Music Monday: Laura Misch - Alchemy on Hilly Fields

Laura Misch might be touring internationally at the moment but but she continues to deepen her relationship with South London landscape and communities. Last month for instance she gave a listening workshop at Avalon Cafe in Surrey Canal Road SE14 while last summer she was down at the 56a Info Shop supporting a project from her collaborators Holobiont.  She's also incorporating field recordings into her musical practice, as can be seen in this short film marking the launch of her new song Alchemy featuring her in action in Hilly Fields.

Laura Misch at Hilly Fields stone circle

see previously:

Laura Misch launches 'Sample the Sky' in Peckham

Hilly Fields Songs - yes several videos have been shot there including one by Stornoway that also features J's Cafe that later became Avalon

Hilly Fields Jazz Police?

Summer evenings this year have seen some remarkable gatherings on Hilly Fields. In the area by the park's stone circle - an ancient monument dating back to 2000 - a group of young jazz musicians have been playing improvised sessions watched by people relaxing on the grass. I believe the sessions have mostly been on Monday nights, though there was also one on July 12th linked to the Black Lives Matter event in the park that day.

Last week though (Monday 3rd August) the session was ordered to stop by the police. It is unclear whether this was due to concerns about Covid 19 regulations, licensing issues or a complaint about noise. The  musicians have a lot of support locally,  as expressed in one facebook comment: 'This event is something very special, the atmosphere is out of this world. Was taken out of London and floating on air. Smiles all round, warm energies, dancing to the amazing music on the air. Seeing the musicians all buzz off one another is incredible. Such a shame if it's shut down now'. The photo below, by Cath Dupuy, shows the scene last Monday before the event came to a premature end.

(photo by Cath Dupuy)

Hopefully a way forward can be found to enable something to continue, for now the musicians are considering taking their talents elsewhere (I have come across similar gatherings on Peckham Rye). 

The bigger picture for me is how amazing it is that in 2020 there should be a vibrant, multiracial community of young musicians playing jazz for an appreciative public! South East London is recognised internationally as a centre for this new movement that has spawned Ezra Collective and Catford's Moses Boyd among many others. A while ago Kate Hutchinson wrote up  'A sweaty night out in London's new jazz scene' in the New York Times (19 October 2018):  'In a tiny converted railway arch south of the River Thames, a mosh pit had formed in front of a three-way brass-off. The house band played from the floor, as if it were a punk show. Other musicians crowded around, waiting for their turn... In London, a new generation is challenging jazz’s stuffy reputation as the conservatory-honed noodlings of middle-aged musicians for affluent — and seated — audiences'. The night featured was a Steam Down session at Buster Mantis bar in Deptford.

As John Lewis highlighted recently in The Guardian, this new 'cosmopolitan vision of jazz' is very much shaped by 'The multicultural nature of London'. Key scene figure Shabaka Hutchings notes that it incorporates influences from  'Dub, dancehall, calypso, soca, Afrobeat, highlife, township jive, nyabinghi – all put through the filter of rave and house and hip-hop' (Add some township jive! How London's jazz scene set itself apart, Guardian, 27 May 2020). Many of the musicians are from South London,  either by origin and/or having studied on the influential jazz course at Trinity Laban college in Greenwich/Deptford.

You really have to go back to  the acid jazz clubs of 1980s/90s  or maybe even the jazz raves of the 1950s to find anything like a similar energy. And when was a jazz event last stopped by the police?  Punk gigs, grime nights, reggae blues parties and acid house raves have all felt the force of the law in the last thirty years, but let's face it jazz couldn't get arrested.  Surely there can be no surer sign of the rebirth of cool! 

(photo by @SwanAroundPhotos)

Hilly Fields Wassail

Wassailing is an old custom of drinking to the health of  fruit trees to ensure a good harvest, most commonly associated with cider apples producing trees in the West Country. Tomorrow (Sunday 7th February) there's a Hilly Fields Wassail with music and refreshments at the orchard by the park's stone circle. It starts at 4 pm, but if you can help with orchard maintenance come along from 2 pm

Organised by the Friends of Hilly Fields with Transition Brockley.

Blur once recorded a version of The Wassailing Song and gave it away as a limited edition 7 inch single to the 500 people at a 1992 gig at the Hibernian Club in Fulham. If you have a copy they sell for around £300.

