Carabinieri, moving rapidly across the bridge, but the Africans were gone. Their shop shut, they had hurried away, vanishing into the crowd.

She looked again at the people who remained: a couple kissing; a tattooed man playing guitar to a small audience; a family sitting on the pavement eating gelati; two old ladies studying their guide through gold rimmed glasses. The thing is, everyone here was from elsewhere. Pink face here, map there, Spanish accent, Australian, African. Noone fitted in perfectly. Noone really knew where they were going. That was the thing to remember. Everyone jostling each other, crowding through the streets, sitting on the pavements in piazzas, they were all visitors of some kind with different stories, different perspectives about what was important. This was always going to be a jumble, with misunderstandings, difficulties, wrong turnings, moments when you found you were lost.

Florence had been one of the proudest, wealthiest, most beautiful and most exclusive cities in the world, Brittany thought. She had read how it was tightly controlled by cultured noble families like the Medicis. The Italians were wrong to sneer at the tourists. The ancient walls of Florence remained but the narrative of the city had changed. Now the city belonged to the visitors and vendors; the people who passed through and the people who sold things to those who passed through. There was something about that thought that came as a relief. Florence would just have to accommodate her.

Brittany suddenly felt an urge to dance around, be silly, get drunk! She’d been so uptight, so self-conscious of everything – her clothes, her Italian, her Americanness! Holy Crap! – she was glad of feeling better! She took a deep breath, looking up the Arno and Jeez, it even felt easier to breathe! Now she wanted to celebrate. Lauren, Kirsten and Lucy would be hanging out with the other American students, laughing and fooling around on the terrace of the Irish bar. Maybe she should go down and meet them.

Ted's Tale in the Making

A picture of me at Winterwell Festival writing Ted's Tale on paper napkins from a cafe. I wrote the story because I got up too early and know one else was around. It was raining outside so I put Ted's Tale in a clean coffee cup and sealed down the lid. Originally Lucy named the story Ted Gets Wet.

Later a boy came up to me and told me he was watching me write that morning but thought it was probably an extremely long, angry letter to my boyfriend. He he!

A photographer dude took this. hence the writing across my face.

Ted's Tale

"It's drier than the Gobi down here still," remarked Mike cheerfully, a burly man wearing a fluorescent jacket. He poked the grass with the toe of his boot.

"But how long will it hold?' replied Ted, his companion, looking up at the low grey bank of clouds gathered ominously above the valley.

It was Ted's first festival on the farm. He'd been planning it since he was fifteen and had taken a year off work to manage the project. His parents had provided half the capital - the rest he'd borrowed from the bank.

Ted climbed the hill above the valley and looked down over the site worriedly. The earlier risers had already started to queue for tea and coffee, waiting with tent-matted hair and glum faces outside the mobile cafes. Fluttering the festival flags madly, the wind rushed through the tents, whipping canvas flaps back and forth and blasting paper cups off the tables. Shivering, the campers huddled closer to the breakfast vans, some jumping up and down to keep warm, some rubbing each other's arms.

"Power's out!" came the shout from Milly's Tea Shop as thunder rumbled down into the valley. The sky was dark. Ted watched as Mike ran across the site towards the generator. Others rushed about securing the gazebos and pulling plastic sheeting over the sound equipment.

The first drops of rain fell, pattering onto tent roofs and patterning the wooden tables with dark spots. groaning inwardly the breakfast vendors set up canopies and pulled cardboard boxes of cups and napkins under cover. The majority of the campers abandoned bacon rolls and hot tea in favour of shelter. A few pulled on their waterpoof jackets to brave it out.

The rain grew heavier. It spattered against plastic sheeting; ran in rivulets down ropes; and began to swell sagging corners of taupalain.

Ted wiped the drops of water from his watch. Another two hours before the music would start. he had checked the weather forecast religiously for the past month. It had looked so good! This was what he had feared. People so quickly got miserable in bad weather - especially at a small festival.

