Christmas break

London Sidelines is dormant, although it looks like it will stay here on the web for ever, like many blogs that were once a daily obsession. I think that is in the nature of blogging, unless it is hugely successful, to just tail off unintentionally, the entries becoming more and more infrequent until the last entry lingers tantalisingly, without any explanation as to why the author stopped at that point. I had fun with it while it lasted. Currently I've switched to writing Walthamstow Notebook about my home territory in east London, a long-term view of that newly fashionable (or last-ditch affordable) and rapidly changing part of the city.

Image: the Art Deco interior of the EMD Cinema in Hoe Street E17. The foyer opened as a pop-up bar after 12 years disused and boarded up, and looks like staying open for some time.

Going to the dogs

The old Stadium is looking tired and shabby, waiting for the rest of the new development to get a bit closer to completion I suppose, before it's worth doing any restoration. It was lit up the other day, perhaps a test run to see how much of the neon lighting still works - because the whole point of the iconic frontage is the way it used to light up at dusk. The 1933 Totaliser Building is crude 30s construction, painted cement render on cheap bricks, with nothing much in the way of interesting detail, just a plain backdrop for the well-known neon sign, the leaping greyhound and the Art Deco lettering. You just have to hope the developers do keep it lit up. The Stadium was listed Grade II, otherwise no doubt the whole thing would have been value engineered out, like the BMX track and climbing wall etc. I'm pleased to see this central feature kept, but not really convinced the car park has any real architectural value on its own, without the rest of the stadium buildings. At least its good to see the hideous metal railings have gone. They must have been added in the 1970s, when adding red tubular metal features to buildings seemed like a good idea.
I went there once, shortly before it closed, had a great evening and won forty quid. Not because I know the first thing about dog racing, just by following what a friend of a friend was betting on. It was quite unique, the combination of the live races and associated betting on the one hand, and on the other the family-friendly night out - junk food and beer, what more could you want? Sophisticated it was not, but adults and children alike were happy. I was sorry to discover my first visit was also to be my last.

*

Londonist published an article about the 2011 alternative proposals which tried but failed to save the site for dog racing.

Clock this

The Clock House at 13 Pretoria Avenue is just one of the eighteenth-century villas built by wealthy families around Walthamstow village, at a time before all the terraced houses sprang up, replacing the orchards, market gardens and country estates. The area was favoured by merchants, early commuters who could live in style and take a conveniently short coach ride to the City to attend to business. The journey, about seven miles, must have taken no more than an hour.

Waltham Forest council's website has a page devoted to the listed buildings of the borough. It describes the Clock House as "Grade II: Regency style detached villa, erected in 1813 and the original Walthamstow home of the Warner family. Originally set in extensive landscaped grounds fronting Marsh Street (now High Street)". There's a china plate at the Vestry House museum showing a view of the house in its original park setting. Those landscaped grounds surrounding the house were soon developed, though, as Walthamstow became more built-up. The Warner properties along Pretoria Avenue were built in 1888, coming right up to the edge of the house, and Mission Grove was driven through what would have been the front garden. The grand entrance now looks rather out of place so close to the street.

I photographed the house as part of my project to document some of the interesting buildings in the area, and posted the photos on Flickr. Walthamstow man Dan K saw this one and sent me a link to his own photo of the house, with comments sent in over the past few years. A lady by the name of Amanda ("almost 44!") says "I was born and brought up in Walthamstow... We lived in Pretoria Avenue and Chewton Road - in Warner properties (and bought our house in Pretoria from Warners). I expect it's all changed there now - we moved when I was 16 and I haven't been back since my grandparents passed away in the 90s. I miss it - but don't want to go back because I fear it's changed out of all recognition." If nothing else, those new flats behind the house would be a surprise, but otherwise Pretoria Avenue can't have changed very much since then. She continues, "I remember seeing an old photo of it looking very grand in a park like setting - it belonged to the Warner family and I guess it was their home. When I was little it used to be a flour factory and I remember a HUGE chute at the back where sacks of flour used to be shot down to waiting lorries".