Three-sided Football returns to New Cross

Tomorrow (Sunday) sees the return of three-sided football to Fordham Park in New Cross with a new season under the auspices of Deptford Three Sided Football Club.

If you've never tasted the delights of the three-sided game, check out this recent Vice article 'The world's most anarchic, hectic sport':

'In keeping with the anti-authoritarian spirit that gave birth to the sport, the rules of 3sf are few, and considered more as guiding principles than steadfast laws. In general, the game should involve a ball, three teams and a hexagonal pitch – anything beyond this is subject to spontaneous revision. Unlike conventional football, a team doesn't win by scoring the most goals, but rather victory is predicated on how few goals a team concedes to its opponents'.

(the article actually credits me with a small role in relaunching the sport - as well as describing me somewhat dubiously as an artist - but the credit must go to Mark Dyson and the other players who have made Deptford/New Cross the global centre of the game!)

A special Midsummer Game  was held at the setting of the sun over the Hilly Fields Stone Circle on 21st June.

If you want to check out the game, and maybe even join in, come to Fordham Park tomorrow (by Deptford Green school) at around 1:30 for a 2:00 pm start. As well as Deptford Three Sided Football Club, teams participating include Strategic Optimism FC, Philosophy Football FC and New Cross Irregulars.

(see previous 3-sided football reports here - including the Association of Autonomous Astronauts 1998 match on One Tree Hill)

Endless Summer

My Tiger My Timing have been taking their infectious electro-pop on the road over the summer, including playing at Glastonbury. Their anthem Endless Summer has been getting lots of attention, with remixes a plenty.

As mentioned at Transpontine a while ago, the band are based in the New Cross area and have previously bigged up Telegraph Hill Park in interviews. The video for Endless Summer was filmed at the stone circle in Hilly Fields.



Follow the band on Facebook and Twitter

Meanwhile local singer Kat Drake has been singing in Telegraph Hill Park and elsewhere as part of She's Happy when She Sings (an online collaborative song writing project with Amy Lim):

Orchard Planting on Hilly Fields

Transition Brockley and Lewisham are planting trees on Hilly Fields next month:

'ORCHARD PLANTING - SAT 15 JAN 2011 - HILLY FIELDS from 11.00am to 1.00pm

Everyone is welcome to join in with (or just watch) the planting of a small apple orchard on Hilly Fields (next to the Stone Circle) from 11.00am to 1.00pm on Saturday 15 January, 2011. This will be the first community orchard in a major park in the borough of Lewisham and we, from Transition Lewisham/Brockley are delighted to be initiating this project, together with the Friends of Hilly Fields and the London Orchard Project, with funding from Capital Growth and support from Lewisham Council and Glendale.

The orchard is being planted to promote the growing of fruit locally (in an area which previously had many fruit orchards), to provide habitat for wildlife, and for people to enjoy. It will be a family activity day, with digging, planting, composting, mulching and treeguard staking. Come along for some warming spiced apple juice, hot apple soup and apple-themed sweet things'.

Hacienda on the Hill

Brockley Max festival finished last weekend with Hacienda on the Hill. Hilly Fields was nice and busy, just like a real festival... I know that sounds patronising, what I mean is that it didn't feel like just a handful of passers-by watching their mate's band. Bumped into a few people (including Bob from Brockley and Scott Wood), sat in the sunshine, heard some good music, what more could you want?

I particularly enjoyed Maracatudo Mafua, samba from Brazil's Northeast State of Brazil - Pernambuco via Brockley.

Seemingly I missed the later restaging of the Wicker Man in the stone circle by Decodance - anybody who was there care to describe it?

Some nice Brockley Max photos by Rupert Hitchcox

There also's a whole page of photos in this weekend's South London Press

A Dance in Hilly Fields

Keren'Or's Spiral of the Inner Space performed by the Hilly Fields stone circle there at Brockley Max in June this year:



Keren'Or is a Laban trained dancer (the name is Hebrew for Ray of Light - keep up kabbalists!). There's also footage of this dance at Laban in Deptford.

It's getting towards the Winter Solstice, is anybody planning to watch the sun rise by the stone circle this year? I did it once - you have never been alive until you've watched the new born sun rise over Lewisham! I know some people were up there for the Summer Solstice this year, come to think of it just a few days after the Spiral of the Inner Space dance there .

