Charles Dickens at The Eagle
Only last week, I was day-dreaming about taking a trip to the Eagle Theatre in the City Rd, so it was my great delight to come across this fictional account of a visit to the Eagle by Charles Dickens in a story entitled “Miss Evans and the Eagle,” written under his penname “Boz.” It sent me back to the Bishopsgate Institute to examine the precious scrapbook of playbills from the Eagle that are contemporary with Dickens’ story, first published as one of his “Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People” in “Bell’s Life in London,” 4th October 1835.
Old playbills have a charisma all their own, combining bravura typography with hyperbolic promises designed to send your imagination racing. Once you start envisaging the reality of these extraordinary shows you are spellbound. Yet Dickens was a visitor to the Eagle Theatre and the characters in his story are not especially impressed by the performance, so maybe the enigmatic hype of these posters surpassed the reality of what actually happened at the Eagle.
I take this as my consolation for never being able to visit the Eagle in person, that I can enjoy the sublime poetry of these magnificent posters without ever taking the risk of having my illusions shattered – unlike Charles Dickens’ characters Mr Samuel Wilkins and Miss J’mima Ivins in his account of their night out at the Eagle on a disastrous double date.
“How ev’nly!” said Miss J’mima Ivins, and Miss J’mima Ivins’s friend, both at once, when they had passed the gate and were fairly inside the gardens. There were the walks, beautifully gravelled and planted – and the refreshment-boxes, painted and ornamented like so many snuff-boxes – and the variegated lamps shedding their rich light upon the company’s feet – and a Moorish band playing at one end of the gardens – and an opposition military band playing away at the other. Then, the waiters were rushing to and fro with glasses of negus, and glasses of shrub, and bottles of ale, and people were crowding to the door of the Rotunda, and in short the whole scene was, as Miss J’mima Ivins, inspired by the novelty, or the shrub, or both, observed, “one of dazzling excitement.”
As to the concert room, never was anything half so splendid. There was an orchestra for the singers, all paint, gilding, and plate-glass, and such an organ! Miss J’mima Ivins’s friend’s young man whispered it had cost “four hundred pound,” which Mr. Samuel Wilkins said was “not dear neither,” an opinion in which the ladies perfectly coincided. The audience were seated on elevated benches round the room and crowded into every part of it, and everybody was eating and drinking as comfortably as possible.
Just before the concert commenced, Mr. Samuel Wilkins ordered two glasses of rum-and-water and two slices of lemon for himself and the other young man, together with “a pint o’ sherry wine for the ladies, and some sweet carraway-seed biscuits,” and they would have been quite comfortable and happy, only a strange gentleman with large whiskers WOULD stare at Miss J’mima Ivins, and another gentleman in a plaid waistcoat WOULD wink at Miss J’mima Ivins’s friend. On which Miss J’mima Ivins’s friend’s young man exhibited symptoms of boiling over and began to mutter about “swells out o’luck,” and to intimate, in oblique terms, a vague intention of knocking somebody’s head off, which he was only prevented from announcing more emphatically, by both Miss J’mima Ivins and her friend threatening to faint away on the spot if he said another word.
The concert commenced – overture on the organ, “How solemn!” exclaimed Miss J’mima Ivins, glancing, perhaps unconsciously, at the gentleman with the whiskers. Mr. Samuel Wilkins, who had been muttering apart for some time past, as if he were holding a confidential conversation with the gilt knob of his dress cane, breathed hard – breathing vengeance perhaps – but said nothing. “The soldier tired,” performed by Miss Somebody in white satin. “Ancore!” cried Miss J’mima Ivins’s friend. “Ancore!” shouted the gentleman in the plaid waistcoat immediately, hammering the table with a stout-bottle. Comic song, accompanied on the organ. Miss J’mima Ivins was convulsed with laughter – so was the man with the whiskers. Everything the ladies did, the plaid waistcoat and whiskers did, by way of expressing unity of sentiment and congeniality of soul, and Miss J’mima Ivins, and Miss J’mima Ivins’s friend, grew lively and talkative, as Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and Miss J’mima Ivins’s friend’s young man, grew morose and surly in inverse proportion.
