Diary: July 2018

5 July 2018, Hackney
At Headway Y said something S had told me before: that having memory problems makes it impossible to think about the future. I will ask them one day whether that means the future is suspended or postponed, rather than it simply no longer exists.

6 July 2018, London
“Theresa May secures approval from cabinet to negotiate soft Brexit
PM proposes creation of ‘UK-EU free trade area’ and matching food standards”

I am starting the think that having a government on the edge of a knife is not such a bad thing. It means that a robust opposition can actually do some work in shaping policy. More and more these days, it is work at select committee level of government that is having the greatest effect. This is how a healthy parliamentary democracy should work.

6 July 2018, London
A bunch of Henley knobheads have just got on the train at Paddington we are getting to Cholsey. One of them is wearing a white long-sleeve linen shirt with a grey-beige paisley tie and matching “handkerchief” in the shirt’s top left-hand pocket. Now they are joined by another set of noisy hoorays. A cork just popped and a blonde woman in a silver pleated skirt and pink high-heel sandals is guffawing obediently to the greasy overprivileged smarmos sitting opposite. Pimm’s in cans now. A navy like men blazer with pink chalk stripes is hanging by the window. I can feel the urge for a class war coming on.

6 July 2018, Cholsey
Remembering what Y and S had said about the future, is this what it is like as you approach the end of your life? Do you decide it is pointless to keep thinking about the future? Or does any concept of the future just slowly recede?

17 July 2018, London
Email exchange with M at the Guardian Education Centre.

Hi M
I just thought I ought to mention something weird that happened in yesterday's workshop. One of the pupils at the back table on the left was a bit stary. She gazed at me in an intense way. One of her fellow tablemates saw her do it and pulled a face of disapproval. Stary Girl then told me I had "lovely eyes". I replied, "Thank you, my wife says they are the best thing about me."

I thought nothing of it and carried on. When I returned to that table later, Stary Girl stared at me again and asked, "Sir, where are you from?" I told her I was from Liverpool and again carried on, but afterwards consciously avoided that table, which was a pity because the rest of the pupils on it were really quite bright and switched on.

I know this probably amounts to nothing, but I also know it could be seen in a less innocent way, so I thought it best to let you know.
Best regards
Billy
***************

Hi Billy
Thanks for mentioning this. I think I know who you mean - she had long brown hair. She was trying to be disruptive throughout the session, and on the whole the teachers and us kept a check on this. Really sorry this happened to you and that you felt uncomfortable - you did the right thing by avoiding that table. We have had no mention of this from the school and we got an email today saying thank you for a great session.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. The school have been before and are from Cornwall - the teacher is on our advisory network.

Thank you for your amazing work and support. The students and us gain so much for you input into the sessions and your superb advice.
With many thanks
M

27 July 2018, London
Email to Cris Vidal at Headway regarding our recent involvement in the Science Museum Lates project for the 70th anniversary of the nhs.

Hi Cris
Sorry we didn't get to talk yesterday. I had to catch a train to Liverpool for a big family reunion. 

My feedback on the Lates event is this: it was difficult to tell how successful it was as I was so close to the centre of the action. It seemed well attended and the space we were in was ideal, a perfect match. The interactive collage workshop/table was outstanding and can be adapted for lots of other projects in the future. It's a winner.

The element I was involved with was not a success for me. I had planned my questions for Yoki in the belief that the title of our conversation was 'You Must Remember This'. I arrived to find that the title was in fact 'Am I My Past Or My Present?' I tried quickly to rewrite the script to fit this title, but did not want to tell Yoki because she was very nervous and we had agreed there would be "no surprises" in our presentation. In other words, I was winging it.

At our talk, I thought it was going OK until a latecomer, who maybe hadn't heard the introduction, heckled me, accusing me of not allowing Yoki to speak. No one tried to calm him, so I had to deal with the situation. Eventually, Thomas stepped in. I regret the way I spoke to the heckler as Phil Symes told me later he believed him to have brain injury. I maybe should have been more sensitive to that possibility, but in the moment I was more sensitive as to how the commotion would affect Yoki.