From where he was stabnding Ted could see that the site had pretty much cleared - not good for the Saturday. The vendors would be eyeing their tills and gritting their teeth.

Ted narrowed his eyes as a fork of lightening shot jaggedly down in the distance. Then came the thunder.

"Mike, come in Mike,' Ted shouted into his radio over the rumble of the thunder that followed. "Mike! Can you hear me? Get some music playing. MUSIC."

"We've got no performers till twelve," crackled back Mike's voice.

"Tell them their time slot's changed. Offer to pay them more. I don't care. Just get someone on stage!" Ted replied in frustration, wiping away the rain running into his eyes.

"Copy that!" came the reply.

For a while there was nothing. Just the wet flags fluttering and the site getting sodden, the valley mutely receiving the rain. Then, suddenly, there was the shir of the generator kicking bgack into life.

"Thank God!" muttered Ted to himself.

And next, from the main stage, the fuzzy sound of an amp connecting and the sharp squeal of feedback from the microphone. Ted began to take large strides down the hill, trying not to slip on the slick turf. He strained his eyes. Yes, there was someone there, up on the stage. Although Ted could see the figure's bright waterproof jacket he couldn't make out which performer it was.

Next he heard a cough, "Ahem!" before a flat voice came, rather apologetically, through the speakers. "Hello. Hello. One, two, three. Urrm. Hello Winterwell Festival. Are you having a good time?"

Oh God. It was Mike. Ted groaned. What the hell was he doing on stage?

"Right then. Here we go," came Mike's embarassed monotone. And then he began to sing "I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the..." and dance as he sang, hopping from foot to foot like a loonie in his neon jacket. "What a wonderful feeling, I'm..."

"Oh my God," Ted said aloud. "Oh my goodness." For a moment he felt like weeping.

Mike waved as he hopped back and forth and sang, "Dancin' in the rain Dee-ah dee-ah dee-ah dee. Dee-ah dee-ah dee-ah dee. I'm happy again!"

Ted started to smile. After all the stress of the last year, not to mention the past month: the sleepless nights, the money worries (his parents' money!), the perfomers pulling out, the site, the weather... he finally relaxed. And laughed. Slapping his thigh he cracked up, doubling over and laughing uncontrollably on the wet hill above the deserted festival.

Iain Sinclair interview

An interview with Sinclair - about Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire.

And then I discovered him talking about Ballard and this interview, called ''When in doubt, quote Ballard’: An interview with Iain Sinclair' is pretty good and interesting. The photos are shot in the Barbican - that somehow doesn't quite fit, because in Ballard's High Rise they would have become frightening anarchic dumps surrounded by rubbish and I reckon you could say the same of Hackney too.

HOUSING BLOWDOWN


Thinking about High Rise, Sinclair and towerblocks reminded me of being a teenager and watching the towerblocks on Queensbridge Road come down, floor by floor, like someone crumpling to their knees. This is on Hackney Council's website! Wow - they call it a housing blowdown.

Story of London at Richmix

Free event at Richmix!

See below

Tues 23 June / Venue 1 / 6.30pm / FREE

London writers Hari Kunzru, Iain SInclair and Rachel Lichtenstein will be taking part in a special event as part of the Mayor of London’s Story of London festival in June. Chaired by Damian Barr, Iain Sinclair and Hari Kunzru will read excerpts from some of literature’s most evocative scenes of London. This is a free but ticketed event. To book your ticket, contact the Rich Mix Box Office on 020 7613 7498.

I suspect Ian Sinclair's a twat though. We'll see

TALE 3: Ravenscroft Studios and the End of the Playground Rainbow

On the corner of Ravenscroft Street and Columbia Road there is a studio building with a cafe on the ground floor called The Fleapit. My Dad's studio was on the first floor in this building for fifteen years. My school (Virginia Primary School) was in the boundary estate, just down the road.

After school in the summer I would walk to Ravenscroft Studios down Columbia Road, eating one of these:



The studio building was a warehouse and had double doors opening over the street. From the hot pavement below I could see that he was in and would whistle, or climb the iron gate and reach for the bell.

