Words + Images

After work

2012-02-14T15:06:00.000Z

It was ‘sod’slaw’

that’s all

rainduring afternoon light continuing over into evening dark falling heavier

a shiftchange, a period of grace.

Ebb &flow

alongCamden High Street, wet

peoplescurrying, some under cover, some surrender many walk heads down a few laugh

carslorries buses bikes vans in slow motion – steam.

Raindropdance

Tyresquelch

Neonbounce

Tarmacreflecting this drenched city

A man sat

on acorner seat in the Buck’s Head

watchinglights change those who wait scramble early off kerb run, some under umbrellas.

Hewould know by the end of the week if he still

had a job.From

day tonight went quickly & the pub’s rosy glow grew proportionally

todwindling traffic. A woman wrote her name backwards in window condensation on a bus

coughing on red. She left

on thegreen.

Herecalled for a moment the cloying dampness of wet clothes

he turnedtowards the bar filling cosy dry saw a sleeping ginger cat satiated &comfortable.

Somecame for shelter some regular.

Markettraders talk trade loss & past better times; a thin man in tight blackjeans,

a blackleather bomber jacket & long wet hair waits for Dingwells; a local dealerin disguise scans the room from inside his hood; a young clothes shop worker indark blue suede high-heeled ankle boots conspires with her friend; the regularbarmaid constructs a text on her mobile; lovers lean across wide pine table,white wine in a cooler fingertips touching while an old man rolls a cigarettelooking for some cover outside away from the Pizza stall.

On histable

anunopened book phone small bowl of nuts unfinished pint of ale a free paper

a fewempty glasses he sinks a bit lower

&contemplates the possible end of dreams & losing this part of London

with noreason

totravel. He opens his wallet two tens a twenty & crumpled five. Enough.

He amblestowards Inverness Street past the Electric Ballroom rain stops

& adecision is taken. He walks lighter.

The bluenotes arrive before he does.

Above the Douro

2012-02-11T09:52:00.000Z

My backbends under a coarse hemp sack

of sourblack grapes: already they begin to ferment.

My headfalls forward towards the slope: a dust

shufflein leather sandals across the plates of history

crackingunder the load carried to the barrels below

woodencased, rimed in iron, drawn and left years while

my lifepasses. Along the curved terrace above the Douro

I watchshadows and light: a signal, a possible call

a wave.Her arms are full and the sun is high.

We arebroken on the cask – air scurries, swirls, fills

where weonce stood: ruby wine lodged below in cold cellars

as yearsescalate, darkly fortified – and the sacks

growheavier, the walls dryer, lizards

scamperin the cracks. Accumulated flesh, blood

and timedispersed into the earth as we make

andremake the slopes until only mountains remain

withoutmemory. High on the sloping plantation burning wood

smokedrifts along manicured rows, not a sign of passing

but newgrowth, enough for my body to

work theschist another day.

More Walthamstow after dark

2011-12-14T09:05:00.001Z

Can't sleep. Not even a siren splits the silence of the ticking clock, books can only whisper narratives of time passing. There's just me in this box disconnected in space.

Walthamstow after dark

2011-10-02T08:28:00.000Z

The merciless drone of the police helicopter slicing the warm silent darkness with blades of authority. Bring it down so I can sleep.

Jessica and Felix: welcome to the world.