As it turned out, she was brilliant. It has been a pleasure to work with her. Every time we did our 'conversation', her answers became richer and richer. I never wanted to plunge her into the unknown, but that is one of the risks at public events. All in all, our bit was a mess, and all I could hope for was that not many people noticed.

Billy

Column: July 2018

I stand accused of timidity. At a social event on the estate last month, one resident said what she thought of this column: “You sit on the fence, you’re too diplomatic”. I offered a puny response, saying my intention is to write about the richness of life here on Golden Lane and what a great place it is to live, etc, blah blah. None of it sounded very convincing.

What she wanted to say, I suspect, is that I don’t stick the boot in on the City Corporation: its poor record on repairs, its culture of non-communication, its institutional blindness to residents’ needs over business interests, that sort of thing. It might be true, but there’s another reason I don’t take potshots at the council. The Golden Lane Estate is in the City of London residential ward of Cripplegate and it has nine, yes NINE, elected members on common council. Many of them rarely set foot on the estate. Only one is seen regularly and works tirelessly for our residents. Two of them I have only ever seen once, at an election hustings, asking for votes. Add to those nine our member on the London Assembly, Unmesh Desai, and our MP in Westminster, Mark Field, and here is a football team of people tasked to deal with voters’ issues. These are the people who should be kicking the council. 

A case in point is the concrete repairs rolling out across the estate. Expert residents (we have a lot) have let fly a barrage of angry emails detailing the works’ shortcomings with regard to listed building guidelines, heritage repair methods and paint colour-matching. The argument is unlikely to end soon and, meanwhile, scaffolding has gone up at Crescent House for decoration and window replacement work. It’s long overdue and residents have often moaned that their heating bills are sky high, all because routine maintenance and improvements dropped down the City Corporation list of priorities. 

I’m glad to see Crescent House being spruced up. I have an irrational fondness for it, even at its scruffiest. Its glorious iconic sweep along Goswell Road is the public face of our estate. I imagine it as a hotbed of radical non-conformism. It’s residents are not afraid to speak their minds and Crescent House is the only block in which I have seen people dancing naked in their window, in full view of the tennis players outside. 

So if do I sit on the fence it is because it’s a good place to watch what’s going on. The event described  above was a sun-kissed two days of activities for Open Garden Squares Weekend. The finale was a performance on Hatfield House lawn by the London Metropolitan Brass Band (with Golden Laner Tom Martin on tuba) and I sat on the fence (concrete) watching residents and visitors revelling in the sheer pleasure of Summer in the City. I also learned that a Basterfield House resident once refused the offer of a dance from Bruce Springsteen.

Open Gardens marked the start of party season. Wimbledon is underway, the World Cup is reaching a climax and today is 4 July, US Independence Day. If you dash, you might just catch hordes of crazy Americans overdosing on mustard at a hotdog-eating competition at the Blues Kitchen in Curtain Road. 

The school holidays begin soon, the local children can smell freedom, and on 15 July the Whitecross Street Party (WSXP) guarantees endless fun. Resident involvement in this year’s event has been a top priority and activities will centre on a number of “Rooms”, each coordinated by local groups – art, music, children, performance, pottery and virtual reality are among the themes.

The day before, 14 July, is more important though, because after an absurdly long delay, the newly refurbished Golden Lane Community Centre opens, with a whizz-bang party promised. The overlords at the City Corporation are very excited, but I am not so confident. At a recent meeting to discuss ideas for activities on the day, I gave a pompous lecture on 14 July being Bastille Day, a celebration signalling, in 1789, the start of the French Revolution. London will be throbbing with Gallic euphoria, I said. Paul in Liverpool Street are said to be dishing out free glasses of fizz and macaroons. To stand any chance of measuring up, I argued hysterically, the Golden Lane party, should include two things: a Wellie Wang on Basterfield lawn and a second outdoor game, in which children decapitate life-size effigies of their parents.