Now, if the matter had ended here, the little party might soon have recovered their former equanimity, but Mr. Samuel Wilkins and his friend began to throw looks of defiance upon the waistcoat and whiskers. And the waistcoat and whiskers, by way of intimating the slight degree in which they were affected by the looks aforesaid, bestowed glances of increased admiration upon Miss J’mima Ivins and friend. The concert and vaudeville concluded, they promenaded the gardens. The waistcoat and whiskers did the same, and made divers remarks complimentary to the ankles of Miss J’mima Ivins and friend in an audible tone.
At length, not satisfied with these numerous atrocities, they actually came up and asked Miss J’mima Ivins, and Miss J’mima Ivins’s friend, to dance, without taking no more notice of Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and Miss J’mima Ivins’s friend’s young man than if they was nobody!
“What do you mean by that, scoundrel?” exclaimed Mr. Samuel Wilkins, grasping his gilt-knobbed dress-cane firmly in his right hand. “What’s the matter with you, you little humbug?” replied the whiskers. “How dare you insult me and my friend?” inquired the friend’s young man. “You and your friend be hanged!” responded the waistcoat. “Take that,” exclaimed Mr. Samuel Wilkins. The gilt-knob of his dress cane was visible for an instant, and then the light of the variegated lamps shone brightly upon it as it whirled into the air. “Give it to him,” said the waistcoat.“Horficer!” screamed the ladies. Miss J’mima Ivins’s beau and the friend’s young man lay gasping on the gravel, and the waistcoat and whiskers were seen no more.
Miss J’mima Ivins and friend being conscious that the affray was in no slight degree attributable to themselves, of course went into hysterics forthwith, declared themselves the most injured of women, exclaimed, in incoherent ravings, that they had been suspected – wrongly suspected – Oh! that they should ever have lived to see the day – and so forth, suffered a relapse every time they opened their eyes and saw their unfortunate little admirers, and were carried to their respective abodes in a hackney-coach, and a state of insensibility compounded of shrub, sherry, and excitement.
Images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
Simon Costin, Museum of British Folklore
When I first came across a reference to Simon Costin’s notion to create the Museum of British Folklore, I knew it was a stroke of genius. So you can imagine my excitement when I walked over to visit him recently and his benign round face appeared behind the door, like the full moon emerging from a cloud. Leaving the East End street, I followed him down a dark passage wallpapered with trees into the basement kitchen where a lifesize wax figure sat across the table from me, while outside a fox gambolled placidly in the overgrown yard. Yet I was not in the least surprised by Simon’s living environment, since every element was perfectly in tune with his lyrical, visionary imagination.
Growing up Devon, I was always captivated by the romance – Dare I say it? The magic – of the folk traditions (like the Ottery St Mary tar barrel rolling) that surrounded me. Experiences coloured by my mother’s reminiscences, recounted to me of her own childhood in Cornwall in the nineteen thirties, and the cherished moment in our family history when my grandfather as bank manager in Helston was chosen to lead the Floral Dance in and out the houses. Consequently, these inexplicable social rituals have always delighted and fascinated me with their egalitarian poetry. Mostly unsanctioned by the church or the state, they are the celebratory culture of the working people.
“Is this your life’s work?” I asked Simon, broaching the burning question as soon as our conversation had settled down sufficiently for it not to be impertinent. And he broke into a wide emotional smile to reply with the answer I was hoping for, murmuring under his breath,“Yes.” Although Simon is a serious fellow with an distinguished career in design including five years as Alexander McQueen’s Art Director, he showed me the face of a child. Specifically, a boy who went on holidays to Cornwall and fell in love with a museum in St Ives that displayed Staffordshire Figures and Corn Dollies, awakening a lifelong passion for our vernacular culture.
As an adult, delighting in the folkloric traditions and travelling the country to participate in many of these seasonal events, especially the Jack in the Green Festival in Hastings, Simon discovered that in spite of all the cultural imports – especially from America – which might appear to homogenise our country, the native culture is thriving. When Simon first attended the Jack in the Green Festival fifteen years ago, there were two thousand people but last year the crowd numbered over twenty thousand. And so, frustrated by the lack of any central focus to research and learn more about this culture, Simon was inspired to create the Museum of British Folklore with the purpose of celebrating and recording the indigenous culture of these Isles, and afford it the dignity it deserves. This was when his life changed.
