A real joy to make this latest episode of my series of walking vlogs as Wanstead Flats is probably my favourite open space in London – and also because it gave me a chance to use the footage of my Dad finding a Hedge Mog on the flats a couple of years ago that I described in Chapter 10 This Other London.
The assassination of the great avant-garde composer, Cornelius Cardew by the Stasi, the course of the Philly Brook, King Harold in Leyton and the pilgrimage route to Waltham Abbey along the High Road, a near collision with a cyclist on the pavement, the Knights Templar, echoes of midwest America, and a glorious sunset – all in a long walk round the block the other evening.
If I hadn’t committed to doing a daily vlog then I probably would have ducked home out of the rain after my morning coffee. I sat in The Sunflower Café pondering on how my vlogs are a form of ‘Slow Vlogging’ – embracing and celebrating the familiar, local, the extraordinary lurking beneath the seemingly mundane. But how do you actual film a walking vlog in the driving rain.
I jumped on the Central Line to St. Paul’s and headed for the Highwalks of the City of London – covered walkways that in parts follow the line of the old Roman Wall. The Postern by the Museum of London is the best place to see how the remains of a Medieval Bastion were built into the wall, lining up with the remains of the Roman wall in Noble Street.
I followed the painted yellow line on the ground – a thread that leads into the Barbican – truly one of the wonders of London. Walking the raised walkways through the Barbican is best done in the middle of the night – but then I’ve only done that by accident when looking for a shortcut home when I lived just off Penton Mound. The soles of my trainers have been worn slippery smooth and I skated over the wet brick paving slaloming around the concrete pillars.
Soon I slid all the way inside the Barbican itself – the Brutalist mothership, a Le Corbusierian wet dream. Floating along the glass roofed corridors linking sections of the buildings, heavy brass doors hissing open ten yards before your arrival – it felt like being in a Space Station (well what I imagine it feels like from watching films) orbiting the City of London. The huge Conservatory with its towering palms and balconies dripping in tropical plants compound the feeling. It’s a glimpse of a future London after the collapse of civilization when nature has reclaimed the concrete wilderness – images garnered from the 1980’s TV adaptation of John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids.
My feet led me to The Curve Gallery currently housing a sculptural installation by Swiss Artist Roman Signer. A bright Ferrari red kayak is gently skimming over the bare wooden floor dragged by a cable attached to a motorized pulley running along a rail on the ceiling. The only other thing in the gallery are two screens showing the kayak moving in other spaces – being pulled from the back of a jeep along a country lane – and spinning around on a spit. The installation is called ‘Slow Movement’. I filmed the kayak from floor level moving in and out of frame – it was the perfect footage to accompany what I had been pondering that morning – of my daily videos as a kind of ‘slow vlog’. I’d honestly chosen to head for the Barbican so I could walk and film away from the rain – but here was a message inspiring me to stay ‘slow’.
Left home at 5pm with no plan except a vague idea to head towards to the Beavertown Brewery at Tottenham Hale and their Saturday taproom which closed at 8. I was torn between my usual walk until dark and/or my knee stops working, and the desire to actually get somewhere by a specified time.
From Midland Road, the schlep of my old work commute with a nod to the home of Harry Beck’s Blue Plaque (but stupidly not shot of it for my walking vlog) then down Coopers Lane and Farmer Road yards away from the wheel screech of Leyton High Road but always tranquil somehow.
So sad to see The Antelope on Church Road boarded up. At a meeting to discuss the future of the Heathcote Arms last week – miraculously re-opened although still owned by a property developer – James Watson from CAMRA told the room that Waltham Forest has lost something like 50% of its pub stock. Thankfully now the local authority seems determined to lose no more – the Heathcote was among a number of pubs granted Asset of Community Value status. Let’s hope that like the Heathcote, the Antelope gets to be reborn.