The present owner bought Clock House in 1999 when it was used as a warehouse, and spent a year restoring it as flats. He had a hard time convincing the council to allow the change of use, and had to comply with stringent Listed Building requirements for the way the work was carried out. The side of the house had been made into a two-storey advertising sign with lettering made of cement render, which you might think of as an interesting part of the building's history, but that had to be removed. The original stone portico was completely missing, and a new portico was built, no doubt at huge expense, to a historically accurate pattern based on old illustrations and photographs.

Watching me watching you

A group of workmen installing a camera high up on a pole at a traffic junction in East London, where it is presumably intended to monitor traffic offences, crime and civil unrest. It will of course also pick up images of everyone walking across the junction or hanging out on the street corner. The chap in the foreground isn't posing for a photo, he's approaching to ask why I'm pointing my mobile phone camera at them. Asking politely, as in not making threats and demanding I delete the snaps, but still somewhat aggressively. Which is more than a little ironic, if you think about it.

Actually though, a fixed camera is preferable to the alternative. There used to be a Smart camera car parked at the side of the road, blocking the cycle lane. CCTV cars are allowed to park on yellow lines but blocking a cycle lane during the rush hour is not a great idea, throwing cyclists out into the stream of traffic. That was annoying, but not as annoying as the sense of being watched.

A man in uniform sat in the car, watching. Not always the same man, one would drive off and another would take his place. Every time I walked past I felt watched, even though I knew they were there for traffic control, not random surveillance of the civilian population. They never made eye contact, but if they weren't looking up they could be looking at you on the screen. What a boring job, sitting in a car all day trying to look indifferent, cut off by locked doors and wound-up windows - of course you would watch the people and speculate about some of them. And what an unpopular job. Sometimes we would be treated to an appearance by the protest group that goes around following the spy cars on motorbikes, often wearing the notorious Guy Fawkes masks. They couldn't park but they would ride backwards and forwards across the junction, two to a bike, the pillion rider holding up a placard saying HIDDEN $CAMERA until the car gave up and drove away.

There's something particularly objectionable about the spy cars, the combination of camera and person watching from the safety of a car. Before the cars, sometimes a policeman stood in the same spot, mainly to enforce the no left turn sign, but that was entirely different. Who would object to a person standing in the street, not to make money but to deter antisocial behaviour, out there in the open where you could pass the time of day, ask directions or simply make eye contact, acknowledge each other's existence. Once I got stopped on that corner, turning left with toddlers strapped into their seats on the back seat of my clapped-out Montego, and the police officer was so reasonable about it I thought, he's right, and never did it again, police presence on the corner or not.

So, no more camera cars in this particular spot, and good riddance. The enforcement team is presumably watching a bank of monitors from some remote location, but at least you don't have to see them.

Scaffolding palace

In the industrial depths of Walthamstow, and those do still exist, you can find a baffling array of anonymous sheds, gleaming stainless steel structures of unknown usefulness, just two old factory chimneys (as far as I know) not to mention a thousand white vans. But the premises of M J Stapleton and Son, Scaffolding Contractors, are far from anonymous. Located across the road from the municipal dump (which is now a well-organised recycling centre) their huge enclosure is made entirely out of scaffolding poles and corrugated iron. Which makes perfect sense. The structure is picturesque, although you would not get away with this ramshackle approach in most places. The dump itself has a similar structure, purpose unknown - an open shed ten metres high, containing nothing more than a few old fridges. These pockets of industrial activity are not exactly attractive, but they give a sense of authenticity to the area, a sense that the place exists for a productive purpose beyond just being a place where people live, something that will be missed when the whole lot is pushed out by the ever-expanding demand for land for building blocks of flats.

Carol Ann Duffy in Walthamstow

If the Nazis had invaded Britain, they would have earmarked Walthamstow Assembly Hall as their kind of architecture: a severely plain neoclassical front with impossibly tall columns. Not the only use for that sort of building of course, but it was slightly strange to approach on a dark and windy evening, with light streaming out of those tall windows and crowds of people hurrying to get in, for the evening of poetry lined up. And not just any old poetry reading: the place holds 800 and it filled up.

The event was billed "an audience with Carol Ann Duffy with music by John Sampson". But first up was Warsan Shire, the new Young Poet Laureate for London, perhaps not announced beforehand because the appointment is so recent. She stood behind the lectern, striking in a simple black dress and giant frizzed-out hair, and read three poems with just a line or so of explanation. Strong stuff that deserves to be read in print too, to get a better understanding of those alarming images she deals with.