“I’ve always loved museums,” declared Simon, casting his eyes around his house, crowded with all manner of intriguing and charismatic curios, “primarily as repositories of knowledge. You can take what you will and interpret it how you please.” At first, he visited curators of existing museums with folklore collections to learn the lie of the land, but soon he realised he needed to create a presence at the festivals, as a means to hear the response from those in the fields and byways – “to learn the language of our intangible heritage,” as he put it.
So Simon decided to set out touring the country in a caravan, and with the help of luminaries from the worlds of folklore and fashion, he spent six months planning an elaborate party for five hundred guests at Cecil Sharpe House to raise the funds. Then with his caravan painted with fairground scrolls and in an outfit consisting of a stove pipe hat designed by Stephen Jones and a long coat designed by Gareth Pugh, he set out from the East End on his eight month quest to meet the dyed-in-the-wool folkies of Britain. And the results of this exercise will be seen next year in a series of exhibitions, derived from Simon’s extraordinary discoveries upon his coast to coast trail.
The first show to be unveiled will be the collection of Maurice Evans, an eighty year old who amassed thousands of fireworks since the age of twenty – all for the quality of the designs. He has donated his collection to the museum and this will be seen next year at Compton Verney, in the first ever exhibition devoted to the history of British fireworks. The second show will be in London, “Dark Britannica” staged in collaboration with the Museum of British Witchcraft in Boscastle, exploring effects of the repeal of the law against witchcraft in 1951 and the subsequent counterculture that arose when all the practising witches came out of the shadows, no longer fearing prosecution.
Simon’s eyes glitter as he gets inspired reeling off these entrancing ideas, and outlining the plans that are afoot to find a building too. “The idea is to have two years of regional exhibitions and during that time we’re looking at sites,” he said, committed to establishing the museum outside London. “How do you manifest folk culture?” he asked rhetorically, proposing the central dilemma,“It’s the challenge with all these things, that’s why these events can be neglected, because there are no artifacts.” Simon’s solution is to involve the participants in these festivals working alongside visual artists and photographers, using his acute eye and experience as an Art Director to bring the language of contemporary art to the representation of these elusive phenomena.
“We’re looking for material,” Simon announced to me, recklessly inviting contributions to the museum. But this is such a huge subject – which has barely been tapped – that I think he will find himself inundated with wonders for inclusion in the Museum of British Folklore, though I guess that is exactly what he wants.
You can watch a short film Rites & Rituals here
The Burry Man, Queensferry, second Friday of August.
Barrel Burning, Ottery St. Mary, November 5th.
Bampton Morris, 29th May
Soul-Cakers, Antrobus
Mock Mayor of Ock St, Abingdon, June
The Museum of British Folklore on tour.
Castleton Garland Day, 29th May
Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival, 14th – 16th January.
Minehead Hobby Horse, May 1st
Winster Morris, Derbyshire.
Stained glass © Tamsin Abbott
Photographs of festivals copyright © Doc Rowe
Portrait of Simon Costin copyright © Tim Walker
Bill Crome, Window Cleaner
This is Bill Crome, a venerable window cleaner with thirty years’ experience in the trade, who makes a speciality out of cleaning the windows of the old houses in the East End. You might assume cleaning windows is a relatively mundane occupation and that, apart from the risk of falling off a ladder, the job is otherwise without hazard – yet Bill’s recent experiences have proved quite the contrary, because he has supernatural encounters in the course of his work that would make your hair stand on end.
“It wasn’t a career choice,” admitted Bill with phlegmatic good humour, “When I left school, a man who had a window cleaning business lived across the road from me, so I asked his son for a job and I’ve been stuck in it ever since. I have at least sixty regulars, shops and houses, and quite a few are here in Spitalfields. I like the freedom, the meeting of people and the fact that I haven’t got a boss on my back.” In spite of growing competition from contractors who offer cleaning, security and window cleaning as a package to large offices, Bill has maintained his business manfully, even in the face of the recession, but now he faces a challenge of another nature entirely. Although, before I elaborate, let me emphasise that Bill Crome is one of the sanest, most down-to-earth men you could hope to meet.
