Column: March 2019

The Golden Baggers AGM always raises the bar in the dull-but-necessary meeting category. The homemade cake on offer is superb (this year a yummy ginger parkin), making it a truly pleasurable way to start planning for the growing season ahead.

The allotment project is now in its ninth year, yet the energy and enthusiasm for progress never flags. The scheme is based around 42 wooden planters (it started as one-tonne builders’ bags, hence the name Baggers), which residents can rent for an annual subscription of £20 ('Friends’ can join for £5).

Membership is open to all residents, experts or beginners, and on the first Sunday of every month they share more scrumptious home baking at their Social Sunday events.

I was especially disappointed this year to learn that one of our Hatfield House residents and veteran Bagger has gone to live in America. He was always very generous in sharing his show-stopping tomatoes, so I never needed to grow any of my own.

Key issues at this year’s AGM were the election of a new Chair and the agreement of a new constitution, the need to attract more ‘Friends’ and to promote the project’s core community values.

We also discussed the failed attempt to save the trees that border the allotment but will soon disappear as part of the development of the former Richard Cloudesley School and suggested locations for this year’s annual outing. Last year’s trip to Turn End house and gardens in Buckinghamshire will be hard to beat. Anyone wanting to join should write to goldenbaggers@gmail.com.

The Golden Baggers is clearly the most successful resident-led project on the estate and its example is proving influential, most obviously in the activities at our refurbished community centre. 

The Christmas Day tea party was a riot of festive fun and the recent jumble sale added to the feeling that residents revel in the chance to do things together, preferably with cake included.

Jumble sales are a great chance to hone your people-watching skills. One minute residents will be chatting amicably about family fortunes and local issues; the next they will be cutting a tough deal for that old teapot, holding out for the last 50p.

If anything can take the shine off this neighbourly bliss it is the clumsiness of the council. A number of residents met recently with housing chief Paul Murtagh, who arrived in a foul mood to explain and apologise for the City Corporation's stuttered response to a potentially deadly gas leak at the building site next to Basterfield House.

He’d hoped to make his task easier by fixing the meeting (two months after the event) as a drop-in rather than a full-throated Q&A grilling from the residents most affected. Unfortunately, his plans went awry when some canny individuals promptly rearranged the set-up and started firing their questions. Mr Murtagh looked more and more uncomfortable as the volleys of verbal shots whistled his way.

While admitting that the City Corporation had failed residents and was searching its soul for “lessons learned”, he stuck to the script that the site work met with all existing laws and regulations. He expressed this forcefully, but tripped slightly when it came to evacuation policy and revealed that, unlike almost every large building in the developed world, there are no emergency muster points or marshalling for the Golden Lane Estate.

On the day of the accident back in December, it was residents, acting on advice from the gas board, who cobbled together a plan of action until the emergency services arrived to offer some leadership. Confused residents eventually found a safe point at Prior Weston School, shaken and feeling sick.

Mr Murtagh told the meeting that the City Corporation's advice when faced with an emergency is to sit tight, keep calm and carry on until help arrives. Yes, even if, as has happened before, an unexploded wartime bomb is uncovered! It later emerged that the City Corporation is reviewing how it handles “events such as this one”, but is unable to share or publicise the findings.

The Square Mile's emergency plan to swerve Brexit appears to have paid off with a hush-hush deal in Paris last month to make sure all the City's hedge funds and derivative thingies do not turn to dust at midnight on March 29.

The best revelation about this mysterious caper would be proof of my suspicion that the audacious plot was hatched not at the Bank of England but here on Golden Lane with the help of Bayer House resident and YouTube sensation Elly Space, whose infectious Europop anthem 'Cancel Brexit’ is powerful enough to turn the tide of history. If you’re still in doubt, go to https://youtu.be/mf4mqPGwtN4 and turn the volume up to 11.

Billy Mann lives in Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate. He is a teaching assistant, a City of London Community Builder and blogs at scrapbookbilly.blogspot.com. Write to him at goldenlanegazette@gmail.com.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper, edition 093

Diary: February 2019

2 February 2019, London

I used to remember my dreams, but not so much since I was visited by You Know What.

2 February 2019, London

Séan and Jane were grabbing the air in front of them at this.

5 February 2019, London

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Absorbing, very funny and not a duff performance. Hard not to recall Withnail when Richard E Grant turns in one of his overcamp romps.

9 February 2019, London

Golden Lane Jumble Sale. We made £30.

10 February 2019, London

There is a lot of talk in the media of how the big two political parties are packed with internal conflict. Political commentator Andrew Rawnsley states in the Observer that their problems are a symptom of an old voting system that breeds tribalism. He urges reform. The piece made me wonder what British politics would look like if the parliamentary whipping system was scrapped and every MP had a free vote. Would this force political rivals to engage in a more meaningful dialogue and negotiate on behalf of the citizens they represent?

11 February 2019, London

If Beale Street Could Talk. A quite intense love story, beautifully played and photographed.

14 February 2019, London

At Headway reading group today SD told us about his “psychopathic Irish girlfriend Mo” and the poor-man's Valentine's gifts he lavished on her back in 1989. Feet were among them. SD and Mo were so poverty-stricken that Valentine’s Day became an embarrassing reminder of their dire straits. SD says he got some old cardboard, made a box and in it he put small drawings of the things he knew Mo would like but he could not give her: chocolates, bits of jewellery and the like. Mo suffered with her feet, so SD sketched a new pair of feet for her.

