Category Archive - London
Traffic Wardens
Posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 in London, Writing | 2 Comments
Is there any creature more universally loathed in the mythology of all big cities than a traffic warden? I kinda doubt it. On the moving-in and moving-out days at my first hall of residence, the traffic wardens of Islington seemed to have some magical power that led them to zoom in without fail, dozens at a time, to penalize every single car that dared to park in front of the hall to drop off their kids. Families that had driven hundreds of miles to deliver their kids to their first day of university found themselves variously ticketed, clamped, and towed, all in the space of time it took to get a clean change of socks and a teddy bear up from the street outside the residence to a room on the 8th floor. I have never seen such a mean, miserable, miserly sight as gaggles of traffic wardens swarming in to slap fines of over a hundred quid on a proud parent who’d been parked for less than ten minutes to deliver their kids, and not reason nor appeals to emotional sympathy could persuade them otherwise.
My Dad, as the driver in the family, has a bitter on-going battle with traffic wardens. He has perfected the art of the polite-yet-steely middle class letter of complaint, which, without wanting to imply that legal action is necessary, nevertheless makes it very clear that hear is an eloquant Radio 4 listener who’s just going to be more trouble than he’s worth. However, this hasn’t stopped a local council for slapping him with a £120 fine for the day his car parked illegally in their borough. Curiously enough, this was the same day that Dad was at work with a local charity, and the car did not leave Hackney all day or all night. The cry of ‘numberplate fraud!’ was duly raised and now an intricate battle of suspicion, reasonable doubt and alibi-affirmation rages between a council stoutly refusing to conceed that it may be trying to rob an innocent man, and an ex-publisher with a knack for letter writing.
(On an entirely different, yet curiously related note, I discovered recently in a battle with my local council the existence of a thing called the ‘Postal Rule’ whereby if a council computer claims a letter was dispatched to a certain address on a certain day, that is considered valid evidence in court that it was so. The only way to argue against this is by proving that you didn’t receive a letter. Now… answers on a postcard please… how exactly do you go about proving that you haven’t received something? Do you hold up the empty air where it should have been?)
Whether this is true for all traffic wardens in all cities, I do not know, but the vast majority of traffic wardens that I see around the centre of London are middle aged black ladies who look perfectly cheerful and pleasant to talk to – until you violate that double yellow line, of course. Since I find it hard to imagine that the people who recruit traffic wardens have a personality test to determine your level of sympathy (lowest score wins), I can only assume that the people who run the traffic warden system as a whole have laid down a policy of go-get-’em-tiger which leads to the kind of swarms that attacked the families trying to unload at my halls of residence.  I was once told that traffic wardens receive extra money based on the number of cars that they manage to ticket – if this is the case (and I have yet to get this confirmed from a viable secondary source) then no wonder these perfectly decent members of the human race undergo such a magical transformation in the presence of an over-run ticket!
In matters such as this, a literal adherence to the word of the law becomes kinda more problematic… yes, these parents come from Leeds and Cardiff and, in one case, the Isle of Skye, were in violating of London parking regulations by being pulled up for more than five minutes on a single yellow line outside the halls of residence. But they were not posing a threat to the public order and, more to the point, they were dropping off Little Tiddles for day 1 of university, an event as emotional as it is demanding on the size of the suitcase. The law has them by the throat, and would duly find them guilty of pissing around with traffic regulations. But in this case, tragically, the law, as enforced by the traffic wardens, is nothing if not a cruel cow.
On the other hand… traffic wardens notoriously suffer more shit from members of the public than any other member of the emergency services. Angry drivers will do anything from shout abuse to spit to, on occasion, resort to physical violence against people who are, at the end of the day, just doing their job. And yeah, it’s not exactly a happy thing when cars park parallel across Oxford Street and my Dad, for all that he writes those steely letters, has been rejoicing these last few years to have a residential parking scheme operating in his area. Rejoicing, that is, were it not for the hundred plus pounds he has to spend a year for the honour of parking anywhere within a 2 mile radius of his front door…
I am, lets be honest here, trying to find some redeeming features in traffic wardens, since I feel it’s unfair to just condemn an entire profession off-hand, and, far worse, to condemn the people that work in it. (Have none of us cheered when the guy with the big hair and the fast sports car gets ticketed for parking like a prat?) But let’s face it, when it gets to the stage that, parking for a few moments to buy a round of fish and chips from your local residential chippy, you have to leave someone in the car to keep an eye out for the traffic wardens and, if necessary, circle round the block 5 times until they’re gone, you can’t help but feel this is a system running mad.
