Microcosmographia

Art is often at its best when it meets nature so the new exhibition at the South London Gallery looks a good one. ‘Microcosmographia’, by American artist Mark Dion is a show running from 9th September to 30th October.

The blurb says: “The centre piece of the exhibition will be a life-sized replica of a beached prehistoric aquatic animal, known as Ichthyosaur, with relics from the history of the natural sciences spilling from its belly.”

"The work of Jean Henri Fabre, provides the inspiration for Les Necrophores-L’Enterrement. A giant mole, crawling in giant beetles, will be suspended by a noose from the Gallery ceiling.”

"Biological Field Unit, a team of botanists, entomologists and artists will conduct a detailed survey of plant and insect life in the SLG’s Secret Garden. Working from a specially constructed research station, the team will collect, document and display their findings using traditional hand illustration and photographic methods.”

Entry is free; South London Gallery is on 65 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH. A map and direction is here.

South London Gallery.

Saucy, Sacred, Secret, Scary Southwark

John Constable, who spoke at SELFS waaaay back in July 2003, is the shamanic poet of ‘The Clink’, the area around Borough that was once the sex, drinking and gambling den of London during it’s time under the Bishop of Winchester (we’ll skirt around the prostitution and bear-baiting here).

All sections of the city has their own spirit, created by history, psycho-geography and goodness knows what else. John has truly been captured by his part of London and will be taking some guided walks around this ‘outlaw borough’ of London.

See and here more of John at the Southwark Mysteries site.

Details of each walk are as follows: each walk in on either on a Tuesday or Wednesday from 7pm. Assemble in the covered area outside John Harvard Library, Borough High Street, SE1.

Borough tube.

Each walk lasts roughly 1½ hours and is free.

Tuesday 13th September: The Outlaw Borough: The medieval Liberty of the Clink, outside the law of the City of London - prisons, theatres, bear-pits, taverns, and stews - outlaws, actors and Winchester Geese.

Wednesday 14th September: The Ghost Walk: Haunted inns, a Roman cemetery, Cross Bones graveyard and the legend of Mary Overie.

Tuesday 20th September: The Bermondsey Walk: Celebrating people, crafts and industries from Roman times to the present.

Wednesday 21st September: The Secret Elephant: Magic and myth around the Elephant and Castle

Tuesday 27th September: The Healing Walk: Guy's Hospital to Bedlam - via parks on the sites of former prisons andthe Cross Bones people's shrine.

Wednesday 28th September: What The Dickens? Marshalsea Prison, Lant Street and The Mint - the criminal underworld ofDickens' childhood.

Avalon in London Autumn Equinox

It’s the Autumn Equinox this month and The Avalon in London Autumn Equinox ritual will be held on Sunday 18th September 2005 at Stockwell Studios, Annie MacCall Close, Jeffreys Road, Stockwell (close to Stockwell tube station on the Victoria and Northern lines) at 5.30pm (for a 6pm start).

Here’s a map: http://tinyurl.com/aytty

The theme is “Banbha: Blessings of the Fruit of Autumn”, so bring “along fruit for the feast and any items representing Mother Earth which you wish to place on the altar. These will be returned to you after the ritual.”

"We will be asking for a £5 (£3 unwaged) donation to cover costs."

Avalon in London and a friendly and open group and Jacqui, who runs the group, welcomes any enquires about the rituals.

Contact her on 07711 515017 or join the Avalon in London email list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Avalon_in_London (for announcements only join the list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Avalon_in_London_announcements)

Bonjourno Bopp-Fans!

The August / September issue of the Rocklands Star described Transpontine as "the essential local news site" so, um, we'd better get our acts together and post a bit more.

The Wolfganf Bopp, fine and witty gig put-er-on-ers are back at the The Montague Arms this Thursday, 15th September, from 8pm with two bands, each scintillatingly named Envelopes and Objects.

If I could pass you over to mein hosts: "Objects are an electro-punk 3-piece on a mission. Expect debauched synth n roll shenanigans a-plenty. ENVELOPES are so impossibly lovely they make us want to curl up in the foetal position and eat cake. This Swedish/French, York-based outfit make suitably quirky, lo-fi indie-pop to fill your heart with delight".

Wolf Gang DJs playing out twisted rock n roll, retro grooves and bleak disco. Thursday 15th SeptemberDoors: 8.00pm – 12.30am

Price: £3. The Monty is on, if you don't know, 289 Queens Road, New Cross, London SE15 2PA. Nearest Tube: New Cross Gate. Nearest BR: Queens Rd, Peckham.

I've now stuck a review of this gig here.

Phantom Black Dogs

12th September: Simon Sherwood - "Phantom Black Dogs: A psychological perspective"

Phantom Black Dogs have been reported for centuries and are still being reported today. Parapsychologists have concentrated upon human apparitions and there is very little consideration of animal apparitions, let alone apparitions of Black Dogs. This talk will consider the extent to which psychological/parapsychological theories of apparitions can explain these phantom Black Dogs?

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.
A map is here.

Steamboy

Along with everything else, we collect portrays and appearances of south-east London in films here. This may not exactly count but I think it’s worthy of note. Steamboy is the new anime by Katsuhiro Ôtomo, the gent who borough Akira to the screen. It’s a fantastic steam-punk adventure set in an alternative Victorian England during the Industrial Revolution. It’s a tale of imperial might versus newly fledged capitalism and the battle to between greed and idealism, identified as father and son, over the future use of technology.

A large part of the action, including the climax that does drag a bit, takes place on ‘Steam Tower’ a vast, steam powered building, all giant pistons, cogs and boilers, that has been built next door to the site of the Great Exhibition by a mysterious, almost certainly American, corporation. The for the purposes of the anime (cartoon, I mean) the site of the Great Exhibition has been moved from Hyde Park, among other Hyde Park landmarks, (before being moved to Sydenham) to an area of London that great resembles Greenwich Peninsular.

“That’s the site of the Millennium Dome”, whispered Carthy, as we watched steam-ships sail past the Crystal Palace and the twin-towers of what is now the Maritime Museum are panned over.

There’s a scene where bobbies pour off of boats to storm the Steam Tower, arriving straight at the doors of Steam Tower. The peninsular holds other wonders too, the Albert Hall is there, Nelson’s Column is there and that huge arch, which is at the Victoria corner of Hyde Park (can’t remember the name of it) is there too. It’s large pats of London’s street furniture place in Greenwich to set a scene of wealth and culture.

All of which then gets destroyed by steam-driven soldiers and tanks whilst Robert Stephenson, the steam-railwayman and colleague of Brunel, coordinates the British forces from the north side of the Thames (more inventors should be action-heroes!).

See Steamboy, if you get the chance, and be warmed by south-east London making a fine, first appearance into the wonderful world of Japanese animation.

Transmetropolitan

On returning and not having a camera on me.

I've been travelling a lot recently, hence the silence at SELFS and the lack of my own riffs on Transpontine, leaving plenty of room for Neil’s eloquent entries.