15 February 2019, London

Brexit metaphors are all over the place, so I thought I’d give it a crack. The swivel-eyed loony Tory fringe are like six Premier League fullbacks refusing to play unless the offside rule is changed.

16 February 2019, Brighton

I just got a message from Facebook telling me I posted this illustration three years ago. I remember its origin. I’d read an inspiring article that claimed that the 21st Century would become the Century of Sharing. I liked the sound of those words. They had a ring, so I started to think how I might illustrate them.

I also liked the sentiment, the idea that a more caring, sharing society might become a model for future generations to aspire to, blah, blah. I’m writing this diary entry because yesterday thousands of schoolchildren in Britain went on strike to protest our government’s failure to tackle climate change.

The sharing symbol/pictogram from internet browsers I ended up using was a shameless act of theft. I do like it, though. It looks like a molecular model for water, H2O, which gives the concept a natural, elemental flavour. In the studio, I later created a sculpture of this idea with three plastic footballs from Poundland, two cardboard tubes, some scrunched-up newspaper and a lot of Modrock. I painted each of the balls red, green and blue (RGB).

In the sculpture, the concept shifted to a more political one. The two satellite balls were each marked MARKET and STATE. The central core ball was marked SOCIETY; the idea being that Market and State can only communicate with one another by journeying the length of the ‘bond’ to and from Society. Society is thus the key to a better world. Everything must pass through Society, so build a good one that can handle the different types of traffic. Stupid, eh?

17 February 2019, Three Bridges

Is there a New Barbarism trend emerging, just in time for post-Brexit Britain? A nation of gentlemen and white savages?

18 February 2019, Liverpool

RIP Sylvia, age 91. Holy Trinity Church, Breck Road/Richmond Bowling Club.

18 February 2019, Liverpool

What if … across the political spectrum, MPs simultaneously resigned their party's whip and united around a Deal Us In coalition to secure a fruitful future relationship with the 27 countries of the European Union?

19 February 2019, London

I finally got to meet the Rotary Club of Gants Hill. I won't pretend it was a long-held ambition. I was there, at Kanchans restaurant, with fundraiser Rosy from Headway and we were on a mission to secure some kind of donation. Four women, four men, they were charming and showed genuine interest in our pitch. I didn't tell them that last Thursday, in preparation, I had discussed their organisation with SD at Headway. We noted that the Rotary Club logo is a wheel with six spokes and 24 cogs. We didn't quite know what to make of that. It wasn't exactly a Satanic code. Not that we could see, anyway. When SD pointed out that there were 5 gaps between the spokes, our imaginations quickened, but only briefly. I think it might just be a wheel. I sat in a Turkish coffee bar called Gold's for half an hour before the meeting, sipping camomile tea and reading the introduction to 'Theft by Finding’ by David Sedaris. A Turkish music TV station was playing in the corner throughout. In preparation, I also had this about Gants Hill up my sleeve: “The name could have originated from the Le Gant family, who were stewards of Barking Abbey. The name Gantesgrave appears in records as early as 1291. Alternatively, the name may be derived from 'Gnats Cross' in reference to the insects.” Named after a transposition error, that’s quite cool.

19 February 2019, London

An unusually shaped Plane tree outside the British Council, Trafalgar Square. Planes are normally trimmed for upward growth since they pump tons of life-giving water and oxygen into polluted city centres. This one has gone all horizontal.

19 February 2019, London

To the Mall Galleries off Trafalgar Square to see the British Life Photography exhibition of those recently awarded prizes. Included were three by Paul, one of them, from Brighton beach, in the 'Rural Life' category.

20 February 2019, London
On Twitter.

21 February 2019, Hackney
A bit of promo text for Michelle flogging a collaborative piece called ‘Love London’.
The heart of London is big and generous and full of love. It beats strongest when its people do their daily dance to the city's sounds. Its smells never fail to entice. Its rhythms guide us powerfully through every step we take. We instinctively feel the warm throb of the metropolis and slip easily into its hustle and bustle. From north to south, east to west, the London we know and love is above all a creation of its people. They come from all over the country and from across the globe in search of London's passionate embrace. They yield to it and give their hearts back in return. This collective work celebrates that beautiful relationship, of London and its people and the partnership they have forged to make our city the envy of the world.

23 February 2019, London
We went to a Headway/Hackney Roots fundraiser last night in Chats Palace, a community centre near Homerton Hospital. Members of Headway Music Group performed with jazz entertainers the Grand Union Orchestra.

They had a showman trumpeter, Claude, who was good at engaging people, a young hip dude on a very cool semi-acoustic electric bass guitar, a very senior citizen on trombone and electric piano and a senior saxophonist who Jane said resembled the Lady In The Van. A smirking drummer completed the line-up.

It was an enjoyable evening, mostly because so many Headway members turned up, either as performers or spectators. Seeing them out in the real world having fun was a joy. The event probably didn't raise much money but it momentarily elevated Headway members from their daily struggle with brain injury.



Check out @HeadwayELondon’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/HeadwayELondon/status/1099416704441090048?s=09

25 February 2019, London

Keith has just pointed out on Instagram that this drawing I posted was a bit phallic. I honestly never noticed until now, but he is dead right.



26 February 2018, London
I'd forgotten how sensual this film is. Lots of acting with the eyes and lots of touch. Even the sound is powerful, the soft piano, the waves, the rain, the squelching mud, the tribal noises.

29 February 2019, London
Couple of digipix.

Plus a marketing idea.