I decided against the scenic route to Tottenham Hale, down Marsh Lane and over the Marshes because by now I could start to feel the tingle of a Beavertown Gamma Ray American IPA on my taste buds, so opted for the fast track via Markhouse Road and Blackhorse Road.
It’s sad to pass the boarded up Standard opposite Blackhorse Road Tube – once a legendary rock venue. I came here when I was 16 to watch my mate Johnny Lee play with his band. It was a big gig for a provincial outfit – it was said A&R men hung out at the bar looking to spot the next big thing.
The hubbub of the Beavertown Taproom crowd can be heard from a good 200 yards away – I thought it might be me and another 20 or so beer fans sat in the carpark of a Tottenham Industrial Estate. How wrong. There must have been 150 of the trendiest people I’ve seen in one place since I was backstage at a Katy Perry concert. Thank god I’ve got a beard.
After a transcendent Neckoil Session IPA and a Beaver Double IPA I tentatively enquired whether they did any brewery tours, “This is the tour I’m afraid”, the barman said gesturing from the bar to the expansive unit of polished brewing vessels. I must have looked visibly disappointed because he called a fella named Cosmo over and asked if he wouldn’t mind showing me around. At 8pm on a Saturday when they’d been flat out serving for hours they’d have been perfectly entitled to say No – but Cosmo couldn’t have been more enthusiastic, swinging back the barrier and leading me among the brew kit towards a 30 barrel mash tun where 5,500 litre batches are brewed using a tonne of malt for the 5% beers and double that for the stronger beers.
He explained how sugars are extracted from the malt by stewing and steeping it like a gigantic pot of tea. Then it is pumped into a copper for heating before it is cooled where the flavours of the hops start to emerge. The brew passes through a heat exchange into a fermenter where yeast is added and some more hops for dry hopping ‘to give extra hoppy aromas’ explained Cosmo. It is further chilled and carbonated for a week before either being kegged, canned (Beavetown have the best cans), or put into a wooden barrel for barrel-aging.
I can think of no finer end to a walk than to be given a guided tour of the brewery of one of your favourite beers. I walked away with the rosy glow of strong beer and a carrier bag containing a Beavertown T-shirt and a mixed six pack. I’ve got one cracked open on the desk beside me now.
I‘ve decided to start a daily vlog of my routine walks (well Monday to Friday) – mainly just local wanderings, occasionally further afield. I normally just record these in my head with notes scribbled in my pocket book and etched into my psyche, but for the sake of YouTube I’ll use the more conventional means of compact camera.
I’ve been watching a few travel vloggers – jet-setting around the globe – Zorbing in New Zealand, Kayaking in Kenya, Skateboarding in Santiago and this is my version – taking a daily schlepp around East London. These aren’t the expeditions into remote London as recorded in This Other London, but spontaneous drifts, meditative meanderings on familiar turf, although I never truly know where I’m going to end up – one morning I set out and emerged through a hedge 3 hours later on the outskirts of Harold Park.
This first one follows a regular trail down Leytonstone High Road, past the Jet garage built on the site of Alfred Hitchcock’s childhood home with the recently painted ‘Birds’ mural next door. I couldn’t resist a look at the dying days of the Homebase DIY store with its empty aisles – it had a creepy Hitchcockian ambience. It’s a glimpse into a near-future where all large retail units will be reduced to this.
With the General Election looming it seems an apt time to post this video of an psychogeographical intervention I was invited to stage by artist Bob and Roberta Smith in Michael Gove’s Surrey Heath constituency where Bob is challenging him on May 7th.
Employing an algorithmic derive seemed like a good way to unlock hidden aspects of the principle town in the constituency – Camberley. The Situationists had developed the derive as a form of reconnaissance mission for the eventual transformation of everyday life – in this case it would be launching Bob’s election campaign.
The algorithm (above) that we used, and the overall idea of algorithmic or Generative Psychogeography was developed by Dutch artists Social Fiction who experimented with the process over the Summer of 2001. I’d used these in a psychogeographical remapping of High Wycombe working with my sister throughout 2004-05 to great effect. What would happen in Surrey Heath?