The assembled group looked at me in disbelief then broke into nervous laughter. You see, reader, that's the problem with these straight-laced council people. They can’t even spot a winning idea when it jumps up and bites them. 

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 Edition 077 of City Matters newspaper.

Picture: Didcot

From a satnav image of Didcot, Oxordshire

Picture: Earthslice1

I did this ages ago and Michelle just dug it out and hung it on the "clothesline" in the studio.

Diary: June 2018

2 June 2018, Brighton

Spotted outside the Taj Middle Eastern supermarket

6 June 2018, London

Something magical happened today. Because I am cheap, I use Spotify Free, rather than pay the £10 monthly subscription. The thing is, the curated collections in Spotify Free only allow you to play songs on SHUFFLE. So you don’t know what you are getting next. It’s random, sort of. I was obviously overjoyed when Elton John’s ‘Tiny Dancer’ came on, but imagine the ecstasy when the next song was Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’. OK, you had to be there. Two fantastic love songs (in different ways) and two songs that have such a powerful piano voice.

7 June 2018, Hackney, London

At Headway today there was a difficult interval with P. P is a bit of a food fascist and believes everyone but himself is ingesting poison in the form of the everyday meal. The food at Headway is cooked fresh on the day, but today P saw fault where innocent mistake was probably the real case. The “savoury bread-and-butter pudding with green-bean and red-onion salad” was the victim of his rant. While most of us just got on with eating this bargain meal at £2.50, P told his table (loudly) that we were suffering a systemic disgrace in silence. We were lapdogs to a food culture that is not only degenerate but evil. At some point, P2 said something along the lines of “OK, we hear what you are saying, move on” and he went mental (“Go back to Ireland, Irish girl). Yes, the bread-and-butter pudding was slightly overcooked and very crunchy; the salad was actually more of a salsa, but P targeted P2 and, when coordinator James tried to pacify him, he switched into full-blown psycho. I sat there wondering what kind of training enables a Headway staffer to bring this fragile situation under control. I thought about setting off the fire alarm, but instead merely got out of my seat and moved away. By this time, P is actually enjoying his bad behaviour, swearing, threatening physical violence and acting like a totally unhinged dickhead. I was outside by now, but somehow the staff managed to usher him out to the arch (art studio). This meant the arch was unavailable to other members to use and that studio manager M, who had not witnessed what I had, was tasked with defusing the bomb. My heart went out to her. This was all witnessed by a man from the borough of Newham, who was checking on HEL’s performance. He told me later how impressed he was. Members who spoke to me later about the incident agreed that brain injury is no excuse for being a tosser. For that, I loved them even more.

7 June 2018, London

Sitting in the Two Brewers enjoying a pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord ale, listening to Neil Young on my earbuds and reading Sherlock Holmes ('Sign of Four'), I come to a pause. On removing the earbuds, I notice that Neil Young's 'Harvest Moon’ is playing on pub sound system. That is the song I was listening to on my earbuds.

12 June 2018, Islington, London

Peggy Ennis has two interesting ways to describe dementia to those who know little about it. In the first she likens the inner wiring of the right side of the human brain to a set of fairy lights that are not performing at their peak. Some of the bulbs are dim, some are flickering. Others have packed up altogether. It all means we are no longer quite as bright or as flashy as we used to be.

In the second description Peggy uses the metaphor of the bookcase. Imagine, she says, a bookcase made of plywood. Each of its shelves are full of books; each of the shelves represents 10 years of your life; all of the books on each shelf are your memories of that decade. On the bottom shelf are your earliest memories, on the top are your most recent. Push the shelf slightly and it will sway; push it harder and the books on the top shelf will begin to fall off. More pushing and the books on the other shelves will do likewise, but the books on the bottom shelf (your long-term memories) will only fall off after an almighty shove. As you try desperately to put the falling books back on their shelves, many of them will get mixed up. In other words, you become confused. This is what dementia is like.