Got back from the Isle of Wight last night and I’ve still got the Baltic lands of Estonia and Finland rolling away in my head but a walk home from Brockley station to home last night helped remind me why I’m here in the first place.

(I’m still failing to spot the Beast of Sydenham whilst travelling between Brockley and East Croydon though.)

The floral murals by the cab rank are a cool bit of folk-art, it’s a triptych, painted in differing shades for each section, blue, orange and green and hides fairies, cats and goodness knows what else within the tangled images.

Some of us know this area is magical by looking it up in books, others go out there and create the magic and others walk about and know.

The selection of vegetarian junk-food in the Costcutter, opposite the Brockley Barge is pretty magical too, better than the behemoth Sainsbury that squats by the New Cross Gate train tracks. Brockley, as is often reported at the Wickham Arms, has the densest population of artists in Europe, is there a density of veggies there too (or could you only refer to a ‘density’ of McDonald’s regulars or a ‘density’ of people who prefer thick-crust pizza?)

At the top of Shardeloes Road was a big bloke is a frock. It was a silvery frock that contrasted against his black skin in the twilight and it had am alien luminescence about it.

A similar bloke the same style of frock came out of the corner-shop at Brockley Cross and I spotted a third in the phone box across the road, having a bit of a natter. The outfits were good, though they showed a bit too much of what was underneath when the wind blew against them. I wondered if they’d been locked out of their church, it looked like church-wear and it was Sunday evening, hence the phone call. Or were they Christians from another planet, hopefully nicer than the ones we usually get round here.

As a rule, I’m not really in to church-goers but men in random silver frocks is something a grubby urban streets needs, now and then.

What I do like is food foraging, there’s a untapped larder of wild food in London, especially down in our part, so the kids picking the blackberries that were hanging down over the huge poem that runs along the top of Shardeloes Road was a fine thing to see.
If only I had the camera, and they were nearer the word ‘Eat’, that stands out tall and proud on that wall that would be one of the best photographs ever.

This area is urban but it’s still wild, just ask the foxes, frogs, birds and plants. I get hops coming in a month, bluebells in the spring and plenty of local birds and insects feeding off the pear and apple trees in my back garden. This place is alive, there’s life crammed into every single crevice. We’re part of that, not always the best part, but we’re part of it and that’s good.

When I got home I also saw that, unsurprisingly, the Brazilian Jazz Hippies that live above us haven’t got round to building their sweat-lodge at the bottom of the garden yet.

It’s good to be home, for now.

Listen this Thursday

This Thursday (18th August) features two nights of left-of-field musical talent, do go and have a sniff if you're free. The Wolfgang Bopp post fantastic posters up around New Cross way, each month's poster has a photograph with figues in it, one of which has the head of a gentleman with a funny hat and huge beard superimposed over it's own head. Every month, a new picture and the same, wildly bearded face. It always cheers me up.

This month they have bands redcarsgofaster, "giving post-rock a much-needed post-punk kick up the arse", they say and This Et Al, the slightly less encouraging (to me) "Smithsian melodies with an ethereal shoegazing aesthetic" though it you've ever wanted to look at Morrissey with a bright-red 'Mickey from Lush' bob then this may, or may not be, you're lucky night, you 30-something indie kid, you.

The Wolfgang DJ's play "twisted rock n roll, retro grooves and bleak disco" and the venue is the sacred ground of The Montague Arms, 289 Queens Road, New Cross, London SE15 2PA. Nearest stations: New Cross & Queens Rd, Peckham.

Entry is £3, doors, 8.00pm – 12.15am, if you need to know anything else, email Wolfgangbopp here.

Also on Thursday night from 8pm, also £3 and also something I've not made it to yet (so all reports gratefully recieved) is the Camberwell music night Echo Chamber at the Funky Monkey, 25 Camberwell Church Street Camberwell SE5 8TR (Buses 36, 136 and 171 from New Cross).

Appearing is Mark Pilkington's new muscial thingy Raagnagrok, who're a "synth 'n' sitar sounds" duo as well as the band Striplight, whom, Mark has found out through diligent research, style themselves as "Noir-wave angular artsters" though perhaps are more like "Jangly indie shouty popsters".

The night will also feature Petris and DJ and MCing spots from the resident resonance trio of Sculpture/Dan Hayhurst, Clive Graham and Richard Thomas. Go on!

Hiroshima

More ritual goings on on the River Thames. A couple of weeks after Christians beat the watery bounds of the parish of Deptford by boat, Buddhists and others this week 'floated lighted candles on the Thames' to commemorate the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while on their way from Westminster Cathedral to the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park.

Free Ronnie Biggs

Former great train robber Ronnie Biggs is apparently seriously ill in Belmarsh prison. Why is he still being kept in prison several years after he voluntarily returned to Britain? He is old and sick and obviously no threat to anyone. It seems he is being punished not just for the audacity of the original robbery in 1963 and subsequent escape from Wandsworth Prison but for making the authorities look stupid in all the years on the run in Australia and Brazil, for the crime of obviously enjoying himself including making ropey records with ex-Sex Pistols.

Biggs once saw a bit more of South London than the inside of the hospital wing of Belmarsh. After escaping from Wandsworth, he hid in Dulwich, Bermondsey and Camberwell before making his way to France. Legend has it too that the robbers celebrated their success with a drink in East Dulwich at The Cherry Tree pub (now called the New Hamlet Inn, opposite the train station).

Image is from Stencil Revolution

Tags: Ronnie Biggs; East Dulwich; Belmarsh; London

Deptford, Opium and the East India Company

Last month 'A mediaeval cermony called beating the bounds was held to mark out territory in the Thames and protest at plans for flats and recycling facilities on Convoys Wharf. Canon Graham Corneck, of St Nicholas Church, Deptford, and the Bishop of Woolwich, Christopher Chessun... led the proceedings from a tug boat' (Mercury, 27 July 2005).

There is a certain irony in the Deptford riverfront at Convoys Wharf being bought up by a Hong Kong based property company (see below), since the existence of Hong Kong as a business enclave came about as a result of the activities of an organisation closely linked with Deptford - the East India Company.

I was reminded by my holiday reading of W.G. Sebald's 'The Rings of Saturn'(1998) of the Opium War, a British government war for drugs in the nineteenth century: 'In 1837 the Chinese Government had taken measures to prevent opium trading, whereupon the East India Company, which grew opium poppies in the fields of Bengal and shipped the drug mainly to Canton, Amoy and Shanghai, felt that one of its most lucrative ventures was in jeapordy... In the name of Christian evangelism and free trade, which was held to be the precondition of all civilised progress, the superiority of western artillery was demonstrated, a number of cities were stormed, and a peace was extorted, the conditions of which included guarantees for British trading posts on the coasts, the cession of Hong Kong, and, not least, reparation payments of truly astronomical proportions'.

As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak notes in her 'Critique of Postcolonial reason' (1999), the East India Company was 'the first great transnational company', establishing the British Empire in India and forming the state in its image: 'The governments of India were the Company's governments, the army the Company's army'. The Bengal famine of 1770, which wiped out one in six of the local population, can be viewed as the Company's famine.