“I’ve heard there is a window cleaner in Spitalfields who sees ghosts,” I said, to broach the delicate subject as respectfully as I could. “That’s me,” he confessed without hesitation, colouring a little and lowering his voice, “I’ve seen quite a few. Five years ago, at the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in Spital Sq, I saw a sailor on the second floor. I was outside cleaning the window and this sailor passed in front of me. He was pulling his coat on. He put his arms in the sleeves, moving as he did so, and then walked through the wall. He looked the sailor on the Players Navy Cut cigarette packet, from around 1900 I would guess, in his full uniform.
And then I saw a twelve year old girl on the stair, she was bent down, peering at me through the staircase. I was about to clean the window, and I could feel someone watching me, then as I turned she was on the next floor looking down at me. She had on a grey dress with a white pinafore over the top. And she had a blank stare.
I did some research. I went to a Spiritualist Church in Wandsworth and one of the Spiritualists said to me, ‘You’ve got a friend who’s a sailor haven’t you?’ They told me how to deal with it. When we investigated we found it was to do with the old paintings at the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, amongst the collection were portraits of a sailor and of a girl. Once I was walking up to the top floor, and I looked at the picture of the girl and she had a smiling face – but when I went back to collect my squeegee, I looked again and she had a frown. It sounds really stupid doesn’t it? I found a leaflet in the house explaining about the history of the paintings and how the family that gave them was dying off. The paintings are off the wall now, yet they had a nice feeling about them, of sweetness and calm.”
Bill confirmed that since the paintings were taken down, he has seen no more ghosts while cleaning windows in Spital Sq and the episode is concluded, though the implications of these sinister events have been life changing, as he explained when he told me of his next encounter with the otherwordly.
“I was cleaning the windows of a house in Sheerness, and I looked into the glass and I saw the reflection of an old man right behind me. I could see his full person, a six foot four inch very tall man, standing behind me in a collarless shirt. But when I turned round there was no-one there.
I went down to the basement, cleaning the windows, and I felt like someone was climbing on my back. Then I started heaving, I was frozen to the spot. All I kept thinking was, ‘I’ve got to finish this window,’ but as soon as I came out of the basement I felt very scared. Speaking to a lady down the road, she told me that in this same house, in the same window, a builder got thrown off his ladder in the past year and there was no explanation for it.
I won’t go back and do that house again, I can tell you.”
As Bill confided his stories, he spoke deliberately, taking his time and maintaining eye contact as he chose his words carefully. I could see that the mere act of telling drew emotions, as Bill re-experienced the intensity of these uncanny events whilst struggling to maintain equanimity. My assumption was that although Bill’s experience at the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings might be attributed to a localised phenomenon, what happened in Sheerness suggests that Bill himself is the catalyst for these sightings.
“I feel that I have opened myself up to it because I’ve been to the Spiritualist Church a few times,” he revealed to me. “I do expect to see more ghosts because I work in a lot of old properties, especially round Spitalfields. I don’t dread it but I don’t look forward to it either. It has also made me feel like I do want to become a Spiritualist, and every time I go along, they say, ‘Are you a member of the church?’ But I don’t know. I don’t know what can of worms I’ve opened up.”
Bill’s testimony was touching in its frankness – neither bragging nor dramatising – instead he was thinking out loud, puzzling over these mysterious events in a search for understanding. As we walked together among the streets of ancient dwellings in the shadow of the old church in Spitalfields where many of the residents are his customers, I naturally asked Bill Crome if he has seen any ghosts in these houses. At once, he turned reticent, stopping in his tracks and insisting that he maintain discretion. “I don’t tell my customers if I see ghosts in their houses.” he informed me absolutely, looking me in the eye,“They don’t need to know and I don’t want to go scaremongering.”
