PLAY.orchestra and Tot Hill

Lunchtime today I found myself sitting on a plastic box outside the Royal Festival Hall that produced the sound of a cello when I plonked myself down. People sat on other boxes around me that emitted the noises associated with flutes, violins etc – collectively I suppose we formed a kind of orchestra. The piece is called PLAY.orchestra, although as I sat there as an Oboe I thought Bum Orchestra might not be a bad alternative. You can then download the sound you’ve made to your phone via Bluetooth and use it as ringtone, send to friends, burn to CD or whatever. It’s the second creative use of Bluetooth technology that I’ve come across this week. The other looks like a large advertising stand in the foyer of the NFT (there’s also one in the IMAX) where you can download a clip from one of the many classic CIO public information films currently screening at the NFT. I think the use of Bluetooth as a creative tool and as a means for disseminating artistic material is quickly becoming common practice.

I went over to Westminster the other day in search of Tot Hill, one of the prehistoric mounds of London mentioned by E.O Gordon in her seminal book ‘Prehistoric London: its mounds and circles’. I’ve previously been fixated on the Penton, because I lived about a hundred yards away mainly, but I’m considering a project based around the sites, even if it’s just a walk to link them up. I knew that it was just outside Westminster Abbey but not sure where. Tothill Fields was a feature on London maps till the C18th and is commemorated by Tothill Street. Tothill Fields is now marked by the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre (opened in 1986). A friendly Abbey gatekeeper pointed out where the fields (and supposedly the mound) had been and also told me that a telephone exchange had been on the site and an old derelict building overgrown with grass. Westminster Central Methodist Hall sits on one side and was where the first U.N General Assembly was held in 1946. Along with the conference centre, the Abbey and Houses of Parliament nearby this site has maintained its ancient function as a place of congregation and worship for thousands of years.

Round the back of Middlesex Guildhall I found the relocated gate to Tothill Prison. There are several parallels between the Mounds (Penton and White Mound/Tower Hill the others) that Peter Ackroyd describes far more eloquently than I can (‘London: a biography’ p.13-15) but one symmetry he doesn’t mention is that they all housed prisons – Tower Hill probably the most famous in our history, Tothill being one of the more humane apparently and Penton Mound had the Middlesex County House of Correction on one side in Cold Bath Square.

have a look at a couple of photos I took of Tothill and PLAY.orchestra on Flickr.

london

Journeys Beyond the Western Sector

The Remapping High Wycombe book “Journeys Beyond the Western Sector” is finally available, through Lulu.com. The purpose of the project was to re-map and re-imagine the town as it was going through a period of redevelopment. The idea was to create a kind of parallel scheme, a psychogeographical vision of the area. The book takes the form of several walks or ‘dérives’ – some following prepared routes based in significant sites or old borough boundaries, others using the principles of generative psychogeography. There is a DVD to accompany the book featuring footage from the derives and some interviews we conducted intercut with archive film of Wycombe, which we’ll send to anyone who wants one.

Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

london

Wanstead Park

We cross onto the flats from Bush Road near a tree which has had its trunk burnt hollow. My 3 year-old explores. Into Wanstead Park over a dried-up brook (Aldersbrook?). We come before a mighty oak, the kind that arouses pagan senses. H says “It’s just so feminine, it’s fertility, like legs spread open”.

We come to the Heron Pond where the light reflects off the water and ripples on the underside of the leaves of a low hanging oak. Wanstead House is gone but the avenue of trees remains to the Temple.

The grand house that was visited by Elizabeth I, Samuel Pepys, Horace Walpole, from where Mary Tudor rode into London to be crowned, gone, a grassy mound. Joggers and cyclists, two power walkers with iPods. “Several Martyrs were sought out from the Forest during Mary’s reign…. John Rogers the first of them….” (‘Epping Forest’, W. Addison 1945).

Sunday on the Leyton Lammas Lands


Down to Marsh Lane Playing Fields with H, Nick and the kids. I’m keen to see their reaction to the former Lammas Lands. It’s a perfect late summer’s day, walking weather, great for a 14-miler, but not with a 3 year-old and a pram.

We enter the fields via a council estate off Oliver Road and over a bridge across the Dagenham Brook. Nick points out Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) growing on the bank. A red dragonfly darts here and there. Starlings swoop across the sky gathering for migration (Nick reckons they’re bound for Siberia). Windswept long-grasses brush up against giant pylons which send black stripes across the brilliant blue sky. Nick and my 3 year-old look for caterpillars on the Marsh Ragwort. Purple-flowered wild peas. Great heavy bunches of elderberries.

Nick rubs some Yarrow in his fingers – “used for stanching bleeding” (it was also known as Soldier’s Wortweed). There’s Black horehound and Burdock. I’m looking out for the legions of foragers that Richard Mabey wrote about in yesterday’s Guardian. But the only other people around are a family on bikes and two joggers. The Leyton & Leytonstone Guardian reported last week that this is one of the least visited open spaces in the Borough. Even Nick, who the great Londoner writer Will Self claims knows London better than anyone he knows, has never heard of it. Will it remain so unspoilt as the Olympics take over the Lea Valley?

The 3 year-old fills his pockets with stones and chases Nick up Marsh Lane.

(plant identification courtesey of Nick. He gifted me his copy of ‘Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers’ by McClintock and Fitter, 1956 at the end of the day so hopefully I’ll be able to bring a greater appreciation of the local flora to the blog in future).

london