Hilly Fields Solstice Sunrise

About ten people watched the sunrise at Hilly Fields this morning, with a few more jumping on the Stone Circle. Hilly Fields Stone Circle itself doesn't give a good view of the Summer Solstice sunrise, it's better in the winter, which does confuse people. One person asked us whether the Stone Circle had been put in "the wrong place?"

Brockley harvested and brewed elderflower champagne was drunk, people did little personal rituals. Some burnt paper, some drummed, some held hands and cried. Marking the Solstice is an ritual or custom without a rulebook, everyone celebrates the sun in their own way.

Autum walk from the wood to the River

On Sunday 17th September there will be a chance to explore the sites of ancient rites, apparitions, folklore and natural wonders with Pagan Federation South East London and South East London Folklore Society. Join them for a Sunday afternoon picnic and stroll along part of the Green Chain Walk, from Oxleas Woods to the Thames Barrier.

The walk starts at Oxleas Wood (meet by the café at 1pm) and finishes by the Thames, and will wander through the ancient woodland of Oxleas and the hideaways of highwaymen before taking in the site of Charlton's notorious Horn Fair (where apparently men `quite frequently wore women's clothes and amused themselves by striking women encountered on the fairground with sprigs of furze') and stopping to picnic near Charlton House, haunted Jacobean mansion. Then onwards for deer and peacock-spotting and over a Roman hill fort before passing a modern stone circle on the way to the Thames.

It's also international Chalk4Peace weekend, so people are encouraged to bring chalks if they feel so inclined.

For further information contact clare@selfs.org.uk or scott@selfs.org.uk.

Addicts vs. The Witches

An interesting story of witchcraft and football appeared on the BBC website in January. Two teams, Yeovil Town and south-east London's own Charlton Athletic met at the end of January on the level playing field of a football match (something I neither like nor understand). However Yeovil had a supernatural advantage.

A witch (or wiccan says the story, though witches and wiccans are two different things), and Yeovil supporter, Raquel Bailey, and friends, had cast a bad luck spell, called the "cross-legged spell" on Charlton Athletic and their manager Alan Curbishley. This took place at a stone circle at Ham Hill, Somerset.

This sinster working had the intention of, Bailey hoped that, in her own words, "something funny" happen to the team's legs when they approach the goalmouth. "The spell is not evil, it's merely to help Yeovil in Saturday's FA cup game against Charlton," she said, thinking that doing something to footballer's legs as they start a footmatch match isn't, in some way, malicious.

And the result? Proof again that south-east London is magical as Charlton beat Yeovil 3-2, with one commentator saying of the match: "Charlton have struggled against lesser teams in cup matches but they finally broke their jinx to deny Yeovil a possible giantkilling but not before they were given a few frights on the way. "

Beware South-east London medicine. It is strong.

Spring Equinox @ Brockley Stone Circle

Thanks to everyone who came and made it magic.

St Valentine Be Hanged!

Monday, 14th February, London. The restaurants of the city will be filled with couples, listlessly munching their pizza, staring glassy eyed in to the middle-distance wishing they could think of something to say to each other.

Perhaps a guitarist or fiddler will sidle up to them and begin to play. He (or she) doesn’t care about what they are doing, the couple are embarrassed but they all go through with this awkward and joyless ritual. It is, after all, Valentines Day.

The tired rose on their table will fade a little bit more and lose another petal.

Other couples will have just got back from a weekend break, tired and a bit fed-up with the craft shops and cloying tea-rooms of out-of-season resorts and retreats. Yet more will wonder what to dread more, gifts of cuddly toys or of novelty, and cheaply made, racy underwear and fluffy-handcuffs. All of which are made with slight, ironic shrug, just in case the gesture is taken too seriously.

Look, if you’re in love, or if you just enjoy shagging a particular person a lot, celebrate it your own way and at your own time. Celebrate it every day it’s there.

And this Monday, well, come to SELFS and see “A Man Called” Jason Oliver discuss a, perhaps, different form of physical passion. Jason has recently been described by no-less of a wise-woman as Treadwell’s Christina Oakley as “a lively speaker and a serious practitioner” as well as “Engaging, intelligent, thought-provoking. We can only imagine that whatever he's speaking on, he makes the evening out worth the journey.” Good use of the royal ‘we’ there.

Jason will discuss suspension and other forms of body ritual and compare these with the techniques of everyone’s favourite self-loving proto-chaos magician, Austin Osman Spare.