2011-08-05T08:50:00.001Z

I like free jazz

2011-03-02T16:20:00.004Z

plate glass doors on rusty hinges swinging in the wind

tambourine shaken by a hand full of nuts & bolts

woman on trampoline playing baritone

flamenco dancer on a yellow feather duvet

small crabs chasing an ebbing wave – scampering – digging in

internal combustion on amber revving waiting green

twelve lane

highway of living moments

a short sharp whistle

for empty last train into Gothic railway cathedral

echoing

rim shoots in a basement full

of dreams & discarded

afterthoughts

snow falling silent on still city rooftops

frost on the glass melts in morning cold sun while moon lingers

& a black haired woman

enters with a clap of thunder & leaves

before a smile can find lips moist

grey days

here on the kerbside

a church aisle full of running spiders

a gymnasium full of bouncing golf balls

a soapy bowl full of tea spoons

a hi-hat full of time

I like free jazz

abstract democratic collective

maintaining constructed philosophies of chance, luck, orchestrated

with precision discourse

together

& the drummer is wind-surfing among the stars

Writing the line

2010-09-23T16:21:00.006Z

A line walking over oyster shells. Splinters and blood, between toes, cracking, unable to hang around until shells finally become sand; where eventually castles crumble: after time to be scurried over by hermit crabs and whipped by weed – washed flat twice a day, an expanse of dirty yellow and debris: foam backed. Maybe the drunk will topple into the space his guttural proclamations have created, breaking glass over subtle and twisted rusting iron. Here the city is never silent. Bubble of conversations rising, falling, loud and soft, constant murmuring, begun never ending, banking and breaking against meaningless pop music and flat-screened bump and grind. Mind numbed. Across this crowded space, low light, the woman waits to leave, reddened lips around yellow plastic straw drawing remains of green liquid into a mouth without surprise or commitment, eyes on distant door and returning companions, she waits without spinning any yarn, just the sometime glare across the room, rebounding from wall to wall. I notice her sandals with a wedged heels, her toes painted dark mauve. Her skin turning bright pink under her foot, foot moving in rhythm with piped bass line and rapid snare drum, awash with orange streetlights through wooden blinds, below the rough table full of empty glasses and unfoldable crisp packets. The voice can lull the troubled mind, this in tune, the tune in time, life ebbing, time of life: it can also tear through skin, scraping against the bone, splinter, fragmenting. The tungsten glare catches passing cars on watered tarmac, the concrete outside persistently soaked, rain visible invisible visible invisible in headlights. Gravel thrown at gossamer.

Introduction to E17 Art Trail 2010

2010-06-09T11:39:00.007Z

Welcome to the town of Walthamstow, one part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest, but until 1965 a town in South East Essex. Its county cricket grounds were at Chelmsford, Ilford and Leyton. Its football team was Walthamstow Avenue, its ground tucked away off Green Pond Lane, where you could stand on a Saturday afternoon amongst discarded Percy Dalton peanut shells and watch your team lose again, and be berated by the man watching from the row behind for swearing in front of his wife.

Walthamstow town lies between the marshlands of the Lea Valley and the Hornbeam, Oak, Ash and Beech of Epping Forest – a twenty minute walk at most, from any part of the town: well, maybe a short train ride from St James' or bus from Blackhorse Road. For most of its history Walthamstow was a collection of numerous villages and hamlets: Chapel End, Higham Hill, Clay Street, Whipps Cross, Wood Street, Marsh Street, Hale End, North End and the highest village with its Twelfth century church of St Mary's: Church End. They huddled together on hillsides to the north east of London, overlooking both the growing city and dwindling Forest. It is said that on a clear day you could see to South Mimms in Hertfordshire. John Keats, while living up in Highgate, would walk on Sunday mornings down into the Lea Valley and up to lunch with his sister off Marsh Street (now the High Street). You could probably watch his progress from the corner of Aubrey and Milton Roads.

Walthamstow was settled a long time ago. There is a rumour that Boudicca, who had camped with her army between Walthamstow and Epping at Copped Hill, passed across the Lea on her way to meet the Romans. If it had been built, maybe her warriors would have rested at the Cook's Ferry Inn. In a large Tudor mansion on Copped Hill the premier of A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed in 1599 for a private wedding: a magnificent Georgian mansion, known as Copped Hall, replaced the Tudor buildings, and was first imagined by a Walthamstow lawyer and built by local artisans, is now being lovingly restored by a later generation of building workers. You can see it from the M25.

Remains of a Roman bath were found in Vallentin Road when the Victorian drains were laid.

There is reference to the villages of Walthamstow as 'a place of welcome' or 'Wilcumestou' in the eleventh century. And that it is well named, even up until the present. Although it's never wise to be too sentimental about a town on the edge of a city.