Now imagine a bookcase made from solid oak. The books on the top shelves might fall, but the stability of the unit will hold many of them in place, allowing the displaced books to be re-stacked on the shelves with some sense of order. This, Peggy says, illustrates the importance of “brain fitness”. Keep your brain exercised and nourished and the effects of dementia can be eased. She has a slogan for this exercise: “a healthy heart means a healthy head”. In other words, regular exercise keeps your mind in tip-top condition.

In the dementia awareness training Peggy delivered to a small group at St Luke’s Community Centre, she then spoke about the left side of the brain and the importance of the emotions. Quite often, she said, we will forget what people told us, what their names were, where we met them and what time they arrived. But we will remember how they made us feel, so using our emotional recollections rather than our factual ones is a good way to compensate once dementia and/or memory difficulties set in. Happy, sad, angry, disgusted, frightened or shocked: these are the experiences we can use to put those books back on the right shelf.

Peggy told us how people with dementia can appear a bit confused, bonkers even. To someone with dementia a polished vinyl floor might look like water; a black rubber slip-mat outside a supermarket door might look like a hole in the ground. This took me straight to a film idea, ‘Dementia Tour Of London’, a kind of funny/serious travelogue in which offspring and parent with early onset wander the capital’s streets seeing everything from a demented point of view.

14 June 2018, Hackney, London

Two SLT revelations at Headway today. Sam joined the band we have with Music Therapy student Sam. She is our  token 'girl singer’, was brilliant, and I believe she got a lot out of it. She steamed through the lyrics of Steely Dan’s 'Do It Again’ fearlessly. Then she took on the job of banging the cymbal at the end of the chorus WITH HER RIGHT HAND (Sam is left-handed). Song-singing as an alternative to reading practice must always be worth a try. Inhibitions fall and confidence rises by having a band - albeit a crap one of me, Stuart and Barrie - to support you.

The second revelation came at Pat’s touching memorial in the arch, led by Michelle and Ben (who told a funny story about meeting "Jackson" for the first time and falling for the prank that his name was "Michael Jackson") Member after member (Cecil, Tony A, Errol), many with acute speech difficulties, lined up to talk fondly about Pat, driven by pure emotion and the will to do the decent thing. Others ad-libbed cheeky comments (special thanks to Eddie) and we all sang Elvis’s 'Always On My Mind’.

14 June 2018, London

I am becoming more and more convinced that in Abraham Lincoln’s determination to establish an American government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, the Corporation of London saw an opportunity to translate it to government “of the people, by the rich, for the rich”.

20 June 2018, London
Being on regular medication can be quite daunting, and not just for the patient. Ahead of a recent holiday to Spain, I visited Portman Pharmacy in Cherry Tree Walk to request a regular repeat prescription. The idea is that the pharmacy contacts your GP surgery and, hey presto, two days later, your life-saving medication is ready for collection.

Twice in a row now, this seemingly simple and streamlined process has crashed. In the most recent case, having made my request to the pharmacy on a Friday and told the medication would be back for collection the following Wednesday, it wasn't there. What's more, the chief pharmacist mined new depths of bad manners and arrogance to tell me, first, that the GP surgery was to blame, and then that it was MY fault because my “expectations are too high".

I turned and left, then made the journey to my GP surgery, the Neaman Clinic, was treated with great courtesy, collected the prescription and got my medication from another pharmacy. Endov Portman Pharmacy, hello Boots New Change.

21 June 2018, Hackney

Cecil on his 80th birthday.

23 June 2018, Winchester

“If the real point if the European Union is to achieve an ever closer union among the people's of Europe, the British have never really wanted a place in it."
Helen Thompson
LRB, 21 June 2018

28 June 2018, Murcia

In a tapas/enoteca restaurant in a place called Baños y Mendigo (Baths & Beggar) we watched England go down 1-0 to Belgium. At the end there was some speculation as to whether England manager Gareth Southgate was being strategic in trying to come second in the group (he made 8 changes to a team that had won 6-1 in its previous game), but that sounds very risky to me.

