Blogadoon - missed connections

November 13th - 19th 2006

Sunday Barnaby Miln
Saturday North Greenwich
Friday Domed
Thursday North Greenwich
Wednesday Hunt the thimble, not
Tuesday North Greenwich
Monday Leafs

Sunday 19th November

Be it pressure of work, or be it simply incipient old age, I seem to be missing more than my usual share of connections lately.

Barnaby Miln for example.

You'll remember this picture of 'Barnaby', a preternaturally aged rent-gent (no rent-boy, he), found on the back pages of QX magazine.

And you might just recall a reference, in the more recently quoted obituary of The Rev Sir Derek Pattinson, to "homosexual activist and former member of the General Synod, Barnaby Miln, JP".

Turns out they're one and the same person.

Eliot, wasn't it, who said "the worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots"?

Indeed.

Finding myself awake at 5am one day last week, and conscious of the need for a few more shots to complete my Canary Wharf flick'r set, I hied myself off to North Greenwich, aiming to capture the western aspect of the Wharf from across the river.

North Greenwich station, as you may know, sits bang next to the ill-fated Millennium Dome, so I tried a few pictures of that to begin with. But it turns out to be quite extraordinarily unphotogenic close-to: fine from a distance, utter bollocks on closer examination (and, as such, a fitting testament to the Blair years now drawing to a close).

Despite the distinctly wan early morning light, I tried a few shots of Canary Wharf but I knew they were crap before I started, not least because the foreground (the land between the station and the riverside) is still more or less unregenerated: strewn with rubble, old tyres and tilting telegraph poles: someone might be able to make something of the contrast with the gleaming distant spires but not me, not then - did I mention I had a hangover?

Aiming to get closer to the river bank, I eventually found a way round the barricaded dome to the North Thames Path, a oddly unheralded walkway that takes an hour or so to circumnavigate the Dome - more than enough time to realise that it's not, in fact, a Dome; much squatter than that, and much less noble: a Millennium marquee?

Carefully dotted at two-hundred yard intervals around this route are a series of "interesting" sites: the Green Quay ('green' inasmuch as they couldn't afford to dismantle it, so they're letting it return to nature instead), the Slice of Reality (nice idea, leaving a brutally sectioned bit of a boat sitting on the shore, but you can't help wondering how much it cost), and Anthony Gormley's Quantum Cloud (again, very nice; again, presumed expensive; again, sited where almost nobody will ever see it).

Having dutifully done my best to capture these white elephants for posterity, I walked on, endless mudflats to one side, endless fencing on the other. A vanful of security people buzzed past me now and again, understandably intrigued by the sight of the only other human being for miles.

Eventually, I could just make out the Thames Barrier in the distance. I wasn't quite sure where I was by now, but I was pretty sure that by now I was (with apologies to residents of North Greenwich) quite a long way from anything resembling civilisation.

Carry on walking through the cold mists until I got to the Barrier? On balance, not. Better to aim for the gasometer I could see some way off, a nice counterpart to Mr Gormley's metalwork that I'd spotted at the beginning of my walk.

Pausing only to take a few more disappointing shots of a flotilla of splendidly isolated small boats that had suddenly yo-ho-hoved into view, I cut down the side of a large white shed that proudly proclaimed itself, in a final gesture of redundant surrealism, The David Beckham Football Academy.

And found myself, within minutes, back at North Greenwich station, with the morning rush-hour struggling to get up to speed.

Very odd spot, North Greenwich. Maybe I'll go back when the weather's more clement.