Transpontine is Five

Transpontine is five years old today. The first few posts, from October 9 2004, pretty much set the tone for what was to come- music at the Montague Arms, a talk on witch trials at South East London Folklore Society, Cafe Crema film nights in New Cross and concerns about building on Deptford Park.

The idea for Transpontine grew out of a period when there just seemed to be lots going on around New Cross and Deptford which was barely being documented. There was a grand notion of maybe connecting up some of the people creating interesting situations locally, or at least helping to make people aware of each other. Whether or not much of this cross fertilisation has happened, Transpontine has hopefully at least opened up a few doors by letting people find out about things they didn't know were happening.... or happened... or should never have happened.

Another notion was of redressing the balance in the Matter of London. There seemed to be lots of interest growing in London history, psychogeography etc. but with South East London barely figuring. Since Transpontine started, South London blogs have mushroomed to the extent that earlier this year Peter Watts asked at Time Out's Big Smoke blog Why are London's best bloggers from South of the River?:

'when it comes to blogging, the south wins hands down, and the south-east in particular. Browse our links if you don’t believe me. Over in the Kentish corner of London we have Greenwich Phantom, Brockley Central, Transpontine, Deptford Dame, Blackheath Bugle and Charlton’s 853, while in Stockwell there’s the excellent Onion Bag Blog. There are dozens more such locally focussed blogs in this extraordinarily fertile area of London'.

So in that respect, perhaps Transpontine and some of the other blogs mentioned have subtly shifted the mental geography of London. In which case, 1109 posts might not have been entirely wasted!