Carol Ann Duffy has a dry sense of humour and her poetry is of course a pleasure to read, as it was to hear her read it. Pieces from The World's Wife remain a strong part of her output. We got a little insight into the meaning behind some familiar pieces, the odd throwaway lines (Mrs Icarus) and even a couple of unpublished pieces. Although she is the Poet Laureate, the title carries no job description and she evidently feels under no obligation to write about the royal family. Making fun of Nick Clegg (like Faust, selling his soul to the devil) comes no closer to an official line, thank goodness.

This main part of the event was set up as a double act with the above mentioned John Samson. A big man in a three-piece suit, he does a sort of foolish musical comedy act, playing a variety of very small pipes mainly for comic effect. He can play very fast and typically throws in a few drawn-out bum notes for a laugh. "The Queen didn't want him so she gave him to me" quipped Duffy dismissively, but in fact she's been performing with him for a least ten years so the apparent indifference is just part of the act. There was little sign of rapport between the two, but she had him play along to a couple of the poems, so we have to assume her deadpan demeanour and his funny noises are an intentional combination. Perhaps he is there to illustrate her conviction that men are basically useless. Actually, a fair part of the audience was amused - they clapped along and even sang to a rendition of the Isle of Skye (or perhaps it was Mull of Kintyre) - but not everyone was pleased with this diversion from the main attraction. I just wished she would stick to reading.

This is the 100th post on London Sidelines. A milestone, or time for something new? Click on the post title to go to the comments form.

After the storm

A fallen tree blocking the towpath of the Lea Navigation canal in east London. One of many trees blown over by high winds on the night 27/28 October, euphemistically tagged Stormageddon on Twitter. The British Waterways man had come with a small crane but it was obviously hopelessly undersized for the job.

Housing boom

After a bit of a hiccup, otherwise known as the recent recession, the frenzy of housebuilding seems to be back in a big way. Along the Lea Valley in east London, the old factories are disappearing one by one, most of them simply bulldozed to clear the site for this kind of architecture-by-numbers apartment blocks. These are fairly typical, built on an industrial area in Walthamstow. There is the usual depressing split between the market apartments, which are quite nicely laid out, and the so-called affordable part which looks a bit like an open prison. Integrating the two is a common aspiration and if I've understood correctly the same developer has done that successfully elsewhere - but that doesn't necessarily happen. It's very much easier to resolve the differences by splitting the site.

In the foreground, another factory bites the dust. There are two problems with all this - firstly, one of those old terraced houses that surround this site are almost certainly what people really want but are now becoming unaffordable, and secondly, those old factories provide affordable business premises which are not getting replaced. Things do have to change, but you can't help wondering how it will work out in the long term.

David Bailey at the William Morris Gallery

The newly refurbished William Morris Gallery opened in August last year with a bit of a coup, a rare viewing of the 14 metre long Walthamstow Tapestry by Grayson Perry. The place was down at heel, hardly ever open when you'd want to visit and always the same when you did get inside, so a revamp is quite welcome - even if it is perhaps a little too child-friendly. The purpose of the revamp is evidently to shift the gallery up a gear, from local Walthamstow attraction to a place in the London art world. This new exhibition is a selection of images of the East End by sixties icon David Bailey, reinforcing that objective. There are two quite different sets of images in the show, black and white street scenes from 1961, and much larger colour photographs of people in pubs and clubs from 1968. Bailey's photographs portray a world rather different from that same geographical area today.

Gritty, grainy scenes of children playing on bomb sites and tumbledown brick terraces are one part of it, the earlier set. Printed at modest size in high contrast deep black with a black border, they show half-familiar streets with that different life going on. They have a period charm, a kind of photography that was fashionable then and dates them quite separately from the subject matter. He uses that trick of waiting for someone to walk past so as to get a figure in the foreground, or captures his subjects apparently unaware - they might be apologising for getting in front of the camera, but he presses the shutter button precisely where they will be framed against a shop front or a pub window. The children, on the other hand, are obviously keen to strike a pose for the sake of a little attention. The background is relentlessly broken, damaged, worn out. It's almost jarring, then, to see Jean Shrimpton looking like the star she was, posing in an oversized sweater in the dingy hallway of his parents' terraced house. The down-at-heel East End has become such a cliche of the era that it very nearly misses that quality of affording an inside view, a sense of looking back in time and seeing how things really were, but you do get a strong sense of just how much things have changed. Apart from Jean, though, the subject matter is interesting but if you found them in a box of old photographs in a junk shop, you wouldn't think they were anything special.