In their essay, Algorithmic Noise as Free Culture: The Hot Summer of Generative Psychogeography 2002, Social Fiction write of the experience, “Participation in a generative psychogeographical experiment forces you to adopt the characteristics of a machine, you are pushed through streets like an object in almost closed loops which are connected by sudden rushes straight forward.”
As the algorithm took us into a series of carparks linked by flytipped alleyways this prediction appeared to be borne out – Camberley was perhaps a perfect ‘generator’ of psychogeography.
The process does come with the warning that, “the algorithm which should be able to produce a walk without navigational friction repeatedly produces more confusion than certainty: the algorithm becomes chaos.” Which certainly seemed to be the case as we crossed and re-crossed roads, and skirted a multi-storey carpark that Bob sketched.
I had stated that we would follow the algorithm for exactly one hour. Our final turn took us off the main road opposite Sandhurst Military Academy and into the carpark behind Argos. And there at the very end of the derive, dead on 1 hour of walking, we found ourselves outside Camberley’s one and only Art Shop. From the chaos the algorithm had produced the perfect conclusion to the exercise.
A sultry Sunday early evening stroll round Bloomsbury was just what my hangover required. One of my literary role-models, Thomas Burke spent a lot of time walking these streets and I fancy, often feeling slightly jaded from a few the night before. In his 1939 book, Living in Bloomsbury he writes about how the reputation and nature of the area had changed, “as one district erases its shabby past, and improves and promotes itself, another forgets its decent past, and deteriotes and wanes…. Bloomsbury is a notable example of the whirlygig of favour.”
Burke outlines Bloomsbury’s arc from a smart neighbourhood for professionals and bankers in the 1820’s – 1860’s to the dwelling place for ‘hard-up clerks’ by the 1880’s, then starting to become re-gentrified during the interwar years of the 20th Century when he lived there. He lists the 19th Century books on London life that he accumulated during this time, books for people who are “seeking illumination on the realities of the period”. The intriguing collection includes, The Wilds of London and The Seven Curses of London by James Greenwood; Ritchie’s Night Side of London, Occult London, Mark Lemon’s Up and Down the London Streets, and James Grant’s The Great Metropolis.
From Sicilian Avenue I make my way for a mooch in Book Warehouse on Southampton Row and then on to the Brunswick Centre after stopping to admire the font of the Underground sign above the entrance to Russell Square tube station.
I photograph the doorway of an apartment block in Marchmont Street that I imagine is where those ‘hard-up clerks’ mentioned by Burke might have lived. The prostitute from Patrick Hamilton’s The Midnight Bell also lived round here somewhere. There’s always life in Marchmont Street, in the cafes, the launderette with the cranes looming above, the pub, Judd Street Books (which I just missed).
Moving round to Judd Street munching on a Topic bar you have to stop and admire Clare Court, a fine 1920’s brown brick block of flats, a fitting tribute to the 18th Century brick fields upon which it stands.
The neighbouring Lucas-Cromer estate was developed for housing with the first six houses rising from the cow pastures in 1801. By 1815, Lucas the tin-plate worker, had built another 99. Cromer Street today is dominated by a mixture of social housing blocks – the backs of the estate that lines Harrison Street and older flats with locally-listed shop fronts below. It has a European feel in the sunset, reminds me of the outskirts of cities in Emilia Romagna – Modena, Parma, Bologna.
The view north from Swinton Street is a panorama of changing London – the backs of early 20th Century social housing and the gleaming new glass towers of the Kings Cross development. I’m closing in on sacred ground – the Pen Ton mound, springs gurgling beneath the pavement, rising on the high ground around the top of Pentonville Road. The only reasonable thing to do now is to follow the water to a table near the banks of The New River outside the Marquess Tavern in Canonbury, a grand Victorian pile where George Orwell used to drink.