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.
John Keohane, Chief Yeoman Warder of the Tower of London
Spitalfields is one of the hamlets in the vicinity of the Tower of London that today make up the Borough of Tower Hamlets and consequently all residents of the Borough enjoy a special relationship with the Tower which means we can gain entry for just one pound, simply by showing a library card. As a result, it is a place that I delight to visit throughout the seasons of the year and each time I discover more wonders. On a recent bright Winter’s day of frost and sunlight I took a walk from Spitalfields down to the Tower, where I found golden leaves scattered across the old yards surrounding the mythic White Tower, gleaming in the light. When William the Conquerer built this citadel nearly a thousand years ago in 1068, there was little else here and while the modern city has grown around it, the White Tower remains almost unchanged.
The purpose of my visit was to meet the Chief Yeoman Warder and it was an adventure in itself to be escorted into the inner sanctum of John Keohane’s office overlooking the White Tower, where he sat behind a desk, distinguished in his scarlet and black uniform beneath a portrait of the Queen. John has the quiet eyes of an old soldier, reflecting his long record of military service since 1964, when he signed up for a career that took him to Singapore, Thailand, Oman, the Falkland Islands, Belgium, Germany and Northern Ireland, resulting in a whole string of medals. Though for the sake of levity – in case I should be too overawed by his loftiness – John brought out an iphone from a special pocket in his uniform to show me a picture of him in costume as the Fat Controller on the South Devon steam railway, where he enjoys his month’s holiday each year.
In 1485, when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field, he brought his personal bodyguard back to his residence at the Tower and appointed them Yeoman Warders. “The privilege is that the appointment is for life,” explained John Keohane who continues this unbroken line of Chief Warders spanning five centuries,“though at New Year we have a toast, ‘May you never die a Yeoman Warder!'” The toast dates from the period before 1826, when the position, which includes accommodation in the Tower, was purchased, thus creating an imperative for the warder to sell out while they were still alive so that their wives would have a pension fund, because you could not sell the position once you were dead.
“In Northern Ireland, I served at the height of the troubles, and you were restricted where you could go. You had to be careful.”, John confided to me, with a glance to the window. And I understood that when you have spent your life living in barracks, as he has done, then it is a sympathetic transition to move into the Tower of London, an edifice which contains a veritable city within the City. To be eligible to apply, you must have a minimum of twenty-two years service in the armed forces and a record of good conduct, a fact which John was quick to qualify as being not so much about the lack of misbehaviour as the lack of being caught. Year in, year out, John lives and works here with his fellow Beefeaters and their families, pursuing an existence circumscribed by duty and ritual. Even the guard rota follows a time-honoured pattern referred to as the “daily waite.” “It doesn’t mean you can’t go out, but you have to follow the rules. People in civilian life would not be satisfied with it.” admitted John, who has made his home inside these walls since 1991.
He explained to me that, until 1603, the Tower was a royal residence and his predecessors ate at the King’s table. In those days cattle were primarily used for milking and their meat was a luxury food, although beef was served to the King and, by tradition, the Yeoman Warders were entitled to what was left – giving birth to the nickname ‘Beefeater,’ the term by which they are most commonly known today. It was the creation of Beefeater London Gin in 1871 which took this name to world with such success that the Yeoman Warders now accept they will always be Beefeaters in the popular imagination.
“You can get photographed as many as four hundred times in one day. Some of the warders take detours walking outside between the offices and their homes because otherwise you can be photographed five or six times just crossing the yard,” John revealed, rolling his eyes at the absurdity of it. Yet as we left the building, he was entirely magnanimous to the visitors who wanted to be photographed beside him. Then as we walked on beneath the White Tower, looming overhead, John cast his eyes around in pleasure at the spectacle and said, “What a place to bring your children and grandchildren to! That’s what sold the job to me. I hated history at school but now I am passionate about it – because this is where it happened.”
He took me into the Tower of London Club, the private bar lined with hundreds of tributes from all the regiments in which the warders have served, and it was a sober image to manifest the integral connection between the Yeoman Warders and the armed services. Then on another wall I came across evidence of a different kind of recognition, pictures of the Yeoman Warders with celebrities including Johnny Depp, Bruce Willis, Jackie Chan, Barack Obama (John showed Michelle and the girls around), Matt Damon, Bruce Forsyth, Sylvester Stallone, and Paul McCartney. These pictures raised the question of who was being photographed with who. The celebrity with the Beefeater? Or the Beefeater with the celebrity? It does seem Yeoman Warders like being photographed with colourful characters, just like rest of us. There is an undeniable poetry to this notion of senior soldiers having a new life in the Tower of London, sedate yet basking in adulation of the two and half million visitors each year. Secluded in their cloistered existence but leaving the confines to accompany the Queen at state occasions – existing at the very centre of their own particular world.