Those black and white images are set against the seedy nightlife of pubs and private drinking establishments, photographed in washed-out colour and printed much bigger. These are sleazy scenes shot in unglamorous surroundings: peeling paint, cheap furniture and some truly awful wallpaper. Two peroxide blondes with dark eyebrows pose with drinks in hand. A rough-looking geezer with a broken nose, creased clothes and a filthy rag around his neck holds up his dimple glass in one hand, the makings of a roll-up in the other. A couple of characters sit alone in their overcoats, and some men in decent suits are clearly slumming it out east. Last but not least are the Kray twins, blown up life-size and leering evilly, almost comically, holding their twin pet snakes. You wonder what they must have made of David hovering with his camera, but of course he was a local boy and must have known how to fit in, how to talk his way into a crowd, flattering people to get them to pose for the camera. What you don't wonder is what to make of the images: they speak for themselves, showing a huge leap of confidence since those earlier street scenes.

It's not a huge selection of images and you're left wanting to see more - that would have made this a stronger show.

The art of street photography

Walthamstow is heaving with artistic activity this week and next. The E17 Art Trail started last weekend and hosts 176 exhibitions as well as performance events and poetry displayed in estate agents' windows. A lot to see, but I have to admit to being busy or distracted, and hardly seeing any of it so far. The English Defence League march on the opening Saturday of the event proved too much of a distraction. After being kettled right on Hoe Street, the only thing I saw of the Art Trail was one of the cycle tours run by Waltham Forest Cycling Campaign, zipping past my house just outside the danger zone.

Sunday was a bit quieter and I did visit the rather baffling conceptual art at the Quaker meeting rooms. Close by is the Rose and Crown pub, where I wanted to see Matt Russell's Motion Blur, simple but effective mobile phone photos of people captured from the top deck of a bus - he calls this 'something of an obsession'. Then at La Delice cafe, a show by Esther Simpson titled People I don't know which delivers as promised, fascinating glimpses of other people's lives. Quite eccentric lives, some of them.

It would be interesting to know if the subjects of Esther's photographs were unaware of being photographed, as it appears, or if she just asked them not to look at the camera. Maybe a combination of both, since people react in different ways to a camera: some will want to pose, others hate being photographed or want to make themselves presentable first. A few might be doing something dodgy and definitely don't want anyone taking photographs. As I found out when I tried to photograph a car wash in Tottenham - the camera sometimes just arouses suspicion. Outside the Olympics on opening ceremony day, a girl passing by actually hit my camera because she had to walk in front of it. Capturing strangers on film is of course the absolute basis of street photography and while you could well argue that there's far too much of that sort of thing, if you are out taking photographs you'd hope not to annoy too many people in the process.

The photo above is from Walthamstow in perspective, number 11 on the Art Trail, opening on Saturday.

E17 in the news

Warehouse fire 25 August

The English Defence League descended upon Walthamstow on Saturday. Despite small numbers, between 200 and 300, the area was completely disrupted from midday onwards. Counter-protesters were kettled at the Bell junction, roads were blocked by an unprecedented army of police and police vans trying to keep the two sides apart, and part of the EDL contingent were still stuck outside Blackhorse Road tube station late into the evening.

 

The event didn't feature at all in the media, apart from the usual alternative internet news and the local paper, the Guardian series, and the Metro website. A warehouse fire (pictured above) the previous weekend made it on to BBC news: nobody hurt and no homes evacuated, although it did take the firemen all day to put it out. But perhaps ignoring the EDF is deliberate. It certainly felt like news if you were in the area at the time.

 

Olympic madness: Dutch bikes take over East London

These are just a few of the Dutch rental bikes that appeared outside Blackhorse Road tube in East London shortly before the Olympics started, greatly outnumbering the commuter bikes locked up outside the station. Often there are a hundred or more identical blue and yellow bicycles, neatly stacked close together.