From 1600 until 1782 the East India Company stores were based at the Stowage site on the river at Deptford, the location for the new Millennium Quay housing development. One thing that hasn't changed over the centuries is the ownership of large chunks of the Deptford riverfront by multinational corporations - from the East India Company, to Rupert Murdoch's News International to Cheung Kong, who recently bought the Convoys Wharf site from Murdoch.

Deptford, London

Electric Six in New Cross

Detroit’s Electric Six (Danger! High Voltage!) are playing a gig in the basement of The Venue, New Cross on September 2nd, hosted by XXIV Records' I SWEAR I WAS THERE club. This intimate show will warm the band up for a major festival in Spain the following day. Limited tickets will be available from this weekend for £10 via http://www.twentyfourrecords.com

In October there's a huge amount of music and other stuff happening in New Cross and elsewhere as part of 'Artful - a non conventional convention of entertainment and exhibition'. We will be posting more details of events as they are firmed up, but check the Artful website for updates.

Bucky & Co.

Interesting Sunday afternoon gig happening tomorrow featuring Bristol band Bucky, as well as Corey OS, Wetdog and Smartypants plus 'Crafting, Tea & Cakes'.


It all happens at The Pullens Centre, Crampton Street, SE17 (map here), 2-6pm.

30 Seconds under Chislehurst

Reading Simon Reynolds' marvellous new book 'Rip it Up and Start and Again: Post-Punk 1978-1984'. Deptford's finest Alternative TV and This Heat both get their dues, along with just about anybody making interesting music in that period. I hadn't realized that David Sylvian and Japan came from Catford - a quick Google search shows that the world's most beautiful man (as he was once described) was born David Batt at Stone Park Hospital, Beckenham, and met other band members at Catford Secondary School.

But the best vaguely South London story concerns Pere Ubu. In 1978 the Cleveland band staged the UK launch of their LP Dub Housing with an 'Ubu Mystery Trip' with ticketholders transported by bus to a secret location - the freezing cold Chislehurst Caves in the London Borough of Bromley. The Caves are well worth a visit, if you can take some of the guide's more lurid tales of Druid sacrifice with a pinch of salt. They have been variously used as an ammunitions depot (World War One), a mushroom farm (between the wars), an air raid shelter (World War Two), and a venue for gigs and parties - Jimi Hendrix played there in 1966, and Pink Floyd the following year. As a film location they have been used for Doctor Who (The Mutants - 1972), Insemenoid, Bliss, Neverwhere and Randall & Hopkirk (deceased).

Convoys Wharf

Thanks to Bob from Brockley for finding an article from the South China Morning Post about Deptford: "Residents in southeast London have mounted a campaign against plans by Cheung Kong (Holdings) to redevelop a 16-hectare site at Convoys Wharf in Deptford into a mixed high-rise residential and commercial complex.The move threatens to stall the Hong Kong developer's ambitions to expand its British portfolio. Cheung Kong and its ports-to-telecoms arm, Hutchison Whampoa, bought the site in May from Rupert Murdoch's News International, the publishing arm of News Corp, for $1.46 billion".

Cheung Kong holdings seem to be in the vanguard of global waterside gentrification - developing luxury accommodation in areas previously reviled by the wealthy because they were full of dockers, sailors, mudlarks and other vanishing urban types. The same company has been involved in similar developments in Vancouver as well as in Hong Kong itself. The interesting Hong Kong anarcho site In the Water obviously knows the company well:

'Hong Kong, with our physical and political environments governed by a ruling class of unrepresentative, unaccountable bureaucrats, and the overriding economic decisions controlled by corporate giants with names like Hutchison, Cheung Kong, and Sun Hung Kai, organisms that will live for decades longer than you and I could ever dream...In our Hong Kong, too, some humans rule and others are invisible. The demolitions continue, the harbor 'reclamations' continue, West Kowloon is commercialized in the name of culture, Mong Kok is smashed for yet another mega-shopping mall, the land and the people are erased until neither land nor people matter, and until... until what, then?'. Sounds familiar.

Swear / Violets

What are our favourite Angular artistes up to (or should that be post-Angular, as they're now putting out material on other labels)? The Swear are playing at the Six String/Paradise Bar in New Cross on 4th August with Strange Chocolate. Their recent 'repeat it, repeat it' CD EP is available from their site and you can also check out what they sound like, if you've never had the pleasure.

Meanwhile The Violets have gone one better on their site - you can hear what they sound like and what they look like, with a video of their Mirror Mirror single.

"They're all Londoners"

More bombs in London... at the moment a lot of people seem more weary than anything, but as the reality sinks in that we could be in for a long campaign, who knows what forms the creeping paranoia and edginess will take? One possible direction is racism, already being stoked by the British National Party, who used images of the bus bomb in their Barking election leafet, and by the Daily Mail, where Melanie Phillips bemoans 'the disaster of multiculturalism'.

Obviously this is an insult to the 7/7 dead, who included people from Poland, Italy, Israel, Turkey, Afghanistan and many other places. Anyway the BNP's ethnic purism is actually very close to the ideology of the bombers, leaving aside the fact that the last bombing campaign in London was carried out by an ex-BNP member, David Copeland. There has always been a link between the Islamist far right and their European counterparts, going right back to the mutual admiration of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Third Reich.

The Daily Mail might want to distance themselves from the BNP, but how could the monoculture they dream of be imposed except by ludicrous patriotic propaganda, repression and ethnic cleansing? My street in New Cross would be pretty empty once they'd driven away my French, Portuguese, Brazilian, West Indian and African neighbours, and I'm not sure that many of the 'White UK' remainder would want to take any kind of citizenship oath to Queen and Country. Count me out for a start.

Anyone would think that London's diversity was dreamt up by some committee in the 1980s. In fact, London was created and has always been sustained by constant migratory flows, a fact that has often been celebrated. In 'London belongs to Me' (1945), Norman Collins wrote:

'And the people. They're London, too. They're the same Londoners that they have always been, except that from time to time the proportion of refugees has altered a little. At one moment the doubtful-looking newcomers are the Huguenots. At another the Jews and it is the Huguenots who are the Londoners wondering whatever London is coming to. They're all Londoners - the French and the Italians in Soho, the Chinese in Limehouse, the Scotsmen in Muswell Hill and the Irish round the Docks'.

Tag: London Bombing

Save The Hood

No, not a reference to Respect's hilarious "stop the Hoodie Ban" demo at Elephant and Castle, but a plea to save one of South East London's finest community pubs. The Lord Hood in Creek Lane has successfully avoided the gentrification of Greenwich, and remained a fine example of a good community local. OK, it only has one real ale, a fairly nondescript Courage Best, but it is reasonably priced, and unusually for the area has a music license. This means that on different nights you can can go to a disco, hear a jazz group, have a sing-along or (like me) join in with a fine English Traditional Music Session. (not made any the finer by me, I hasten to add) The pub also seems to be a focus of activity for local pensioners ( ie they're not driven out by pricey drinks and loud contemporary music) and there's a feisty Womens' darts team too.