Olha Pryymak, A Painting a Day
At Leila’s Shop, Calvert Avenue, November 17th 2010
When Olha Pryymak arrived to meet me in Spitalfields on her bicycle, once she had dropped off her son at Columbia Rd Nursery, she was ready and eager to talk about her practice of painting a picture every day. And I recognised an imperative to make the interview brief – because she had to paint her next picture and post it on the internet before getting back to the school gates again at three. Yet Olha herself was sublimely comfortable with the situation, and more than happy to sit with her ipad scrolling through the online gallery of hundreds of her paintings, because she was in her own time.
“This was not my idea,” she declared, clasping her delicate hands and folding her pianist’s fingers with a modest candour, admitting her debt to the international movement of daily painters who show their work on the internet and in particular to Edward B. Gordon. Olha chose to embrace this singular endeavour in 2006, upon her return to her native Ukraine, when she became pregnant after nine years in Washington D.C. where she had done a Communication & Business Degree before landing a job in Financial Statistics at the World Bank. “It was fun, a great working environment,” Olha said, moving on with disarming levity, while also revealing an admirable strength of mind.
“I badly wanted to have the baby in the Ukraine, and to get back to what I always wanted to do. So I did a painting a day for year solid and it sharpened my painting skills. I was busy painting what was in front of me. And it gave me feedback and kept me in touch with the international painting community too. I think being under pressure helped me to make better paintings, because now I am able to keep focus on one or two things at once.” Olha has the self-respecting confidence of a woman who has made her own way in the world and yet she is quick to acknowledge the support she has received too, “It was possible because of my hardworking husband, who didn’t move to the Ukraine, he moved to London. He flew back and forth until 2008 when we were reunited here, living in a flat in Cheshire St.”
Olha’s pictures demonstrate the spontaneity and endearing lack of pretension that is characteristic of the daily painters’ movement which has blossomed on the internet. “Although it’s addictive and I wouldn’t do anything else now, I have a family, so that dictates.” she explained, “I take vacations and I usually paint about five pictures each week. I’m doing really well, I have been accepted for the Royal Academy twice. What I love is that I can do this instead of having to get a job. Though there are limits to it, because people are unlikely to buy something big over the internet unless you have a reputation, that’s why my pictures are all sized fifteen centimetres by fifteen centimetres.” Over time, Olha has embraced these limitations of time and of scale, defining a form as distinctive as the Elizabethan miniaturists. Now she chooses to forgo larger pictures in favour of the dynamic possibilities of her chosen canvas, and prefers posting work online and getting immediate responses over the impersonal environment of the gallery.
Looking back over Olha’s archive of work, I began to see that it has a lot in common with a diary, recording the fleeting impressions of the passing days, created in the moment rather composed retrospectively into something more self-conscious. “I eyeball what’s going to be a good composition and I carry it in mind,” she revealed to me, raising her brows and casting her eyes suspiciously to the looming sky over Spitalfields.“You just can’t paint ‘en pleine aire’ in London, the weather changes too much and it almost always rains.” she declared, from personal experience exemplified in the all-enveloping raincoat she was wearing that day.“I do work from photographs and I am not ashamed of it,” she continued brightly, confident in her own aesthetic,“It’s a visual cue, but it’s the experience I want to capture.” When I asked Olha if she has a studio, “I have a paint box,” was her dignified reply.
Until Olha was five years old, she lived in the forest because her father worked as a woodman, and then the family moved to Lutska, a small town in the North of Ukraine when she started school. “It was fascinating in 1989, with both Chernobyl and Perestroika in the same year,” she admitted with considerable understatement, widening her eyes, before adding,“And when I discovered what had happened in Western Culture since the nineteen sixties, I had quite a culture shock!”
There is a warm celebratory quality to these paintings, appreciating the inconsequential delights that Londoners often ignore, and reflecting Olha’s own affection for this city which brings her pleasure to depict. I can only admire the courage and tenacity of Olha Pryymak, pursuing such an ingenious way to earn her own money and retain an independent creative spirit. She had risen at five that day in order to make time to speak with me about her work, which she has spliced so elegantly into her life.
The Broadgate Tower viewed from Folgate St.
Sunday roast in Spitalfields.
In Gun St.
Three on Dray Walk.
Face hunting in Brick Lane.
The kitchen at Dennis Severs’ House.