Picture: Priap

I was really rather pleased with my first attempt to draw something using my disabled left hand. The face seemed sad and glum. A few days later, a friend remarked on the image being 'phallic'. I honestly hadn't noticed, but I used the fact to give the picture its title.

Picture: A Sharing Universe

I just got a message from Facebook telling me I posted this illustration three years ago. I remember its origin. I’d read an inspiring article that claimed that the 21st Century would become the Century of Sharing. I liked the sound of those words. They had a ring, so I started to think how I might illustrate them.

I also liked the sentiment, the idea that a more caring, sharing society might become a model for future generations to aspire to, blah, blah. I’m writing this diary entry because yesterday thousands of schoolchildren in Britain went on strike to protest our government’s failure to tackle climate change.

The sharing symbol/pictogram from internet browsers I ended up using was a shameless act of theft. I do like it, though. It looks like a molecular model for water, H2O, which gives the concept a natural, elemental flavour. 

In the studio, I later created a sculpture of this idea with three plastic footballs from Poundland, two cardboard tubes, some scrunched-up newspaper and a lot of Modrock. I painted each of the balls red, green and blue (RGB). 

In the sculpture, the concept shifted to a more political one. The two satellite balls were each marked MARKET and STATE. The central core ball was marked SOCIETY; the idea being that Market and State can only communicate with one another by journeying the length of the ‘bond’ to and from Society. Society is thus the key to a better world. Everything must pass through Society, so build a good one that can handle the different types of traffic. Stupid, eh?

Column: February 2019

The search for good news this month has been tough. There was a fantastic performance by Whitecross Street comedy duo Rachael Spence and Lisa Hammond (aka, Bunny) at the Globe's Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, in which they tackled the Faustian question “What price your soul?” with the answer: “We’re not sure we've actually got any souls to sell” and went on to make fast and loose with the words “our souls”. It was hilarious.

I got a tip-off on the whereabouts of the estate's missing-presumed-stolen plastic heron, but my lips (beak?) are sealed ... for the time being.

There was a fascinating revelation at the community centre’s weekly techno clinic (Wednesday, 2-4pm) on how to fix a busted TV remote (not working, even with new batteries). The solution, apparently, is to remove the batteries, press and hold every single button for three seconds, replace batteries, and hey presto!

But behind all of these gentle stories was the heavy hand of discontent. It was even a struggle to find the right description: is it a Catalogue of Complaints or a Richter Scale of Rage?

First up are reports from Hatfield and Basterfield House residents of scary vibrations from the nearby building development of the former Richard Cloudesley site. Shattered ornaments and spidery cracks in the plaster top the list of woe. The City Corporation's attempts at colour matching paintwork after their recent concrete repairs have not gone down well, either.

A group of Bowater House residents are hacked off that the area around the fishpond they overlook is being used by non-residents to eat their packed lunches, smoke cigarettes and fill the bins. On the face of it this sounds like a petty whinge, but who’s footing the bill, residents ask, and where do the boundaries between public and private lie? Technically, the whole estate is private. Residents pay for its upkeep through their rents and service charges, yet the City Corporation treats it as a public space. That’s understandable. The estate is open, welcoming and attractive. But, residents argue, public use should be paid for from public funds.

Another Bowater House issue is the proposed installation of a cluster of mobile phone masts on its flat roof. In their objection, residents have been joined by an unlikely ally, Taylor Wimpey, the construction firm building the controversial Denizen block of luxury apartments across Fann Street on the site of the former Bernard Morgan House. They are livid that an eyesore and potential health hazard so close to their prized asset might deter would-be buyers from paying top whack for their shiny new City dwellings.

Residents in Stanley Cohen and Crescent House woke up recently to find zero-tolerance notices attached to the plants they keep in the large open communal areas around staircases. This issue has been a running sore since the Grenfell Tower fire, and few would argue that safe evacuation in the event of an emergency is paramount. But some residents feel bullied because the strict “no-plants” policy seems both out of proportion and inconsistent in its policing, plus it is issued as an order to desist, with the words “or else” attached in a threatening manner.

The final entry in the Catalogue of Complaints (this month) comes from young parents who discovered towards the end of last year that City Corporation funding towards nursery places for Golden Lane families at Prior Weston School's Golden Lane Campus has been cut. This was a deal with Prior Weston’s owners, Islington Council, which I’m told was terminated without notice. The Corporation now advises Golden Lane families to use the facilities at John Cass Children’s Centre instead, a full mile across the City through some of London's worst air-quality blackspots.

This not only has all the hallmarks of thoughtless penny-pinching, it appears to contradict the City Corporation's own stated wellbeing policy of supporting young parents. A report 12 months ago identified young parents as a group vulnerable to loneliness. Until recently Golden Lane parents could meet at Prior Weston, swap stories, support each other and oversee quality pre-school development for their toddlers. Now they are forced to abandon talking to each other face to face and to use WhatsApp instead to keep in touch.

In a last-ditch attempt to find something joyful to report, I crossed my fingers as the City Corporation planning committee met to decide the fate of the four healthy trees that sit on the border of the Golden Baggers allotment and the building site that is causing mini-earthquakes inside our flats. I hoped our council might actually stick to its previous pledge to save the trees, but no, a hooded axeman was spotted surveying the Richard Cloudesley site before the meeting had even finished.

