Escaping London - An Accidental Epilogue? 11 years ago
Posted in London on Monday 7th October 2013 at 10:10pm
How do you know when a journey is over?
The weekend has been long, strange and unexpectedly surreal. We set out rather later than usual on Saturday, having spent the morning at a tiny village hall in Somerset. The contrast was both curious and a little disorienting, as we arrived at Paddington and plunged headlong into a tube journey eastwards. Our regular visits to the city in recent months have fallen into a pattern - we meet with friends, enjoy company and include some of our wanderings. It's a settled, easy way of enjoying the city - it tempers the more overwhelming qualities which can surface, and it satisfies my need to wander. We've made a few plans for the weekend, and as I have an extra day off work we're in no hurry to be anywhere - the plan is for a fairly relaxing weekend before we both plunge into complicated work-related weeks. However it's pretty clear on our arrival that all is not well. We don't want to intrude on private life, and it feels like the only thing we can reasonably do is find somewhere else to be - so we make plans for a hotel stay the next night and quietly retire. It's not an easy decision for a number of reasons, but it feels right.
Sunday starts earlier than usual. We've a couple of targets in mind, and we take our leave swiftly and head for the tube to Stratford. A quick change to the Overground and we arrive at Hackney Wick. The morning has turned out improbably bright and we walk under clear blue skies towards The Hackney Pearl. It's just opening up, and the friendly Texan barista is happy to chat while she makes us fantastic coffee. We sit and discuss the events of the trip so far in the quiet morning, watching the Wick wake up. Hipsters emerge, pale and red-eyed for their coffee fix, while families with cute little soon-to-be-hipster kids totter and wheel about the place, heading for the station and perhaps somewhat guiltily to the magnetic retail mecca of Westfield? It's quiet, an occasional car passes and the Overground trains screech as they negotiate the curve of the line towards Stratford. The sun is high and bright when we reach the meeting point for the walk. Simon, our guide appears on his bike and suddenly our group begins to assemble. We're a truly cosmopolitan bunch - USA, Germany, Italy, Canada and of course the UK all represented. We meander around Hackney Wick and Fish Island, exploring a world of changing priorities and shifting politics. Genuine innovation - petrol, plastic, oxygen - sits alongside artifice and artistry. Street art, legal and otherwise, is significant here. Not just territorial markings but statements of purpose. The ideas of living space and industrial space are conflated - much to the local council's chagrin - and the Wick is home as much as it is work nowadays, a new role for this island of industry in some senses. Over all of this, the shadow of the Olympics lurks. I guess if you'd done this tour in 2006 it would have been very different. A tale of resistance and objection which never really disappeared, but was somehow edged out of the mainstream and into the churn and bluster of the British Left. Simon calls the issues "complex", and with a year of clear hindsight he's right - there's good stuff to be found... New bridges link Fish Island with the park, infrastructure will improve, arts funding is at a counter-economic peak here. Meanwhile, the same artists face a pricing-out of the housing and workspace market. As leases mature on these hulking, previously largely worthless industrial shells, they will be re-let at post-Olympic prices. There's already talk of Poplar and Canning Town as the new edgelands.
As we cross the Hertford Union Canal and enter Fish Island, the sun is high and inescapable. Headaches descend and we blink into the stark white of another new art space. This one is determined to survive, using the Localism Act to delay sale long enough to potentially raise the absurd amount of cash required. In some ways, it's faintly depressing - worthy, if a little textbook perhaps - but ultimately doomed to collapse into a round of squatting and frantic money-raising. It will be a news story, briefly and locally, then a sale. We pass the multi-story stable block and cross the narrow walkway over the gates of Old Ford Lock. In the distance, the old Big Breakfast TV studio cottage is dwarfed by the Olympic Stadium. I took some pictures here before the games, but never turned back to see this view once I'd crossed the Cut. It didn't seem right. Surely I was the one being watched back then? We edge along the water, finally ascending to the Greenway. At last this stretch is open again and I can complete a bit of undone business, but the sun beats even harder on the flat open expanse of pathway above the sewer. Finally we arrive at The View Tube. The Orbit towers pointlessly over us, and occasionally vehicles flit about the park. It's busy here, a little chaotic even as the barista and cashier skitters between transactions, pausing mid-sentence to weave into the cafe with plates and cups. We settle in to recover from the walk, chatting briefly to Simon before he disappears for his next assignment in Stoke Newington. I feel like I've closed a book - or at least ended a chapter. My more scattered wanders condensed into a single walk. Simon has achieved what I failed repeatedly to do - focus on the place. Eventually we head off - to Pudding Mill Lane DLR station, enclosed within the same sinister blue fencing which used to mark out the borders of the Olympic Project, now bequeathed to the ponderously slow but largely hidden Crossrail project. Briefly on our journey we pass through Westfield - busy, oddly populated by young women dressed to be out for a night rather than perched on traffic bollards outside a retail complex. We buy provisions and disappear into a taxi which takes us to Baker's Arms, and our strange, idiosyncratic hotel for the night. I still have a journey to make - into the Roding Valley via Epping Forest on a tiny bus to collect our belongings. Lea Bridge Road pulses with life even this late, but the suburbs are dark and a little uninviting - strangely more sinister than the babble of foreign voices and bustle of unfamiliarity on the main streets. The bus curls around Whipps Cross Hospital, a massive site almost entirely obscured by trees - inside Victorian asylum buildings vie with horrible modern utility blocks. There's little sense or order. Signs point to various departments based on body parts, but they're all out of place - the Chest Department sitting weirdly close to Podiatry. I'm not sorry to find myself in the anodyne, faceless suburbia once again.