A bedroom at Dennis Severs’ House.
Mick Pedroli at the door, Dennis Severs’ House.
At Leila’s Shop.
At Leila’s Shop looking out to Calvert Avenue
At Franze & Evans, Redchurch St
In Dray Walk
At Columbia Rd
Christ Church, Spitalfields, February 2010
Olha Pryymak
Columbia Road Market 60
This is Rosario Rospo, universally known as Ross, who told me he has been trading here for fifteen years, but then we did the sums and he realised it was more like twenty five – that is how time passes when you are busy selling flowers every week in Columbia Rd. At the age of nineteen, Ross began working with his uncle Dennis selling cut flowers at the other of the market while worked his way up the waiting list to get a pitch of his own, where he presides today with a irresistible smile. Many of the traders I speak with each week in the grey dawn possess the pallid faces of those who rose too early, but Ross has a ruddy complexion and healthy tan complemented by intense blue eyes. The picture of vigorous health and with the physical presence of an athlete, bouncing around on the balls of his feet and limbering up for day’s trading, Ross bragged he has just lost twenty pounds through the boxercise and karate that he practises with his eleven year old son.
Ross has cut flower stalls at Bishop’s Stortford Market on Thursday and Saturday, and Hertford on Saturday, as well as his regular pitch here in Columbia Rd, which has the reputation as the best-organised flower stall in the market. In fact, it was only on my second attempt that I managed to snatch a conversation with Ross, because each time I asked he was pre-occupied in the all-consuming creative task of arranging his beloved roses, tulips and freesias in perfect ranks to create a masterly floral panorama worthy of an artist. This week Ross recommends buying Amaryllis which will last until Christmas. When I asked what keeps him coming back, “I know nothing else,” Ross answered plainly over his shoulder, his eyes already straying back to the fulsome perfection of his stall awaiting the imminent despoilation of this morning’s customers.
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Adam Dant’s Map of Shoreditch in the Year 3000
In the year 3000, Shoreditch is all that remains intact among the ruins of human civilisation. Although fortunately none of us are likely to be there to witness it in person, you can click on the map above to scrutinize all the grim details for yourself and discover the primary historical events of the next thousand years too, courtesy of Adam Dant’s dystopian vision created in the year 2000. “But why did only Shoreditch survive?” I asked Adam in horror. “Because it’s subject of the map!” he retorted with good-humoured alacrity, “There is no reason or explanation.”
Casting your eyes upon this disturbing spectacle – like a cavemen peering from the darkness into a glowing shopping mall – be aware that the view is looking South over the remnants of Shoreditch from the Hackney Mountains. On the site of the former Old St roundabout sits the new transport hub enabling passengers to travel upon beams of light through the transformation of micro-particles. On the site of an ancient Shoreditch strip club sits a museum of what used to be – where women go to learn about men, in this world where men have become redundant, ceased to exist and then had to be invented again. Where the Prince’s Drawing School once stood in Charlotte Rd is a collection of British cultural relics including Stonehenge, St Paul’s and Big Ben, in the same manner you might see fragments of lost civilisations at the British Museum today.
Under the spell of the Millennium and inspired by the writings of Jim Dator, Professor of Futurology at the University of Hawaii, Adam Dant asked the residents of Shoreditch about their ideas of the future, and this map was the result. “It’s very loaded. You are asking people to reveal their politics, ideology and world view,” he explained, referring me to the works of Professor Dator, who in his Utopian Coursework proposed the investigation of fictional future worlds on alarming principles such as,“Everyone over or under a certain height could be killed,” qualified by the suggestion, “People under a certain height could be required to wear high heels or tall hats, and people over a certain height could be forced to crouch.”
“People mostly imagined it was going to get worse,” revealed Adam delightedly, speaking of his survey of the residents of Shoreditch,“The future is a nightmare, a de-humanized dream.” When I confessed to Adam that, speaking personally, I still harbour hope for humanity, he put a hand on my shoulder in reassurance. “Paradise is pretty dull,” he informed me with a twinkly smile, revealing his ulterior motive as an artist. Yet, a mere ten years later, history is already eclipsing Adam’s vision of the future. “I was way off with the route of the new highline,” he admitted in gracious acceptance, acknowledging that the new overland train follows a different route from the one he predicted. I take this as a sign that Adam’s map is not the inevitable future for Shoreditch, instead I prefer to see it as the apocalyptic Shoreditch we wish to avoid.