A rusty hand rail led up the paint-spotted concrete stairs and there was a strong smell of turps, which was even more intense inside the studio - and on my Dad's painting shirts.

Inside the studio there were some objects which are very clear in my memory, and which I would like to describe.

The first is a large antelope skull propped against a wall, which was stolen from the still life room at St Martins . Although aged and delicate with cracked nostrils and splintering eye sockets, it was crowned by shining, twisted brown horns three times the length of the head and as thick as my wrist. My Dad told me that he regretted this theft but I saw it as a trophy neverthless, imagining the herd of bellbottomed long-haired art students who lounged, smoking, outside St. Martin's on Charing Cross Road in the early 1970s.

The second is a miscellaneous collection of china cups on a shelf, made of blue and pink dipped porcelain, with half worn chipped gilt lips and dry drips of ink running from the rims. Inside were hardened pools of ink. If I wanted to paint a picture I could use one of these ink cups, dipping the wet point of a paintbrush onto the pastel of pigment, circling the tip and summoning up a little slick.

The third object is the industrial bulk of an etching press with its handle and wheel - the heaviest object I could imagine - associated in my mind at the time with Ironbridge, a Victorian mangle I had seen in a museum, and the Royal Mint.

Finally, a black woodburning stove, stoked with wood and coke through a hole in the top. (In winter, I would make tea in plastic thermos cups - mine with four sugar cubes - and then we'd eat fingers of shortbread that had been heated on the stove.)

Beyond the stove's silver chimney, upstairs, was Miguel - who was friendly, listened to loud music and painted naked women... in jungles? I remember his paintings as exotic and pornographic. (My brother crept upstairs to get a look.) Downstairs was Bob Mason, our American friend Cathy's husband, and the painter Hughie O'Donaghue who produced enormous canvases of crows against bleak, streaky-grey landscapes.

At first my Dad painted people - funny bands of people partying - men with ponytails and punks in brightly coloured clothes getting drunk. He also painted potraits. Later he stopped painting people and painted spots and circles and made some small sculptures using the balls he found in the gutter by the studio toilets.

Although they were outside with ricketty wooden doors that wouldn't shut, the studio toilets were magical. Outside, at the back of the building, they shared a wall with Columbia Primary School. Tattered tennis balls; the soft sponge balls used for Dodgeball; green plastic soldiers atttched to parachutes; model aeroplanes; the occasional football; dwarf bouncy balls which came to rest, like multicoloured marbles, in the paralell rungs of the drain cover ; all these came over the wall - a blessing from some benevolent playground god.

My Dad got sick of throwing them back over. We never got sick of going to the studio. For my brother and I it was a dream. The studio toilets were at the end of the playground rainbow. Every day brightly coloured balls and toys showered over the wall. Every day there was a new supply of loot.

In about 1996 everyone left the studios. Space had sold them. I helped move everything to a new building (Triangle Studios) off Mare Street, which was brighter and closer to our new house. I went to secondary school. I wore a uniform instead of my own clothes. My uniform was bought from Harrods and was 'city red'. I had a pencil case, studied German and Geography and Home Economics, and went straight home after school every afternoon to do three hours of homework.

On the last day at Ravenscroft Studios we had a party. The room was empty apart from the stove and looked enormous, whitepainted, with nothing on the walls. (How did my Dad move the etching press? I can't remember). Because the walls were empty I noticed the patterning of round multicoloured dots on the floor for the first time - fifteen years of multi-coloured paint spots on the floorboards skirting the walls of the room. We hung the room with rainbow paper streamers bought from Neal Street East and had a party.

C-B-C Man at the Gallery

C-B-C Man

Yesterday a massive dude with a gold tooth came into the gallery carrying a painting. The painting was of a little boat on a calm sea in front of a vivid orange sunset. It was like a kind of 70s Carribbean paradise.



