Picture Montage Me

This was a trial in the studio for a montage workshop we were running at London's Science Museum. Bits of bodies cut from magazines became self-portraits. There is probably some deep psychoanalytical revelation here, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is.

Picture: Self Portrait

Tester for a Headway workshop at London's Science Museum (July 25, 2018). The question was, 'Who Am I?'

Picture: Birth

Quoted from 'Tell Me The Planets', by Ben Platts-Mills

Picture: Scribble Man

This is little more than a nervous twitch brought to an iPad. Like many of my 'instant' sketches, they worry themselves into some human form, often a face, but sometimes a whole figure. I stopped when I saw a man walking. That told me the picture was finished.

Column: June 2018

Sport was meant to be the subject of this month's column. Arsenal are widely supported here on Golden Lane and their ponderous appointment of a new manager has been a hot topic, and not just for those old enough to remember who Dick Emery was. The booking congestion at the Golden Lane tennis courts is another issue. And there is one resident (a Leyton Orient fan) whose dream is to see “walking football” introduced to the estate. All of that will have to wait, because the environment has barged in demanding attention.

First is the CoLPAI development of the former Richard Cloudesley site, which stands to rob us of several proud birch trees. An online petition to “Save Our Trees” is up for signing on change.org and staff from both the City Corporation and Islington Council have bleeding eyeballs working through the small print of the planning verdict in case someone overlooked something. It wouldn't be the first time. Add to this the latest news about the City's ultra-poor air quality and cutting down healthy trees and replacing them with flaky promises of new ones “sometime soonish” seems indefensible.

A much nicer experience was this year's Golden Baggers day trip, to the Turn End house and garden in Buckinghamshire, and in planning for this year’s Open Garden Squares Weekend (9-10 June), which will no doubt once again see hundreds of green-fingered enthusiasts trooping through our award-winning allotments. It was nice also to attend a reception for one Golden Bagger, artist Liz Davis (aka, “Buffy”), who for the past nine years has been sneaking around the neighbourhood collecting weirdly-named (sorry, rare) plant species (Hairy Cockspur?), drying them under scientific scrutiny and mounting them on the finest art paper. Her exhibition, 'Wild City’, is at the Town House Gallery in Fournier Street E1 until 17 June.

It was also a bonus to be invited by our new estate manager, Michelle, to join an al-fresco discussion about the Golden Lane pond. The pond sits in an idyllic and relaxing spot at the back the community centre between Bowater House and Bayer House and is flanked by fabulous shrub roses. But it is suffering. Slime is festering below the surface of the water, the reeds are gasping for breath and the innocent turtles thrash around looking totally clueless. The fountain and pump are unsightly and a wholescale renovation is overdue. Buffy is shouting “homes for frogs” at passing strangers.

Michelle is keen to rescue the pond’s beauty from the jaws of neglect, but getting residents to agree on anything around here is hard work, and tainted by a dash of status envy, since the Barbican’s handsome water features get more loving attention from the City Corporation than do Golden Lane’s. A general meeting is planned for June 21 so all pond views can be captured. Expect some feisty exchanges.

And we mustn't forget that the environment includes buildings. The scaffolding on Great Arthur House is coming down, though the dust and psychological damage to residents during the tiresome two-year window-replacement project will take much longer to clear up.

The dust is unlikely to settle on Bernard Morgan House anytime soon. One the accidental pleasures of the demolition of the former police section house is that the Eglwys Jewin Welsh church in Fann Street, with its distinctive green roof, can now be seen out in the open, in all its heavenly glory. Not for long. The BMH site is being prepared for a mammoth block of luxury flats nobody on the average UK wage could ever afford. The developers, Taylor Wimpey, are clearly nervous about the building’s designated name, The Denizen. They have been surveying residents for an alternative, something a bit less flashy and superior, I guess.

Their list of possible new names did not include Big Ugly Monster (BUM) so I spoiled my ballot paper in protest. Then something very funny happened. A relic WW2 bomb was unearthed by a JCB. The area was closed off and everyone in Bowater House and Cuthbert-Harrowing House put their fingers in their ears. They needn’t have bothered. It's was a false alarm, and the digging soon resumed.

