Is your Christmas lickin' good?

Wishing you a Merry Christmas with, I hope, a more succulent bird than the colonel will produce at KFC.  Photo taken on Rye Lane, from top deck of bus on a sunny, winter's day.

Spark and Byrne

Here’s my book FECKHAM PECKHAM displayed in the shop window of Review bookshop -- best bookshop in Peckham -- close to Muriel Spark’s The Ballad of Peckham Rye. What an honour! 

Sharing the love

Just what is it that I love about Peckham, excluding words like: exuberant, colourful, crazy, thrusting, energetic, in-your-face, unpretentious? Apart from those qualities, it’s the notion that all life is there. Some bit of ‘all life’ can be found there doing its thing… often with attitude.

Take a butchers

Rye Lane in Peckham must have a dozen butcher shops. Now, there’s a new, trend-setting boy on the block. Note the modern (boudoir?) wall-paper! This butcher sells only red meat: beef, lamb and goat. The place is stream-lined and the background music is contemporary. All the other butcher establishments, except this one, sell a range of goods from parrot fish to plantain; peppers to yams. All of them sell chickens that can only be described as scrawny, except this one. No chickens. 

Skulduggery

Posters on the underground photographed while I waited for the tube to Piccadilly Circus and from there a short walk, sunny in a chilled way, to the Royal Academy, or as Brian Sewell calls it, the ‘grand old whore of Piccadilly’. Indeed there is something unbridled about the place as if at any moment it might lift its skirts and reveal polka-dot pantaloons. On this occasion, it was bronze sculpture that had the place heaving.

Santa sighting

A blog is rather like a baby. ‘Feed me!’ it demands. Sometimes one doesn’t feel like it. Still… unlike a baby it won’t die of starvation. Or perhaps it will. To make amends and, quite against my usual principle of ignoring Christmas until it is imminent, I present a shot taken this weekend of Santa on his sleigh launching skyward from a garage roof in Nunhead. Look closely and you’ll see that Santa is wearing ill-fitting glasses. 

Evergreen

Derelict yet dignified, this old phone box is a reminder of a time when making a phone call was a bit of an occasion. But who needs public telephones nowadays when everyone has a mobile into which they intone: ‘I’m on the train’ or ‘They’ve only got the low-fat one’ or ‘Love you’? It’s good to talk, I guess, but we appear to have become insanely fond of disembodied chatter, much of it inane. 

A mad, mad, mad world

SIX BILLION dollars was spent on the US election campaign… to achieve political status quo. There’s got to be a better use for the money. But, hooray, Obama is back. A man who can dance has to be a better bet than a man who can’t.

street furniture

Here’s the view from the back of Scootercaffé in Lower Marsh in Waterloo. The wall art depicts a film-maker poised above the guttering. Just visible, a strand of ivy. To the right a bridge. And a road sign for three destinations: Kennington, the Elephant and Brixton. Each has played a part in my life. Kennington is home to Oval Theatre where I performed in plays from my late teens to early 20s. Elephant and Castle is where, as a child, I watched Saturday morning pictures... so many cliff-hangers. Brixton is where I lived for 10 years. And Scootercaffé  is where, just the other day, I enjoyed an excellent cappuccino; something that would have been impossible in my youth. Unless I went to Italy. Which I didn’t. Not then, anyway. 

Oh, and here’s one of the lamps in the café: a converted hair dryer. See below.

mirror man

This hair-drying contraption is in the window of a hairdressers in Wales. Don’t worry.  They don’t use these head-frying things any more. It’s a retro window to make you smile… and be grateful that things have moved on since then.

What would Julia Gillard’s hairdresser partner make of it, I wonder?  I know what I made of her speech taking on Mr Misogyny in the Australian parliament. Wonderful. And to Tony Abbott, go take a hike (don’t forget your mirror).

New apprenticeship scheme?

You can never start ‘em too young! This headline conforms to the image Peckham holds in the imagination. They’re all out nicking, aren’t they?