29 June 2018, San Pedro Something Or Other, near a La Manga, Murcia

About 50m from the sandy beach is an inflatable playground, with slides, trampolines, climbing frames, etc. The water here is still and quite shallow, so this is an ideal spot for such a glorified bouncy castle. It's best feature is a vertical climbing wall in the shape of the grand upper deck of a cruise liner. What would have been portholes on the cruiser are toe holes for the climber to scale straight from the sea to the top of the deck, from which they can then slide back into the sea, and so the joyous, safe process repeats itself.

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.

Column: May 2018

Exciting times lie ahead here on Golden Lane. We have a new estate manager, Michelle Warman, formerly in charge of the Middlesex Street Estate. Our newly refurbished community centre is about to finally open its door, and residents are asking what kind of tempting events are likely to take place there. Live music is on the wishlist, but that comes tangled up in a lot of red tape about insurance, performance rights, public conduct and nuisance, so it’s always easier said than done. Still, the demand is there and there isn’t much of a gig scene around here, not even a half-decent local pub band to turn up for. The best venue we have nearby is at the Slaughtered Lamb in Great Sutton Street, a magnet for indie-folk, roots and Americana fans. And right on cue, a very cool guitar shop has opened around the corner on Old Street. PMT (Professional Music Technology), occupies a space previously occupied by Cesar’s Janitorial Supplies. We are not short of musical talent here on the estate, so with the smell of cleaning fluid and floor polish gone, the start of our very own Tin Pan Alley is imminent. 

Theatre is another contender for our community centre. The first wave of Golden Lane residents back in the 1960s enjoyed a good show. Grown men dressed in women’s clothing could be seen regularly on the community centre’s stage. Last year we were visited by the Off The Wall Players doing Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. The play climaxed with a lovers’ tiff, a lot of spilt wine and a body on the floor. Our neighbourhood is famous for its theatrical history. Fortune Theatre, in Fortune Street, was one of London’s earliest. More recently, Shoreditch Town Hall has dusted itself down and now hosts a wide range of performances. And Theatre Delicatessen in Broadgate – a hip young space devoted to eating, drinking, incubation workshops for budding talent, rehearsals and full-on shows – is blazing a trail for innovation.

All the signs are right for Golden Lane to grab the limelight. There is even a secret plan afoot to get some of our senior residents involved in making plays about how the neighbourhood has changed in their lifetimes. So don’t be surprised if one day your TV listings include ‘The Only Way Is Golden Lane’ or ‘Made in Cripplegate’.

The film crews are already primed for action, because every so often they turn up on the estate to shoot scenes that require the hard edges of realism softened by the warm heartbeat of the big city. Just recently we saw an advert for Puma sportswear being made. We have in the past been visited by top stars.  Brad Pitt is said to have done something unspeakably wicked in a Crescent House flat above the Shakespeare pub, and I swear I once spotted Idris Elba in an episode of the TV series Luther prowling menacingly around a flat in Great Arthur House. 

Most residents are happy to rub along with this type of glamour, but sometimes the shooting gets out of hand. This is what happened with Puma. They stand accused of bossiness and a lack of respect for residents. The City Corporation Film Team is not short of guidelines, policies and contracts for those asking to use the estate for location shooting, but sometimes fails to supervise properly. This is when film crews and residents clash and a drama becomes a crisis.

Far less exciting are the looming challenges of Brexit. The future impact on jobs, families, health and wellbeing will inevitably fall to the children and young people of today. They will need help. We’ve heard City Corporation policy chief Catherine McGuinness extolling the virtues of apprenticeships – despite some companies reportedly using the scheme to dodge paying a living wage. And City University’s Micro-Placement programme aims to toughen up those about to enter the jobs market. But Brexit does not appear in a draft of the City Corporation’s Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP).

This is a rolling three-year project  (2018-21), and its latest mission statement names five priorities: safety, potential, involvement, health and community. There then follows a dull narrative on what those words mean and concludes by saying there will be another plan along shortly on how this plan will be put into action. It wasn’t exactly inspiring, unlike the sound of a robust panel discussion on 15 May at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, about the soaring numbers of children and young people suffering from anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self-harming and attempted suicide. As if Brexit wasn't enough to deal with.