Key to Numbered Sites of Historical Interest on the Map of Shoreditch 3000: 1. Bishops Flood Gate 2. Liverpool Gate Tower 3. Cattle Management Module 4. Great Slab of Cattleism 5. ESP Banks 6. Prismic Departure Point 7. Venicification Towers 8. Understadt Optics Funnel 9. Magnetising Point 10. Atlantunnel 11. Public Dream Management 12. Chinese Style Version Law HQ 13. William Blake & the Mothodists 14. Institute of Planetary Consciousness 15. Sky Pantry Inlet 16. Transport Hub 17. Chris Church real & imagined 18. Movement Co-ordination HQ 19. Drug Simulation HQ 20. Reality Bank 21. Asylum 22. Institute of Coincidence 23. Measure Center 24. Crash Site of Super Sat 1 25. Gene Exchange 26. Large Art Archive (the bongs etc) 27. Carbonised Automata Laboratory 28. Medindustry 29. Major & Minor War Pillars 30. Star Power Research 31. Devout Democratic Monarchy 32. Religious Theme Park 33. Plankton/Plasma Drain 34. Restored Sky Boat 35. Virus Market Site 36. Animal Circus Revue Board 37. Hakny Mountain Viewing Pod 38. Celebrity History Hotel 39. Silica Manipulation Mine 40. Leonard’s Shakspur’s Place 41. Terminus 42. Knob Empire/Superdrain 43. Anti- Gravity Chambers 44. Tubic Pod 45. Honxton Curtalns Morality Crater 46. Sensatiorama Chambers 47. Fug Protection Shield
You may like to take a look at Adam’s Dant’s Map of Shoreditch as New York, or his Map of the History of Shoreditch or his Map of Shoreditch as the Globe. Next time, the Shoreditch You Dream Of. Adam Dant’s current exhibition Bibliotheques & Brothels runs at the Adam Baumgold Gallery, East 66th St, New York City until November 27th, and his forthcoming exhibition Dant on Drink opens at Hales Gallery, 7 Bethnal Green Rd on November 25th and runs until January 8th.
Russella, London’s Top Tranny
Who is that mysterious face in the cafe window in Dalston, lost in such dreamy contemplation? Is it an obscure European princess, taken flight on a state visit to London in the manner of “Roman Holiday” and yearning to discover something of the life the of the common people in the East End? Is it perhaps a Hollywood starlet conscientiously researching her role in a forthcoming romantic comedy about a Hollywood starlet and an East End barrow boy? Or is it Goldilocks in her red cape, who has somehow strayed too far in the forest on her way to grandmother’s house and discovered herself lost on the Kingsland Rd? All of these are possible, though what is certain is that this delicate presence incarnates a rare glamour which captivates the spectator. Yet the simple truth is this picture records an ordinary scene in the daily life of Russella, London’s Top Tranny.
Eager to learn more of the alluring enigma that is Russella, I asked Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Sarah Ainslie to turn paparazza for a day in an attempt to capture some intimate images of Russella’s life in the East End. And it was my privilege to be granted a rare telephone interview with Russella herself which I publish here to accompany Sarah’s affectionate portfolio of cherished tranny pictures.
The Gentle Author: May I ask you about the word “tranny,” what does it mean?
Russella: When I started doing drag, I think “tranny” was a word that was probably derogatory, so we were reclaiming it. I know some people think a tranny is a transvestite but that’s very different, they actually dress up for kicks or they do it on a more full time basis. I don’t really know how to explain “tranny,” it doesn’t really mean anything other than we’ve updated the term “drag queen.”
The Gentle Author: I can’t say the word “tranny” without smiling…
Russella: It’s a fun word isn’t it?
The Gentle Author: Can you tell me about your origins?