Why? The Olympic campground is a bit more than a mile down the road, occupying playing fields on Walthamstow Marshes for the duration. Seen from the air, a high proportion of the tents are orange, which can mean only one thing: the Dutch contingent is camping there en masse. The bikes belong to OV-fiets, the rental company who have bases at most railway stations in the Netherlands. Unlike our own Boris bikes, you need membership to rent these, so they are only really available to nationals. Most of the bikes are identical but I saw a few decorated with flowers. Marigolds, naturally. You can even see passengers riding sidesaddle on the luggage rack - common in Amsterdam, but perhaps not so sensible in London.

The Borough of Waltham Forest has risen admirably to the occasion by posting signs all round the junction, introducing a new rule for the occasion: DO NOT CHAIN BICYCLES TO THE RAILINGS.

Post industrial landscape in East London 3/3

We rejoin the Greenway where it crosses the A12. There is now a brand-new bridge (not yet open) and a pedestrian crossing in case you don't care to climb all those steps. Like the way the Greenway itself has been improved for the Olympics, it's stylish and imaginative. It's interesting to see the way the Olympic landscaping incorporates bits of old concrete and metal, unusual seats designed by students and bits of arty sculpture to make something interesting out of what was really a bit grim. There are security guards here too, but only patrolling the perimeter of the Olympics site and presumably only for the duration of the event.

We stop to admire the ornate Victorian buildings at Abbey Mills pumping station. After that the improvements fizzle out and the route is somewhat older, cracked tarmac and concrete, endless terraced houses both sides, and little roads that cross over the Greenway at intervals. These junctions all have metal gates, randomly wide open or locked shut, and those annoying bicycle barriers where you have to get off and push your bike underneath the bar. You can just about straddle the crossbar to squeeze under without dismounting. Seeing my strained expression a passer-by advises me to "watch yer head". It's not my head I'm worried about though. "Oh yeah, see where you're coming from there mate" he sniggers. Time to move on.

We ride the remaining four miles to Beckton uneventfully. Completely losing the route at the A13, we climb the giant spoil heap known as Beckton Alps to see where we are. The bottom of the 'Alps' is a nice winding path through the trees, but higher up, inexplicably, we find the top, the open bit with the view, is completely surrounded by a high metal security fence. Fortunately some public-spirited person has removed a few railings so we can squeeze through, minus bikes, and climb to the top. What a view! This must be the only place where you can see the whole of the city spread out before you: Greenwich, Canary Wharf, the Gherkin and the Shard, Stratford and the Orbit tower at the Olympic site, all spread out in one amazing vista. It's the one photograph I take all day, knowing a photo can't hope to convey the scale of all this.

Post-industrial landscape in East London 2/3

Not so long ago the marshes were a wasteland, more or less unregulated, with burnt-out cars and occasionally kids riding motorcycles, but also a true sense of wild untended nature. You could walk or ride a bike where you wanted, climb trees and bring a rope to make a swing, very like the wastelands I loved when I was a boy. The role of the LVA is to turn that into a properly regulated nature park, because for various reasons wasteland is no longer acceptable, especially perhaps because a wasteland could be taken over for development while a park cannot. Whatever the reasons, the Lea Valley is of course a huge asset to the area, but with regulation and management come corresponding opportunities for people using the place to be fenced off, confronted with prohibition notices, or actually told off in person. At one point the Authority got rid of their park rangers, who were of course educated and polite people who walked around the nature reserves, and replaced them with private security patrols who dressed in black, drove unmarked white vans, and of course knew nothing whatsoever about wildlife or walking routes. These characters made a point of interfering with families eating picnics and children climbing trees, let alone youths with a ghetto blaster and cans of beer, on the basis that they're keeping the place safe, but missing the point that perhaps the level of contact with the public might be a little excessive, and their image more threatening than reassuring. Perhaps people more vocal than myself have persuaded the Authority to tread more lightly, because I haven't seen them lately.