Billy Mann has lived in Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate for more than 20 years. He is a City of London Community Builder and writes a blog about neighbourhood happenings at basterfieldbilly.blogspot.com. Write to him at goldenlanegazette@gmail.com.

A version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper, issue 073

Diary: April 2018

7 April, 2018, London

Dear Sue

Jane says she saw a portable rabbit hutch on Hatfield lawn tonight and a ginger rabbit making free with the long grass. The estate is teetering on the brink of revolution.

Billy

8 April 2018, London

There is a new Agatha Christie drama on TV, Ordeal by Innocence, starring Bill Nighy and Anna Chancellor as his murdered wife. What I like is that it is textbook AC apart from the detective. In turn, each of the suspects acts as detective, which thickens the plot no end. The viewer becomes ‘complicit’ in the puzzle, which I like. It's a nice new twist on an old but faithful formula.

11 April 2018, London

12 April 2018, London

Juventas beaten by Real Madrid in Champions League quarter final. A controversial penalty and Cristiano Ronaldo had something to do with it. Juve goalie Gianluigi Buffon was not happy.

13 April 2018, London

I wrote this turgid essay below ages ago, parked it and forgot about it. They put it on the Headway website and Cris Vidal said she liked it. I hate it.

It started with a blink. That’s how Chippy says yes or no. A day-service volunteer in the art studio was showing him pictures from a magazine, and the lady with the crown caught his eye. If I could say the rest was history, I would. But that would be a lie. Chippy’s pictures begin pretty much in the way described above, but their journey from start to finish is a story all by itself, a slow, rocky road from eye to hand to board and back the way you travelled last time, or maybe via a different route, with different sights to see with different travelling companions and a whole new set of bag-carriers.

Every ‘Chippy’ is a tactical leap of faith. Only good communication, a lot of love, and a masters degree in patience can pull it off. Each finished piece is actually a dialogue rather than a single voice. Watching studio boss Michelle coax Chippy in collaboration through a picture is one of my favourite pastimes. They have evolved a relationship in fondness akin to a longtime comedy duo, where a cutting look is forgiven in an instant and an easy adaptation to each other’s irritating quirks becomes effortless.

To then partner Chippy with one of the studio’s most commanding artists would, in most cases, be dismissed as one small step from insanity. Stephen Staunton – sometimes just ‘Staunton’, like Picasso or Rembrandt – always brings a massive presence to any room. Most people take a step back, wondering whether the correct response is fear or amazement. He is profoundly deaf, so his world is aggressively delimited but fine-tuned by all his other senses. There is a brutality about him that stops you in your tracks.

Separate and individual Chippy and Stephen may be, but what brought them together for this project are two primal elements of art: shape and pattern. A studio chat between manager Michelle Carlile and coordinator Alex Brady saw both of them flirting with ideas around pattern and brain injury. They noticed that many of the Submit to Love studio’s artists use pattern and shape by instinct, no professional prompting required. It is as if pattern and shape offer some kind of psychological anchor to a troubled and struggling mind. It sounded like a cliché waiting to be born, but it was worth exploring.

Stephen’s work, with its powerful geometry, fits this idea no problem. All the expression is in the colour and stroke. The pattern is the skeleton that holds the whole thing together. Chippy's work doesn't fit the pattern/shape idea so easily. Until you watch him at it. Chippy is unable to look straight ahead in a conventional way, so his peripheral vision has become acutely trained in compensation. It’s actually more like an extra sense. This is the sense with which he picks out shape and line.

There is a mountain of documentation behind this joint work. Its progress has been photographed at every stage and from every angle and a fearsome inventory of accreditation and consent compiled. Not only have both artists suffered brain injuries, they have been isolated further: Stephen with his deafness and Chippy, unable to speak and confined to a wheelchair. The task of making this happen was an ethical and logistical tightrope walk.

