Friday, February 09, 2007
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Can't live wiv 'em; can't live wivout 'em.
A vampire wind cuts through the city and races across the river to suck the blood’s heat from the traders and night workers in the concrete wilderness of the New Covent Garden Market.
In one of the narrow draughty cafés, tired men slump in plastic seats over plastic tables that are littered with cold oily plates and half-drunk mugs of strong tea, talking quietly in a low kind of growling hum, or slowly turning the pages of the cheaper tabloid newspapers.
Behind the counter, the fierce looking Turk whose passion is football is cooking breakfasts, whilst two pretty women with East European accents are busily running the counter, making our tea, buttering our bread, and despatching our food to the tables.
The steel door creaks and a plump young woman enters hesitantly, dressed in unbecomingly heavy clothes, her drab hair tied back with a rubber band, grubby looking spectacles reflecting the cold fluorescent lights on her pale upturned expressionless face. Her mouth is small and turns down at the corners. There is a lack of the Market’s usual post-Dickensian ebullience in her demeanour; not the sort of girl to command two seconds of a stranger’s interest as she shuffles towards the counter.
She waits silently in the short queue behind a couple of Polish lads who are struggling to count out some change for their tea and cheap sandwiches, and she squints up at the blackboard where a surprising cornucopia of choice is neatly proclaimed.
The atmosphere of weary respite prevails for a few more seconds until, from the mobile phone in her pocket, a woman’s shrill strong voice speaks electrically in a loudly aggressive Cockney monotone, theatrically tinged with an annoyed mixture of curt boredom and impatience, announcing vehemently that,
“There’s a text message, you dirty bitch !”
Like a ripple centred on her cringing embarrassment as she fumbles to silence the thing, smiles begin to spread all around; and from the farthest corner beside the draughty door, a few hoarse words are spoken,
“The Salvation Army’s here, lads !”
In one of the narrow draughty cafés, tired men slump in plastic seats over plastic tables that are littered with cold oily plates and half-drunk mugs of strong tea, talking quietly in a low kind of growling hum, or slowly turning the pages of the cheaper tabloid newspapers.
Behind the counter, the fierce looking Turk whose passion is football is cooking breakfasts, whilst two pretty women with East European accents are busily running the counter, making our tea, buttering our bread, and despatching our food to the tables.
The steel door creaks and a plump young woman enters hesitantly, dressed in unbecomingly heavy clothes, her drab hair tied back with a rubber band, grubby looking spectacles reflecting the cold fluorescent lights on her pale upturned expressionless face. Her mouth is small and turns down at the corners. There is a lack of the Market’s usual post-Dickensian ebullience in her demeanour; not the sort of girl to command two seconds of a stranger’s interest as she shuffles towards the counter.
She waits silently in the short queue behind a couple of Polish lads who are struggling to count out some change for their tea and cheap sandwiches, and she squints up at the blackboard where a surprising cornucopia of choice is neatly proclaimed.
The atmosphere of weary respite prevails for a few more seconds until, from the mobile phone in her pocket, a woman’s shrill strong voice speaks electrically in a loudly aggressive Cockney monotone, theatrically tinged with an annoyed mixture of curt boredom and impatience, announcing vehemently that,
“There’s a text message, you dirty bitch !”
Like a ripple centred on her cringing embarrassment as she fumbles to silence the thing, smiles begin to spread all around; and from the farthest corner beside the draughty door, a few hoarse words are spoken,
“The Salvation Army’s here, lads !”
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Sunday, February 04, 2007
bexhill, de la warr pavilion, seventy years old
readers with a liking for serendipity will note that the socialist earl de la warr was a sackville ... see the sackville monument earlier this week ...
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Friday, February 02, 2007
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
the sackville monument at withyham church
i speculated on a short lunch break in withyham church, about two miles off my route
as i arrived, i found a sign on the door saying the church is kept locked and giving a phone number ... however, i heard voices within and entered
two builders were just packing up and about to lock up but they allowed me a two minute trot around the interior
i was astonished but there wasn't time to do justice to what i'd seen and i must return
the sackville memorial was carved by caius cibber, it is probably his best work but is poorly documented, & only after hours of searching the internet, could i find this black & white picture postcard from the nineteen thirties
it is a pretty good photograph but i can and must do better ... so watch this space
Thursday, January 25, 2007
love in a cold climate
Yesterday morning, before four o’clock, I set out to walk to the bus stop at Putney Heath, about ten minutes away. As I arrived, the first snowflake appeared & in two minutes a steady whirl of tiny flakes enveloped the City. I turned my face up and was tickled by them. At South Kensington, some young Polish maintenance men had come up from the Underground to catch the bus home & seemed pleased to see some snow. When I got off the bus near Harrods, some young Africans were laughing in an unknown tongue, & around the corner in Sloane Street, a young English couple were already waiting at the next stop although no bus was due for twenty minutes.
There was no shelter. He was tall & slim and vaguely old-fashioned in his corduroy jacket, child’s scarf, & Brideshead haircut. Her short jacket and shorter skirt, gave her long body no protection against the cold & she looked desperately unhappy. Neither spoke. He paced up and down the curb whilst she squatted against a shop front, lit a cigarette and shivered. Oppressed by their misery, I wandered off a little way to shelter in a doorway. Then their conversation resumed. His first words were unclear, but her reply was shrill. “Well, you shouldn’t have called me a fucking slag ! What do you expect ?” His reply sounded like, “Oh, do you deny that you are, then ?”
Silence returned for a few moments until another, sweeter, voice approached from the direction of Sloane Square, accompanied by the steady clicking of very high heels striding upon leisurely long legs. The woman was slender & tall & black, and everything she wore was black. Her high-waisted ankle-length coat swung elegantly beneath a huge black umbrella, and as she passed us she was singing sweetly into a mobile telephone, her laughter-tinted voice as deep & melodic as her silhouette was dark.
Later, passing the tenements in Nine Elms, where grass and pathways were now unambiguously white, a young woman with a big anorak lay on the ground beneath a young man with a big rucksack on his back. She was writhing voluptuously, her arms relaxing behind her head, palms up, & her fingers pinching snowflakes whilst she yielded to his passionate kisses.
There was no shelter. He was tall & slim and vaguely old-fashioned in his corduroy jacket, child’s scarf, & Brideshead haircut. Her short jacket and shorter skirt, gave her long body no protection against the cold & she looked desperately unhappy. Neither spoke. He paced up and down the curb whilst she squatted against a shop front, lit a cigarette and shivered. Oppressed by their misery, I wandered off a little way to shelter in a doorway. Then their conversation resumed. His first words were unclear, but her reply was shrill. “Well, you shouldn’t have called me a fucking slag ! What do you expect ?” His reply sounded like, “Oh, do you deny that you are, then ?”
Silence returned for a few moments until another, sweeter, voice approached from the direction of Sloane Square, accompanied by the steady clicking of very high heels striding upon leisurely long legs. The woman was slender & tall & black, and everything she wore was black. Her high-waisted ankle-length coat swung elegantly beneath a huge black umbrella, and as she passed us she was singing sweetly into a mobile telephone, her laughter-tinted voice as deep & melodic as her silhouette was dark.
Later, passing the tenements in Nine Elms, where grass and pathways were now unambiguously white, a young woman with a big anorak lay on the ground beneath a young man with a big rucksack on his back. She was writhing voluptuously, her arms relaxing behind her head, palms up, & her fingers pinching snowflakes whilst she yielded to his passionate kisses.
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