He said the painting had hung in a hotel foyer for many years and was also powerful as it had been given to him by a spiritual person. He was just off to to Hyde Park to sell it.

Then the brass handles of the gallery door caught his eye and he shook his head worriedly. ‘I think you need to have this brass cleaning. There is a lot of swine flu about and this brass is getting much too dirty. It's dangerous and catching. You're going to get infected.’

This made me laugh. After I told him we didn’t want the brass cleaning he went off down the street to the carpet shop, to check their handles.

I was a bit perplexed by this visitor, but then I remembered the gallery manual the last assistant gave me - there’s a section of the manual dedicated to regular visitors. I looked down the list, and there he was! Aha!

‘Crazy brass-cleaning man – he will visit the gallery every few months and want to clean the brass on the door. He will tell you that you will get HIV if he doesn’t clean it. Try not to let him catch you alone in the gallery and in the loo as he will make suggestive remarks.’

(NB - C-B-C man must have updated his spiel since then – swineflu being a more current concern!)

TALE 2: World Class Table Footballers at Bar Kick

World Class Table Football Players at Bar Kick (05.06.09)

Christina, Nelson, Sam and Diego are part of a niche group of serious table football players who meet on Friday nights at Bar Kick - Shoreditch High Street. Nelson told me that a number of the players are world class.

(I have photos of the players that I will add to this story.)




After a friend told us about the group, we went there to look for them. It’s pretty easy to work out who they are. A crowd of goggling onlookers surrounds one of the tables where Christina, her boyfriend, Nelson and Diego are playing intently, their faces contorted with concentration. On closer inspection, you notice the handles are different to those used on the other tables; the serious players bring their own.

Christina is a small Chinese girl, hair tied back in a ponytail, short fringe. She plays the forward position, her boyfriend plays defence, his mouth working as he scopes out an angle through the opposition. Christina neatly receives his passes, pins the ball under one foot and agitates the row of men, feinting back and forth mesmerically before releasing an explosive shot at goal. Sam said she is the group’s most formidable player. Her expression is fixed and her body is taut – wired – waiting for the ball - watching it like a cat. When she scores I see her grin and relax for the first time. Releasing hold she steps back from the table and high fives her boyfriend.



I watched Diego playing Christina. Diego is a slim beautiful Brazilian boy dressed in a white aertex, with smooth brown arms and a charming smile. Christina is intent and businesslike; she gets her kicks from goals. Darius is a showman; he gets his kicks from tricks. He passes between his players swiftly and accurately, makes the men dribble and dance over the ball, using the sides of the table to knock away and bounce back to himself before flipping it high into the air with a jaunty flick of the wrist: the ball shot off the table four times during the game I watched.

Later I played as Nelson’s partner - on the secondary table. He insisted I took the forward position and gave me strict instructions: raise my players when he has the ball – Nelson does the rest.

Nelson’s game is almost static. He stops the ball dead on contact, gives me the look (‘Get those players up Dorothy’), prepares himself, waits… The rest of the table jiggle back and forth impatiently, eyeing the ball. Waits. Waits… suddenly delivering a highspeedbullet of a ball, which scarcely tickles the goal’s tonsils before gargling down into the bowels of the table. Although he was very encouraging when I managed to stumble on some contact (‘Come on Dorothy! Good shot!’) I couldn’t help feeling a bit superfluous. It would have been better for Nelson’s score if I had kept my strikers out of play, permanently staring down at the pitch in the horizontal position.



They meet every week in the packed bar, which is filled with boozy Shoreditch revellers knocking back bottled beer and mojitos. But not to drink, as Sam, a bearded wizardy type with tattoos (and the oldest of the crew) pointed out. None of them are drinking. It’s not about that.

Sam tells me most people grip the handles tensely and too tight. That’s a mistake. He showed me how Diego’s grip changes, rolling the handle loosely across his palm from below to flick the ball, swapping to an overhand position and manipulating the handle delicately between his thumb and index finger to dribble between rows. ‘There’s a lot of weight in the players’ feet.’ Sam demonstrates by turning a pole and letting the men drop and swing in a smooth arc. ‘You don’t need to use strength, just let them do the work for you.’

