Diary: May 2017

29.5.17
A friend who has recently debuted as a councillor has been told off for behaving too much like a citizen, which is not befitting for a councillor, apparently.

26.5.17
I saw the crescent, Connie saw the whole of the moon. Or at least that is how it seemed to me. I wanted to know what colour eyes Marilyn Monroe had. Connie did a web search but ignored any written testimony in favour of checking the images and trusting what she saw. Blue-grey was the answer. I am too skeptical about photography to trust it to deliver facts.

Memory: 1981
Bruce Springsteen, Manchester ApolloWe had been told to stay seated, but as soon as the full blast of air from the speakers signalled the opening chords of Prove It All Night took off the front of our faces, we were up, on our feet, and on a charge.

25.5.17
Witnessed firsthand the conflict between parents and disabled people on the buses. Riding to the Guardian, a wheelchair user at one stop signalled to the driver to open the ramp at the middle door so that she might board the bus. The space on the bus allocated for wheelchair users was already taken by two mothers with buggies, who shouted to the driver that the space was full. Both women looked at each other and at the wheelchair user (also a woman, though I am not sure gender is important here, other than women generally being the parent who has to struggle with buggies on buses) and shook their heads in dismay. What this really meant I am not sure. Were they indignant that a wheelchair user might want to use a bus? Or were they annoyed that buses and bus drivers do little to accommodate parents and the disabled? I’m not sure the last is actually true, but the first has certainly made headlines recently and is likely to remain a sore point for some time to come. The wheelchair user decided to wait for the next bus.   24.5.17Yesterday came in three parts. First I settled into getting what to say about Chippy’s pictures straight in my head. I lay in bed in the early hours and it all seemed straightforward. I would start with his eyes and I would end with him having an attack of the giggles with Tony Allen. But when it came to recording the audio, it didn’t happen in the way I’d planned. I was stuck for words. Somehow I managed to utter something about his eyes, but then it all fell apart. I clawed my way back to talk (badly) about how he and Michelle work together. Then I went off on a ramble about Connie As A Goth, which was on the wall in front of me, and the portrait of me he did in which I look like George Michael with an oversized right ear.
News of the suicide bomb attack in Manchester was all over the news and I began to wonder whether this was a ‘gender crime’. It seemed targeted at girls and young women. Killing children indiscriminately was another thought, an act not exclusively practised by terrorist groups.
Later I attended a drinks-cake-speeches reception at the Guardian’s Education Centre, where I have been doing volunteer teaching assistance for over three years. Nice to see some familiar faces, and I managed to get a chat with the Chair of the Scott Trust Alex Graham, a Scottish giant, who sounded genuinely proud of the Education Centre’s work and how it reflected the core liberal values of the Guardian that began nearly 200 years ago in … Manchester. This is all the work of the Guardian Foundation, a charity wing of the Guardian covering the Education Centre, the Archive and Exhibitions.The speeches were short but packed with passion and commitment.
One of the familiar faces I bumped into was Joseph, now a senior editor. Many years ago he worked on the Education desk with Sheila, who was instrumental in setting up the Education Centre and was herself a senior executive until she left last year for pastures new. I asked Joseph if he thought the Manchester attack was a ‘gender crime’. He thought not, adding that terrorists simply seek the greatest number of dead bodies. They don’t do demographics. I still wasn’t sure about that, but began to wonder that maybe I had grown a little too attached to the ‘gender crime’ label.

21.5.17 London
Meeting with poet called St John to see how he might goose up our allotment’s contribution to Open Square Gardens next month. Unfortunately, he cannot do his 'Spring’ poem because it is June, which is Summer. Pity, that. The lines about sniffing fertile bushes would have been a real treat for our visitors.

20.5.17 London
Spotted people photographing chewing-gum blots on Millennium Bridge. Not sure what they were doing at first, but I noticed three different sets of people doing it, so watched more closely. Is there a social media-style photo collection somewhere on the web. I dare not look.
20.5.17 London
Boat trip on the Thames Clipper to Greenwich from Bankside for Séan’s birthday. He was deeply absorbed in the encyclopaedia of Lego Superheroes we bought him, but later managed a killer impersonation of me walking round with my stick uttering weakly, “I’m a very old man I am.” And Paula keeps her credit card in her bra.

6.5.17, Paris
Kate tells us that Ade is “walking out hand in hand” again. What lovely news.

5.5.17, Paris, Montmartre Citadines
The reception fella told us that Dalida was buried/entombed in the nearby cemetery. We thought he said Derrida and got quite excited.

1.5.17
In the Arona Gran hotel in Los Cristianos, Tenerife, they put a small vase-like bin in your breakfast table. I think you are meant to put your tea bags and butter paper in there.

“I don’t mind dying, I just don't want to be I'll.”
Eric

Art: Monroe word board

Theatre: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

14.05.17

Golden Lane Estate Community Centre

Letter: Emily Thornberry MP

I sent a handwritten version of this sometime in March. I was bored and in a very cheeky mood. Thornberry did not reply but passed the letter to Mark Field, who sent me a creepy letter saying there was nothing he could do, etc, not my place to interfere, blah.

Dear Ms Thornberry

Islington Council and the City of London Corporation are about to unknowingly gift up to 300 of your constituents to Mark Field MP (Con).

