June 12th - June 18th 2006
Sunday Barbicanerama
Saturday Smithfield
Friday Big picture
Thursday Canary Wharf
Wednesday Ageing
Tuesday Canary Wharf
Monday MassResistance
Sunday 18th June
I guess summer's here: having spent large parts of winter complaining that there was no light, I'm now stuck with an excess of it, and every day that I don't get to voyage out with a camera feels like a day wasted.
Not that there haven't already been quite a few excursions: with Andy, Jonathan and Stuart to the Lisson Galleries, with Jonathan and DavidC to the National Gallery, this week's little trip on the DLR to the Thames Barrier (more of that later), and yesterday's wander round Smithfield and points east.
To call that latter an Excursion is to imply a degree of planning that really wasn't there...
The previous evening David had drawn my attention to the plan to drive sixty sheep from Borough Market to Smithfield as part of the London Architecture Biennale (sheep and architecture? There is a connection, albeit tenuous); sheep swarming across the Millennium Bridge and up the steps to St Paul's sounded definitely camera-worthy.
Pano texted his intention to attend (ha, I know passive aggression when I see it: never say "Do you want to join me at X", say "I will be at X"), but the event's 10am start conflicted with the impact of my late Friday shift, so I forebore from making plans - and woke up the next morning, predictably just too late, at 11am.
Tracking Pano down took a while ("Where are you?" "I am with my flock..") but I decided to head straight to Smithfield, stopping only to take a couple of sunlit snaps in Postman's Park on the way.
I found the ovine protagonists almost by accident, herded into a suspended parking bay near the entrance to St Bart's (the only hospital I know named after a cartoon character).
I didn't count them - too recently awoken to risk that - but I'm pretty confident there were less than sixty. Sheep-napped by animal activists, perhaps - or did some of them escape en route, even now to be found drinking in some basement bar?
Pano emerged from behind an ice-cream van, and we set off on a slow perambulation around the boundaries of Smithfield Market, with me delivering a short psychogeographic commentary as we went, making up the bits I didn't know (for what else is psychogeography?)
David appeared, as if from nowhere, just as we reached the site of the former Fleet Ditch ("...their bodies would wash up, exquisitely preserved, at Barking Creek"), and we continued walking in a clockwise direction, taking in the eccentric sights and sounds of a Bartholomew's Fair for the 21st century: a mariachi band in a meat market! exquisitely carved watermelon! pedal-powered fruit smoothies!
Just as we reached the knitted house at the north-east corner of the market, a flight of five grey planes ripped through the sky above us. Planes and architecture? No: our arrival was exquisitely timed to coincide with the flypast for the Queen's Birthday. And then another group of planes. And another, and another.
Unexpected, to say the least. (We wondered if there would be eighty planes but it transpires there were only 49. Cutbacks.)
Recovering our composure, we wandered into the Biennale's temporary headquarters and pondered adding our own suggestions to those already hanging from the ceiling ("Knock it down and start again" being my favourite).
I was not the only one of us to notice how many attractive young men seemed to be wandering around: Pano, as the ex-boyfriend of an architect, had particularly sensitive antennae and, by way of escape perhaps, expressed a mild interest in the Barbican, looming in the near-distance.
Mild interest is all it takes these days, so off we set.
The only member of our group to actually remember the birth of the Barbican, I'm constantly surprised by what a glorious space it's turned out to be, now that the concrete has weathered and the horticulture has blossomed.
I was also, it transpired, the only one to know about one of the Barbican's hidden jewels, the huge Conservatory tucked away on the third level.
Its opening hours have always been eccentric - currently it's only open on Saturdays. And today was a Saturday - so Pano got to regain the psychogeographic initiative by expatiating on tree-parasites and delivering a long - and entirely fanciful - explanation of what distinguishes berries from fruit. (My attempt to regain the high ground centred on the iconography of carp and Chinese quail in Japanese art.)
Prior to that, David guided us down to The Curve, the (rather new?) gallery lurking in the Barbican's bowels, where the striking space was filled with an equally striking video-work by Tomas Saraceno, filmed with a ring of 32 cameras floating in a Bolivian salt-lake.
Tucked alongside it was a computer showing some stills from Saraceno's expedition, stunning shots of people standing on an expanse of wet salt that perfectly mirrors the dramatic cloudscapes overhead.
I muttered that they were enough to stop you wanting to take photographs ever again. But I didn't really mean it.
Saturday 17th June
Smithfield, Summer 2006
Friday 16th June
There's a certain inevitabilty to the problems architects and town-planners seem to experience when trying to think on a human scale.
Blueprints and artist's impressions, CAD programs and 3D rendering; all create illusions of efficiency that mask the uncomfortable fact that, in the real world, their box-fresh creations will become all too rapidly engrimed by low whim and stubborn resistance.
(The solution, I guess, might be a sophisticated virus - call it HoiPolloi - which would insidiously populate those clean mathematical models with tiny little humans, wandering around the floor-plans in flat 'ats and prams, spilling kebabs on the pristine pavements and urinating in their sharp-edged corners.)