All of this is endangered by a proposed property develpment which will result in the demolition of this great bit of 1930's pub architecture, and its replacement with more soulless overpriced wine bars and bong shops (probably).

Do your bit and sign the online petition

Future Sound of SE14

Saturday saw the latest gig from the alumni of Felix's School of Rock at Prendergast School, Hilly Fields, with school-aged rockers taking the stage. Highlights for me were Redrum (average age 9.5) with their versions of Seven Nation Army and Californication, and Unique, who supplemented Audioslave and Led Zeppelin covers with a song of their own.

Hot-footed it from there to the Six String Bar, where I said a few words about Deptford Fun City and played a few SE London classics (including June Brides 'Every Conversation, plus a bit of This Heat and Carter USM). Couldn't stick around for the bands, but Charlie Brown looked good from their sound check. Maybe next time...

After the silence

Some places have periods of silence all the time. I imagine that, say, Dulwich Village is pretty quiet in the middle of the night. Walworth Road is never quiet, so the two minutes of silence last Thursday for the victims of the London bombings felt quite eery - construction, shop and council workers standing on the streets, and the traffic gradually coming to a halt.

The day before, the London bombers' comrades in Iraq blew up 20+ children in a working class quarter of Baghdad. Hardly anybody mentions them, and nobody mentions the blood on the hands of some of those leading the silence. Never mind Iraq, who now remembers the civilians blown to bits by NATO in 1999 on a train at Grdenicka in the former yugoslavia?

As a humanist and internationalist, I don't value London lives any higher than anybody else's, but I recognize that there is a (self-centred) emotional charge to death on your doorstep. A city is daily traversed by millions of individual paths intersecting with each other. It is the fact that we can plot our own paths crossing those of the dead that reminds us of our vulnerability and enables us to idenitify intimately with the victims.

After reading acres of coverage of the London bombings, the detail that finally brought a tear to my eye was buried in a report of the life of Shahara Islam, killed on the no.30 bus. It wasn't the face of the pretty young muslim woman staring from every front page that got to me so much as the fact that she regularly stopped off at Patisserie Bliss at the Angel Islington on the way into work, just as I did every day for the three years I worked there.

Back to work after 120 seconds- bury them and be silent. The much vaunted stiff upper lip, business as usual attitude is wearing thin. It's one thing to say we're not going to let a few bombs stop us getting on with our lives, its another to order people to carry on as if nothing has happened. As Jon Eden at Uncarved experienced, most people weren't given the choice of not immediately returning to work.

After two minutes of silence, two minutes of critical argument with our friends, colleagues and neighbours would be a start. Why is the world in this state and what are the alternatives? Do we just have to accept living in a permanent state of global low intensity war? Discuss.

As Iain Sinclair wrote last week 'Random acts of terror are finite, the money wheel never stops turning'. Business as usual means more of the same. No thanks.

Tag:London Bombing

On the buses

In the aftermath of the London bombing there has been an almost delirious outpouring of rhapsodic prose about the city and its pleasures. Following Iain Sinclair's Theatre of the City piece, Laura Barton penned a hymn to London buses in yesterday's Guardian, apparently based on a day traversing the capital by random routes. As I sat on the 171 into work yesterday, I read her poetic observation that 'Londoners sail the buses, floating along its surface like the flotsam of the city, each passenger following their mystical routes as if by divination'.

Sinclair and Barton are in a line of double decker flaneurs. In 'The Nights of London' (1926), travel writer and journalist HV Morton included an essay 'To Anywhere' with the starting premise that 'Strange things happen now and then if you just take the first omnibus and sit there long enough'. He describes a journey that ends with him getting off the bus and wandering through a park by cricket matches, a political meeting and open air dancers. Only as the night closes in as 'Lovers drifted slowly under the moon' does he ask a policeman ''Where am I?'... He looked at me suspiciously, and replied: 'Peckham Rye''. Must have been a number 12.

See also: A Delaware County writer recalls a trip with a Deptford bus driver.

Tag:London Bombing

Walworth Jumpers

Philip Hoare's 'England's Lost Eden - adventures in a Victorian Utopia' is a fascinating exploration of the overlapping milieus of spiritualism, millenarian religion and utopianism in late-Victorian england. Of most interest to transpontinians is his account of the so-called Walworth Jumpers, a split from a group known as the Peculiar People who had a chapel in Gravel Lane, Kennington (they were later known as the Plumsted Peculiars- presumably they moved). There were rowdy scenes in a railway arch in Sutherland Street off the Walworth Road in 1871-2 as curious crowds gathered to watch the jumpers' ecstatic dancing, leading to them being compared to the similarly inclined Shakers in the US. After facing similar hostility at premises in Salisbury Row, Lock's fields (under the current Aylesbury Estate) and another railway arch near Waterloo, Mary Ann Girling and her followers moved to Hordle in the New Forest where they lived communally while waiting for the end of the world. The 1881 census record a number of south londoners still living with them, including the unusually named Emma and Elizabeth Knuecheles, the latter a 14 year old born in Camberwell.

In and around the New forest in this period there seem to have been various experiments in different ways of life, from the plebeian to the aristocratic, encompassing various combinations of dress reform, Bible communism, vegetarianism and celibacy.

Back in South London, we also hear of Captain Alfred Wilks Drayson, a spiritualist who claimed to have 'witnessed fresh eggs, fruit and flowers descend from the ceiling' of his quarters at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and who held seances with John Ruskin (then living in Camberwell) and Arthur Conan Doyle. Peculiar people, one and all.

Spring Heeled Jack

Steve Ash gave a great talk to South East London Folklore Society on the Spring Heeled Jack phenomenon. In 1838 panic swept through the villages on the edge of London, with people apparently being accosted by a mysterious figure in a cloak able to leap great heights to avoid capture. A servant girl in Forest Hill was frightened out of her wits by a creature in a bearskin; horses panicked after Spring Heeled Jack lept over Streatham High Road...

Steve talked through some of the different explanations that have been put forward - was it all a prank played on gullible peasants by toffs? Was it mass hysteria linked to the stresses of urbanisation and disease? Was there some paranormal content? In true Fortean style, the mystery resists any single explanation.

Next SELFS on Monday August 8th features another dark creature of the night, with a talk on the folklore of the Black Dog. Upstairs at the Spanish Galleon pub, Greenwich, prompt 8 pm start.

Camberwell Shows

Lots of interesting and free art stimulation to be had in Camberwell last weekend. The Summer Show at Camberwell College of Art had some really good work. Our favourites were Hanna Park's melancholic sketches of London bus life (example here), rendered very poignant by recent events. Other Londonist work included a sound recording made in the Dragon Wok Chinese restaraunt opposite the college, and Cui-Li Zhang's exploration of traffic lights and other street signs, incorporating a video clip of New Cross Road, tapestries of signs and a fake aquarium of plastic fish and miniature signs. Its finished now, so look out for next year's show - for now there's still time (until 17 July) to see Saskia Olde Wolbe's short film 'Trailer' at South London Gallery, a short story to lush shots of cinema interiors and tropical flytraps.