To complicate the project further would have amounted to an act of extreme self-punishment. But this is the hard-nose part. Because when you decide to exhibit a piece of art, to put it out there for the world to see, someone has to decide on context. This image was destined to appear in a shop window space in Dalston, east London, so how would it fit, and who are the passing viewers likely to be? What should the background look like? These are what I call 'engineering' decisions. They can make or break a project, but rarely is enough quality attention given to the preparation of the ‘environment’ in which the finished image will be displayed. Smelly pubs are full of great art that nobody pays any attention to.

When Matt Chappel agreed to join the project I was excited. Like Chippy and Stephen, Matt is severely limited physically, but I am fascinated by the intensity of thought he pours into his work. In action he looks like he is using art to work existentially through the trauma of his brain injury. I watch the line of his jaw tighten and I see his hand respond, sometimes gentle and sweeping, sometimes recklessly squirty and plunging. Matt’s paintings push you into switching from a comfortable position to one of high alert. This can be quite nerve-wracking.

Complex colour is a big part of Matt’s strength as an artist, so the decision to go for a leopard print background, with its typical abrupt contrasts of black/yellow/white/black could have failed badly. The background unit would comprise 12 rectangles pieced together to create a wall of pattern. Anything could happen between Phase 1 and Phase 12.

It wasn't until Matt had finished the first 'tile’ of 12 and had started on the second that I could envisage how brilliantly this was going to pan out. The speed with which he started fluently mixing the colours with his brush got faster and faster. Sometimes he was stroking the paint in a carefree manner, then he would poke agitatedly. Both methods succeeded in merging his chosen shades in the yellow/orange/beige/brown spectrum so that, when dry, a whole new tone formed itself. How the hell did he do that, I was asking myself continually. The addition of the black at the end was more an act of composition. Those spots form the eye-grabbers that move you around the whole space. They are points on a map.

Now set these two finished elements together, the queen’s head and the skin of a killer animal, and a flood of metaphor erupts in front of you. It’s hard not to attach the word KITSCH because that is exactly what it is, and shamelessly so. I can see the art of the three characters I sit with week after week. There they are: Chippy ambling and scratching, Stephen stabbing his kaleidoscope of colour and Matt putting in enough energy to power a rocket to Mars and back. It’s a classic case of the result being more than the sum of the individual parts, so you end up asking how can something so audacious possibly succeed? I stopped trying to answer that question after about five minutes and just stood back in amazement. It should never have worked, but it did. Leave it at that and just give thanks.

15 April 2018, London

Did this flyer for an exhibition in Enfield featuring Sam and Errol. The sqiggly line around their names is an outline of the borough of Enfield.

19 April 2018, Hackney

Pictogram based on Japanese script.

20 April 2018, London

It is a warm evening and some nutcase in a straw hat is sitting on his balcony in Stanley Cohen House playing a violin, badly. The suspected cause is drink and maybe drugs.

21 April 2018, London

To the Natural History Museum with Séan.

23 April 2018, London

Bumped into Crazy Sue, who was on her way home to lie down and ingest a large quantity of dark chocolate, which, she swears, is the best relief for severe migraine. 

Picture: Voodoo Chile

This voodoo figure is a mash-up of a pictographic script I spotted somewhere. The shape seemed to resemble the movement of a tribal dance. It had something skeletal about it, but where other skeletons have muscle tissue and external features hanging off them, this one looked just ok by itself, as a raw bit of human scaffold. I over-decorated that primitive shape with a face and painted toenails. It seemed to be lacking something I struggled, and failed, to find in it.

Column: April 2018

Diary: March 2018

3 March 2018, London

Still haven't been out for three days (snow). This must be what it was like in the war. I am eating stuff that has been at the back of the cupboard for a year. The freezer is nearly empty. Theresa May would be proud of me.

5 March 2018, London

Two Russian exiles in Wiltshire, father and daughter, have suffered a mysterious poisoning and are in hospital “fighting for their lives”. Putin and agents of the Russian secret service are being fingered in the media. This, it seems, is the price a country might be forced to pay when it grants residency to “enemies” of a foreign state.