There were active branches of the Chartists both here and in Woodford during the 1830s led by a radical artisan wood engraver : William James Linton. The last common lands were enclosed in 1851, and then the railway came to change our home town for ever. It rapidly became a working class suburb with commuters into the city and its own industries, mainly furniture and engineering. Part garden enriched haven and part wild (east) town, Walthamstow became the place we know and love today.

In 1834 the great designer, poet, writer and socialist William Morris was born in Elm House, a typical Nineteenth century town house standing alone in 3 acres of wooded land, along Clay Street, now Forest Road. The William Morris Gallery opened in 1951, given over to his work and others from the Arts & Crafts movement, is in Lloyd Park. His socialist influence imbued the early labour movement and signs of his presence pepper the town. The idea and realisation of the gallery was dreamed up by three unsung modernist artists: Frank Brangwyn, Arthur Mackmurdo and Walter Spradbery. A major part of the Gallery was a gift by Brangwyn, who had served part of his apprenticeship with Morris & Co.

Walter Spradbery, known best for his wonderful posters for London Transport advertising excursions to Epping Forest in the 1920s and 1930s, was born here, and lived close by all his life. He studied at Walthamstow School of Art, and for fifty years taught art at the Educational Settlement in Greenleaf Road helping to empower generations of local working people. And for 65 years he was the dynamic centre of the Essex Arts Club, which had developed out of a sketch club set up by tutors and students at Walthamstow School of Art in 1899.

Peter Blake taught for a time at Walthamstow School of Art, teaching Ian Dury to paint, but not to sing, this probably came from the public bar at the Bell, a favourite watering place for many art students and would be four-piece rock bands over the years. In the mid 1980s a group of ex-students of Peter Blake, calling themselves 'At the Connaught', tried hard to establish an art centre in the old Town Hall, which became Connaught Hospital, in Orford Road but failed. Council take note we are still demanding our arts centre.

So welcome to Walthamstow. Sometimes you can feel that you are on the edge of the rural and in the middle of the urban: a strange mix that can get you hooked and you find yourself staying, maybe making art like so many before, maybe following the E17 Arts Trail.

Roger Huddle June 2010

2010-04-28T20:05:00.003Z

Red Saunders and myself (the short guy) at Radical Wallpaper mechandise travel van 1979. Click to enlarge. Picture: Syd Shelton

Under Heavy Manners

2010-04-22T10:45:00.017Z

we came together moved by music
we came together with one heart beat against the Nazi,
feet tapping out a different tune. You know
we came together. Rhyme in urgent time
to beating drums from the black and the white
where two sevens clash we stood up to fight
2tone calling from the sound system stacks, a rhythmic dub attack
on city streets against crisis rampant:
no jobs no fun no future.
National Front taking up the slack, feeding off despair
of the powerless and despondent.
Labour had signed the contract
workers got sacked
hopes and dreams got hijacked.
National Front blaming the black, feeding on despair
the Nazi Front was at the door
blood on their hands, concentration camps behind their eyes
desiring burning flesh
to make right their hatred of the other
to quench their fear of the future.

we came together, one love, one struggle
finding unity on the dance floor
reggae and punk tearing loose
cracking taboos and breaking rules
rockin’ against racism and their dirty rotten system
rockin’ on the bass line, marching to the frontline
human voice raised in anger and joy
politics and muscle and rhythm drove the Nazis down
under heavy manners
all you tribal dancers keep true to your part
keep the real
keep the music in your heart
all you cultural warriors step forward
and as Funkadelic say:
‘Here we are getting’ down on what we believe in
one nation under a groove (feet don’t fail me now) to dance away, dance away
all of our restrictions’.

but that was then, what we gonna do now?