Well, no. On Peckham Rye at the weekend, there were A-4 home-made posters tacked to trees and railings appealing for help in finding a ‘loved ferret’. There was the couple walking at the right pace for their three-legged Yorkshire terrier. And, a game of five-a-side football; three of the players were women. A land of contrasts.

rather too much spirit

Looking at photos taken in mid-70s London during the Winter of Discontent (the photo of men warming themselves on the street with a meagre fire fed with cardboard boxes, stood out) I overheard one of the Hairy Bikers say: ‘God, it looks Victorian!’ We were at Tate Britain’s photography exhibition: ANOTHER LONDON, International Photographers Capture City Life 1930-1980. The images ranged from foggy romanticism or destitution to funny and touching; the usual class consciousness and displays of British spirit. One photo showed a young married woman, on her knees, scrubbing her doorstep. Who does that now and who thinks their neighbourhood status is connected to their doorstep?

In the spirit of Victorian-looking poverty pictures, I offer this, taken a few years ago from a bus as it made its way through Peckham.

Star lunch

Photo taken today outside a Peckham café. As it happens I know the man who ate everything on the plate, bar the crusts. He works in pest control and once came to my house to eradicate it of mice. I, too, ate lunch at this café: £2:50 for bubble and squeak, fried egg and tomatoes. Delicious, filling, convivial and all this for £2:50!

Moving up a register. On the radio this morning it was said that, following on from his Olympics/Grand Slam success, Andy Murray stood to earn One Hundred Million Pounds. Achieving millionaire status… it’s so yesterday.

War: what is it good for?

I came across this painting on a wall in Peckham. The image is powerful and the words puzzling. If war’s not a man’s thing, it certainly ain’t a woman’s thing. Does it mean that war is a technology thing… played out with and by  machinery? For sure, the soldier is lumbered with weaponry and gadgets. Or does it mean that being a man does not equate with being a warrior? Whatever. It’s a statement to stop you and start a debate, even if only with yourself.

Do I look pretty in this?

Dogs feature large at the annual Peckham Rye Fete. Held this weekend, the fete, as usual, attracted lots of people who ambled and did things like eat cakes, buy ephemera, watch Punch & Judy, chat and generally gather on the common land as if we were at a medieval fair. I bought books, garden plants (six for a fiver), and a pot of ‘sunrise’ marmalade, which is a layer of lemon over orange. Last time I came across the word sunrise attached to something I could consume, it was a tequila sunrise but that was a long time ago. The greatest attraction of the fete, though, is always the dog show. This boxer was a contender in the fancy dress competition. He didn’t win, but he was a contender. 

Killer Fridge

                            I’m stumped for a comment on this headline, except, REALLY! 

Putin attacks pussies

Today the Royal Court hosted a reading of testimonies written by members of Pussy Riot who have been jailed for ‘hooliganism’ and other crimes against the sensibilities of the Russian state. They are in danger of giving hooliganism a good name. Contrary to their media image they are revolutionaries with provenance. They are operating within a cultural, historical, philosophical and artistic rationale. It was humbling to hear their words, which they have had time to compose as they have awaited trial for five months. Their actions are an indictment of Putin’s totalitarian regime and his co-opting of the Russian Orthodox Church to fool the masses.

A postscript. One of the accused drew attention to how in earlier repressive times in Russia, art or poetry would be referred to as ‘so-called art’ or ‘so-called poetry’. This she said was a ‘so-called court’.

Bowled over

How often do you see a gent wearing a bowler hat? Here’s one. He’s on Rye Lane in Peckham (everything a pound!) For once the road is clear of thundering buses and exhaust(ing) cars because after an accident, police had taped off the road.

Peckham beauties

A couple of summers ago I photographed these two young women at Peckham Rye Station. Perhaps they were waiting for friends to arrive for a visit to Frank’s Campari Bar here in Peckham. It opens each summer on the top floor of a multi-storey car-park and for trendy Londoners it’s a must-see and must-be-seen-at venue.

Window shopping

On the bus (coming back from Tate Modern’s Edvard Munch exhibition; lots of angst but no Scream) I spotted this man outside an Afro-Caribbean hair and beauty shop on Peckham’s Rye Lane. When I later zoomed into the photo I saw that some products are made by Fair & White or Soft ‘n’ White; there’s even a Whitening Cream, which I thought was illegal. I like the photograph, not sure about the products.