I wake early, my back aching from a night on a hard bed. The change of plans feels like it has cursed us. This extra day here was meant to be an extended adventure, but now it feels like an imposition. We set out on the No.55 towards Hackney. Progress is slow, the sun radiates in, headaches are re-calibrated and start to pulse in concert with the bus engine. We pass over Lea Bridge and the brief stripe of green which separates the bleak, collapsing kebab shops of Walthamstow from the organic vendors of Clapton. The urge to walk the valley south towards the city is strong, but there is coffee at stake here. Once free of the snarl-up of Hackney Central we're swiftly onto Mare Street and soon walking towards Broadway Market again. At Climpson and Sons we find wonderful coffee as ever, and spend some time people-watching - not least observing the seemingly endless train of employees disappearing into the basement, each a little more hipster than the last. We linger over coffee and food, the tiny store fills and empties over and again. Business seems good - no surprise with coffee this well done. We finally head out into the cool of London Fields to regroup. There's no plan and too much time - almost the worst possible situation. We're tired, tired of London almost, and disappointment is brewing into anger. In the midst of this I decide to do something which I'd never normally countenance. I head west...
We end the day at dusk in St. James's Park. The gliding Pelicans looking sinister against the backdrop of greenery, Buckingham Palace floating through the slight evening mist. It's a beautiful, crisp afternoon. The sun is almost gone as we head for Bressenden Place, realising an entire street of buildings has disappeared leaving us disoriented. We arrive back at Paddington in darkness, thankful to be back and contemplating a cosy, restful journey. The last stragglers of the evening peak scan the board and dash for trains. We collapse onto ours and settle in for the ride - the tension and threat of London left behind as we speed west towards home. I never thought I'd feel quite so relieved, so thankful to be leaving - and I wonder about what this might mean for my future engagement with a city which has absorbed hours of my time and occupied much of my imagination. Again I sense a book closing, a work complete - but I have nothing much to show for years of trudging concrete, absorbing facts and developing allegiances.
For now, at least, my focus needs to lie to the west - and for the first time in years I find myself wondering when, and in what context I'll return here?
The Magick Circle, Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat - Paisley Arts Centre 13 years ago
Posted in SHOFT on Friday 7th October 2011 at 11:10pm
Once again, I found myself in Paisley. A year ago I explained how I'd hoped for a pleasant, golden October evening on which to explore the town. In the event, I got a dark, miserable rain-soaked night instead. However, today was different - and dodging the groups of feral kids and fire engines which seemed to howling around the Town Centre with alarming regularity, I made my way along the High Street, taking a longer route to the Arts Centre. I was struck again by the grand civic architecture of the town and the sense that there was a fierce pride somewhere here, but like so many towns across the UK there were more than a fair share of closed up shops and cafes. Given this, its especially pleasing that somewhere like the Arts Centre exists, and remarkably enough, remains in public hands still. Tonight's show was preceded, like last year's 'Paisley Underground' events by an industry panel which was well attended, and as the panel finished and the audience spilled out, Vic Galloway was besieged by folks wanting to discuss things with him in more detail. Picked my way through the crowd which he'd generated and found my seat in the auditorium as the audience filed in.
A lot of people seemed to stay in the bar for opening act The Magick Circle - which is no surprise given the typical local arts centre type crowd who had once again turned out for this event. However, they missed a treat as Laura Carswell, familiar from earlier in the week, rather nervously led this band of local young Paisley musicians through a set of accomplished folk material, which they'd made their own by way of some interesting arrangements. One of the strengths of the Paisley Underground setup is how establised, crowd-pulling acts are paired with bands emerging from Reid Kerr College. Laura's voice was certainly the highlight - on this material striking a high, purely traditional register but lacking some of the depth and range of approaches she'd shown in her solo show perhaps. Added to this was a touch of carefully understated electric lead guitar to enhance and add a little edge to the melodies, and some delicate drumming which underpinned things perfectly. This allowed the band to deliver these traditional ballads and covers with a strangely jazzy edge, veering sometimes into a sort of underplayed folk-rock which looked enormous fun to be playing, and their enthusiasm shone through the nerves into a spirited performance. The opening track was dedicated to Bert Jansch, the very recent loss of which seemed to be affecting a surprising number of younger Scottish musicians too, with many having regarded him as a presence in their earliest musical memories it seems. His style and spirit live on in The Magick Circle particularly, and their sensitive but individual take on traditional songs seems to continue the tradition admirably.