Masters of rhyme

2010-04-06T11:23:00.011Z

The big man pulled down his cap, the brim broken, he wound the long woolen scarf higher against the bitter wind, drew his long overcoat around his body with one hand, and inhaled from a hastily made cigarette – the exhaled smoke billowing into the air. He sheltered inside one arch of the Smolny Institute. He watched this city with a poet’s eye and a smile of memory. It was still dark, but dawn approached on the fifth day. Days of running, wherever they took him, no wonder he was exhausted. Again streets were awash with the human tide that ebbed and flowed through the centre of this capital city, nearly European, of over two million. A city built across islands, rivers, canals and ice. To look at it from the air it seemed to be breaking up and floating out into the Gulf of Finland. It was late February, the snow had fallen steadily over the past month, compacted and frozen hard – thousands of workman’s’ boots had trampled it down on the long, wide main avenues, crisscrossed with tram cables and tram rails.
Ice blocks, broken by ships tonnage, floated motionless on the river; snowdrifts had gathered and stayed in parks, in corners, on building ledges, along the branches of trees in winter, in alleyways and shop doorways. The canals were frozen, but no child was skating. In yesterday’s fighting spears of ice had joined stones and the occasional hammer as weapons against police truncheon and rifle. But the strongest weapon remained the numbers flowing out of the Putilov works, out of the Vyborg District, across the river, down into the heart of Petrograd.
He listened for the metal ring of horses’ hooves striking cobbles, then the echo that ricochets off silent stone. Although the Cossacks remained on the streets, but this time it was as if, with a wink and a nod, they had decided to make their own protest, and let the crowds flow between and around the legs of their horses.
He sighed then laughed, looking up to a clearing sky. Snow slowly fell through the orange glow of a gas lamp, its light falling on his ragged features. The crack of revolver fire came from the direction of the Imperial Palace. He would have to be on the move again. He took another deep draft of tobacco. The war had brought bread lines and widows he thought – but now out of the blue, a bolt from history, a prophecy fulfilled – the return of revolution. He cried out loud:

I spit on the fact

that neither Homer or Ovid

invented characters like us,

pot-marked with soot.

I know

the sun would dim, on seeing

the gold fields of our souls!

Sinews and muscles are surer than prayers.

Must we implore the charity of time!

We —

each one of us —

hold in our fists

the driving belts of the worlds! [1]

He set off towards the continuing gunfire, merging naturally with the people going towards the Nevsky. He was impatient, his hat flew off, over the heads of the crowds – it seemed to rise on their united breath, chanting up into the morning cold – turning and turning until lost. He could only laugh, his booming shout that many would come to recognize and love in the next few years.
A new chant had joined ‘down with the war’ and ‘give us bread’, – a chant for soviets – the Soviet returned like a ghost from 1905 – held fast in the collective memory. He was alive now, moving through the gathering mass of women and men, quicker towards the future, he hugged and shook anyone in his path, they were all aquiver, utopia and hope flowed through them all – Mayakovsky included.

The city was bursting with excitement.

Near the Nevsky Prospect he ran into his old comrade Alexander, carrying bundles of the first issue of Izvestya, the paper of the Petrograd Soviet, still wet from the press. Mayakovsky now bareheaded, his overcoat unbuttoned and flapping like bats wings, lifted Alexander from the ground, kissed his face all over, shouted something, called out to someone, waved his arms:
– Here! Here! Newspapers!
Alexander felt like a tree before a storm.
The sound of more shooting was heard from towards the railway station. Mayakovsky rushed in that direction.
– Where are you going?
– Why, they’re shooting over there! He shouted in ecstasy.
– But you're not armed!
– I've been running all night to where the shooting is.
– What for?
– I don’t know! Let’s run!

He snatched a bundle of newspapers from Alexander’s hands and waving them like a flag ran in the direction of the shooting. [2]

Citizens!

This is the first day of the workers’ deluge.

We come

to the aid of the muddled-up world.

Let crowds rock the skies with their stamp and yelling!

Let the anger of navies by sirens be snarled! [3]

The workers never thought of going back to the factories. Yesterday’s shootings and failures had not discouraged the masses. Pouring through the streets, colliding with the enemy, pulling at the arms of soldiers, crawling under horses’ bellies, attacking, scattering, leaving their dead at the cross roads, grabbing a few firearms, spreading the news, catching at rumours, the insurrectionary mass becomes a collective entity with numberless eyes, ears and antennae. [4]