Babee!

Street photography is not without incident. In a mid-Welsh town I snapped this gentleman (let’s call him Danny). Later I saw him go into an alley where he bent down and undid the dog’s lead. Was this to facilitate toileting? Next thing, the dog is running out of the alley towards me. ‘Catch her,’ bellowed Danny, shaking a stick at me. I’d noticed that the dog had black things (worms?) around its bottom and I was not keen to get close. Besides there was no lead to grab hold of, only the dog’s collar. ‘What’s her name?’ I asked. ‘Babee. Catch her!’ So, I took off down the road, calling ‘Babee, Babee’ and each time I drew level, the corgi waddled off. When it ran into the road, I felt it was time to leave as Danny shouted at someone else: ‘Catch her!’ Next day the man on sticks, pipe clamped between teeth, the dog on lead set off once more…

Ordinary people soon to eat cake

Are you one of the ‘ordinary people’? This term is increasingly used to distinguish us from greedy, immoral, cynical (le mot de jour) bankers. We, the ordinary people (doesn’t seem long ago we were described always as ‘consumers’) have become steadily more upset by the perfidy of the masters of the universe. But, surely, consolation is at hand for soon (forsooth) they may feel the lash of a silk tie… prison sentences, fines and dishonour may follow. And, then, we shall eat cake. Because simple pleasures do us.

God and Country

The Rye Lane Chapel in Peckham appears to advocate turning not only to Christianity but to royalty in our battle to avoid sin. In any case, the image of the Queen, like an infinite granny, is quite cheering.

Dogs, balls, poo

People in Peckham like to do it large. And, so do their dogs. A friend’s dog is known as Two-Balls Alfie because he’s only happy if walking with two balls in his mouth. One winter morning as I crossed Peckham Rye I saw a woman scooping up her dog’s poo into a plastic bag. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what a way to start the day.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it warms your hands up.’

City foxes

Here is a pic taken through a rainy window of Mrs Fox and three of her four cubs posing in my south London garden. Their den is under the shed, and so deep is the tunnel, it looks a little wobbly. One day a month ago, urged on by my friend Phil Polglaze, I blocked the entrance to the den, so as to encourage the frolicking family to move on. That evening Mrs Fox and a cub arrived home only to find it blocked. She looked so dejected and even (anthropomorphism gone mad) embarrassed in front of her offspring. Of course, I unblocked the entrance and all slept well that night. Now, as you can see, the youngsters are practically teenagers so will be off looking for their own pads soon, I hope. 

Queen Jean

This is Jean. She has lived on this street since the 1930s, her entire life. As a young woman Jean was badly injured in a road accident, and since then her legs haven’t functioned normally.  Jean was already quite old when I got to know her, and had become housebound except for her weekly jaunt to the hairdressers who kept her hair red as a raspberry. Recently, following a spell in hospital she moved to a care home. For our jubilee party, kind neighbours whisked her back to the street where she performed the ribbon cutting ceremony. I think she bears an uncanny resemblance to the ageing monarch Elizabeth I. Do you agree?

jubilation

It had rained all night and in the morning it was still raining. It was cold and grey. Around lunchtime there was a pause in the rain. Not for long, though. Combine that with a street party and what have you got? A lot of damp people persisting with a pet show (the Labrador nearly ate the goldfish), musical acts, delicious savouries and cakes  (most eaten, some left to swim), and hours of crazy dancing to the sounds of a superb DJ. We danced like people possessed of joy. Not because the queen has been on her throne for 60 years but because we live on a street where some of us know each other's names. And we enjoy a good bash… and if you’re British that means doing it despite the weather. 

This photo is part of a series I’m calling Grave Art that I’m exhibiting at Dulwich Artists’ Open House. It will hang along side colourful abstract paintings by Caroline Wright and figurative textile art made by Louise Baldwin. Showing photos taken in cemeteries is an odd choice. I mean, who, in heaven’s name, would buy one? They probably won’t. But, the photography may begin a few conversations.