‘Do you ever play one on one, instead of in pairs?’ I ask. ‘It’s no fun that way,’ Sam replies. ‘It’s good to mix up our styles. We come here to play each other. Oh, and to talk to people about it. Like you.’

The bar closes and the bouncers shepherd out the last drinkers. As the bar staff collect glasses and stack chairs Christina, her boyfriend, Nelson and Sam are still locked in combat, feeding the plastic chips into the slot - four serious gamesters bent fixedly over the table.

TALE 1: Outside Cargo: The Face v The Laugh

Hoxton Idiot and Funny Face Man (05.06.09)

Waiting in the rain outside Cargo we were approached by a homeless man who wanted to make us laugh with his funny face. He was wearing a padded coat and fairy-light-lit angel wings. I was surprised to see a bottle of Pimms sticking out of his coat pocket. Pimms? His patter was pretty inoffensive and relatively amusing; he wanted to entertain with his round rubbery-cheeked face in the hope of getting some money together for somewhere to stay.

Unfortunately I was standing next to a Hoxton Idiot of the first order, equipped with an ear-piercing, artificial, falsetto laugh. He was trying to entertain his blonde girlfriend with The Laugh. Funny Face Man told us he was broke and needed a bed for the night. Hoxton Idiot responded with The Laugh, shrieking like a hyena, bending over double and holding his stomach as if his sides were splitting. Funny Face Man took this in good part, and bantered a little, before returning to his story – ‘Just walking around the streets trying to make a couple of people smile tonight. I’ve got a funny face I can do that will make you crack right up, and I’m hoping if it gives you a laugh you might be able to help me out.’

The Idiot pulled out another high pitched, trilling, ear-offending cackle at this juncture, slapping the homeless man on the back and pointing at him before staggering, bent double across the pavement in a mime of helpless amusement. As the homeless guy hadn’t got to the funny part of his routine, this threw him considerably. ‘You’re funny yourself, you are! Yep, very funny. But let me show you my funny face and hopefully it’ll give you a belly laugh, not this big,’ he made a gesture with his hands about a foot apart, ‘but this big,’ he widened his arms to their full span.

‘Yes, give him a chance,’ I said to The Idiot, before turning back to the homeless guy. ‘I want to see it. Carry on. Show us the funny face.’

The homeless guy pulled his coat around him a bit, and widened his stance on the pavement. ‘Right, well brace yourselves. I’ll show you the face and hopefully it’ll crack you up.’

He bent double, so his face was hidden from us down by his knees, and did some mysterious face manipulation with his fingers, turning his cheeks in and his lips inside out, or something like that, before triumphantly lifting up to show us the face. But The Idiot was quicker.

Before the homeless man could fully present the funny face there was a screech of laughter: high, wavering, intrusive, compelling. A hysterical, ham laugh, which started with the head held back, sound streaming skyward and ended with The Idiot curled over his toes – hopping round in a tittering, shoulder-shaking circle on the pavement.

The homeless man’s funny face melted away as he goggled in disbelief at The Idiot. I tried lamely to show my appreciation of the face but things had started to turn nasty.

‘You are a prick mate. A prick of infinite magnitude. A prick like I have never seen before,’ the homeless man spat at the Idiot. ‘Do you think it’s funny to laugh at a homeless person trying to get a bed for the night. It’s raining. Look at me. Do you think I do this for fun? A fully-fledged cock, mate. An absolute and utter cock.’

‘What? What have I done?’ the Idiot responded with a mock horrified expression. ‘I don’t get it. I was just laughing.’

‘I’m a homeless man out on the streets in the rain trying to get a bit of cash together for a bed by making people laugh. That’s what I’m trying to do. And you are taking the piss, you prick. With your fucking laugh. You are a tosser. A total tosser.’ The homeless man had started to push through the crowd to shove The Idiot.