Billy Mann lives in Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate. He is a teaching assistant, a City of London Community Builder and blogs at scrapbookbilly.blogspot.com. Write to him at goldenlanegazette@gmail.com.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper, issue 091

Diary: January 2019

1 January 2019, Los Cristianos, Tenerife

The fireworks last night were surprisingly spectacular in a very non-grand way. The one I hadn't seen before was like a missile aimed at shooting down enemy aircraft, zooming horizontally at a slight incline into the sky.

1 January 2019, Los Cristianos, Tenerife
This is where the world is today.

8 January 2019, Tenerife
On the return flight, before takeoff, we were asked not to consume anything containing nuts, or to spray perfumes or use nail polish. The reason was passengers with allergies. I asked Jane whether the sandwiches she had made earlier in preparation for our flight home breached this request. She said she didn't think so. I told her I could not remember whether or not I used cologne this morning.

10 January 2019, Hackney
Just tried to add a Reminder to my calendar and by the time I opened the window in which to type the note, I had forgotten what I was trying to remind myself about.

12 January, 2019, London
The Melanie version of 'Ruby Tuesday’ is a revelation.

15 January 2019, London
With Headway and St Luke’s at ‘Modern Couples’ Community View and art workshops. That's me in the middle wearing a flamenco hat and scratching my chin with a large paintbrush.

17 January 2019, Hackney
Further to SD's story about his 'nanny’ Rose (20 December 2018) and her petty thieving activities while in charge of the young SD, he told me today about Maria, Rose's successor, and her young daughter Anna. Maria and Anna would go on to become SD's mother and sister.

19 January 2019, London
It was never about Europe, apparently.
Brexit is Britain’s reckoning with itself.

19 January 2019, London
Rachael and Lisa did slot in this called Souled Out. Pauline McLynn (Mrs Doyle from TV’s Father Ted) was another star turn. The whole thing was a tragi-comedy juggling act and female retort to the previously very male exploration of the Faustian thing about selling your soul to the Devil. It put good and evil, morality and ethics, dilemma and conundrum into the pot and shook it up. Left feeling that all of life itself is some sort of Pact.


20 January 2019, London
I have just spotted an unintentional, accidental half-baked metaphor in my last City Matters column. Towards the end of the piece I explain that I am filing the column from the island of Tenerife and go on to draw a couple of similarities with London. One is the north-south divide, “and bang in the middle is an active volcano,” I state, describing the alien landscape of Mount Teide. It never occurred to me at the time that the City is a volatile, strange mini-state within London, remote, rock-hard work and potentially dangerous. It is also constantly renewing itself, which parallels a volcano constantly renewing the earth's surface.

22 January 2019, London
My notes for a talk with two large groups of physios at St George’s University, Tooting for Headway. I used the visit as an opportunity to pop in to see the Bridges crew: Heide, Tess and Chrissy.

During the training talk, one of the students asked me if I was Liverpool or Everton, a reference to the text in my painting 'Surrender’. I asked him to guess and he chose Everton. I asked why and he replied, “because you are quite humble.”

23 January 2019, London
Rachael and Lisa came to the coffee and chat at the community centre and it was amazing to see the ease with which they slipped into chatting with people such as Naomi, Lela and Brigitte. It must be part of their skills in getting their ‘Verbatim Theatre’ scripts together

24 January 2019, London

SL at Headway has written about her brain injury. She used to work in business in the City and it is nice to see in her writing that she has somehow managed to turn the bullet-point list into a form of poetry.

28 January 2019, London
A bit of drivel for Headway award entry

The voice of brain injury isn’t an especially loud one. It is soft, reluctant, cautious even. Those who have been affected by a catastrophic life-changing event, don’t shout about it too much. They are best heard in their actions, and it is in what the members of the Headway East London community in Haggerston do for each other that has the greatest impact. Just recently one of them spoke at the bookshop Pages of Hackney about the agony of deciding whether to undergo brain surgery that might OR MIGHT NOT relieve his condition. Every two months, a whole team of them prepare and deliver an evening of freshly cooked food and fun for the Headway Eats supper club, attended regularly by up to 60 guests at Headway HQ, Timber Wharf, Kingsland Road. And art by Headway members, made in their Submit to Love studio, can be seen all over Hackney, most recently at vfdalston, where member Tony got to show off his unique typographical skills.

With a lot of love, Headway does Hackney proud by taking what to many looks like an insurmountable disability and turns it into something super-special, something worth shouting about and something worth sharing.

31 January 2019, London
Got to attend a posh exhibition of S2L studio art at Rathbones, an ancient capitalist investment outfit at 8 Finsbury Circus in the City. The views from the 8th floor were spectacular and the evening was well managed and enjoyable, and I discovered from the CEO's speech that Rathbones started in Liverpool. I helped Cecil sell his Tower Bridge picture to an unsuspecting punter called Elizabeth, who fell, as I knew she would, for Cecil’s obvious charms. Jane bought my brain picture for £120. I think it was a pity purchase, so I agreed that the money should come out of the family account. The group picture here shows me and Michelle posing with some Rathbones people and the Many Faces of Eve collaborative painting, for which I wrote a mini-essay in the exhibition leaflet.

Column: January 2019

It’s not unknown for disasters to strike towards the end of the year. Last year it was the December 23 eruption of the Anak Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia, which caused a deadly tsunami to sweep the coasts of Java and Sumatra. At the same time Mount Etna in Sicily was rattling the city of Catania and pumping out clouds of angry volcanic ash, threatening residents and holidaymakers alike.