The “Bernard Morgan Bomb” incident got some of our senior residents talking about the old Ealing comedy film ‘Passport to Pimlico’ (1949), in which the accidental explosion of an undetonated German WW2 bomb uncovers a tomb full of treasure and an ancient royal charter declaring the surrounding area an independent state. Postwar rationing and austerity end immediately and the pubs stay open for 24 hours a day. Sounds good to me.

Billy Mann has lived in Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate for 24 years. He is a City of London Community Builder and blogs about neighbourhood happenings at basterfieldbilly.blogspot.com. Write to him at goldenlanegazette@gmail.com.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper, issue 075

Diary: May 2018

3 May 2018, London

Stuart says that Mural in French is Wall.

Dr Kai dropped into the studio today and laid her mind-wandering vision out on the floor. It's all there in the weave: magic feminism, maths, philosophy, empowerment and ritual. All made in Belgium by the best rug rats known to the world of art. We (me and Stuart) especially liked the image of Ada Lovelace - the first computer programmer and Charles Babbage accomplice - who died tragically young.

3 May 2018, London

Just heard that Eric has died. They said it was some complication following diverticulitis, but we all know it was a broken heart.

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/16236862.Last_remaining_member_of_popular_Brighton_band_dies/

5 May 2018, Chichester

The homeless person’s equivalent of the towel on the sunbed is the sleeping bag in the shop doorway.

5 May 2018, Chichester

Me and Alex warm up for our presentation on ‘The Artist’s Voice’.

6 May 2018, London

Spotted at Magdalen House, Winchester, next to the kitchen tap.

8 May 2018, London

I am reading Ben’s book, Tell Me The Planets, which is a blistering read. It is a very warm and human interlacing of stories related to himself, his family and dramatic tales from survivors of brain injury, centring on Mathew and his perCYSTent trauma. I like the technique and his way of letting the stories tell themselves. It makes me want to do something similar about my friendship with Stuart. Two people who know next to nothing about each other but have become friends, though I don’t even know if Stuart thinks of me as a friend.

9 May 2018, London

Just sent this to L at Headway, to forward to screenwriter John Wrathall. An idea for a TV series.

The pitch

Cash-strapped inner-London charity supporting people with brain injury finds a new revenue stream as a private detective agency. It uses the unique sleuthing powers of its vulnerable yet perceptive members to crack cases the local police can no longer afford to investigate due to austerity cuts.

EXT. TIMBER WHARF, HACKNEY. DAY

There is a body in the canal.

9 May 2018, London

Dear Fellow Travellers

M and I had a wonderful short session in the Lincoln Lounge today, despite being interrupted by DU doing an appraisal. The sesh lasted one hour, and if we had been even closer to KP, travelling times could have come down further. My proposal is that we plan for these short sessions, set food and stuff in place, and abandon the massive blow-out thing. It is important to stay in touch in a quality way that we can all feel comfortable with and I would trade seeing you more often but for a shorter time than trying to squeeze things into a mysterious evening date that might never happen. Tell me what you think.

Bill

9 May, 2018, London

May column in City Matters.

10 May 2018, London

M told me yesterday that her stalker is a mansplayer. He dresses well and is 'hot’, by her description. She says he stares at her and stands behind her at the queue for the escalator, breathing heavily. She says she can sense his presence at all times but does not feel threatened. I suggested a 'reverse stalk’ in which she turns the tables on him and starts breathing down his neck, but she was uncomfortable with that idea. I tried some cod psychology and managed to accidentally hint that the man might be quite a desperate character, to which she replied sarcastically, “Thanks very much”. We ended up joking about a serious subject, which in this case I’m not sure is a good thing.

10 May 2018, Hackney

At Headway S tells me that he went to Overchurch school and now lives in a place called Overbury. We toyed with album titles such as 'From Overchurch to Overbury’ and 'Overchurch, Overbury, Over&Out’. He said he was bullied by insensitive kids like me. He wore a school cap and his school blazer had coloured piping. Red tag to a bully. Smell the fear. It lives with him to this day. He asked me if I was a “scally”. I told him no, I never quite measured up in that department.

10 May 2018, Hackney

At Ben’s book launch I spoke to the comedian Robert Newman. When I told him how I had my stroke at work, in front of people, he remarked “how humiliating!” When I described once editing one of his overlong rants about climate change, he said, “So, editing my copy gave you a stroke?” I said yes, that's about the size of it and looked for someone else to talk to.

