Picture of the Day (27/05/2009)

This is the long-empty Green Man pub at the south end of Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. It looks like the most recent layer of paint has been scraped off, revealing the original sign beneath. Note the now-extinct beer brands advertised, such as Reid's Stout but also Watney's, makers of the infamous Red Barrel.

Picture of the Day (26/05/2009)

This is St Michael Paternoster Royal on College Hill, a church near Bank and Cannon Street Stations. It's also the headquarters for the Church of England's Mission To Seafarers. It's next to a nice mini-park with seating and is very leafy in May.

The Last Day In Brixton

I had to get off at another underground station than the one I was meant to yesterday: someone had fallen in front of a tube train. The train I was one simply drove slowly through the station where it had happened. I could glimpse the train involved in the accident on the adjacent platform as I went past. Its doors were open but the lights were off. It had not entirely pulled into the platform, so the accident must have happened midway on the tracks. I saw a policeman talking matter-of-factly with two maintenance workers in dirty orange overalls. On the platform my train was going through, meanwhile, a sign had been put out for the train drivers to remind them not to stop, while a station attendant sat next to it, apathetically.

Within an hour the station was back on line and no one seemed aware that it had even happened.

Brixton Road was full of people trying to sell salvation. It was either charismatic Christian groups tied in with the many black churches nearby or any number of Socialist groups, either screaming for bent MPs' blood or promising an altogether more secular promised land.

As I sat down in St. Matthews' Churchyard to eat lunch, an open decked double decker covered in Christian Party regalia and full of supporters roared past. They're making a special effort in Brixton, if all the campaign posters are anything to go by. (Meanwhile, UKIP's 'NO To Uncontrolled Immigration' posters, with Winston Churchill thrown in for good measure, are nowhere to be seen for some reason, being more common in the more conflicted East End of London.)

I doubt the Christian Party will do well in next month's European Elections though. The public doesn't want principles or idealism nowadays. They want parties that are bitter and suspicious, that rage and self-pity in equal measure. Politics and religion don't mix anyway, but only in the same way that politics doesn't quite mix with anything.

As I drank my tea, a big mongrel (part-Alsatian, part-Labrador) trotted up to me. With dogs I don't know, it's always a good idea to be friendly and say 'hello'. They seem to calm down if they're growling, or stop finding you so interesting. This was the case with the dog too, which turned away, but stared instead into the Churchyard and at the other humans in the distance, sitting on benches. He seemed to be looking for something. A while later, I saw him walking past nonchalantly, now on a lead and with his mistress.

I then went to Brixton Library. As usual, there were a gaggle of drunks, dossers and generally dodgy looking regulars congregating in the square in front of the building. It's often the place to see the local constabulary, sometimes on bikes, drawing up to resolve a pointless squabble.

Brixton Library was careworn, but reassuringly serene. Outside, the city growled, screeched, shouted and boomed without end.

Tragedy as nuisance.

We were caught up in a delay just outside the train station. It had been over five minutes now. Suddenly the driver's voice resonated over the tannoy:

"I'm sorry for the delay, Ladies and Gentlemen, but we are currently delayed owing to a member of the public going under a train at the station. We hope to get moving soon and..."

An ugly, angry voice drowned the announcement out.

"WHY DON'T THEY JUST SCRAPE 'IM OFF AND STICK 'IM IN A BAG? I'M GONNA BE LATE!!!"

The train got moving again a few minutes later. None of us knew what had exactly happened. The passengers swarmed out of the carriage in a hurry, like nothing happened.

Living In A Sh*t Hole

It's always interesting to go out walking where I live. Not nice, but always interesting.

For example, I was out today and walked past a house where a mother was shouting at her daughter. The monologue went like so:

NAAAH! YA NOT GAAAAAARRRRN TA THE FACKING FAIR NAAAA! YA CAN FACK OFF! STOP FACKING CRYING! GET IN THE FACKING HAAAAAARRRRSE NAAAAA!

The little girl looked like she was five or six.

Romping In Romford

(Above: A mural on the pavement of Romford's market area. In case you were wondering.)

A memo to myself: don't sit at the back of a bus. They're magnets for arseholes, idiots and the banal. Like the trio of very loud, lurid girls who walled us in as they got on and went straight to the back where we were sitting. They all had absurdly bleached hair of a tone normally only associated with albinos and Boris Johnson. Their clothes were gaudy and sparkling, like they were going out to a nightclub, even though it wasn't even noon. And they wore lots of junk jewellery, which clanked and changged like chainmail. They weren't chavettes or your common or garden toerag though. Just young and silly and thoroughbred in their Essex Girlishness. My only real complaint was that they kept putting their feet on the seats, which really ought to be grounds for exile to South Georgia.

It was hard to keep up with their stacatto wittering, but some snippets stay in the mind:

"Yeah, oo's that gel? Ain't she gaar'n to th' Sickth Form? Stoopid Cahh!"

"I've never bin ta Sarrfend before. Is it true the sea gets bigga if it gets rained on? I've goht sicktee paahnd so I'll get really smashed there!"

"Y'knaa, if someone stole flaaars off my family's graves, I'd faaaaking kill 'em!"

"Stop takin' photahs of me, Shell, ya bitch!"

And so on. Halfway through our trip, we drove past a white plaster-coated house with the legend 'Pixy Cottage' written on it. You'd have to wonder what kind of fae folk would live in the Dagenham-Romford wastes, as it's hardly the sort of place where fairy dust flows freely.

Later we were sitting down for a coffee at an outside burger bar in Romford Market. The day was gloriously sunny. Suddenly I saw a strange bearded man in dark clothes and sunglasses in the distance. He slouched down and started running towards us, around the back of the burger van and then around the seating area, past the corner and into the market once more. He was holding a pair of numchucks, but whether he was the local ninja assasain, I couldn't really tell.

At the end of the day, while queueing for an ice cream in McDonalds, we heard the following pearls of wisdom from two lads behind us - young enough to still be living with their parents, old enough to ponder the meaning of romance:

"Yeah, like, she's sooo immature, y'know-what-I-mean?"

"Mate, at their age they're just too young to know what love is."

"Tell me abaaht it, mate, tell me abaaht it..."

It sounded rather silly and yet profound, like the sort of wisdom that could only come from a broken heart.

Turning Japanese (In Dagenham)