Subterranean Sonic Women Artists take Greenwich

I've waited ages to write that headline and finally....I CAN! This came over the email today:

Local women tunnel under the Thames

Local Greenwich women are filling the Greenwich Foot Tunnel with sound on Saturday 16th July 2005. They have been working with London sound artist Jo Lucas to produce a sonic journey called 'Tunnel of Time' through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. The project was set up by the Greenwich based media arts organisation Independent Photography. The installation brings together ambient sounds and spoken word by the artist and women created through intimate discussions amongst themselves.

A collage of voice and sound is immersed within the environment of Greenwich and woven together with 5 women's tales of fear and faith. The project explores a fragility and power within private experience that is often overlooked. The installation will run from 12pm - 6pm, with information, refreshments and a short presentation by the artist and women at 5pm at the tunnel entrance in Cutty Sark Gardens.

Hannah Baneth

Bob from Brockley notes the passing of Hannah Baneth, post-war Jewish refugee and Deptford housing activist, among other things.

6 X 6 at Six String Bar

6X6 is a mini-music festival happening at the Six String Bar (formerly Paradise Bar),460 New Cross Road this Saturday 16th July. It starts in the afternoon (3 pm) and goes on until 11 pm with a diverse range of musical talent including THE CROWD, NEBRASKA, CHARLIE BROWN and DEVIL IN MISS JONES . DIGITAL SNEAKERS will be showing their documentary film 'Rocklands - Live In New Cross' featuring Twisted Charm, Angular Records, Art Brut, Bloc Party and many others. All this plus DJs, pub price booze and good company. I will also being doing a short talk about Deptford Fun City, and probably playing a short set of Transpontine tracks (maybe a bit of ATV, This Heat, Band of Holy Joy etc.).

Its free before 5 pm (bar is open from mid day) after 5pm it's £4 / (£2 with a Music Tourist Board card/NUS). Come and hang out, watch/meet bands, play pool, read/write zines, watch visuals.

London healing

Avalon in London are holding an impromptu ritual of healing and protection for London, and all her inhabitants, and to celebrate her vibrant life force. They will be meeting at Cross Bones Graveyard at the north end of Redcross Way, close to Borough tube station, at 7.00pm on Friday 15th July.

They say: 'Please bring flowers and ribbons to decorate the gates, poems and London songs, objects that symbolise London to you, messages to be tied to the gates etc, bring candles to honour the recent dead, bring your love and your longing for change, bring your courage and your creativity, bring your passion for the city that opens her arms to all... Cross Bones Graveyard is an unconsecrated graveyard, dating back to medieval times, which holds the bones of the prostitutes and paupers of The Liberty, who were denied burial in consecrated ground or were too poor to afford it. The graveyard was closed in 1853 but was unearthed during the building of the Jubilee line. Each year a Halloween of Cross Bones graveyard event is held by John Constable and The Southwark mysteries and vigils are held there each month to honour the outcast dead. Over time it has become a place of deep healing and of hope for a better and more compassionate city, the city that is stirring beneath our feet as we walk her streets'.

A description of a previous London protection ritual has been posted at the Dragon Environmental Network site.

Tag:London Bombing

London belongs to me

Transpontine crew all believed safe and sound after yesterday's madness, though Skitster apparently went through Edgware Road station not long before the blast. Met somebody this morning who had been on the top of the bus that got blown up - after the explosion she looked round and most the seats behind her had disappeared along with the people on them. So it was no surprize when they said today that 13 had died on the bus, rather than the 2 originally announced. Miraculously she got away with perforated ear drums and shock. Some of the people on the bus had earlier been caught up in the bomb at Edgware Road a full hour before. This in itself calls into question the story of the super-efficient emergency operation swinging seamlessly into action, though who can say if any course of action would have made any difference by that stage.

Lots of schmaltz on the radio about indominatable London pulling together, spirit of the Blitz etc. Some of this a bit bogus, judging by the actions of hotels putting up their prices to take advantage of captive customers unable to travel home. Nevertheless there was obviously lots of mutual aid, and its interesting that in times like these people affirm their connection to the place we live in rather to than the imagined community of the nation - London not England.

It's over-dramatizing things to compare the situation today to the Second World War when millions were slaughtered on all sides, but it is notable that London was appreciated in similar ways in the 1940s. I recently picked up an old copy, from a Walworth Road charity shop, of HV Morton's 'London', a series of sketches of pre-war London life published in 1940. It has a touching hand written message in the front saying 'Another war time birthday. Here are happy memories of our beloved London. Just Chubb 11.6.41'. The book itself is full of London pride: 'London, once so aloof and so vast a mystery, has, in the anxiety of these times, become comprehensible in her danger, and Londoners by the thousands have ceased to be merely lodgers in London, and have found a new importance as helpers of London'. Similar sentiments can be found in Norman Collins' 'London belongs to me' (1945) and Noel Coward's London Pride: 'Ghosts beside our starlit Thames, Who lived and loved and died, Keep throughout the ages London Pride'.

Too soon for me to write much about the politics and to be honest I've found some of the internet comment a bit irritating with people trying to slot events into their favourite conspiracy theory (including usual anti-semitic crap) without waiting for even the basic facts to become clear. Suffice it to say that mass murder in London is no more, but equally no less tragic that mass murder in Iraq, whether carried out by Islamo-fascists or Imperial armies. Neither justifies, or even explains, the other - we need a world without both.

Tag:London Bombing

Freaky Friday

Sorry, that's the only subject line I could think of for hese two south-east London event. Maybe 'Fine Friday' or 'Fab Friday' would be more positive, these are both cool looking events, but, what the heck, everyone's heard of 'Freaky Friday'.

Anyway, I digress, in New Cross this Friday (8th) Fresh Films at Cafe Crema, 306 New Cross Road, are hosting an event called 'Rats and Roses' where they will be screening animated shorts from the 10th Brief Encounters Short Film Festival.

First up is ‘Jo Jo in the Stars’, The description of this award winning film is: ‘The heart wrenching tale of two unlikely lovers; Jo Jo, a silver plated trapeze artist and the nameless hero who worships her'.

This is followed by 'Dog Years’, winner UK Film Council audience award, ‘Ben, 39, castrated mongrel, needs love. GSOH essential’, as well as ‘London Fields are Blue’ and a film called ‘The Curse of Geoff’.

The films will be followed by music from George Leitenberger, singer songwriter and composer of film scores for cult german films of the 80s: including La Fuente Verde;Glasnost Junkies;Night Comes Falling.

Now, if you're like me and you've never seen or heard of these films, Cafe Crema helpfully lists George's influences and sound as "Bob Dylan, Tom Waites, Jacques Brel….Beautiful guitar, bittersweet ballads…drink and dream"

The cost is £5.50, including a meal, and Cafe Crema can only reserve a total of 5 tickets over the phone. To reserve tickets phone 020 8320 2317 during café opening times Mon-Fri 9.30-6.00.