Here on the estate, the demolition of the former Richard Cloudesley School came to a halt when a JCB accidentally fractured a gas pipe. Not an earthquake exactly, but tremors were felt just before it happened. All of the residents of nearby Basterfield House were evacuated to the local school. Medics arrived and investigations began as to how so many people came so close to disaster. Some days later, residents picked off their doormat a letter from someone in the City Corporation housing department offering a flimsy apology and a plea to not jump to conclusions about the cause of the incident. That particular horse had already bolted. Residents rightly believed they'd had a lucky escape so were stunned when work continued on the site soon afterwards with no guarantees of future safety or any indication that lessons had been learned.

The estate is currently in a vice-like grip of building work over which residents have had little say. It’s been dubbed ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. The Richard Cloudesley site is to become a monster residential tower block taller than Greater Arthur House, to be shared equally by City of London and Islington tenants, plus a primary school. One hundred metres down Golden Lane is the site of the former Bernard Morgan House, where another gigantic block, The Denizen, is under construction, this one offering suites of luxury apartments to rich overseas clients as an investment opportunity.

Nobody expects to see any of these new residents in the Two Brewers, Cliffords the barbers or shopping for lunch in Whitecross Street Market. They are expected to be invisible, which puts them alongside the estate’s resident heron. I wrote about this elusive bird some months ago, describing it as lurking hungrily around our revamped fish pond.

I’ve since learned that this was fake news, because the heron was in fact a fake heron, its skinny legs cemented into a concrete block. It eventually found a home, fittingly, in the shallow waters of the pond, but not for long because, as well as being gripped by development work, the estate is now enthralled by the 'Mystery of the Missing Heron'. Someone’s nicked it. There is said to be incriminating CCTV footage, but no one is quite sure where the camera's rewind button is, so the mystery remains an enigma wrapped up in a riddle.

All of this brings a lighter note to what are heavy times. The TOWIE rendition of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Barbican set the tone, and the Christmas Day funtime family tea party in the Golden Lane Community Centre added to the seasonal goodwill. It was a great success for yet another resident-led event, though I was quietly staggered by the number of very clever people who were unable to work out how to play bingo. They weren't much better when the quiz asked them to name the shop on Goswell Road next door to City Hardware.

The free raffle was a hit. I won six freshly-laid eggs from the chickens they keep at St Luke's Community Centre on Central Street. After that, not winning the luxury hamper was a disappointment I could live with.

I'm filing this column from Tenerife. The island doesn’t have many similarities to London (it is 23C), but there are a few. There is a north-south divide, the north being temperate, the south being hot and arid. Bang in the centre is an active volcano, Mount Teide, with its fabulous craggy lava-landscape that looks very like an artist's impression of the surface of Mars.

Tenerife has its fair share of controversial building projects, too. Close to where we stay in the quiet end of Los Cristianos (the south) is an apartment block some claim illegally breaches planning regulations; 200m away is a newly built parade of what were meant to be luxury shops. They stood empty for two years, then they were occupied by a ragtag group of counterculturals. Today the hippy colony is still hanging in there and the buildings look like they’ve found a niche in the local life of Los Cris. I'm sure these new residents are a headache for local planners and business people seeking a nice profit, but with luck their example will make the local power-brokers think a bit harder in future.

Billy Mann lives in Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate. He is a teaching assistant, a City of London Community Builder and blogs at scrapbookbilly.blogspot.com. Write to him at goldenlanegazette@gmail.com

An edited version of this column appeared in the newspaper City Matters, issue 089

Diary: December 2018

2 December 2018, Pangbourne
Sodden newspaper on metal bench at Platform 2 of Pangbourne railway station.

2 December 2018, London
Got these roughs from Hackney artist Coline L’Archiver. We did a jazz/art workshop at Headway last week with the aim of producing artwork that might appear on T-shirts for a jazz event. Mine is the crappy Letraset thing, a case of do it faster, make it better.

And this from Errol.


4 December 2018, London
On a 'Best of Ennio Morricone’ album is a fab version of 'Gabriel's Oboe’ from the film The Mission played on flute, guitar and pan-pipes.

6 December 2018, London
Message sent to Hackney artist Coline L'Archiver
“Many many years before I became an artist at the Submit to Love studio at Headway East London, I worked as a writer in the music press. One day, for some reason, I was invited to the retirement party of Jack Hutton, the managing director of the company I worked for. Jack was an old jazzer, so the party was at Ronnie Scott's in Soho. It was a lively event at which Jack made a speech. He told stories from his past as a young reporter, one of which was the occasion on which he interviewed John Coltrane. Jack finished his interview by asking Coltrane if he had any advice. Yes, answered the master, “Have sex and travel”. Only when Jack returned to the office and repeated his gem of a quote to a senior editor did he learn that “Have sex and travel” is a roundabout way of telling someone to “Fuck off!” Jack's unhappy brush with a legend was the inspiration for my typographical piece HAVE SAX AND TRAVEL. It is a small detail in the rich tapestry of jazz, but one that nevertheless always makes me smile.”

20 December 2018, London
At Headway today during Christmas lunch, SD told me a story from when he was a young boy in Birkenhead. While his mother was ill in hospital - dying from cancer as it came to pass - his father employed a woman called Rose as a home help. According to SD, this woman abused her trusted position to run up massive bills and even to pilfer the contents of the young SD’s plastic piggy bank. When his father came to check the contents of the piggy bank and found it empty, he blamed and scolded SD for spending it all on sweets. A smack around the head is what SD got when he protested his innocence. SD said I was the first person he had ever told that story to. Unfortunately, he started the story by describing Rose as his “nanny”, which led instantly to cruel jibes from me about SD’s fellowship with Jacob Rees-Mogg.