That was the LVA's worst excess, putting into perspective minor annoyances like unnecessary gates and barriers (supposedly only temporary), and their failure to get rid of the rubbish or to make decent paths. The chain of reservoirs nearby looks like going the same way. Currently they are operated by Thames Water, who maintain the place efficiently but leave the margins entirely wild, a true nature reserve in the sense that wildlife coexists naturally with the function of the place. Only fishermen go there, putting a pound in an envelope and dropping it into the honesty box. Now Waltham Forest have won lottery money to turn the place into another nature park. Catch it while you still can and see the difference for yourself.

Across Hackney Marsh football fields, a vast expanse of grass that's escaped the grasp of the Olympics, we get on to the canal towpath. The towpath recently got the Olympic upgrade treatment, properly laid paths that are maybe less fun than awful muddy ruts but actually quite nice for cycling, now the loose gravel is starting to bed down to a less slippery surface. Alongside the Olympic site the graffiti-covered warehouses and artists studios are still there, surprisingly not wiped out by new developments, although you can see the signs of change everywhere. One old warehouse has huge new windows cut through the graffiti-covered brickwork, and a concrete-framed building next to the lock suddenly has new glass walls, with the steel skeleton of the old loading bay still suspended over the canal.

Post-industrial landscape in East London 1/3

According to Wikipedia, "the Northern Outfall Sewer is a major gravity sewer which runs from Wick Lane in Hackney to Beckton Sewage Works in East London; most of it was designed by Joseph Bazalgette after an outbreak of cholera in 1853 and 'The Big Stink' of 1858." Fortunately that is not apparent when you're standing on top of it, because it's part of our route for the day's cycling trip, eight and a half miles from Walthamstow to Beckton on the Thames estuary. Starting from Blackhorse Road, the way is flat and mainly traffic-free, passing through various places that were once post-industrial wasteland, now in their various ways reclaimed as leisure facilities. We already know the landscape as far as the Olympic site, but the idea today is to explore right up to the end of the line, the Thames at the far end of Royal Victoria Dock.

Things get off to a bad start with a flat tyre on one of the bikes, but that is soon mended and we start out on the familiar route down to the canal. Just ten minutes on the roads before we get down to the fortress-like waterworks on Coppermill Lane. Half a mile of un-climbable wire fence with a vehicle crash barrier behind it: with a couple of watchtowers and armed guards patrolling the perimeter it could easily pass for a Cold War concentration camp. Who knows what paranoic scenario prompted those defensive measures.

Across Leyton Marshes, a wide path lets you cycle side by side, although we're not very good at keeping pace. I keep getting ahead and stopping to wait for my companion to catch up, except for the times when I stop to take photographs while she disappears into the distance, unaware that I've stopped. The path takes you along a high embankment, with the horse riding school on one side and the marshes on the other, then twin tunnels under Lea Bridge Road. The tunnels flood sometimes, usually just a few inches of water, but occasionally a proper flood two metres deep. You can cycle through the smaller floods but it's easy to misjudge the depth, inevitably soaking one or both feet because you can't stop pedalling.

A twisting path from there leads to the bridge over the River Lea, once bright red but now faded to dusty pink. Giant hogweed grows on the river banks, maybe three metres tall and highly poisonous. You can get a nasty rash just by touching it, and no doubt one day it will be exterminated by the Lea Valley Regional Park Authority, but while it lasts it's rather spectacular, perhaps the biggest plant that grows wild in this country.