Oops, actually, the Kosmische night is on Saturday 9th July, Friday 8th at the Corsica Studios, (Unit 5, Farrell Court, Elephant Road, SE17 1LB), which is under the arches of Elephant & Castle station, just off the top of Walworth Road is:

Friday July 8th - Shortwave Films 8pm till 2am, Entry £4/£3 concRunning order: Short films/videos by emerging talent from 9pm till 10pm Bands on stage from 10:30pm Following on from the films we have live music courtesy of Battant, Crack Village and The Hands. Battant are Chloe, Mole and Tim. Formed in November 2004, they produce a flurry of pop-dripping rampage. Laptop, drum machine, keyboard and electricguitarcomebass gang-bang the twisted corners of Chloe's mind as she spits out convulsively addictive mutterings. Quick on the path to success, these three will not stop til they've reached the far corners of Everywhere.First release is out on Firewire July 11th. Wait for it... Crack Village are building an enthusiastic and loyal fanbase with their irreverent brand of hip-hop, mixing in live brass, human beatboxing and punk rock attitude together with electro and breakbeats. They will be showcasing material scheduled for release on MAKE SOME NOISE RECORDS. The Hands are a crack four-piece playing wired-pop in the finest tradition. Formed 18 months ago, the quartet from south east London have taken inspiration from the everyday to create a quintessentially English sound. Built from keyboard, guitar, bass and drums, the songs go from thoughtful to throwaway in a beat: love, loss, work and play all feature in the big sound of their short stories. Joining the dots between audio and visual will be resident DJ’s Rob Wray and John Reynolds. Visuals come courtesy of Digital Mass.Email info@shortwavefilms.co.uk for guest list. For more info visit www.shortwavefilms.co.uk who can be contacted on 0778 869 2137

On Saturday, Kosmische, kraut-rock to the masses, are demonstration their exquisite taste by hosting their nineth Birthday party at Corsica Studios, Unit 5, Farrell Court, Elephant Road, SE17 1LB, which is under the arches of Elephant & Castle station, just off the top of Walworth Road.

The line-up is:

Fine Finnish drone-rocked Circle, Jean-Herve Peron of Faust (with guests), Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom (DFA synth genies), Amal Gamal Ensemble (Shock-Headed Peters/Cyclobe/Guapo/Alabama 3) and the always fab Now.

They also promise "Kosmische club djs, Barry 7 chamber, whacked-out films, liquid lighting by Lightning Rod from Bubble Vision, strangeness and surprises."

there are only 2 ways to get in:1. buy a ticket for £12 from WeGotTickets or email with the subject 'put me on the list'. It's £15 on door and you'll need ot be on the list.

Planet of the Apes, SE24

The search for obscure South London film connections continues. Further to our list of transpontine horrors, we have uncovered a link to the Planet of the Apes cycle in the personage of Roddy McDowall, who played chimp good guy Cornelius in the original movie (as well as several other simian parts in the follow ups). He was born in 1928 at 204 Herne Hill Road, London SE24.

It has also been brought to our attention that the photo we reproduced from the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein features not one but two South London monster impersonators. As well as Lewisham-born Elsa Lanchester as the Bride in question, Frankenstein himself was played by Boris Karloff (1887-1969), born William Henry Pratt in Camberwell.

Spirit of '77

Tipped off from The Fall Message board about a gig on Saturday-

"The Phobics, are playing on Saturday 2nd July at The Birds Nest pub on Deptford Church Street, SE8 at 9pm. 2 sets of old fashioned Punk Slop - think Ramones meet Buzzcocks where The Dead Boys and the New York Dolls frolic.

They're a very friendly bunch. And it's absolutely free!

To get an idea of what fun to expect, look here: http://www.thephobics.co.uk/"

Do check out the site- It warms the cockles to know that people are still doing this kind of "old school" punk, as opposed to the later Exploited style rubbish...

I'd be there, if it wasn't for the fact I'm morris dancing in Northampton....

Graham Coxon at Goldsmiths

Ex-Blur guitarist Graham Coxon returns to his old college tomorrow night (22nd June) for a gig along with Lady Sovereign and The Idle Lovers. It all happens at Goldsmiths College Students’ Union. More details at Smiths

Mid Summer Fire

Solstice Sunrise at Hilly Fields, Brockley, 21st June 2005 by Steve Ash.

I shall be writing my thoughts on the Solstice sunrise in south-east London here when I get a moment, it was dead good there.

Records not bought

'beatnik boy' sleeve

The excellent new Saint Etienne album 'Tales from Turnpike House' includes on the sleeve a paen to the joys of jumble sales in Bromley by Jeremy Deller. Deller bemoans the shift from jumble sales to car boot sales in the course of the 1980s as a symptom of the time - 'where once you gave things away to be sold for charity you now sold it for yourself. Everybody was on the make'. Of course this is even more the case with Ebay, where more and more people fancy themselves as traders in the global market place. The car boot sale does at least still have elements of potlatch as well as pot luck, enabling, as in Dellar's youth, 'a parallel education where it became possible to buy books and records at random almost because they were so cheap'.

This morning I went down to the weekly car boot sale at Alwyn Girls School in Southwark Park Road (worth a look if you're in reach of Bermondsey at 11 am on a Sunday). I came away empty handed, but did find a couple of surprizes amongst the ubiquitous Whitney Houston and Phil Collins LPs. The first was a 12" blue vinyl original of Patrick Juvet's oft-sampled disco classic 'I love America'. It was though very scratched and I reluctantly pulled myself away on realizing that I was in danger of succumbing to pure vinyl fetishism (i.e. buying records even if the music is virtually unplayable). The second treasure was the Talulah Gosh 12" EP 'Beatnik Boy'. When I find something like this that I really like but already have I always want to grab somebody and say 'you've got to have this'. I couldn't see anybody nearby who looked like an 1980s twee indie pop afficianado, so that wasn't an option. Should I buy it anyway just to give it a home? Should I buy it and flog it on ebay? In the end, thinking of Jeremy Dellar, I moved it to the front of the pile and left in the hope that some curious passer by might decide to give it a go and in the process be opened up to a whole new galaxy of girls and boys with jingly jangly guitars.

London Bloggers

London Bloggers is a great resource for finding local blogs, grouping together sites by local train or tube stations. You can see the list for New Cross Gate here. We will get round to checking out and reviewing some of our fellow SE London blogs soon, but check it out yourself.

Film locations - more monster action

Just had confirmation from Lewisham Arthouse that the building was used as a set for the 1992 film Tale of a Vampire. The film, by Japanese director Shimako Sato, features Julian Sands as a vampire hanging out a lot in a library - which is what the Arthouse used to be in the days when there was a decent library service in New Cross (rather than a tiny one opening three days a week). So to recap here's our current list of SE London horror film connections:

- Tale of a Vampire (1992)
- Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - stars Lewisham-born Elsa Lanchester
- Shaun of the Dead (2004) - filmed in Monson Road, New Cross Gate
- Interview with the Vampire (1994) - partly filmed in Deptford, including St Pauls Church
- The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) - partly filmed at Deptford Creek
- Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) - stars New Cross-born Gary Oldman

In terms of other local film locations, we've got Gary Oldman's 'Nil by Mouth' (1997) and Patrice Chereau's 'Intimacy' (2000), both filmed in New Cross and Deptford, and 'Look Back in Anger' (1959) with Richard Burton as a Deptford market trader. Any more?