21 December 2018, London
Paula, Sean and Sue Howard came round for pizza and a viewing of the film Elf, which coincidentally stars both Lou Grant (Ed Asner) and Professor Proton (Bob Newhart). Sean’s treat as an 8-year-old was to talk to Alexa, and he wasted no time in getting familiar. But unlike the adults we have introduced to her, he did not treat her as a slave. He spoke to her politely, asking questions such as who was the first Roman Emperor and which was the heaviest dinosaur. Alexa was polite back, even to the extent of her response to Sean’s declaration of his love for her. “Wow!” she replied, “That’s very flattering.”

22 December 2018, London
Saw MH from GAH at the bus stop today. She said she had been unwell with a cold and had gone to get her hair cut to cheer herself up, but it didn’t work. She also told me that when her husband T was still alive (he died in 2016), they had given up buying each other Christmas presents because they had everything they wanted. Nevertheless, each year Ted still bought her some Chanel perfume. Since his death she has bought it for herself, but told me she rarely had much use for perfume “these days”.

22 December 2018, London
Merry Wives of Windsor at the Barbican Theatre. Roll together off-the-shelf, writing-to-order Shakespeare humour, Are You Being Served, ‘Allo ‘Allo, The Only Way Is Essex and Carry On Everything and you get the picture. Great Christmas fun. It made me want to re-read all of Shakespeare’s comedies.

23 December 2018, London
In the 'paper' today. Labour leadership under pressure over Brexit.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/23/labour-leadership-is-at-rock-bottom-wont-be-forgiven-for-conniving-in-rightwing-brexit

28 December 2018, London
There is a coffee bar in Farringdon that does not take cash. I remember when it was difficult to pay by card. Retailers were suspicious. Card-reading machines were rare and banks did not repay the money very quickly.

30 December 2018, Los Cristianos, TenerifeColour combinations. Pink and grey has long been a favourite for me. The grey clouds and the pink sunset here at Paloma Beach is mesmerising. Add a pristine sky blue to those colours and the effect is sublime.

Column: December 2018

The stories we tell about our own lives are the most important ones. The centenary of the end of the First World War served up a feast of stories and voices recently, the best coming from the ordinary people who lived through it. The Imperial War Museum's Voices of the First World War collection gave us a rare chance to hear at last from those who said nothing for so long after the 1914-1918 conflict. And in Peter Jackson's film They Shall Not Grow Old, an army of lip-readers toiled endlessly through silent film footage to work out what the battling young Tommies in the trenches were saying to one another.

Here on Golden Lane a small number of residents (myself included) have made a start on our own mission to remember, by gathering the stories of residents, in their own words, in their photographs and in the curiosities they have collected over the years. Altogether these often small and seemingly uninteresting things tell us a bigger story.

Over at the Barbican estate they are doing likewise. A new archive project just starting in conjunction with the Guildhall School, Laying the Foundations, aims to capture the history of the neighbourhood and its people. Golden Lane has been invited to join, too, so together we should be able to put post-war home life centre stage.

It’s a fair guess that the dusty corners of places like the Guildhall and the Bishopsgate Institute are already well stocked with the testimonies of former Lord Mayors, beadles, sheriffs and all the rest of the City’s ceremonial grandees. So it will be a pleasure be able to read and hear the memories of the residents, the office workers, the shopkeepers, the taxi drivers and the police officers.

This is where Laying the Foundations promises to fill the gap, by putting real people at its core. Barbican residents have already got off to a flying start in this ambitious plan. I’m told they have a secret stash of original (1965-76) fixtures and fittings from kitchens and bathrooms.

So Golden Lane has a bit of catching up to do. We already have in our collection a lot of vintage photos and architectural documents. And one or two senior residents have allowed us to copy items from their own personal stock, which contain such gems as old copies of the Golden Lane Journal and Club News from the late 1950s. Pictures from 1977 show serious-looking children in daft costumes doing their best to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Letters from locals describing the ground zero they saw when they emerged from air-raid shelters after the war bombing in 1940 put into context the citywide rebuilding of London that our estate was part of.

More of these stories will follow, but I especially must guard against my love of tall tales, because they will almost certainly rub up against the archivists’ rigorous codes of practice. Here’s hoping that the sensible people at Laying the Foundations and their partners at the London Metropolitan Archives can steer us in the right direction.

A good test for our seriousness is an unpublished memoir we’ve recently got our hands on, by Pat Moriarty, who lived on nearby Whitecross Street from the late 1950s. Pat made, and remains, friends with many of Golden Lane’s residents and her memories of the neighbourhood are vivid and tell a lot about life in the early days of the estate. In one section Pat describes the social progress of graduating from washouses and outdoor toilets to the fitted home comforts we now take for granted. The arrival of a launderette locally is greeted with rapture: “Then came a ray of sunshine in the greyness of this end of the street – the Sunlight Laundry, with its magnificent rising sun in blue and yellow covering the whole window.”

Good stories are irresistible, and the truth is often dull, but this is the kind of first-person account that gives community history a good name. It is an example worth following. Yes, I am still confident that one day I will crack the mystery of the Basterfield House resident who once slept with David Bowie. And I am itching to talk to the 90-year-old Great Arthur House resident who has a minor obsession with knickers. These stories fuel our imagination and feed our hunger for entertainment, but behind them stand more serious stories about lives lived locally.