‘But I don’t understand. I was just laughing. What’s the problem? That’s my laugh.’

I stepped in to try and arbitrate. ‘Look, you were being a bit of an idiot. He was just trying to make a bit of money. You should have given him a chance.’ Actually, I hated The Idiot too.

I dug a pound out of my purse and gave it to the homeless man: ‘Here, I enjoyed it. Hope you have an alright night. See you later.’

The homeless man put the pound in his pocket. After zipping up his coat, he pointed a dirty finger at The Idiot with a final jab. ‘You’re a prick. An utter prick. A prick of infinite magnitude,’ he said angrily, ‘A prick like I have never seen before.’ Then he turned his back on us, and with fairy-light-lit angel wings flashing, set off down Rivington Street.

I looked at The Idiot. ‘Is that really your laugh?’ I asked him, distastefully.

‘Yes!’ he nodded indignantly, rolling his eyes, ‘That’s my laugh. My real laugh.’

I turned to his blonde girlfriend. ‘Is that laugh actually his real laugh?’.

‘Yes,’ she replied, in great embarrassment. ‘It is.’

Raqib Shaw - The Absence of God. White Cube (06.06.09)

This show is on until 4th July 2009

Raqib Shaw manipulates pooled metallic paint with a porcupine quill to produce marbled patterns on the petals of peonies. There’s a pedantry in that level of minute pissing about that’s off putting, especially when you imagine the great troop of poorly paid peasant art students who are doing the quill fiddling for him, swooping, pausing and dipping over the enormous patterned panels like hummingbirds.

(When I was at the gallery I happened to stand next to one of these art students. I overheard her telling her friends about which sections she had worked on.

‘I was up on a stool, bent over that small part of the piece, completing the flowers by that join. It was ridiculously tricky because the whole thing was still wet, so you couldn’t lean on it or brush against it. You had to come at it from above. It was back-aching and bloody hard to get it all the panels match up.’)

But they are sublimely beautiful – camp as a Christmas tree (is that the phrase?) – naked demons and demi-gods bound with diamante encrusted ropes - and so blindingly brightly coloured, sparkling and intricately worked that it hurts your eyes to try and figure out what’s actually going on. I stepped backwards and forwards, trying to unlock the detail of one small section close up, before piecing it into the wider narrative.

The whole room is dimmed, which enhances the dazzling effect of the work. Perhaps it also adds to the ecclesiastical vibe White Cube have gone for (they make much of hanging the show so that the room resembles a church, with altar piece/stained glass windows etc.). You could say that the dimmed room also gives the spectator’s experience a cinematic quality – but then cinemas are like churches too in terms of lighting, layout, and ritualistic communal behaviour - and galleries in fact - full circle: we whisper in all three.

I haven’t laid eyes on anything quite so spectacular in a long time. It offers the densley crowded visual entertainment of Where’s Wally?, sexed up with eyeball-boggling homo-erotic, rhinestone-spangled, grotesquerie.

White Cube draws out the influence of Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516) in particular - see The Garden of Earthly Delights, below, with the creation of man (Adam and Eve on the left - evil invading the world), earthly paradise (centre - sensual pleasures) and vision of hell (right - horror and tortuous punishment). In Shaw's work sensual pleasure and torture are bound together in a teaming S&M paradise.

The show made me think of Salman Rushdie – Immigrant literature/Magic Realism – in particular Gibreel Firishta’s half-magic half-mad (schizophrenic) dream visions. The way Shaw irreverently mixes up Eastern and Western religious imagery and narratives is perhaps partly responsible (Gibreel/Gabriel in Rushdie, for example - not to mention the sexy rendering of the Prophet Mohammed). Perhaps in Shaw the realism of Rushdie’s Magic Realism is classicism?. I noticed there is an essay by Homi K. Babha in the catalogue that accompanies the show – renowned theorist of post-colonialism/nationality and identity (Nation and Narration, 1990) and of such renowned wordy impenetrability that he won a prize for most unreadable academic writing style. His commentary would be fitting – in form as well as content. Unreadable in one sitting but richly dense and intriguing.