And oh yes…
… did I mention? Randomly enough, traffic wardens may just prove to have their role to play in the life of Matthew Swift and the Midnight Mayor too…
Peregrine Falcons
Posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 in London | 1 Comment
So, there are peregrine falcons nesting on top of Tate Modern. About six couples, the nice lady from the RNIB with the telescope said, waving me in the general direction of the tower of the Tate. They like to nest, it turns out, somewhere high, with an excellent and reliable supply of food near by, and while I instinctively imagined that this meant a diet of discarded cheeseburgers, I am now prepared to no longer be surprised if, sitting one day by St. Pauls Catherdral watching the pigeons, one vanishes without a cluck into the out-stretched talons of a huge sod-off bird of prey.
I suppose upon retrospect that there’s no reason why falcons can’t flourish in London. There was even a government scheme to introduce falcons into Trafalgar Square to curb the pigeon population, although perhaps upon second thought the great tourist banner – ‘come to Trafalgar Square and watch small grey birds get gutted in front of you and all your family by a bigger grey bird’ – didn’t wash with the London Tourist Board.
Anyway, just thought I’d share that peculiar, slightly surreal thought with anyone who likes their birds of prey big, fast and in London transport zone 1.
Shakespeare’s Globe
Posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 in London | 1 Comment
So, having done a very brief post on a play at Shakespeare’s Globe, I figured the next logical step was to do a post about the Globe itself. First up, I really like this theatre. I mean, speaking as someone who wants to spend the rest of my life doing lighting for the theatre, I doubt I’m ever going to go there as anything other than an audience member, but as an audience member, it’s a fantastic place to be.
The history as I vaguely remember it is something like this… theatre built in Elizabethan times, nabbed a reputation for a place to see Shakespeare (although I have a sneaky suspicion that there was a neighbouring theatre, the Rose, which has equal if not better claim to this reputation and academics are cringing… however, it’s not my period and all this stuff is pretty much postcard level history…) – burnt to the ground by cannons being fired as part of a performance of Henry VIII, owing to its straw roof and, as I’m sure many stage managers would smugly add, a certain disregard for the conventions of health and safety. For a few hundred years nothing much happened, until some thirty-something years ago a gentleman by the name of Sam Wanamaker decided to try and ressurect the Globe in all its traditional Tudor glory. Therein followed a fairly standard London Development cliche, involving bureaucracy, fiddling, back and forward local council bickering and finally some rather grudging building permission. From that cliche came the next cliche of all London building projects, towit constant cash problems and the Great British Builder gag, this last probably not helped, but certainly made interesting, by the commitment to using traditional materials and techniques for as much of the construction as was possible. Finally, after much angst, the Globe was opened, and stands now on the South Bank, as good a guessed mimic of its Elizabethan predecessor, from the straw roof (+ sprinklers) to the wooden balconies and ground level exposed to the sky. I have a sneaky suspicion that I may have been there for one of the first plays ever shown at the Globe… suspicion only, because I was, I think, 10 years old at the time, and while I remember loving every second of Henry V, the extensive speeches and dinner that followed after are a bit of a blur. Do not get the impression, by the by, that my family is exactly known for patronizing the arts; but we do know people who do and sometimes this leads to such bizarre occurrences as described above.