Not that the 90-year-old can tell us very much at the moment, because recently she accidentally threw away her false teeth. Gum's the word.

Billy Mann lives in Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate. He is a teaching assistant, a City of London Community Builder and blogs at scrapbookbilly.blogspot.com.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper, edition 087

Diary: November 2018

2 November, 2018, London
Amazing geometry and texture at Tate Modern.


7 November 2018
Archiving Don McPhee’s pictures today at the Guardian, it dawned on me, as I checked some colour negatives of ice-skaters at a rink in Blackpool, that many of these negs have never been seen, let alone printed. Back in the day, once Don (or any other Guardian staff photographer) had delivered a shoot and the picture editor had made a selection, the remaining frames were surplus and unlikely ever to see the light of day again. Excuse the pun. There were some fantastic unused shots of skates, feet and lower legs that have probably been seen by around three people, and that includes me. It made me feel slightly sad, but also happy that the arrival of digital photography at least offers the possibility that such a waste of creative energy is not everlasting.

11 November 2018, London
There has been a lot of talk recently about the possibility of Remembrance fading now that the 100-year anniversary of the First World War has arrived. So I have decided to rebrand 11 November for myself as 'Death of Innocence Day'.

11 November 2018, London

The woman on Waterloo Bridge doing a piss standing up was a standout sight.

13 November 2018, London
At the Memory Group today, Charlie, an ex East End docker now living in the Barbican, declared Jeremy Corbyn “not left-wing enough” for him.

19 November 2018, London
Great study of black/white US politics made personal.

22 November 2018, London
Photographers are crap reporters. At the Guardian Archive today I was indexing pictures and growing more and more pissed off by the minute by photographers who give the most scant information about their work. Items labelled “TUC Conference, Blackpool” contain countless headshots of various people but no clue as to who the hell they are. A diligent researcher would no doubt be able to find that information, but the reality is that any good picture editor would simply select a photo properly labelled and reject the ones not.

On another note, I came across a sheet of colour negatives by Don McPhee labelled “John Major at Emmerdale”. They looked like great pictures of the PM in the Woolpack Inn, etc, but it struck me then that one of the dying skills of the picture editor is to be able to “read the negative”. Being able to “see” the printed picture, its quality, its composition and its suitability for publication is a skill that must have largely disappeared, or is at least consigned to academic study.

Diary: Introducing Basterfield Billy

For the past three years I have been writing short pieces about my local neighbourhood in London EC1. This blog, Basterfield Billy, took the name of the block on the Golden Lane Estate in which I live. The posts in the Basterfield Billy blog are mostly columns I have written for the City Matters newspaper about the goings-on hereabouts, plus a few sketches and vignettes of events and characters locally. But the time has come to consolidate and put all my blogs in one place, so from now on any posts that would have appeared in Basterfield Billy will now appear in the this blog.

Diary: Introducing Neuro Billy

Back at the start of 2015, I attended a stroke rehabilitation clinic at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery to improve the function of my left arm. Part of the treatment involved restricting the use of my dominant right arm. In the downtime between serious physio and occupational therapy sessions I started writing a blog, using only my badly affected left hand to type the entries. This was the start of Neuro Billy, a blog that continued for 25 posts over three and a half years. It covered all the therapies and research projects I took part in, plus my own darkly comic observations of all things neurological. As my rehabilitation gained momentum and my ability to live with my brain injury improved, the need to record my activities declined. In short, the neuro aspects of my life are now just part of my everyday life. This is why I have now incorporated the blog I started back then, Neuro Billy, into this blog.

What prompted me to do this was a research project I took part in last week at NHNN into fatigue after stroke. This, I was told, is not fatigue as we generally understand it. I does not refer to physical tiredness or a lack of stamina. This is fatigue as diminishing attention. It refers to how the brain deal with a new stimulus by standing to attention. It remains standing to attention so long as the stimulus is novel and performs at the top of its game, alert and ready to respond. If, however, the stimulus becomes repetitive, the brain with shift into a kind of cruise control and act according to a fixed pattern it believes to be the right one. In many people who have suffered a stroke, this mechanism no longer works and EVERY experience is detected as being novel. The brain is thus dealing with every new stimulus as if it were the first time it has experienced it. This is what can, in the end, lead to wipeout in strokies. Their brains stand to attention ALL THE TIME, and that's a bit knackering.

Picture: Great Arthur House poster

Power and the people. Signpost shows Cripplegate Ward officials at the top and a Golden Lane Gallery poster comprising residents' photographs below.

Can you spot the dangling man?

As seen behind the Shakespeare pub

Diary: October 2018

4 October 2018, Hackney 

In the studio today.

Bit rude, but never mind

which is a companion to...

Addicted to Bette Davis Eyes on Spotify Easy 80s collection

5 October 2018, Paris
It is such a long time since I last spotted a bit of rolled-up carpet in a Parisian gutter.

6 October 2018, ParisNot only do they have those hire bicycles you can just leave anywhere on the pavement, they also have a motorised scooter equivalent. The marginalisation of the pedestrian is in full swing here in Paris.

Paris has motorised scooters 

6 October 2018, Paris 

Spotted in the 15th Arrondisement.

Parisian dentists leave this stuff lying around

6 October, 2018, Paris 

Out and about in Convention.