Part 2 tomorrow

Pie and mash in E17

L Manze, half way down Walthamstow's kilometre-long High Street, is one of the last surviving pie and mash shops in London, which means one of the last anywhere because they are a London thing, a survival from the cockney past. It's hard to tell if cockney has become just a historic concept: the real east enders are indistinguishable from the population of Essex, and anyway they're outnumbered by artists and yuppie starter home owners. Likewise, in the High Street the old-style cafes face stiff competition from cappuccino and ciabatta, kebab and falafel, colourful cafes in the American style festooned with memorabilia, and the Turkish places open to the street and displaying a huge range of tempting things, stewed meat dishes, grills, salads and fancy cakes. The pie and mash shop stubbornly stays put, with no concessions whatsoever to the modern world.
     No. 76 L Manze Wholesale and Retail, Live Eel Importer, reads the moderately elaborate shop front, alongside a blue Waltham Forest Heritage plaque. Jellied & Hot Eels. Pie & Mash. I visited in February on impulse, partly because I was cold and hungry but mainly to see what it's like inside. The shop is long and narrow, with dark mahogany bench seats, floor to ceiling tiling and a patterned ceiling. Everything brown, white and sludge green with bold black and white chequer tiles up to waist height. There are mirrors set into the tiles, and big brass and copper pots of aspidistras, those most boring of pot plants. The windows were steamed up and I have to confess to feeling something rather oppressive about the place, a bit claustrophobic even though there were only a few other customers. It's a bit of history all right but I couldn't manage the proper sense of reverence. On the contrary, it made me feel that the old days were when people had modest aspirations and knew their place, before cable TV, four wheel drive cars, holidays abroad and all that supposed social mobility.
     The menu is exactly what it's always been. Quite good meat pies with a thin crust and stewed minced beef inside. Mashed potato, which has to be unappetisingly smeared onto the side of your plate with a giant spatula. 'Liquor', which is a sort of bland but bright green gravy, perhaps made from mushy peas. And then there's the eels, which used to be killed to order if you wanted, or you could take them home alive and risk getting bitten. I'm not sure what happens now, but if you eat them in the shop they come cold in briny colourless jelly - disgusting or delicious depending on your preferences - or hot, which is easier to cope with. That's it, the only other food on offer is fruit pie.
     It is apparently quite popular, especially in the nostalgia stakes: Brits living in California or former E17 residents who have escaped to Suffolk and Kent keep a rosy image of the place and the food, and they will visit when they have a chance. Even so, it's impossible to imagine anyone opening a new pie and mash shop now. Anyone who remembers Cookes in Dalston will tell you it was the best of the pie and mash shops, spacious with lots of mirrors, mahogany and marble and all that, but now it's a Chinese restaurant, so you can still appreciate the decor minus the cockney nosh. That's not altogether a bad thing.

Another view, or perhaps the same view differently expressed, is at archipelago-of-truth.blog.co.uk

Artists at Blackhorse Lane

One of the highlights of the recent E17 Art Trail was the open studios at the Barbican Arts Group Trust. I managed to spend an hour out of a busy day there last weekend, and wished I had more time to look at everything properly. There are 28 artists studios and after spending time looking at the first few studios at a leisurely pace, of course I ran out of time and had to skim what may have been equally fascinating things towards the end.
On a buzz from talking art all day, I plucked up courage to ask some of the artists if I could photograph them. Mike Thorn (top) has an enviable light-filled corner studio, in contrast to some of the windowless internal spaces. His portraits of macho men reveal them to be big softies - at least part of the time. Strong stuff, large canvases portraying his subjects larger than life-size. He was happy to pose with his easel and paint table against the current work in progress.

I think the lady above must be Franki Austin but not entirely sure, perhaps because she was the first person I asked and I was unsure of the proper etiquette. She had delicate works on show, somewhere between painting and installation. Really I wanted to capture her as I first saw her, in the centre of a group of visitors, but the camera frightened them off out of shot. I'm hoping a reader will supply the missing information.

Next door, I was impressed by Helen Maurer's plywood paintings, shaped panels with abstract designs superimposed. She has one of the windowless spaces, improved by taking out the false ceiling to let in daylight from the rooflights in the unused loft space above. I copped out of asking to take photographs though.

Near the entrance, Michelle Reader (above) showed papier mâché figures, apparently self-portraits, which I wrote about in my last post. I asked her to pose with her rather photogenic junk pile.

Gisli Bergmann (above) was showing a selection of ceramic objects, each with a tiny framed picture to give a clue as to what they are about. So the object pictured, a tortured grey slab trapped in a nest of wires, is accompanied by a picture of Batman. Some of them are very funny, with just the slightest nod towards representation. The work is displayed on a spacious windowsill, silhouetted surreally against a long vista of Walthamstow back gardens.

Tam Joseph (below) shares the same view but his studio has a different feel, with small framed paintings competing for attention with the centrepiece, a version of Cranach's Adam and Eve. Foliage on one wall half conceals an array of postcard-size paintings based on those prostitute cards you see in telephone boxes. The same temptresses appear in the tree behind Adam and Eve instead of boring old apples.

Finally Julie Caves' colourful abstracts (below) were on show in a windowless internal space but seemed none the less vibrant in the fluorescent light. I just asked to photograph the studio, cleared for the show and paintings stacked and hung against white sheets that conceal the stacked-up studio junk.