Camberwell to Ladywell Walk

Last Saturday's 'Magic, Mystery and Hidden History' was a great success, with a packed theatre upstairs in the Brockley Jack for this South East London Folklore Society event, all part of the Brockley Max Festival.

Talks included Alex Hodson on the battles against the enclosure of Sydenham Common and One Tree Hill, Steve Wilson on the Brockley Thing (the origins of the Woodcraft Folk), Chris Wood on the ancient landscape of Brockley, and Andy Worthington on The Battle of the Beanfield. It was all rounded offf with the runic singng of Kate Waterfield

I talked about Brockley Footpath, certainly an ancient track-way and possibly a route between the holy wells of Ladywell and Camberwell. Scott Wood's talk on 'Ghosts and Monsters of Brockley and Surrounds' also had some spooky stories about the same path.

On Sunday 26th June you can come with us and explore the path itself, setting off from outside St Giles Church, Camberwell at 2 pm and heading via Peckham, Nunhead and Brockley to Ladywell. Ancient taverns may well be sampled along the way.

You are here but why?

More interesting (and free) events coming up as part of the You are here but why? Festival of Mapping, happening in and around 56a Infoshop in Walworth. Tomorrow (Friday 17) promises a Psychogeography bunfight, while on Saturday at 6 pm there's a talk on gathering free food from the wilds of South London. It's followed by a cafe where you can sample some of the results. Should be good, judging by Mikey's elderflower cordial I sampled last week, made from flowers gathered in Burgess Park.

Last week, Andy Worthington's talk on the 1985 Battle of the Beanfield went well, and he was joined by one of the makers of the Operation Solstice film that documents the events. Then last Friday we had a discussion, 'History No! The Future', about some of our efforts (including Past Tense and Practical History) at using history in alternative ways to challenge the present and shape the future.

There's some cool maps to see in the temporary Map Room at 56a Crampton Street, SE17, including some South London radical history cartography. So get on down before the end of June.

Camberwell Now! (well, this Friday..)

A whole host of SE London alternative music types are performing on Friday 17th in what is described as "A one off contemporary music performance using a wide range of diciplines and attitudes in surprising and unusual contexts"

The Line Up includes ex This Heat drummer/vocalist Charles Hayward, Sean O Hagan (of the lovely High Llamas and sometime keyboard and brass arranger for Stereolab), Harry Beckett (venerable Brit-Jazz trumpeter), Pat Thomas (wild man of piano and cheap electronics), John Edwards (omni-present double bassist), Sharon Gal (vocalist with No Wave noise trio Voltage), Rob Mills, Ashleigh Marsh, Nick Doyne Ditmas and ...er..Chris Cornetto. There's also digital projections by Scopac (who's really known as Rob Flint and is a member of SE London based audio visual ensemble Ticklish).

I happen to know this lot have been practicing hard- so it won't just be an improv/noise explosion but possibly more along the lines of Charles Hayward's fondly remembered "Accidents and Emergencies" interventions.

7.30 - 10.30 PM,
Lecture Hall,
Wilson Road SE5
Tickets £5/£3.50 concessions.

as a curious side note- the organiser of this event is Martyn Simpson who works at the college. Some 22 years earlier, and 250 miles North, Martyn was the lead guitarist in my indie post-punk band "The Euphoria Case"....

On the team

Morning all! Just to announce that I'm now proud to be a member of the Transpontine team. I'm Richard, and I live in Hither Green, so I guess I'll be covering stuff around the Eastern End of the Transpontine remit.

One thing to start me off though. Meridian Line Markers. I'm fascinated by these things- there's one in the tunnel at Hither Green railway station, and one in a paving stone on Lee High Road- both of which seem fairly arbitrary. Are there any other less obvious ones? (like not in Greenwich Park...)

Bride of Frankenstein - born in Lewisham

At Transpontine we have uncovered various South London monster connections, incuding most recently Shaun of the Dead.

Thanks to Captain Normal, we can now reveal that Elsa Lanchester, who played both Mary Shelley and the Bride of Frankenstein in the 1935 film of the same name, was born Elizabeth Sullivan in 1902 at 48 Farley Road, Lewisham. She came from an interesting background - her parents, James Sullivan and Edith Lanchester 'were militant socialists, pacifists, and vegetarians who caused a scandal when, true to their free love beliefs, they decided to live together in 1895 without marrying. Edith's family was so outraged that they kidnapped her in collusion with a psychiatrist who committed her to a lunatic asylum. Her cause was taken up by fellow members of the Social Democratic Federation (she had been secretary to Eleanor Marx) and her release was secured when she was found not to be insane'. Elsa Lanchester maried Charles Laughton and moved to Hollywood. She died in 1986.

Dracula has been seen locally in various guises, with Gary Oldman (who played the Count in Bram Stoker's Dracula) born in New Cross, and parts of Interview with a Vampire filmed at St Pauls Church in Deptford. Bela Lugosi himself played Dracula at The Hippodrome, Lewisham in May 1951. We have also heard that the old library building in Lewisham Way (now the Arthouse) was used in one Dracula film, but we don't know which one - any ideas?

Thomas-a-Becket - No room at the inn?

Walking up the Old Kent Road today I noticed that another famous London pub is no more. The Thomas-a-Becket (on the corner of Albany Road near Tesco's) is now occupied by the office of a 'Property Consultant' - seemingly a landlord - with an art gallery upstairs. The site has been a place of refreshment for hundreds of years - Chaucer refers to pilgrims to Becket's shrine in Canterbury stopping off at St Thomas a Watering for a rest. This refers to the crossing of a stream near where the pub stands. In the past few years it has hosted a restaurant and bar, but no more refreshments there for the time being.

The building has a number of iconic connections. In the early 1970s, David Bowie rehearsed on the 2nd floor with the prototype 'Spiders From Mars', while James Fox trained in the first floor boxing gym for his part in Performance. Henry Cooper trained there and bizarrely Dave Prowse (the original Darth Vader) is selling photos of him meeting Muhammed Ali there. John Martyn also did a photoshoot there. Way back in 1888, a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders was arrested after 'leaving a shiny black bag at the Thomas a Becket public house' containing 'a very sharp dagger, a clasp knife, two pairs of very long and vary curious looking scissors, and two preservers'.

We can only hope that the building itself will survive, unlike the recently demolished Gin Palace nearby.

Deptford Fun City - back on the streets

'Deptford Fun City: a ramble through the music and history of New Cross and Deptford' is back in stock at Morph Music. 64 pages of sonic and social history for only £2.50. Morphs is in the basement of Moonbow Jakes cafe, 275 New Cross Road (tel. 0208 691 9977). You can also order the pamphlet online at Past Tense Publications.