The Carly Simon song 'You're So Vain' came to mind, with the replacement words "you probably think my stroke is about you".

11 May 2018, Brighton

Romantic message No1: “We need a new mop head xx”.

13 May 2018, Brighton

S told me off last night for eating and drinking in Wetherspoons because its owner actively supported Britain leaving the EU.

14 May 2018, London

At St Luke's they are having a 'goodbye’ for Jeanie. Barb says in her speech that they will name the bench outside the front of the building “Jeanie’s Bench” because that is where she sat, rain or shine, smoking her fags with the hunger of a starving lion. Jeanie entered her funeral service to the sound of Norman Wisdom singing 'Don’t Laugh At Me Cos I’m A Fool’ and exited to Frank Sinatra doing 'My Way’.

14 May 2018, London

At a Men’s Shed barbecue in King Square Gardens, R tells us that in 1969 he boarded a ship in Southampton bound for Australia. He was 21 and it was his first Navy posting. His duty was to peel potatoes. They called him a “spud barber”, he said.

15 May 2018, London

At the launch of S and E’s exhibition at the Dugdale Centre in Enfield Town, I got chatting with E’s mum, a lively Jamaican who has lived in Enfield for most of her life. She told me she was sad that E did not have any friends. I told her that he had loads at Headway. She was pleased to hear that I had met E's brother, P.

18 May 2018, Paris

Notice displayed inside the number 65 bus.

18 May 2018, Paris

Headlines today.

18 May 2018, Paris

K once visited the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb. That is up there with the sausage museum in Spain and the sardine museum in Portugal. Not to mention the pencil museum in Keswick.

23 May 2018, London

At the magazine launch last night Ben mentioned my contribution. When I pointed out that I had done nothing, he said I had made him and Laura feel easier with a piece of editorial advice, which amounted to “just get loads of stuff in and then decide what’s best”.

24 May 2018, London

I arrived at Headway today to be told that Pat Jackson had died suddenly last week. He was a miserable sod, always in cheap wraparound mirror-finish shades, who perked up at any mention of Elvis. I am grateful to him for always laughing very loudly at any bad joke or feeble remark I put his way. Michelle gave me the news and Tony B told me later that Pat was one of the first people he met on joining Headway. He told me that Pat was kind-of living on borrowed time, having fought and survived cancer some years ago.

24 May 2018, London

At Headway, S and I are looking at a painting on the wall. “In A Forest. Isn't that a song by The Cure?” says S, reading the painting’s title. We spend some time on Google, locate the song, A Forest, listen to it and earnestly discuss Robert Smith's singing voice. Then I notice that the painting is signed, by the artist B T Pole. Only then do I realise that we are looking at a picture called 'BT Pole In A Forest’. What larks, eh? People with brain injuries do the silliest things.

25 May 2018, London

Bumped into L, who had a good moan about how life on the estate has changed for the worse. She has lived in the area 62 years and is especially pissed off at residents who complain about children playing. I am with her on that. She was having a problem with Channel 10 on her telly. It has “disappeared”. She likes the detective programmes on Channel 10 (ITV3), and the re-runs of Dallas and Dynasty “on Channel 61”. She and her deceased husband were big Arsenal fans. She said that what is now the People's Choice café on Goswell Road used to be run by a fella connected to Arsenal FC and that players used to turn up for cups of tea and a chat. One of L’s children (in their 60s) died recently, which she swears caused the heart attack she suffered last Christmas.

25 May 2018, London

J has just got back from the hospital. She needed an injection in her hip and asked the nurse if she should take off her jeans. No need, said the nurse, who then described how men take their trousers off automatically - enthusiastically -  even when they don’t need to.

27 May 2018, London

In Bruce Grove, Tottenham, there is a neglected and partly derelict building called the Trades Hall. On its wall is a blue plaque commemorating Luke Howard, “namer of clouds”.

30 May 2018, London

While preparing questions to ask Y at Headway about her memory difficulties, I realised that three of the six 'Memory’ pictures I did are of heroes: Yuri Gagarin, Bill Shankly and Muhammad Ali/Cassius Clay. I also remember a presentation years ago at one of Nick Ward's seminars at NHNN when one neuro egghead was urging us to “search for the hero”.

31 May 2018, London

In a chat with E at Headway, we both got Kim & Aggie mixed up with Trinny & Susannah.