[1] from Mayakovsky: A Cloud in Trousers

[2] The Life of Mayakovsky, Viktor Woroszylski, page 174

[3] from Mayakovsky: Revolution (a poet’s chronicle) 1917

[4] History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, pp137

Zen in the afternoon

2010-04-06T09:49:00.004Z

Mid afternoon in a basement bar just off Denmark Street. In the background Monk is halfway through Ruby My Dear, the 1957 recording with Coltrane on tenor. Just loud enough to set your feet tapping, head bopping. Behind the bar Abigail looks into space while she polishes a whiskey glass dreaming her own dreams. There are two men in the dive. One regular nods, either asleep or with Monk, over by the cigarette machine. He drops in lunchtime for a quick one most days. The other man is seated up at the bar, a large red wine rests untouched before him. He is dressed like a painter, easel not house: archetypical Hornsey 1968 – blue jean jacket washed almost grey, fading blue baggy boiler trousers over paint-splattered black boots. His hair is pulled back into a ponytail, long and grey. At his feet, resting against the high stall is a battered dark brown portfolio, with the black gaffa tape around the edges – falling apart. Blobs of paint, in various colours, and exhibition gallery stickers from most European capitals, cover the surface, holding it together. On the counter, next to the register, a 1950’s ornate lamp, orange shade with gold tassels, this, and beams of sunlight, entering through gaps in the closed blinds is all the illumination there is, except for an exit sign. Day is not welcome here. In the sunrays dust hovers, unsure whether to chance the carpet, sticky under foot from spilt beer, dried puke and chewing gum. It was once red and yellow.

The door opens and shuts letting in a blast of heat, traffic noise and some windswept bookie’s tickets from the shop next door. Nobody enters. Abigail shrugs and returns to her dreams. Monk begins the ragged opening of Nutty, this time with Johnny Griffin on tenor and Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass. Through the rays of light dancing on the stained carpet comes a small Yorkshire terrier, going grey around the mouth. It sniffs around seat cushions, looks sadly at Abigail who has stopped polishing and is watching, then waddles towards the man at the bar. It stops, cocks its leg against the portfolio, pisses, leaves a puddle below the chair. The dog walks across the newly sprung dance floor and leaves by the emergency exit. Abigail’s mouth drops open: Did you see? She half stammers to no one in particular, looking to where the terrier was. How did it do that? She turns to the man at the bar and falls silent. His eyes full of unfinished paintings.

On the river

2010-04-06T09:31:00.003Z

It flew on the surface

of the Duro, a mirror

before the actual, it flew

maybe in slow motion

large wings agitated

air as silent as still water.

To glide, hunt, hover

alert for any movement

in our wake, a heartbeat

before banking above the boat

to shore becoming a blur

against rising slate, blue grey to blue green.

Gone in a whisper

a likeness remaining, breaking

the river’s edge.

The eagle

passing me by so close

I could almost call

her name.

A shot in the dark

2010-04-04T12:14:00.001Z

The car turned its lights off as it turned into the driveway. It simply disappeared. The low rhyme of the engine remained, plus tyres on grit, crunching through the dark, intensified by the huge plain trees on either side. Realigning himself after the sudden blindness, he brought his eye back to the target, focusing now on sound, following the swish of rubber on stone, with no choice he had to trust his ears: one shot only, when he was sure he pulled the trigger, an almost silent crack of glass. The air carrying the roaring engine into the night, for just a moment, before the stall.

A night in a bar

2010-04-04T10:29:00.001Z

Writing a complicated line from there to here. A line walking over shells. Splinters and blood, between toes, cracking, unable to hang around until shells become sand – where castles crumble: later scurried over by hermit crabs and whipped by weed – washed flat twice a day, an expanse of dirty yellow and debris: foam backed. Maybe the drunk will topple into the space his rasping voice has created, breaking glass over subtle and twisted rusting iron. Here the city is never silent. Bubble of conversations rising, falling, loud and soft, constant murmuring, begun never ending, banking and breaking against meaningless pop music and flat-screened bump and grind. Mind numbed. Across this small-darkened space, low light the woman waits to leave, lips around yellow plastic straw drawing remains of concocted liquid into a mouth without surprise or succour, eyes on distant door and returning companions, she waits without spinning any yarn, just the sometime glare across the room, rebounding from wall to wall. I notice her sandals with a wedge heel, her toes painted rubine red. Ebony skin. Turning pink at the heel, foot moving in rhythm with piped musak, awash with orange streetlights through wooden blinds, below the rough table full of empty glasses and unfoldable crisp packets. The tungsten glare catches passing cars on watered asphalt, the concrete outside persistently soaked, rain visible invisible visible invisible in headlights. The voice can lull the troubled mind, this in tune, the tune in time with life ebbing, a time of life: it can also tear through skin, scraping against the bone, splinter, fragments. Gravel thrown at gossamer.