Comfort

This photo is currently on show at the South London Women Artists’ exhibition at Bankside Gallery (next to Tate Modern),  until Monday, 7 May. As it’s such a wet Bank Holiday, perhaps the public will pop in for shelter, for art and even a little comfort. On Sunday at 3pm at Bankside I’ll be doing stand-up poetry with Pia Randall-Goddard and Helen Adie (together we comprise Three Sheets In The Wind). All welcome.

No flies on him?

I admit I was predisposed not to like Damien Hirst’s exhibition at Tate Modern, so in that sense it didn't disappoint. It’s big stuff and it’s boys’ stuff. The severed head of a cow in its pool of blood serving the appetites of flies set to die in a fly-killing contraption is ‘amazing’, as one guy said. And, that is the tone of the show. A vast array of pharmaceuticals is amazing, so, too, is a golden case of glinting diamond-like objects; bisected cows (inspiring people to biology disquisitions) and sharks (quite small ones) in tanks and a great big bull’s-eye design on the wall made up of flies, all amazing. The Jacuzzi-size ashtray full of butt ends is… Anyway, then there are the butterflies. Thousands of them provide the material for mandala-like 2-D works and then passing the ashtrays, one reaches the room where live butterflies flutter and fall about. What should be uplifting, isn’t. One of the last rooms? A shop for DH paraphernalia. I bought two postcards: one of them of a hairdryer keeping a ping-pong ball afloat in the air, entitled ‘What Goes Up Must Come Down’. A comment on the value of Hirst’s work? I read that a Qatari customer spent £9.7m acquiring Hirst’s pill cabinet, Lullaby Spring. The show at Tate is sponsored by the Qatar Museum’s Authority. If you pay a lot, it makes sense to protect your investment.

Kissing, romance, passion, tenderness

Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’ is at the Turner Gallery in Margate until September. The live couple will have moved on, but for a moment they appeared to vaguely echo the romance of the sculpture, albeit without the ripple of passion but with some of the tenderness.

Freedom?

Freedom's just another word for... toilet paper. Window display in a Margate corner shop.

The photo not taken

Not taken because I didn’t have my camera with me -- three or four people sat at a table in the sunshine outside a fish and chip shop. A life-size model of a grey heron stood on an adjoining table to which it was padlocked. The fish shop owner was outside and joking with his customers; everyone was laughing. I know them by sight; two of them are people ‘in the community’ who, in another age, might have been in residential care. To be honest, I would have loved to have photographed the scene, but there would have been something Diane Arbus (known for her photos of ‘marginal people’) about it. You see I wasn’t only drawn to the peculiarity of the heron and the rotund fish fryer but the eccentric appearance of the care-in-the community couple. By taking a photo I would have intruded on their afternoon’s conviviality. And there would have been something exploitative about it. I will, though, remember that photo not taken for quite some time.

Dodgy broilers

Steaming hot day and Rye Lane is packed with shoppers and dawdlers. I’m one of them. I spot the sign in one of the many butchers where broiler chickens hang by their feet, ready for the pot. As I took the photo, three guys behind the one in the foreground turned away, not wanting to be captured.

Super!

It’s an odd juxtaposition: death and the superlative, SUPER. But, hey, life (and death) is about oddities. I could explain that on either side of this newly-occupied grave were the words MUM and GRAN, but that rather spoils things. I prefer to think someone thought, death… SUPER. Maybe it is.

Sad demise of 'chicken addict'

I’m making a Blurb book (an internet design program for photo books) of snaps I’ve taken in and around Peckham, most of them dating back to the early part of this glorious century. Not all my photos and words can fit into what will be a small book; some will find their way into the Blog. Here’s one.

This headline stopped me in my tracks: 'CHICKEN ADDICT’S SUICIDE'. What is it like to be addicted to chicken, I wondered? Doomed to a constant ingestion of KFC? Incredible chicken cravings that can erupt at any time? Never feeling like you can eat enough of the damn bird? Does the addict's day start with a giant bucket of fried chicken wings? Can you get high on chicken? Does addiction lead to dreaming about chickens; inhaling, like a junkie with his crack, chicken aroma; wishing there was a device to mainline it, spending every penny and conscious moment chasing the chicken dragon? 