Here's the details Jason gave me plus some other shameless SELFS promotion (location and directions after these messages:

14th February: Jason Oliver – Suspension and other Body Rituals.

Jason will discuss body ritual with specific relation to suspension, both past and present, and its relation to the death posture as posited by Austin Osman Spare. Other body modifications will be discussed as a peripheral to these body rites of passage.

Jason is studying at the Royal College of Art for a Masters degree, his main themes being body modification, ritual and associated practices.

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SELFS now distributes books, pamphlets and magazines on our chosen interests of paganism, folklore, forteana, high strangeness, radical history and the occult. We currently hold:

Deptford Fun City – Neil Gordon-Orr: £2

Down with the Fences: Battles for the Commons in South London – Past Tense Press: £1

Fowlers Troop and the Deptford Jack in the Green: a history of an old London
May Day tradition – Sarah Crofts: £1

LVG Vampire Chronicles Issue: Slayer Special: £2.75 (with an article by me in it).

Do contact me if you think you have something we could distribute for you.
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SELFS made the national press! One Hermione Eyre (possibly not her real name) cam to SELFS on the 10th January, made a few notes, gave Jeremy Harte the rave review he deserved and then wrote us up in the Independent on Sunday on 16th January.

The review can be read here.

It’s not on the Indie website so I had to scan the photocopy Jeremy sent me. We, “the pagans”, are “lovely”, says the bar staff of The Spanish Galleon, which is nice to know, and they talk about foxes a lot and wear a fair bit of purple, do a bit of note taking in green biro and but, ultimately, are “friendly” according to Hermione. Hopefully she wasn’t too perturbed by the thought of the Galleon bar-staff thinking she may be one of those ‘pagans’ (or forteans, folklorists or various other SELFS sorts).
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As well as posting the above over the interweb, I have finally gotten around to setting up an online photo-gallery for SELFS which includes three pictures from the epic Jack Gale walk in Greenwich Park in 2003 and one of our first goes at watching the Winter Solstice sunrise at Hilly Fields Stone Circle in Brockley in 2003.

Also in there are a few photos, that I’ve pinched off Stewart Smith, of former SELFS speakers (me, Gordon Rutter, Richard Freeman) mingling with March’s speaker Mark Pilkington as well as (before this turns too much into ‘Hello’ magazines for pagans and forteans) some snaps of last years Fowlers Troop Jack in the Green procession around Greenwich pubs, the Lion’s Part October Plenty gathering and our growing collection of ‘plant people’ pictures.
The link to the SELFS & Forteana page is here, The gallery is updated as often as we can so if you have any SELFS-related pictures (or pictures of cute, furry animals) that you’d like to put up there, such as pictures of speakers, SELFS or related events or anything interesting snapped in South East London then do please let me know.

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SELFS meets every second Monday of the month upstairs at The Spanish Galleon, 48 Greenwich Church Street, SE10 9BL. Talks start at 8.00pm and costs £2.50 / £1.50 concessions.

Greenwich Mainline & DLR: Turn left from the main exit, walk about 5-10 minutes, the Galleon is on your right, at the cross-roads.

Cutty Sark DLR: Turn left from the station, right when you get to the road, the Spanish Galleon is across the road.

Buses: 177, 180, 188, 199, 286, 386.

Contact email
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The Longest Night

21st December is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. The sun will rise over London at 8.03 am. A good, if cold, place to watch it happen is Brockley Stone Circle, a circle made by local artists and the like in Hilly Fields. This astronomically correct stone circle dates all the way back to 2000AD.

As with last year, no formal ritual is planned, come along and do your own thing, be it private or public, spiritual, astronomical or personal, before going to work (or bed or where ever). The solstice itself is at 12.41am.

The nearest stations to Hilly Fields are Ladywell, Brockley and Croften Park. Buses are the 171, 172, 122 and 484.

Info and map of Hilly Fields is here. Some useful information about the Solstices can be found on the National Maritime Museum’s website.

Magical Pubs in South London Pt. 2

This is a continuation, due to length, of the Magical pub list I started here.

The Dog & Bell, Deptford

Loving this place is a sign of my advancing of my years and slowing pace, yes, but also of the maturing of my tastes. The Dog & Bell is a real ale pub, is always has five cask ales on the go, including guest ales and some interesting bottled boozes too. By all the gods that be, I have drunk some fine beer in this place. It has a scruffy and eccentric clientele and an ivy-covered corner in the beer garden. It is a perfect place for a chat with friends over a pint. Perfect.