Le Comptoir toilettes 

Le Comptoir menu 

Exotic Parisian goth reads paper 

The things you see if you look down 

Working out our winners 

7 October 2018, Paris 

A day at the races.

First drink of the day 

A spare bottle is always a good idea 

The view from the cheap seats 

Getting the Smartie-suit guy and the Peaky Blinder in one shot was not easy 

Lipstick at the race track

Behind a row of horsey hoorays 

8 October 2028, London

Just back from a weekend in Paris, where not only do they have those hire bikes (Mobike) you can leave anywhere on the pavement, but a motorised scooter equivalent. Now I read in City Matters, number 083, a story that hints at a future where the highway conflict shifts from motorist versus cyclist to motorist and cyclist and scooterist, or whatever, versus pedestrian. As the City's ‘Culture Mile’ tourism programme gains momentum, footfall will increase, but so will the march of technology and the public highways will become the province of all kinds of gadgetry. The distinction between road and pavement is breaking down and the City will become a much more dangerous place for walkers.

Clipping from City Matters 

11 October 2018, Hackney
The best thing for me at the Headway Co-Production workshop today was Rosy’s answer to the question: "Why HEL members should be involved in decision making?” Rosy is not a Day-Service member, but she did benefit from talking to day-members, which she did actively. I especially enjoyed a conversation with her and Phil Chimes during one of the breaks about being a cop (pre brain injury). We shared the experience of not being able to multi-process. We both can only do things serially, start-finish, start-finish, etc. Rosy said also that she retained some of her pre-brain injury embedded characteristics, what I frivolously referred to as “being plod”. She was still very observant, suspecting and cautious. She had not “lost it”, as she told her closest friends.

12 October 2018, London

The puppeteers did not wear gloves 

18 October 2018, Hackney
Bit of writing for Michelle about masks.
The studio's current artist-in-residence is Stephen Wright, who found fame turning his house in Dulwich, south London, into a living museum of Outsider Art. He called it his “House of Dreams”, so it was interesting to see him bring his dreamworld to Submit to Love.

One of his first projects was to get members making masks. The temptation to draw parallels between masks and dreams is strong. It could be said that both are multi-layered confessions, and Steven agreed that masks are more often about revealing than concealing.

Our members took first-base inspiration from a serious book about Mexican masks, but roamed freely with the subject thereafter. So it wouldn't be a good idea to read too much into these masks. Some of them are of real people (Michael Jackson), some are just for fun. Some are self portraits. AD's image of herself depicts a wild-headed woman with her tongue sticking out. It's a remarkable likeness, both physical and metaphorical, of the AD I know. Studio manager Michelle modelled herself on an evil crone with sunken eyes and a hooked nose. As I said, don't read too much into these things. Errol Drysdale did the mask of a lion. That's a good character fit, too.

Thankfully, I managed to dodge doing this project 

One of the fascinating things these masks all have in common is that inside them, their essence, their soul, is one day: Tuesday, October 16, 2018. This is because they all started as scrunched-up pages from that day's copy of the Metro newspaper, on top of which is layer upon layer of Modrock.

The front-page headline in the Metro on that Tuesday was “MEXIT!” followed by a story about how Prince Harry's wife, Meghan, will be enduring the pain of childbirth on the same day the UK is scheduled to leave the EU. Good luck with that, thought Sam Jevon as she turned this story into the outsized nose of a grinning idiot.

Other stories that day included one about Katya from Strictly Come Dancing trying to repair her marriage after a slip of the tongue with a long-haired comedian called Seann. There was something about Universal Credit not only being a pathway to misery for tens of thousands, especially women, but a total waste of billions for the taxpayer. But my favourite story was an interview with the artist Finn Stone (aka, the Mad Hatter), whose north-London house looks like it just came out of Stephen Wright's toilet.

It is weirdly comforting to think that the Metro newspaper's worldly wisdom is embedded in these creations. More so that each of them carries an identical tabloid voodoo and yet look so vastly different. It's both enlivening and creepy in one take.

I still can't resist mentioning that huge pink nose to Sam Jevon at every opportunity. She giggles coquettishly, but I'm pretty sure she's wishing I’d just shut up and piss off.

18 October 2018, Hackney 

In the studio today.

Oils are so messy

22 October 2018 🎥, London
The cynic in me says Bradley Cooper just wanted to cast himself in a love story with Lady Gaga.

I don't advise dissing Brad

24 October 2018, London

A sort of cross between Kids From Fame and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.

It turned my po face into a big grin

25 October 2018, London
Children looking remotely happy are rare in this exhibition.

Maybe it's because they is posh little squirts

26 October 2018, London
Early this morning I heard on BBC Radio 4 Extra a gripping 20-minute play made in 1978 called 'The Revenge’. It was written by the actor Andrew Sachs, who is also the story's principal character. The stand-out feature of the play is that contains no spoken words. The drama is communicated purely by sound. To get the idea, think of the difference in sound between someone breathing calmly, at ease and in a relaxed manner, and someone breathing desperately during a chase.

26 October 2018, London
Another Corrie woman to go with those appearing in the print show at Could Be Good in Deptford.

Ena Sharples

Others in the series include Bet Lynch, Hilda Ogden, Vera Duckworth and Elsie Tanner

27 October 2018, London

The writing is so clever 

28 October 2018, LondonInteresting introduction from a woman who told us about Czechoslovakia's early adoption of votes for women (1918). This film cries out for a women's Monty Python-style remake.

I think some of the humour might have been lost in the mists of time