This is the outcome of a proposed plan to redevelop a piece of land on the edge of Islington South formerly occupied by the Richard Cloudesley School to create ‘much needed social housing' and a primary academy.

On paper, the proposals look innocent by modern standards: a two-form primary school and a 14-storey tower block of dual-aspect apartments fronted onto Golden Lane. In practice, the development is a backdoor extension of the Grade II listed Golden Lane Estate.

The Golden Lane Estate is, as you probably already know, a place of worship for architecture students worldwide and a historically important ‘living museum’. It was an attempt to regenerate a badly bomb-damaged area of London after World War II on principles of good functional design, and a socially progressive and humane demonstration of how high-density inner-city living can work and thrive. Key workers from the nearby St Bartholomew’s hospital were among its first residents.

Today it is a much-loved urban oasis of hard-faced concrete, steel framing, coloured wall panels and green spaces. There is a gym, tennis courts and a swimming pool. There is the multi award-winning Golden Baggers allotment project. And we have a soon-to-be updated community hall that recently hosted herds of excited children crawling around the floor while adults sat gently swaying to the sound of a brass band playing David Bowie’s Life on Mars.

Now it has become the plaything of political pygmies. Here we find two councils, City of London Corporation and Islington Council cosied up in a plot to plonk your constituents onto the doorstep of the Golden Lane Estate. Many of them, I am sure, would be very happy about that, but if the current plans go ahead their homes will be managed and controlled by the Corporation of London and, by extension, incorporated into Mark Field MP's constituency of City of London and Westminster. The details of this ugly manoeuvre, plus graphic illustrations of its hideous effects can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/GLERA/ Your local Labour colleagues Mary Durcan and William Pimlott can also brief you.

South Islington and Golden Lane residents have lived together happily for many years. We share a lot. We have welcomed our Islington neighbours to events here on Golden Lane and they welcome us to activities around Whitecross Street, King Square and St Luke’s. But now, the partnership of manipulation formed by the City of London and Islington Council in this proposed development is set to blur the borders so much that there is no way your constituents can be adequately represented. In this sense they become hostages to bad politics. I fear Islington has been duped by the dark forces of political chicanery and the desire for an instant solution to key social problems at any cost. The plans are being railroaded forward with unseemly speed and very little proper consultation.

This letter is starting to sound like a Nimby rant, so I will finish, but ask you please to check the details for yourself, for the sake of your displaced constituents and for the reputation of Islington South.

Diary: Brighton, Adelfia restaurant

To a Greek restaurant, Adelfia in Preston Street, last night with Sue & Lil, Jaq & Lynne. We met beforehand for a drink in the Royal Sovereign. We laughed about the hammering Crystal Palace (Sue) had recently inflicted on Arsenal (Lil) and got tips for hangouts in Cristianos (The Hideaway, a pub near the church and the petrol station). Hotel California started playing on the pub sound system, at which point Sue asked me to name the band. When I replied the Eagles, she punched the air with a yell of EEEEGGULLLS (Crystal Palace), and I knew I’d been had. The music continued and I noticed at one point three of us quietly swaying in our seats to the country rhythm, mouthing the words to Take it Easy: ‘Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.’ Jaq did not attempt to hide her disgust.

Adelfia was friendly in the way we have come to expect from Greek restaurants and the staff’s happy mood infectious. The menu had other Mediterranean touches: halloumi dusted with flour before frying; the cheese stuffed into the peppers was softly spiced. During the mains (me, chicken souvlaki), Sue dropped a biggie. When Sue, Jaq and Jane were at university together, an older student they all knew not very well turned out to be the Westminster bomber. Cue them all trying to remember something about him that set him apart as a would-be mass killer. He was not interesting in any way, they reported, or they would have remembered more about him. Not like the gender fetish bloke who did things with raw chickens on the weekend. I spoke to Lil about Brexit and whether he feared for the future of his two daughters, 17 and 23. He was sure everything would turn out OK.

Diary: Brighton, Western Road

Walking west along the north side of Western Road, about half way between Currys-PC World and Argos, I spot an outstandingly overweight woman bouncing along in front of me, pitching and rolling from side to side as if trying to keep her balance during a choppy sea voyage. I started to think unkind thoughts about her. Should she have equal entitlement to nhs services? Should she be charged double for the two seats she occupies on buses and trains? That nasty sort of misanthropy. Then I spotted her male companion. He was much thinner, but still probably obese by modern measuring methods. His outstanding feature was the pair of grey cotton jogging pants he was wearing – loose fitting and stretched droopy enough to exhibit his arse crack, but murkily stained in the rear toilet area. The single mark wasn’t big enough to spot from a distance, so not majorly embarrassing, some might think. But walking behind him was not a treat. Just as I expected to again to be taken over by hateful snobbish thoughts, instead I started to wonder whether I should tell him about it, and if I did, what might be his response. I found it hard to believe that his wife/girlfriend/spouse-equivalent wasn’t aware of his soiled state. Then I thought maybe they both knew but didn’t care. Maybe it had only just happened and nobody but me knew about it. All the time these thoughts were distracting me, my eyes were fixed on that humiliating patch. It got to the point where I started deliberately to look away in case anybody thought I had a thing about staring at men’s dirty arses. Then they both squeezed through the door of Foodilic and I was free.

Picture: Easter