Russella: Originally I was a more traditional drag queen and I went by the name Christina Draguilera but then I decided I wanted to be more performance art and avant garde, so I changed my name to Russella. The official story is that I started doing drag because I entered a competition and I won it, and then I was offered more and more work – but I think the reality is I was probably having an identity crisis…
The Gentle Author: Let me say, I think your “Next Top Tranny Contest” is a tour de force and I predict big things for it.
Russella: It’s strange because there’ve been all sorts of competitions, but this format seems to work quite well, even if the first winner was a sixty-five year old truck driver and the last winner was a drag king! And it’s all quite messy isn’t it? I try to make it glamorous but, the more I try, the more of a mess it becomes…
The Gentle Author: Had you ever thought of launching your own chat show?
Russella: I would love to, but I did actually go on the “Weakest Link” and I was quite wooden. A film man once said to me that sometimes when you put people who are quite outgoing in front of a camera they just freeze, so I think I would need more training for that. I do like asking questions actually.
The Gentle Author: Tell me about your ambitions.
Russella: I have a show about Princess Diana that I used to do, it was a really great show and I’ve been thinking about bringing it back for years now. It’s my next biggie. I think it’s time we brought Princess Diana back. It’s such a touchy subject, I performed extracts of it somewhere quite corporate recently and they were a bit disgusted by it, even though it’s twelve years ago. All her dresses have been taken out of Kensington Palace, so she’s officially in the past now but I think she deserves to be remembered.
The Gentle Author: Do you think there’s a spiritual side to trannies?
Russella: I do think there’s an ethereal quality – because it does just come from nowhere. I put on my clothes and my wig and I become something else. I think that for a long time I embodied this thing I’d become, but I actually go to therapy now and, since I’ve been having therapy, I feel more and more like a clown, like I am putting on a costume whereas before I actually became this other character. I suppose it is quite spiritual – something’s going on! I feel like when I am doing drag it’s like becoming a child again, acting and behaving in a way that you wouldn’t in day-to-day life. People find it quite hard to dress up and run around laughing and joking and poking fun at things. But when I am in drag, it’s like you become the person that you are supposed to be.
The Gentle Author: I feel that this performance liberates something in the audience too, a sense of misrule.
Russella: I can’t imagine what it’s like for the audience because I am in the moment, but I suppose it must be like watching a little child play – you do get that feeling of “anything is possible”
The Gentle Author: There was this sense of danger, that it could all go so wrong, and it did and we loved you for it.
Russella: I guess I like chaos, because I’m constantly striving to make everything perfect which it’s not.
The Gentle Author: Are you an East End girl?
Russella: Originally I am from Yorkshire and the reason came to Dalston was because of my friend, who’s actually a pop star now, Paloma Faith who lives up the road from where I live now. I moved from Yorkshire with no job so I slept on her sofa for a year. That’s how I ended up in the East End.
The Gentle Author: But is this your home now? Or is there another part of London you want to be?
Russella: Chelsea! I want to sell out and live a quiet life in Chelsea.
Russella sets her cap straight.
At Avant Garde, 466 Kingsland Rd
At Wah Nails, 420 Kingsland Rd.
At the First Class Laundrette, 408 Kingland Rd.
Learn more at Russella’s horticultural blog The Glamorous Gardener.
Always gracious with fans who strike up conversations.
At Tin Cafe, 1 Middleton Rd.
Pondering the mysteries of the postal service.
Relentless in her pursuit of five a day.
Enjoying seasonal fruit.
Making good use of her Princess Diana tea towel.
At A Bit of What You Fancy, 465 Kingsland Rd.
Dreaming of meeting a Mudlark one day…
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
The Mudlark & The Tranny have agreed to get together for a CHIT-CHAT next Wednesday 24th November at 7pm. Russella, London’s top tranny gets down and dirty with Steve Brooker, London’s top mudlark! This is the second of my CHIT-CHATS in which characters from the pages of Spitalfields Life interview each other live in front of an audience, after hours in the Rough Trade East record shop in Dray Walk, Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane. Admission is free and no booking is required, just turn up at 7pm. I have no doubt it will be as amusing and informative as The Stripper & The Oral Historian proved to be last time, and we can all go along to the Golden Heart again for a couple of drinks with Sandra afterwards.