The gore is extravagantly ladled on. The lobster raping Adam is silly. However, I could look again, with pleasure, and would enjoy sucking out a little more juicy ocular detail.

Tal R and Moonspoon Saloon (20.05.09)

This show is at Victoria Miro Gallery and finishes on 25th July

Below this post are some pictures to start things off. I forget which shows I have been to see. In fact I usually can't remember the names of the artists either, which is annoying. Instead of writing them in a book they can go on here and they look pretty too.

Every time I see a show I buy the exhibition poster. These are the only things I deliberately collect. My bedroom walls are full and now the new ones gather dust down the side of my dressing table.

The Tal R show was odd. A bouncer tried to turn us away as we didn't have an invitation. I've never been to a private view where they asked for your card before. We stood outside and ate peanuts - slightly embarassed - till a friend came out and got us in. The place was packed with work - but none on the walls. Plenty of big smooth shiny phallic and egg shaped sculptures. The paintings and drawings were laid flat on platforms - at shin height. There were brightly coloured flags laid on the floor. Blank white walls.



The odd assortment of pieces - flags/sculptures/paintings - on platforms made the work come across as a cultural exhibit - like they were artefacts someone had collected together from a nutsy tribe. Totems, flags and fertility symbols.



It was impossible to move around easily. Victoria Miro came over and gazed glazedly into the middle distance as we spoke to her. My Dad told her he'd send her some work. She nodded vaguely. I told her I liked the floating metal ballbearings in the pond outside. She smiled very slightly and wandered off.

(Later on I saw her blackberrying ferociously - impassive face - oblivious to the dancer who was taking part in the grand Tal R fashion show/performance dressed in a frightening mediaeval jester costume and freaking out wildly to some banging music right in her face.)

Outside the decking was rammed with people - artists and trendy folk smoking roll ups and drinking free beer and wine. We squeezed into a corner by the pond to smoke and had a conversation about how artists have to suck up to gallerists like Victoria Miro in order to get a show. My Dad is a painter. He said that's the way it is, pretty much, and he doesn't seem to mind enormously. At the gallery where I work I delete the emails I receive from artists straight away. It isn't really my choice to do this.

We watched the fashion show. MoonSpoonSaloon. This is a fashion label created in collaboration between designer Sara Sachs and Tal R. The models were wearing pyramidal hats tied under their chins. The girls walked with white doll painted faces, staring into the lights with fixed expressions, while the boys danced around and worshipped them. These are Tal R's tribe I suppose.

My Dad liked a dress like a lampshade. There was also this furry blob coat.



The band We are the World were more mesmerising - they entered with their faces covered by long, sinister black veils, costumed in freakish jester clothing and wearing gloves with long trailing fabric fingers. The singer performed from behind her faceless mask, her mouth stretching out the black fabric in a hollow gape, while the two dancers capered to the elctro like spooky manic jesters.

On the way out I encountered the models from the fashion show. They were lined up in front of the mirror in the toilet wiping away the red and white paint, wearing pants and vests like in PE with ballerina tight hair. The rest of us queued and eyed them in the mirror. Two of them were chatting - posh white girls.

'I hate hair like this,' one of them said to her friend. 'The make-up totally ruins your skin too.'

Another model came in with a full face of clown make up. 'Oh girls, can I borrow some cleaning wipe?' she asked. I'm not sure where she was from.

The other two exchanged a bitchy little look in the mirror and then carried on carefully wiping their faces, rubbing round the hairline and nose delicately, deliberately oblivious.

This encounter somehow sums up the general impression I got from the Tal R opening at Victoria Miro.

Raqib Shaw at White Cube (06.06.09)

Damien Poulain at Kemistry Gallery (04.06.09)

Tal R at Victoria Miro Gallery (20.05.09)

Kuniyoshi at the Royal Academy (16.05.09)