With the audience swelled by latecomers, a surprising number of which managed to miss the start of the set entirely, Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat took to the stage. With Wells ensconced behind his piano, the remainder of the band consisted of a trumpet player, a violinist and a double-bass player. With Moffat stationed behind a small collection of percussion instruments, the band swung into a surprisingly full-sounding groove, led by the remarkable piano playing from Wells. Despite Aidan recovering from a cold and having dosed himself up on remedies prior to the show, he was in fine voice - his unconventional Falkirk drawl having softened over the years since I last saw him sing live, becoming a warm and sometimes rather sentimental delivery. Much of the recent "Everthing's Getting Older" album was played and received a very warm response too, not least for "The Copper Top" which became an even more affecting rumination on age and change in this setting. Also played, and I understand from a forthcoming EP, was Bananarama's "Cruel Summer". Given a regretful and rather downbeat treatment, the bones of the song were revealed with a darker edge than perhaps expected given the tone of the original. Afterwards Moffat speculated on whether much of the audience would remember Bananarama? Looking around, I'm not sure many of them would remember Arab Strap to be honest!
Having experienced a rather staid, typically 'arts centre' type crowd here before, it was heartening to see a little banter developing between the stage and the audience tonight. As the band began a new song with a Halloween costume party theme, there was an outbreak of laughter which put Aidan completely off his stroke, exclaiming that Paisley was "easily pleased". I won't explain it here, because I don't want to ruin the moment when this song finally gets a release, but suffice to say it's a classic Aidan Moffat moment where bad life choices, illicit sex, religion and deceit collide. The new material is just as affecting and keenly observed as that on the recent album, with new stories on the old themes aplenty. By the end of the set, the audience just didn't want the band to leave - and I noted that Moffat had turned this not always comfortable auditorium's shortcomings to his advantage by narrowing the gap between audience and performer. No mean feat with these audiences, and testament to both his skills as a storyteller and Wells's remarkable talent as a composer and arranger of backdrops which give Moffat the space to develop his tiny, sometimes harrowing dramas.
It's difficult to describe just how moving and heartening tonight's performance was, and how well this music works in a live setting despite it's quiet, reflective nature. The simple instrumentation suited the setting and the material perfectly, and the intimacy of it's tone worked incredibly well here. My journey back to Glasgow was full of all the usual spectacle which a late evening here produces, and it was hard not to see some of this through the storyteller's eyes. Maybe I'm just getting older, and as the song says after all, everything is...
This weekend the West Somerset Railway holds it's Autumn Steam Gala. Much as I love the scenery and the ambience of the WSR, I'm always disappointed by some staff member's attitude to Diesel traction. This seems to have been compounded by a lack of Diesel gala this year and by management recently announcing that "the WSR is a steam railway". In this climate, and alongside First Great Western MD Alison Forster recently saying she "'didn't think steam engines should be on the mainline" today saw an unlikely alliance!
Set out on the 08:07 from Highbridge. There appeared to be a few steam cranks on board. The guard had a little difficulty issuing the return to Bishop's Lydeard but eventually coaxed the Avantix machine into action. Wonderful weather on the short journey down to Taunton - can only hope it holds for my week away. Platform 2 at Taunton packed with WSR staff, FGW staff and a few press interested in the event - the first service train to work through to Bishop's Lydeard since 1971. On time, a single 158 crept into the platform with a makeshift route indicator for Lydeard. We piled on and crawled slowly past Fairwater Yard and onto the branch at Norton Fitzwarren. After passing the army base and the location of the WSR's proposed turning triange, we were soon passing a line of steam locomotives ready for the gala, and drawing into the station.
Stayed aboard for the return trip, and I was surprised at the number of people who got on for the first ride back. As we passed Norton Fitzwarren we halted - an elderly female was walking her five dogs on the track. A British Transport Police officer travelling with us stepped off to have a word - "but I've been doing this for thirty years officer!". Held again at the junction for 6201 Princess Elizabeth to cross into Fairwater Yard awaiting an incoming charter. Soon arrived at Taunton and the adventure was over - a tiny bit of track in some ways, but one I've waited a long time to travel.
Daylog Entry for Sunday 07/10/2001 23 years ago
Posted in Updates on Sunday 7th October 2001 at 12:00am
Urgh! Should probably not have gone out last night. Had been feeling pretty dodgy all day, and not in the best of moods. Tried to get through it, but ended up getting drunk far too fast and stumbling dizzily through the maze of gardens at the top end of the seafront and trying desperately to make it home before being horribly ill! So, a late and groggy start - not feeling much better. Braved torrential rain to get some supplies and a Dublin Rough Guide. Tried to get in touch with people, to little avail. US attacks start - spoke with my sister for some time about what was going on. We tried to nervously make light of events. Hacked a bit on libwvconf. Demon seems to be lacking any kind of US connectivity tonight.
Lost::MikeGTN
I've had a home on the web for more years than I care to remember, and a few kind souls persuade me it's worth persisting with keeping it updated. This current incarnation of the site is centred around the blog posts which began back in 1999 as 'the daylog' and continued through my travels and tribulations during the following years.
I don't get out and about nearly as much these days, but I do try to record significant events and trips for posterity. You may also have arrived here by following the trail to my former music blog Songs Heard On Fast Trains. That content is preserved here too.
