Thursday, October 16, 2008

Good Shoes in Deptford

Good Shoes - The Photos on My Wall, a video shot in Deptford in 2006. But where? Looks like an interesting semi-derelict place - or maybe a place roughed up to look semi-derelict. The round window as he comes downstairs might be a clue. I wondered whether it might be somewhere in the (now demolished) Seager distillery?



They have also of course sung of the joys (or otherwise) of Morden in South West London.

5 comments:

DDKK said...

It looks like the interior of the Master Shipwright's house, parts of which are still semi-derelict but which is being slowly done up by its owners - who are quite into the art and music scene. I don't remember the small round window on the back stairs, but the bit where he goes up the main stairs from the hall looks very familiar.

. said...

Sounds plausible, I was wondering about that too but I've never been inside.

Anonymous said...

I think Knit nurse is right - looks very like the MS house to me too...It's an amazing house and somewhere worth looking round if you ever get the chance.

Anonymous said...

Yeah - Morden! Used to get the tube there every day. Do they mention the Roman burial mound in the park? They were actually playing in the park, from what I could make out. (I didn't turn the sound on; would have found it distracting).

ban

Anonymous said...

Goodness - I found the lyrics and they don't tell you anything about Morden. I could do a lot better but wouldn't do so to music...

The last two lines are toe curling. A drug dealer crashes into a chicane - that "sums up" the area? No it doesn't! And nor do "KFC" and "Wilkinsons", which have branches all over the place. Like any place, Morden has aspects and collections of aspects which make it unique.

Bloody hell! Without even giving much thought to it, I could write about:

- the tube station (southern end of the 'Northern line' which many north of the river despise but don't understand - the term 'Misery Line' is just snobbery against South London), with its candelabra and the changing conditions for fare-dodgers; and tricks of knowing how to get on a train after it's disappeared from the display board;
- the St Helier estate (built just before WW2, once one of the largest council estates in England, before the Tory bit-by-bit debt-funded sell-off of the 1970s, dwarfed by later sell-offs under New Labour - originally built with outside toilets but then the council put in bathrooms)
- Merton College (formerly Merton Technical College, once with a great lecturer in Pure Maths A Level plus a couple of 68ers including a pal of Stuart "only talking to the media about the Angry Brigade when they got arrested, wasn't I?" Christie),
- the Roman burial mound in Morden Park
- the largest Ahmadiyya mosque in western Europe, by Morden South railway station (Ahmadiyya Muslims are not recognised as Muslims by other Muslims, and they [allegedly] counted [perhaps count?] among their number a guy called Benjamin Creme who holds that Christ has reincarnated and is alive and kicking in the East End of London)
- the distinctively shaped Crown House
- the swimming pool (never swam there myself, but watched people from outside where there were nice blackberry bushes)
- the cafes (excellent meeting-places, but then I've never been trendy - the one in the park is among those that are particularly good during afternoons)
- the landowning Hatfeild [sic] family (parasites who owned the park, and I think they had streets, a school, and one or more [former LCC?] blocks of flats named after them by today's 'popular democratic' authorities
- the George pub on Epsom Road, long ago Harvesterised (was the introduction of table-type computer games at the turn of the 1980s the beginning of the big slide?) - in the 17th century this was a coaching inn
- the biker cafe across the road, long ago disappeared
- the big Hawes department store
- the small library that used to be on Morden Road opposite Morden Hall Park
- the toilets in Mostyn Gardens (best not to dally there!)
- the bombing of the area from German aircraft during WW2 (part of Middleton Road was bombed out - my family recalled that some were very quick to loot the ruined buildings; St Helier Hospital, towards Carshalton from Rose Hill on the edge of the St Helier Estate, was also bombed. Originally painted white, it got painted in dull colours as part of blackout policy. I don't know whether this was a case of shutting stable doors or not. Today it has an appalling reputation among people living for miles around, but I guess this must also be true of many hospitals).
- the Art Deco style Rose Hill Court block of flats at one end of St Helier Avenue, once private and with some of the flats used after WW2 for running prostitutes by mafia interests involved in the Eagle Star insurance company; then turned into council flats; now possibly private again???)
- etc.

(And I haven't even lived in Morden - just my Mum grew up there and I spent my teenage years living a few miles away, going to it by bus to get on the tube).

But no. Here are the boring lyrics from these boring people who get up on the stage and sing about Morden, as if they had anything to say about it that's at all interesting (apart from the reference to the chicane, which at least shows their powers of observation are not zero):


you can go and eat your Chinese food over
drunken fools singing 80’s tunes
they’ll be singing out of tune saying
get the foreigners out of my area

a skinhead in a Burberry coat
this is not the sort of place you want to take your kids to
fifty pound shops
and nothing left to inspire me in

Morden

starring at the government not noticing the queen
a wilkinson’s and a kfc
is this everything you need for a cultured city?
or is this everything you need to promote burglary

you don’t get this in the country side
a teenager coming at you with a knife
oh but you do
there must be something wrong with our society or is it

Morden

i read the news today
a youth killed himself in a horrible way
he hung himself
from the local supermarket car park
walking down canon hill lane
i saw the flowers lay where a car crash took place
a drug dealer crashed into a chicane
it sort of sums up my area in

Morden


ban (South London Scum)