'Dooneen' by Keith Ridgway - from Burgess Park to revolutionary Dublin

I loved Keith Ridgway's novel Dooneen, set in an alternative present version of Dublin where housing struggles are intensifying towards some kind of uprising. The story actually starts though in Southwark with two men walking from the River Thames (including a drink at the Angel in Rotherhithe), through Southwark Park and on to their home in Havil Street SE5. The next day the lovers are separated when one of them enters a mysterious portal in Burgess Park and steps out into Blessington Street Basin park in Dublin. There are some other understated fantastical elements, and some comical ones,  but this is also a highly believable imagining of revolutionary escalation and state repression, told through a tenderly-drawn cast of characters and mostly from the point of view of a writer never quite understanding what he is caught up in.

It's difficult to write with these kind of themes without coming across as didactic or hectoring, Ridgway pulls it off though he does put some great rants in the mouths of some of his characters:

'Feeling the cold. Feeling the damp. Paying the rent. Tramping home in the rain from Peckham to the Liberties, from Makoko to the Five Lamps, from Paraisópolis to Hardwicke Street, isn't everything ridiculous when you put it next to everything else? And of course we have voted. Of course we have. Some of us have even stood. And campaigned and petitioned and lobbied and leaned in and fell over. We have withdrawn our labour. We have withheld our rent. We have picketed and protested. We have asked politely and impolitely. The letters we've written! We have been eloquent and we have been blunt. Loud and quiet. We've had a word. And we've taken to the streets. And the only fucking thing we've got in return is older. Older and colder and poorer and deader. And what would they have us do now? I can tell you what. Shuffle along the cliff edge to the point of no return and fall to our deaths so they can scold our corpses for not being careful, for not watching where we were going, for not saving, for not investing, for not getting on the ladder, for not thinking ahead, for not being born in the right place, for not getting the right sort of job, for letting a foreigner move in next door, for not understanding how complicated it is, for being idealistic, for being juvenile, for being utopian, for being anything really, for being, just for being'.

The title references the folk song which I got to know through Christy Moore and Planxty, 'the Cliffs of Dooneen', a song from the perspective of somebody leaving and bidding farewell not just to the landscape but 'to all the fine people I'm leaving behind'. There are so many such songs of exile and emigration ('Spancil Hill', also recorded by Christy, being another example), infused with a deep longing for far off places that assume a hazy, visionary quality from a distance of time and place. A similar longing infuses this novel, for Dublin, for the cliffs of the West of Ireland, but also for South London with the narrator  dreaming of being back in Havil Street with his lover.  

There aren't too many South London references after that opening chapter, though I note that this novel is published by the fine Fitzcarraldo Editions as one of their iconic blue literary volumes. The publisher is now based in the Bussey building at 133 Rye Lane in Peckham having previously had its office in Deptford at  8-12 Creekside London.

My copy with its Lala bookshop bookmark

Beer and coffee latest: ex-White Hart opening in New Cross, new coffee shop by Nunhead station and much more

As always lots going on in the SE London beer and coffee zone. 

Best news is that a new pub is set to open shortly on the site of the former White Hart in New Cross Gate. The Broken Wheel, as it will be named, will occupy the iconic junction of New Cross Road and Queens Road, a place where there really should be a pub. The White Hart was there for over 170 years, it had its ups and downs but in its most recent incarnation was doing really well with great Sunday lunches including a fine Irish music session. Unfortunately it closed in the Covid period and has been empty since. In the mean time rooms above the pub have been converted to flats which may put some limits on noise and late hours, but hopefully not hamper the pub's success (see more about the pub's history at this earlier post).

work underway at the Broken Wheel (ex White Hart), photo from their insta @thebrokenwheelpub

Not far away the famous Montague Arms is up for let but no sign of a tenant as yet. Like the White Hart the pub closed during the pandemic and at one time looked likely to be demolished. Instead the upstairs has been converted to flats leaving the space downstairs refurbished but smaller. The famous stage is long gone (more about the Monty here), but scope for a good neighbourhood bar. See previous posts about history of this place.

Montague Arms - done up but still empty

A new coffee shop is set to open by Nunhead station soon. I know it sometimes feels like there's coffee shops everywhere but there actually isn't one here for caffeine-hungry commuters and other locals at this end (though there is Goodcup of course by Nunhead Green).  Servesmiths, which runs two shops in Catford, is coming to the site of the former Tony's barber shop at 52 Gibbon Road (next to Silver Fish Chinese takeaway).

Site of new Servesmiths coffee shop by Nunhead station (building in middle to left of Silver Fish)

Hopefully some of these places will become community hubs with space for music and meetings, as happens with many of our existing bars and cafes. It's been amazing for instance seeing the Old Nun's Head become a queer destination pub, and so many people enjoying the music and the craic at Skehans. 

Here's a few more examples from next week:

Welsh electronic duo Overmono are celebrating the launch of their new album Pure Devotion by running a pub for the day, The Two Dogs, in Deptford on Friday 7 August. Actually judging by the address they are actually doing this at the famous Dog and Bell pub in Prince Street SE8.

Bar D4100 (Dinner for One Hundred) are having a party on the 8th August at their Nunhead bar. The pizza people started out at the Hill Station Cafe SE14  (actually I think they started out in a family garden even before) and are very much rooted in the New Cross/Nunhead community. Locally based singer Jessie Ware recently declared them to be the best pizza on London in an interview with Topjaw (she also name checked Eat Vietnam in Deptford)

Joyce in Brockley are hosting another Brockley Queer FLINTA social on 11 August. If you haven't been keeping up with your acronyms that's 'Female, Lesbian, Intersex, Non-binary, Trans, and Agender'.