Tent city at St Paul's Cathedral

So much goes on in London that it's easy to be blissfully unaware of even dramatic events like this. I vaguely registered that protesters are occupying part of Wall Street and Times Square, but it was only when I bought the Independent's baby sister paper i this morning that I found out we have our own protest occupation, not in the City - security is presumably draconian there - but at that symbol of London, St Paul's Cathedral. And even so, coming up from the Tube the scale of this is surprising. There are over a hundred tents pitched in Paternoster Square, and makeshift enclosures of tarpaulin strung up by the cathedral railings. Lots of placards, organised catering and a bank of portaloos, a media centre, speakers going on about practical matters and a lone guitarist with his battery-powered amp, completely ignored. An excitable but entirely peaceful atmosphere. The tourists continue to pile into the cathedral - the protest wisely keeps the main entrance steps clear - and there is an extremely modest police presence. Some of the beautifully lettered slogans:

REVOLUTION

CAPITALISM IS CRISIS

WE ARE THE 99%

END CORPORATE GREED

PLANET 4 SALE POPULATION 6BL RESISTANCE EXPECTED

and my favourite, 

$ELL YOUR STOCKS, IT'S OV£R...

Remembering Gandhi

Cycling past Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury, I took a break from my journey to visit the statue of Mahatma Gandhi that sits in the square. A timely visit, as it turned out, because the anniversary of his birth was on 02 October 1869, just a week ago, and the statue sported a garland of orange flowers, cellophane-wrapped bouquets on his lap and more flowers piled on the stone steps. At other times, there are always a few flowers - his fame in the history of non-violent resistance is not forgotten. Gandhi sits cross-legged on a bell-shaped stone pedestal, in the centre of the square, surrounded by sedate English gardening and benches occupied by office workers and academics from London University eating their lunches. The roughly sculpted bronze figure was made by Fredda Brilliant, a colourful globetrotting character, and installed in Tavistock Square in 1968.

Although the principles of  non-violent resistance originate from Buddhist and Hindu philosophy, Gandhi was the first to use those principles in an organised way and on a large scale. He pioneered his ideas under apartheid in South Africa, fighting for the rights of the Indian population there. He went on to become a figurehead of India's long struggle to free itself of British rule, although failing to stop the slide into sectarian violence that followed.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Regent Street on Friday night, a modest display of flowers and half-eaten apples. The picture says it all really.

See It Now Remember It Forever

Today, a real piece of street art. This tribute to TOX, the tagger jailed for persistent vandalism, appeared on the end wall of a house in Camden during the summer. Tox, real name Daniel Halpin, is notorious for the quantity of his tags, not for any artistic merit. Londonist once called him a serial wall-spammer, and commented "Poor Tox just can't help himself". Banksy's take on that affair is a small boy with his face blanked out (to protect his identity?) blowing red bubbles spelling out T-O-X. It's open to various interpretations: sympathy or solidarity, piss take, opportunism. The image appeared overnight, and by the following afternoon the property owner boarded it over, and then installed a protective perspex cover and frame. A couple of months later the prospects for this theoretically valuable work of art do not look very promising. The perspex is no longer very transparent, with a new tag scribbled on the surface. Someone has bashed a hole through to spray paint onto the image behind (with limited success). The passing bus unintentionally provides an ironic commentary.

Pavement art in Dalston

Rubbish masquerading as art, litter louts with a sense of humour - or a bit of a laugh, done by someone who has already arranged for this old mattress to be responsibly recycled? Discarded mattresses are not unusual in this part of town, and at least this isn't a particularly disgusting example, but the art reference is a bit off. Ceci n'est pas une pipe reads the text on the famous surrealist painting. This version is a bit mangled, and mattress certainly isn't a French word. Whatever the motivation, there it sits on Dalston Lane waiting to be removed. The bin men were there today and one of them asked what it was about, but they were doing a proper regulated collection, not just picking up any old stuff.

Cool Camden

Earlier this year, the top floor of a residential tower block in Camden bore this bold and somehow pleasing message in two metre high letters. You can work out the height by the architect's technique of counting the brick courses, and multiplying by 75 millimetres. The eyes make it, reinforcing the words and giving the whole tower a sort of face. Despite the large size and the height of the building, it wasn't visible from many places and although I'm sure it must be on a website somewhere, I've not been able to find out anything about it. This is in Stanhope Street, an area of well-kept postwar public housing still run and maintained by Camden council. It's far from being the most desirable of the housing blocks around there, but prominent graffiti is really out of place in these surroundings and inevitably, walking past today I see it's been painted over in a tasteful shade of cream.