Walk to the West End – redux

Sat in The Heathcote last night reading David Boote’s excellent series of leaflets on the Leyton Loop made me think about the walk that I did through Leyton to the West End via Kings Cross in June 2007. I posted a blog about it at the time.
Enthused, I came home from the pub, dug out the miniDV tape and quickly edited together this vid. It’s always difficult to capture the experience of walking in any form – literature seems to have managed it best. Here I tried to film as instinctively as possible as if scribbling in a notebook.
The Heathcote btw was shut tonight due to a gas leak – was it something I did? Not quite sure what I’ll do if it stays shut for a while. Maybe get round to writing up some notes I’ve got on walking that I’d like to share.

Persepolis – Leytonstone Library 1st October

The first Wednesday of the month will hopefully become firmly enshrined in the collective psyche of Leytonstone as Film Night. Tomorrow is Leytonstone Film Club’s second proper screening since launching in the festival.
I’ve got to try and think of a few words to say before the film about why we chose ‘Persepolis’.

Truth is a dear friend who happens to work in the film industry – so is rarely impressed – said to me “you must see this film – you must”. So that’s the real reason although I’d better come up with something better. Maybe something about the rarity of an intelligent, entertaining film aimed at an adult audience that is animated and dealing with the not altogether comedy-laden subject of the Iranian revolution. Reckon that’ll do.

I’ve posted up a clip here from the screening of The Lodger that we did for the Leytonstone Festival with the brilliant improvised rescoring by Fabricio Brachetta.

london

Leytonstone Film Club

Spent the morning at Leytonstone Library setting up the new kit for the first night of Leytonstone Film Club‘s first season. Exciting stuff. The launch event in the Leytonstone Festival went so well that we are possibly feeling overly optimistic. All were impressed with the quality of the projection despite having to run it through a single video cable. Although with all this hi-tech latest release digital wizardry the event of the morning was when Kevin went and dug out the dusty old projection table that dates from the opening of the library in 1934.

So all looks good for Wednesday’s screening of The Counterfeiters and the subsequent events on the first Wednesday of the month. Although we’ve got a good list of films that we’d like to screen in the rest of the season we’d also love to hear what you’d like us to show. Cinema is coming back to Leytonstone – maybe Hitchcock can finally rest in peace.

The Counterfeiters, Wednesday 10th September 2008, Leytonstone Library, Church Lane, E11

Leytonstone Film Club Launch

Leytonstone Film Club present the first classic film by local boy made great Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film ‘The Lodger’ accompanied by musical improvisation from composer Fabricio Brachetta.
Tuesday 8th July Leytonstone Library 20.00

This screening, which is part of the Leytonstone Festival, marks the launch of the Leytonstone Film Club which will hold monthly screenings at Leytonstone Library from September.

london

Steve Harris – Leytonstone

Just doing some research into famous people who grew up on council estates and stumbled upon the fact that Iron Maiden founder and principle songwriter, Steve Harris was born and raised in Leytonstone. A nice extra dimension to my original housing angle is that in addition for playing for the West Ham youth team he studied as an architectural draughtsman. Having said that, I haven’t been able to establish whether he did in fact grow up on a council estate or not (if anyone knows I’d be very grateful – it was our invaluable friend Google who made the initial connection) making this lovely piece of local trivia potentially irrelevant to my overall project.

Forest to North Circ

Late Sunday afternoon and I’m overcome by the desire to strike out through the forest. Maybe it was my father calling me up earlier in the day asking to speak to Fieldfare and then berating me for my recent lack of walking.
I live a good 20 minutes walk from the edge of Epping Forest so to bring it closer I decide to head up along Forest Road, a pastoral row of cottages with nattering birds and flower festooned gardens.

A clockwise spin around the Hollow Ponds in the rain with a polystyrene cup of tea from one of the roadside huts and then through the trees emerging opposite The Forest – a row of beautiful Victorian houses overlooked by the fourteen grand-a-year Forest School.
Back through the woods and as I start to revel in the sylvan beauty of it all I’m confronted with a psychedelically decorated concrete underpass, and worse, an intersection of directional signs. ‘Waltamstow – Redbridge – Chingford’, not a choice so much as a warning, a rambler’s Russian roulette, I was looking for a state of fugue, not an example of poor post war urban planning.
I end up changing my mind twice – first in favour of Chingford, then Redbridge. This delivers me to a promenade that runs beside the majestic North Circular – a road to which Deep Topographer Nick Papadimitriou is symbiotically attached. You can’t walk beside such a road (which at the time I confess I mistakenly identify as the M11 – maybe that’s a Leytonstone thing – all motorways become the M11, all motorways are the M11). This brilliant path is raised high along the cutting giving a grandstand view of the metal pods hurtling past with the dark hills of the forest rising in the distance.

It’s not possible to walk beside a motorway without thinking both of Nick and his North Circ obsession (I once witnessed him clasping his hands and declaring his love for the road from the top deck of a bus as we passed it near North Finchley – I have this beautiful Brief Encounter like moment on video), and Iain Sinclair’s magisterial book ‘London Orbital’. The combination of these two references makes it futile to even consider writing about the experience of walking beside a motorway, so instead I stand on a footbridge and think about the documentary series of motorway walks that I plan to pitch to bemused commissioning editors (note to commissioning editors: come on – it’ll be great) – I just need to work on getting Clarkson onboard.
As I see the sign announcing Stanstead airport I momentarily plan to propose a walk out to the airport – then realise that the other member of the triumvirate of great contemporary psychogeographers, Will Self, has perfected this practice to the extent of boarding a plane, flying to another continent then continuing his walk into the city centre (no small feat in LA or New York – more of this when I get round to blogging my recent trip to LA).
I’m further drawn along the roadside by the sight of a cluster of tower blocks rising in the distance like some kind of proto-Croydon. Where can it be?
Turns out to be South Woodford, lovely old Tory South Woodford and a development being misbranded as Queen Mary’s Gate by Telford Homes (“at the forefront of East London regeneration”). These developments always seem to have a fortress-like appearance, the outpost of a colonial power, in this case City capital. But with the credit crunch starting to bite it’s not so difficult to imagine the potential ghetto-isation of such ‘prestige’ communities.
I amble down George Lane which feels like it belongs in Boscombe or Ventnor, particularly on a lazy Sunday evening – so I stop for gelato and take it on the tube home with me.

london

The Crook, The Toff, The Cop and The Fascist


An anarchist perspective on the London Mayoral Elections: ” We all know politicians are lying, corrupt, self-serving parasites – its time we let them know. This is our London, not their, their party’s or their paymasters’.
– noticeable that the Greens still get left out.
I stopped to chat to the Left List canvassers outside Leytonstone Station the other day greeting them with the line, “I thought you lot didn’t believe in bourgeois democracy”, which seemed to catch them slightly unawares. The SWP must have changed a bit since I was a lad when all SWSS members were thoroughly indoctrinated with the line on the futility of elections. I perused their stall, being a sucker for political paraphernalia, and looked at the latest edition of Socialist Studies that included an article on ‘Reality TV: the Big Brother phenomenon’. “What’s Big Brother got to do with socialism”, I scoffed, before noticing that the lady I was talking to, and at this point looking slightly sheepish, was former Big Brother contestant (and local celebrity) Carole Vincent.

london