Happy Birthday Greenwich Pirate

Friday night was the first birthday party for Greenwich Pirate zine. The Montague Arms in New Cross was packed out. Free Repeater were a bit too epic indie for my tastes, but Snow White were a long fringed noise riot, reminding me at times of Sonic Youth in some of their thrashier moments.

You can read more about the Pirate crew in this recent interview in the South London Press.

Kidstock

Yesterday's official re-opening of Telegraph Hill Park in New Cross included a 'Kidstock' showcase for local bands graduating from the Brockley-based Felix's School of Rock. The idea is that kids are taught to play together and then form bands to play a gig at the end. So we were treated to early and pre-teen bands like Mint, Van and The Growth Spurtz bashing out cover versions of Green Day, Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine, as well as some of their own songs. It was cool but also slightly unsettling - can 9 year olds really be so alienated to sing 'Teen Spirit' with deadpan conviction or write a song called 'You're born, you live, you die?'. Apparently so.

Maxi and Mistri

'Why you are WRONG about Maxi Priest' is an interesting post over at Uncarved, where Jon Eden attempts to reclaim the only reggae star named after Max Bygraves from the charge of being just a diluted crossover sell-out. Maxi Priest was born in Lewisham and started out with south-east Lewisham's Saxon Studio International sound system. He went to the now closed Roger Manwood Secondary School in Brockley Rise, as did the late Arsenal and Leeds player David Rocastle (and presumably Ian Wright too as Jon says he went to same school as Maxi).

Over the years Saxon has functioned as a finishing school for emerging reggae talent - as well as Maxi, Smiley Culture, Papa Levi, Tippa Irie and DJ Mistri all performed with them. The latter, famed for a thousand car stickers, 'was born in St Giles Hospital and raised in Camberwell & Deptford, South London... His first public experience as a disc-jockey started with Saxon Sound System at the age of 17... Mistri studied drama & dance at Goldsmiths University, and ballet, jazz and contemporary dance at Laban' (in New Cross).

Maxi Priest played on Jamaica Unlimited's 'Rise Up', recorded to support the Reggae Boyz Jamaica team in the 1998 World Cup. There's an interesting article discussing this whole phenomenon, 'Lions, Black Skins and Reggae Gyals' on the Goldsmiths site.

Help required for local festival

Help is required for some of the nights of the Brockley Max festival, which is in full-cry at present, check out the me at or Moira (the grande-fromage of the festival).

The line-up for the closing night is:

Comedienne Charmain Hughes has been shocking, charming and winning audiences with visual puns and verbal slapstick. Mixing sharp observation with joyful flights of fancy of surrealism - this is comedy with heart.Chris Lynam the infamous iconoclastic clown and unstoppable titan of humour with the multi-faceted operatic diva Kate McKenzie in Eric The Fred.

SOAN ALONE Martin Soan, Time Out comedy award winner 1991, reveals characters from history, literature, the world of the unknown and some that are not known at all, places, objects and an array of various animals. Sometimes it’s surreal, sometimes it’s just silly; colour, mood and music all coming together at an alarming rate to leave you feeling “What’s coming next?”.

Also Ska Daddy – “Who’s the Daddy”, a dynamic mix of imaginative retakes of classic ska standards with contemporary material - to end the festival with as bang. Also raffle prize draw. (advance tickets from Moonbow Jakes and Toad’s Mouth Too)

Joining in is fun and rewarding and you could make friends.

Magic, Mystery & Hidden History

The South East London Folklore Society have put on a program of talks on Magic, Mystery and Hidden History for the Brockley Max Festival. Those taking part either live in or around Brockley or have something to say about this part of south-east London. This set of talks will run from 3pm to 7.30pm on Saturday June 11th at the Brockley Jack Theatre, above the Brockley Jack pub, Brockley Road, Brockley, SE4 2DH.

A map can be found here, directions are at the bottom of the page.

Magic Mystery and Hidden History is also part of the excellent festival of mapping YOUR ARE HERE but why?

The event is free. The running order below is, like all things, subject to change. Please contact SELFS with any questions or to reserve yourself a place.

3.00pm: Doors Open

3.10: Alex Hodson: Down With the Fences: The Battles against the Enclosure of Sydenham Common and One Tree Hill.
Local people have a 400 year history of fighting to preserve open space against development and destruction. Some they lost... but some they won!

3.30: Neil Gordon-Orr: Brockley Footpath - an ancient track-way?
South-east London Historian Neil Gordon-Orr traces a possible sacred path to and through Brockley.

4.00: Break

4.15: Scott Wood: Ghosts and Monsters of Brockley and Surrounds.
SELFS organiser combines two of his favourite things in a talk on supernatural beasties in south-east London.

4.35: Steve Wilson: The Brockley Thing.
In the mid 1920s The Woodcraft Folk broke away from the Kibbo Kift, Britain's first modern working class pagan group - over "The Brockley Thing". What was this thing? What sort of thing was it?

5.10: Break

5.30: Chris Woods: Merriton and Brockley - The town in the marsh and the clearing in the wood.
A possible prehistory of the landscape of Brockley and Deptford Bridge from the Iron age to the Middle ages, "common greene" to Brockley Common.

6.00: Andy Worthington: The Battle of the Beanfield.
The local author of “Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion” remembers, twenty years on, the events of the Battle of the Beanfield, the bloody end of the Stonehenge Free Festival.

6.30: Break

6.45: Kate Waterfield: Runa Megin.
Kate Waterfield discusses and performs pieces from the Runa Megin; an evocative exploration of the musical possibilities of ancient runes is rich with echoes of an Eastern European folk heritage and an experimental "extended technique" vocal approach.

A "musical delight to the ears" says Pentagram Magazine and who am I to argue?

The Brockley Jack is served by Brockley Station, Honor Oak Park Station and Crofton Park Station.

From Honor Oak Park Station turn left and walk to end of the road. Turn left at the traffic lights into Brockley Road. The theatre is situated 500 yards on your left. (Approx 10 minutes walk).

From Crofton Park Station turn left out of the station, then cross the road at the pedestrian crossing. The Jack is 200 yards on your right. (Approx 2 minutes walk).

Buses: 171, 172, 122 and P4 (stop in front of the theatre).

Battle of the Beanfield

Next Tuesday (7th June 2005), South London Radical History Group will be looking back 20 years to the infamous 'Battle of the Beanfield'. Brockley writer Andy Worthington, author of 'Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion', will be talking about this infamous police riot when the state was mobilised to put a stop to the Stonehenge Free Festival, which a year earlier had attracted thousands of people. A film of the events, 'Operation Solstice', will also be shown.

It all takes place at the the Pullens Centre, 184 Crampton St Walworth SE17,
7.30pm, Admission Free. Its only 5 minutes from the Elephant and Castle (see map here

This event is part of the YOU ARE HERE BUT WHY? Free Festival of Mapping