When I bought the paper I discovered I was on the wrong track. The 'addiction' was to live chickens. The man kept 73 of them in a flat he shared with another man. But, when a new batch of eggs arrived for hatching, the flatmate objected, and threatened to move out. At the inquest, the flatmate explained that the dead man 'had an addiction to chickens… He had 73 when he passed away -- I said this and the 20-plus rabbits was a problem -- insanitary.' This led to a row, which, apparently, triggered the suicide. The Southwark Coroner said the man's death was a loss to medicine. He had been a surgeon, originally from Iraq. 

Odd couples

Today on Radio Four I heard that H G Wells’ father used to own a shop that sold china and sports equipment. Footballs and porcelain is a pretty daft retail proposition, so too is the offer of teas, coffees, and tennis re-stringing in a shop in the Elephant and Castle. As you can see, this rather sublime venture is now boarded up. A friend tells me there’s a stall on Rye Lane in Peckham selling bras along with brassicas, but I have yet to find it. Must try harder.

The wedding dress

The bridal gown in a Peckham charity shop window reminds me of my French friend, Brigitte. On the eve of her wedding, she left behind her house-guests (a dozen or more) in order to do a trawl of local second-hand shops in a hunt for a wedding dress. It turned out she already had one but had gone off it. Luckily, she found a replacement which fitted perfectly and she looked wonderful on the day. What a demonstration of sang-froid. 

God & Money

DIVINE MONEY appears to be a new business in Peckham. Putting together divinity and money is kind of crazy but, well, why not? Many of us see it as something to worship, although Jesus didn’t, the prophet Mohammed forbade usury, and Buddha would have seen money as impermanent and something that ties a person to the wheel of life. Oddly, now that we are all destined to have less dosh (most of us, not all of us) we’re re-discovering simple joys such as baking bread, growing veg and singing in choirs. Quite divine, really.

Raising a laugh

‘Don’t pull that string!’ warned the Bun House publican (see entry below). I didn’t. Then along came one of the guys who works there and he pulled it. The regulars must have seen this trick hundreds of times, but it seemed no less amusing to them than it did to me. The monk’s days of dangling over a mahogany bar are numbered: Friday, 27 January is the Bun House’s closing party after 114 years of pulling pints for Peckham punters.

The Bun House and the Fat Boy of Peckham

It’s an old Peckham boozer, soon to be an ex-boozer as financial interests have moved in. ‘Switzerland’ is whispered but is left unexplained… contracts ensuring silence have been signed… and the landlord mutters the ‘pub game is dead’ and he may be right. This kind of pub, anyway, is past its best. Although, the Bun House has not just been a dingy pub; it has been adopted by art students wanting unconventional exhibition spaces and for the past several years the place has been enlivened by modern art and modern artists. The banner in front of the pub, designed by Rachael House, draws attention to the shared birthdays of the Fat Boy of Peckham (an entertainer) and the Bun House. They were both born in1898. The pub will close its doors next week: no more Quavers, boiled green sweets, jammy biscuits or Brazil nuts -- fare which the publican provided for his clientele -- will ever be eaten there again.

Despite all

Phew! We made it through 2011. Through the madness of collapsing systems, institutions and hope. And, yet, we’re still here and so is hope. It regenerates like new skin on old wounds. So, what will 2012 bring? Well, there’s the promise that nurses will speak with patients; that the grammar school system will be revived for them as can afford private tuition for their children; that the financial world will be regulated sometime quite soon (honest!); that fat bonuses will be, ahem, poked a bit, and that, according to Polly Toynbee, half a million families in Britain with children under 5 will fall into absolute (not relative) poverty. Ah, hope. And charity? Where she?

Photo shows a part of the Berlin Wall which stands outside the Imperial War Museum. The museum has a stunning exhibition of Don McCullin‘s photography: Shaped By War. You may, like me, be amazed by the number of wars there have been since the end of World War II: the war to end all wars. http://www.iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/shaped-by-war-photographs-by-don-mccullin