Time was I wouldn’t have given a toss about the Dog & Bell being south-east London CAMRA’s ‘Pub of the Year 2004’ but nowadays that’s not only that which excited me there, there’s also the ‘Home Made Pickle Contest’ CAMRA are running with the pub on the 27th November.

Do not pity me, though, for that sort of thing is good.

The Cricketers, Greenwich

The Cricketers starts well. It’s pubby, what some people might mistake for ‘dingy’, with three cask ales, toasted cheese sarnies, a book on local history on sale behind the bar and décor doesn’t look forced or contrived.

There are also board games lying around so you can play connect-four or drafts while you drink, which is conducive to the relaxed atmosphere. All of this is good, there are not enough ‘actual’ pubs in the world and lots of brightly-lit, soul-less holes trying to fake it.

The magic at The Cricketers really happens on a Tuesday night, of all nights. The Greenwich Traditional Music Co-Operative get their fiddles, flutes and assorted squeeze-boxes out and start playing traditional English folk tunes.

If that doesn’t constrict your accordion, and I accept that my tastes can lean toward the ‘beardy’, then at around 10pm on this night the bar staff dole out free cheddar and biscuits to go with your beer and music. If that isn’t magical, then I don’t know what is.

The Wibbly Wobbly, Surrey Quays

‘Pub’ is, of course, an abbreviation of ‘public house’, a house anyone can walk into and fill themselves with booze and crisps for money. This place is a barge sitting in Greenland Docks in Surrey Quays but its interior is ‘pure pub’ making it, perhaps, a ‘public house boat’. Anyway, enough of that, there’s a beer-garden that is an adjacent floating platform performing a ‘beer garden’ function.

It’s a site to see, really. One day I dream of taking charge of the pub, having a few beers by my drinking arm, a jar of pickled-onions under my right-arm and cutting the moorings. I would then tour the world, searching for ancient sacred sites and bizarre animals, hither-to unknown to science, on my floating pub. I can see the telly series based on these adventures on BBC3 already. Let it be known that I would like the part of ‘Skitster’ to be played by Emily Woof, if possible.

The Montague Arms, New Cross Gate

The location isn’t promising, the Monty is on the very boundary where bouncy New Cross becomes edgy Peckham and the exterior looks ominous, there’s big black boards with ‘COACH PARTIES WELCOME’ painted on them.

And s othe coach-parties should come. Along with the Brockley Stone Circle, the ruins of Lesnes Abbey and the wonky dinosaurs of Crystal Palace Park, the Montague Arms is one of the seven (or more) wonders of south-east London. The interior is full of old naval equipment and trinkets and stuffed animals and human skeletons watch you are you enjoy your ale. Think of an old, dusty museum that had been opened as a pub without clearing out the exhibits.

One of the family who run the pub, they may not be related but them seem like one big family, collected old psychedelic projectors so on the stage, there’s a stage, one can often enjoy illuminations of zodiacal signs and other strange beasts.

And of the stage, well, many have performed there, local music clubs such as Fear of Music, the Lost Club and Throbb put on interesting and eccentric music there but, good though many of them are, none of them can beat the house entertainment.

I know not his name despite seeing him often. When the coach parties come to the Montague Arms on a Saturday night they, and any locals who potter in, are entertained by a blind organist who does ‘interpretations’ of both current pop songs, classic tracks and other surprises. This may be more than one evening rolled into one by my, frankly, harmed and faulty mind but in one sitting I have heard ‘Closest Thing to Crazy” by pony-loving Katie Mela-woo-warr, David Bowies ‘Life on Mars’ and the hymn ‘Jerusalem’ all played on a moog, often in a jaunty oompha style. All of these are interspersed with abuse hurled at the bemused Dutch and German coach parties and offers to let someone from the audience to get up and sing to the locals.

It’s very much like Bill Bailey when he performs Cockney versions of rock songs but real and performed by someone with south-east London engrained into them. In, remember, the strangest looking pub you will ever sit in. And according to this page and this page on the UK Cabaret Records website, not only has he been doing in since 1972 but he’s also had four live albums out of him and his mates insulting the big-haired tourists of yesteryear and mingling Beatles songs with Hawkwind. The man’s a dangerous genius.

It’s both Yule and my birthday in December. Have you enjoyed reading this? Those records must be out there somewhere. You know what to do.