Anyhow, whether or not my suspicions are correct, the Globe first really entered my attention when I was at secondary school, courtesy of a highly cultured friend who, for the sake of anonymity, we’ll call Galadriel. After an initial dubious encounter involving a jazz production of Macbeth, a thunderstorm and a stinking cold, my love for the Globe was sealed by spending a warm, cheap and surprisingly un-rainy summer watching Richard II and Twelfth Night. While the Globe can be a bit hit and miss with some of its stuff, when it is good, it is absolutely wonderful, and being a groundling, inches away from the stage and in full cover of the same light that hits the actors is a theatre experience like none other. I remember being absolutely absorbed by a production of Edward II, and laughing so hard that my face ached for hours after an all-female version of Much Ado About Nothing. The Globe, by the by, while producing some brilliant stuff often, produces some absolutely brilliant comedy almost all the time. I have never laughed so hard at Shakespeare’s comedies (which lets face it, are sometimes not as funny as his tragedies…) as I have at the Globe. I’ve also stood through a lot of non-Shakespearean stuff; being bombarded by bread in the name of the French Revolution being my most recent experience. There are some snags; being a groundling is undeniably tough on your kneecaps, so that by the 3rd hour there is a growing urge to grab Hamlet by the throat and scream ‘just kill him already!’ But it is a small price to pay for some of the most exciting summer nights I have ever spent in front of a stage… rained on or otherwise…
Helen
Posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 in London | No Comments
So, I went and saw Helen at Shakespeare’s Globe on the South Bank. I even took my big rain coat, and, with the magic of the big rain coat, it of course was a lovely night and completely and utterly failed to rain.
Shakespeare’s Globe is another one of those landmarks that I may have to add to the ’something to talk about at great length later’ category; however, I will take a quick 100 words or something to say that Helen was immensely enjoyable, tonnes of fun and lots of other things besides, as well as a brilliant example of what can be done with tires. I highly recommend to all who have a sturdy pair of legs, a waterproof jacket (to prevent the rain from happening) and £5 at their disposal of a summer evening by the river!
Dennis Severs’ House
Posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 in London | 1 Comment
Nestled away on 18 Folgate Street, Spittalfields, is a place known as Dennis Severs’ House. It’s a building which contains within its traditional terraced walls various rooms charting the course of one family’s life from the 1700s through to late 1800s, and prides itself on not being a traditional museum, but rather a sort of still life drama, in which every room has the feeling of having just been vacated. This can occasionally be annoying – a lack of information coupled with occasional notes telling the viewer to ‘feel’ the past grates after a while – but mostly, it’s a strange, interesting and entirely engaging wander through history, including the sounds and smells of the past, and I recommend it! You have to book to visit in advance, and there is nothing to mark it out from anything around it except the address and perhaps the silhouette of a 18th century lady in the window above…
Graffiti – European and London
Posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 in Cities and Adventures, London | 1 Comment
Holloway Road, London
Rio Terra M.Foscarini, Venice
Railway line, Milan-Malpensa
Holloway Road, London
Venice
So, I don’t know why, and don’t really know whether it’s an expression of something cultural/political, but as a general impression, I always get the feeling that there is more graffiti in continental Europe than in London. Sure, most of it – as with most of it in London – is the unintelligable scribble of a mark whose meaning is known only to the painter and a few select friends/rivals. Some of it is linked to crime; some of it is kids playing, some of it is standard political protest – which in my own quaint way, I sort of cheer for – and every now and then, some of it is a splash of colour on concrete. The railways of Europe are particularly heavily painted on. Brussels Midi is a particularly boring, depressing station but the tracks leading out of it are three inches thick with every kind of graffiti you could ever see. The railway lines of Italy are also covered in paint, so much so that you begin to wonder how the painters got access to some of the stuff they’re drawing. Alas, I didn’t own a camera until a few months ago, so these are only some of the more recent pictures I stumbled over when last in Europe!
Blink pt 2.
Posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 in London | 1 Comment
Once again, I might just post pictures…Â there are certain things which pictures say faster…
Graffiti
Posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 in London | 4 Comments
I like graffiti!
But for now, I’ll let the photos do the talking….
Caledonian Road
Kings Cross
Waterloo Bridge
Lewisham
Essex Road
Rathbone Place
South Bank
Chapel Market
Through a Dirty Window pt.2
Posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 in London | No Comments
For those who are wondering about the previous post, I guess I should add 2 key bits of information.
1. There are actually 2 dirty windows involved, although they are both on the same floor of the same building.
2. It’s not the London Eye.
Through a Dirty Window
Posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 in London | 5 Comments
This is going to be another one of those blog entries which is mostly photographs, whose main theme, besides the obvious one, is that they were taken of London through a dirty window. The game is guessing which dirty window…