E17 Art Trail

I'm showing drawings and photographs this weekend as part of the E17 Art Trail. Having an exhibition in your front room (and hall and kitchen) keeps you tied to the house all day. I did get to spend an hour at Barbican Arts, where Michelle Reader's amazing sculptures made out of domestic packaging (pictured) are one of many highlights. Mainly though, tied to the show so I can't get out to see all the other exciting stuff going on in Walthamstow.

There is a selection of my drawings and photographs from the American Midwest on Flickr.

Walthamstow... new and old spaces on the E17 Art Trail

Old and new spaces on the E17 Art Trail

The Ruby Stables secret garden is indeed a Walthamstow secret, a rampant garden grown in containers, mixed in with junk, garden furniture and antiques for sale. It isn't new, but showing art there is. As long as the rain holds off, showing oil paintings among the greenery is very effective, the colours sparkling in the sunshine. Slightly naive but accomplished images of summertime parks by Titus Forbes Adam are offset by a psycho portrait by the artist's daughter, Olita-May.

At the Quaker Meeting Room next door, a simple white space flooded with light is bare apart from a single church pew and one chair, and four pairs of headphones. What might be mere tedious pretension is in fact an absorbing experience: relax, appreciate the simplicity and subtle features of the room, and drift off on the suggestions the work evokes. 

At the other end of the High street, it took quite a while to find the Mill because I wrongly assumed it must be the Coppermill on the Walthamstow Reservoirs site, when in fact it's the former library just off Blackhorse Road. Another clean white space, also recently opened. The doors are wide open all day long and the space is immediately welcoming. Paintings and photographs lent by local artists are on display, mainly not for sale - you'd guess many of the artists are not pros and don't want to part with their work. Furniture and fittings are imaginatively built out of scaffolding boards, shuttering ply and recycled plastic, giving the place a pleasing recycled-chic look, so instead of cheap second-hand chairs there are unique solid wood benches. A programme of three minute films was also showing.

Cutting back along Pretoria Avenue, the recent appearance of the Tokarska Gallery in unlikely surroundings at the bottom end of Forest Road (just up from the fish and chips and fried chicken takeaways) comes just in time for the Art Trail. The background to the gallery opening there is apparently complicated, with their website referring to recent art graduate Nadiya Pavliv-Tokarska, and also to an international organisation of the same name. This was the first time I've seen the pristine new white shutters open, which might explain the slightly damp smell inside. Punk Recruit steals the show with his photographs in muted colour of old mannequins crowded into a dingy warehouse. Barely human, he calls them, which is a way of saying how disturbingly human they seem. It will be interesting to see what comes next in this space.

Finally, rather a disappointment at Barbican Arts open show, where a last-minute visit before closing time really seemed like plenty of time to see what there was to see. Some great photographs, but the paintings mainly left us wondering just what the selection/elimination process might have been- but seeing just one work by an artist is seldom the best way to appreciate what they are doing. None the less, the studio opening next weekend is likely to be one of the highlights of the Trail.

Walthamstow - waterways and woodlands

Today is the beginning of Walthamstow's E17 Art Trail. While the trail is on I will be writing about the place and some of the exhibitions.
Walthamstow sits on the edge of the Lea Valley, which is a swathe of green landscape encompassing the complicated watercourse of the River Lea, the Lea Navigation Canal, the reservoirs, filter beds and water treatment plant at Coppermill Lane, and the open fields of the marshes. You could walk around the town centre without seeing any of this, but it's quite evident as a green barrier coming in to Walthamstow by train across the marshes, or by bus on one of the only two road links, Ferry Lane passing the long blank brick wall of the reservoirs, and Lea Bridge Road passing the marshes and equestrian centre. An open landscape with a wide view of the sky, willows and tall poplar trees, swans coming in to land and geese flying in v-formation overhead, rusty gas holders and electricity pylons looming in the distance, boat dwellers in their tatty narrowboats. Then to the north, Epping Forest bleeds in between the suburban fringes, the old gravel pits near Whipps Cross hospital with rowing boats for hire, and woods criss-crossed with muddy paths. All of which makes a difference to how you feel about the place.