Thus it was with East London's Docklands, where a grandstanding project to plonk down a shining new city on the derelict remains of a declining industry resolutely overlooked the Dockers, or what was left of them: second or third generation working-class families with nothing left to work at, and no inclination to relocate to new hives in Harlow or Hemel Hempstead.
Despite fierce competition from fresher immigrants, pre-inured to the necessary loss of dignity, and less able to dodge and weave their way to just enough cash to live on, some of the younger members of these urban tribes found work in the service niches of the shiny malls that arose in their midst: slicing pizza, stacking shelves, hoovering late-night corporate corridors.
But the majority simply dug in for the long haul, bunkered down in row after row of post-war public housing, scanning the pages of someone's borrowed Sun, walking the whippet to the pub - and following football.
So that even today at places on the Isle of Dogs, you can feel your ears pop as you push through the invisible barrier that separates the newly marbled acres of Canary Wharf from the still-despondent sloughs beyond.
Sensitive to the snags of unvarnished capitalism, Canary Wharf's PR slickmeisters have always taken care to season their public programme of events - a big bronze statue here, a chamber concert there, - with a soupçon of common touch, catering to local ethnic sensitivities with a food festival, calming savage young breasts with A Chance To Be A Model.
The now traditional Summer Series of big-screenings in Canada Square Park (make that: Canada Square "Park") have hitherto been restricted to opera and ballet direct from Covent Garden, drawing a very genteel crowd from the surrounding office blocks, snacking on hampers from Carluccio's, mildly tipsy on a bottle or two of Waitrose sparkling rosé.
This year, what with it being the Summer of Sport, there will be tennis, athletics and horse racing too. And, of course, football.
But not just any match. The opening game of the World Cup, Germany vs Costa Rica, despite attracting enormous interest when shown on the smaller video-screen in nearby Reuter's Plaza (as seen here, two photos down), was not thought worthy of Canada Square Park: England-only, they decided.
England's first game, versus Paraguay, was shown there last Saturday and the screening (as opposed to the match) was one of several events that I would have liked to have pointed a camera at (noticeable amongst the others being The Naked Bike Ride).
Alas, the vagaries of our rota currently being what they are, I spent that afternoon desperately trying to get myself fit for an unexpected shift, which is to say I slept till late afternoon, before heading to Canary Wharf, later than I had hoped, at 6pm.
Only to discover that the screening had turned out considerably more dramatic than expected: 10 minutes before the final whistle, fighting broke out in the 3,000 strong crowd, with sixteen people injured and six people taken to hospital.
This was not a champagne scuffle, not a row over who gets to scoff the last amaretto; authorities were quick to blame fans of Millwall and West Ham, two local clubs whose often violent rivalry dates back to tensions between dockers in the General Strike of 1926.
So much for the World Cup as a beacon of classless international amity.
And so much for big-screen coverage of the tournament at Canary Wharf.
The estate managers have announced they will no longer screen World Cup matches, either in the Canada Square Park, or at Reuters Plaza; the England vs Trinidad & Tobago match (as seen below) could only be watched, in much less salubrious conditions, in local bars.
Or for those who actually work on the estate, in special screening rooms set up by their employers: international law conglomerate Clifford Chance have bought a brand-new state-of-the-art projector screen for their Yellow Budgie cocktail bar.
In the unlikely event of your finding yourself there during the tournament, don't expect to meet any Millwall fans.Or, for that matter, any architects.
Thursday 15th June
Canary Wharf, Summer 2006
Wednesday 14th June
Promiscuity. That was of its day, really.
The good thing about getting older is that, as you become less attractive, so you have less desire - I do, anyway - to go out and conquer everyone you see.
[Cruising gay pubs] is a strangely addictive thing. In the Eighties, and beyond, the whole point was to take someone home with you. You didn't ever go home empty-handed - that would mean the evening had been pointless.
It is a very predatory thing. You didn't question it at the time - it was just what you did, what you were meant to do. Then you'd compare notes the next day.
I don't regret any of it, but I don't want to do it any more.
Julian Clary is not getting any younger...
Tuesday 13th June
Canary Wharf, Summer 2006
Monday 12th June
Macy's, the department store, decided to celebrate Boston Pride with a special window display, a supportive act that rapidly drew down the well-mobilised wrath of MassResistance, a rabid anti-gay group (You might think 'rabid' a bit strong - until you read their weblog.)
The homophobes objected not only to the object of Macy's support ("The parade is full of insane perversions," said MassResistance president Brian Camenker) but also to the way the support was expressed, and in particular the use of two mannequins, one of them sporting a rather fetching rainbow sarong.
"They were male mannequins with enlarged breasts, and one was wearing a skirt," says Brian Camenker, "It was really disgusting."
"Those aren't breasts, they're pecs," sniffed Rebecca Haag of the Aids Action Committee, regretting Macy's decision to remove the mannequins (and sensibly deciding not to retort to Camenker's remark that "A number of people are getting a little tired of having homosexuality pushed in their faces").
Whatever. My main reason for mentioning this nonsense is the headline we came up with to cover the story:
How butch is that dummy in the window?
......previous week