Downtown Lisbon

2008-08-01T16:29:00.002Z

Around this city,
buildings climb hillsides, balancing
uneven, unequal echoing
pink grey white and broken stone. Red roofs
fan from the castle. Occasional
walnut and olive and vine
like hyphenation, or hinged signs amongst
the cluttered passageways
where washing hangs limp waiting
for a drying wind off the sea.

Huddled together here with memory
and desire, where perspectives collapse
flat against lived experience, drawn
into a labyrinth of repeating sad
songs. Where centuries give me a sense
of living, here where I hobble up
a thousand steps worn down by
walking ghosts, where houses
overlook their history with the same eyes
that see the present.

Old yellow trams clatter through wide
streets: you take the elevator to rise
to another level, looking down to where
the city tumbles to the waters edge
and blue meets blue and up where
you find lifelines scurrying among battered
cobblestones, iron clad balconies
lemon trees in courtyards and narrow
bars where you stand to drink a small coffee
and lick custard up onto your tongue.

On the corner of a square we sip
cherry brandy with others under the towering pillar
of some king, a monument to an explorer
from the golden age. Gothic railway stations
with guardian angels watch the beggars
carry out their daily ritual, and the aroma
of grilled sardines pulls out the past;
singing with a million others May first 1974
while soldiers dropped red carnations
from helicopters and revolution was in the air.

Just a yellow rose

2008-06-20T17:07:00.007Z

Got this rose from Ruby Road Stables. So glad it's the colour they said it would be. Thanks LeRoy.

Streets + decay

2008-06-20T15:52:00.003Z

Signs of decay are almost everywhere now. The moribund and increasingly distant Borough council, in their craze to let the market rip though all our lives, duck and dive, dodge issues, blame everyone and sell-off education along with refuse collection. You hardly see a road sweeper any more, let alone mad drivers crouching behind the wheel of the electric whirling sweeper bearing down on you like some machine from the Doctor's Tardis. Around here last autumns leaf fall slowly turns to dust in kerbs, blown against walls, flecks scattered among the weeds and grasses pushing up through concrete. Cans, packets, dumped junk mail, are joined by recycling left behinds that fell from the box on the way to the truck, all blown into ad-hoc heaps of crap we walk through each day.

The decay of this outer city suburb has been painful and long winded. About a quarter of a century in my reckoning. After the defeat of the Miners in '85, quickly followed by the collapse of London and Liverpool Councils in the face of cuts packages flowing unhindered from Thatcher's war wagon, Labour Council's began to loose any semblance of being social. Civic duty was waving the gold chain of office at corporate functions, courting cheap speculators dressed up as big business. First they sold council housing, then cut social services. They decentralised into neighbourhood offices so they could shed more jobs and we wouldn't spot the loss of meals on wheels. Now you have to go through a means test to be able to buy a small plate of goo from some privatised firm looking for a profit amongst the old. Then sold the neighbourhood offices and re-centralised, cutting a few limbs on the way. They sold education to an arms manufacturer — deversifying into our children's youth. All meeting halls have gone and all the small community groups who used to meet in them. And then a crime against us all — they pulped the majority of the library achive — maybe up to 200,000 books destroyed to allow room for computors and Google. Poor kids have to go to Waterstone's for knowledge, but of course they can't afford the books so they go without. I've no idea how many books from the archieve were rare first editions. The books, who stole the books....

This is just the opening of my pet hate.

Profile

2008-06-20T08:10:00.002Z

A rarity. A self-portrait.