6 March 2018, London

Maybe one day everyone will describe themselves as a “citizen-producer”.

8 March 2018, London

Ben was talking about some Japanese thing about transience and imperfection called Wabi-sabi. To illustrate he explained it to me as the idea that “there is a little bit of sadness in everyone”.

15 March 2018, London

14 March 2018, London

There is a building over the road from Whitechapel Hospital that was once the “Working Lads Institute”. It sounds like something to do with the child labour and juvenile delinquency of 19C London.

https://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/generalnews/inside-the-working-lads-institute/

15 March, 2018, London

At Headway, E is playing Oasis on her phone for C. His head is tilted back and a big grin has settled on his face. His favourite is Some Might Say. Later we did a group rendition of Wonderwall and C was again in the land of bliss.

17 March 2018, London

It is snowing outside, and I am reading in the Guardian an article by Ian Jack about beggars, begging, rough sleepers and homelessness. At the end of the piece he describes a growing fellowship between beggar and begged-from that defines a shift in attitudes. More people now stop to talk to beggars and fetch them food and warm drinks. It sort of correlates with conversations I have had previously with successful and relatively wealthy people in which they speak of the very thin line that separates the rich from the poor. One of them went as far as to say that, but for one small lucky break, he too would be on the street begging or festering in a squalid prison.

22 March 2018, London

Near Anchor Yard/Wenlake Estate gardens on Old Street lives a man in a tent. On the pavement, taking visitors and welcoming them to his abode.

25 March 2018, London

Better late than never. The six primary emotions in bad selfies.

30 March, 2018, Brighton

‘Cathay Pacific completes two-leg journey, letting women wear trousers’
Airline becomes one of few in Asia giving its female flight attendants an alternative to skirts

The Guardian

Column: March 2018

Diary: February 2018

4 February 2018, London

A makeshift Golden Lane/Peabody/Barbican quiz team came last in Pete's Sunday-night quiz upstairs in the Artillery Arms, with a score of 42. They were beaten by, among others, a stellar performance from a mixed-gender team called We Put The Men In Menstrual. The theme of the quiz was sport, and not knowing the colours of the rings on an archery board and that the longest-ever rally in table tennis was 9-hours-something-or-other was a heavy burden to carry. Apologies. The theme for next week's quiz, says Pete, is WOMEN. Sunday, 7.30pm. Artillery Arms, Bunhill Row, etc. 20 February 2018, Liverppol Into University is a charity, started by J's cousin Rachel, that supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in getting a place at university. They run after school classes and mentoring projects in many centres around London. They also have branches nationwide. They recently opened one in Anfield, Liverpool, where I was born. The project is a partnership between IU, Liverpool University and LFC Foundation, the charity arm of Liverpool Football Club.The event’s evening reception  took place at Liverpool FC’s Anfield stadium, and I was lucky enough to get an invite. On the train north, I had my first encounter with a talking toilet. As soon as you lock the door a jolly-sounding woman tells you politely what not to do with sanitary products and nappies. She sounded like she really loved her job (“I knew what I was getting into when I became a toilet,” she says), but I did get the unnerving sense that I was being watched. At the day reception we heard speeches from staff and students. Then Liverpool goalie Simon Mignolet told us how he studied political science at university in Belgium. The IU approach is for a goal-centred programme of academic support, creating an enriched nurturing environment for dedicated pupils to do homework, to study and to follow their dreams. The ethos was right there to see when we arrived. The walls of the reception room were covered with photographs of the young students holding signs stating their professional ambitions. Many wanted to be teachers. Nearly the same number wanted to be footballers. One, Ethan, said he wanted to become a spy. Beneath the word SPY he had written “don't tell anyone”. The same theme was played out for visitors with a Flipboard asking the question, “What did you want to be when you were growing up?” Again, teachers and footballers were the desired occupations, though one or two curious alternatives appeared. One said, “pub landlord” and another, “high level drugs enforcement officer”. I put “marine biologist”.

25 February, 2018, Botley, Hampshire Someone has tied up their horse to a post outside Halfords.