John says the years pass quickly here. Every night at ten precisely, he supervises the Ceremony of the Keys at which the Tower is locked for the night. Twice a year is the Ceremony of the Constable’s Dues when a visiting Naval ship’s Captain reports to the Tower to pay a due to the Constable of the Tower. Annually in May is the Lillies & Roses Ceremony commemorating Henry VI, the founder of Eton College and Kings College Cambridge, who was murdered at the Tower of London in 1471. Every three years is the Beating of the Bounds Ceremony on Ascension Day when the Yeoman Warders visit all the boundary markers in a circle around the Tower to beat them with willow wands. And every five years a new Constable of the Tower is installed as the monarch’s representative at the Tower.
Aware that his twenty years dwelling among these ancient walls is a mere blink in their nine hundred year history, time runs smoothly for John Keohane, Chief Yeoman Warden of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace of the Tower of London.
John Keohane points out the figure of the Sultan of Oman in this painting of the state visit to the Tower, of special significance to John because he served in Oman in the seventies.
John Keohane, Chief Yeoman Warden of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace of the Tower of London
Photographs copyright © Martin Usborne
On the Papercut Express with Rob Ryan
On Friday, I was thrilled to board a fast train at Euston with Rob Ryan, the papercut supremo, racing North through the dusk to Stafford for the opening of his latest exhibition. “Your job is to take this world apart and put it back together… but even better,” at the Shire Hall Gallery in the Market Square in Stafford, follows just two weeks after the breathtaking sellout success of Rob’s show at the Air Gallery in Dover St, entitled “The stars shine all day too.” He certainly has a way with titles.
While the London exhibition comprised monochrome papercuts and prints – some of truly astounding size and ambition – this show in Stafford features the papercuts he made as illustrations to complement the text by Carol Ann Duffy for “The Gift,” as well as some remarkable ceramics that signal a new departure for him. The gallery in Stafford sourced nineteenth century moulds for Staffordshire figures and they have cast new ones for Rob to decorate. When I visited Rob at his show at Somerset House in the Summer, there was a Staffordshire china dog that he had already decorated sitting upon his desk. By adding a pair of glasses, Rob had drawn attention to the unlikely resemblance between himself with his luxuriant locks and the spaniel with its curly ears. We used to have a pair upon the sill at the top of the staircase when I was child, so I was fascinated by Rob’s hilariously extrovert reworking of these inscrutable figures. And for months now I have been looking forward to seeing these new works, at their first public showing here in Stafford.
After dozing on the train up, we walked through the dark and frosty Friday-night streets of Stafford, and into the tall bright spaces of the Shire Hall where the rich colours of Rob’s papercuts and prints glowed with exuberant life. I went straight to the cabinet of shelves filled by pairs of china dogs and cats, all staring back at me through the glass. There was an exciting tension between the poise of their nineteenth century form and the lively decorative sensibility of Rob’s designs, animating the figures with idiosyncratic personality. It was the perfect marriage of two disparate threads of folk art, the Staffordshire figure and the papercut, both reinvented by Rob Ryan in an entirely contemporary way. The words which Rob applied exemplify the thoughts I always imagined the dogs on my parents’ staircase harboured. Naturally meditative and sometimes contradictory, reflecting the fact that these creatures are mirror images of each other, the texts are secret insights into the collective psyche of china dogs and cats. Now we know what they were thinking all along.
I was interrupted from my reverie by a local councillor giving a speech. He appeared to have stepped from a novel by Arnold Bennett, quick to declare his lack of specialist knowledge, yet eager to give his modest opinions at length about contemporary art, before swelling with pleasure to introduce the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, whom he chose to regard as a local lass – the pride of Stafford – in spite of her origins in Glasgow. By now the gallery was full with an enthusiastic crowd and once Carol Ann declared the show open, Rob found himself inundated with a long line of fans eager to make his acquaintance. And as my pictures testify, dressed for the occasion in a bright pink gingham shirt, and with a playful nature and a mantle of unkempt curls comparable to the lion in the Wizard of Oz, he is the consummate showman.
Meanwhile, the rest of the citizens of Stafford spread out to scrutinise the immense detail of the works on display and I slipped among them, taking a closer look for myself. The bright energy of these intricate pieces draws your attention and then the subtle melancholy touches your heart. As I noted all the delighted faces, I realised it was an immense body of achievement and a phenomenal finale to a year of hard graft by Rob Ryan.
Then suddenly it was time to hurry back through the maze of streets to the railway station, riffle the vending machine for snacks and hop onto the last train back to London. Rob brought out his game of Boggle and the happy atmosphere in the darkened carriage rattling through the night was more like that of the returning leg of a school trip than you might expect after a major exhibition by a rising star – yet it was the ideal way to wrap up our adventure on the papercut express.
The paparazzi move in on Rob Ryan and Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate.
These two ladies wore dresses to camouflage themselves amongst Rob’s papercuts.
Rob enjoys a game of Boggle on the night train home from Stafford to Euston.
Your job is to take this world apart and put it back together again … but even better runs at the Shire Hall Gallery, Market Square, Stafford until Sunday January 9th and The stars shine all day too runs at the Air Gallery, Dover St, London until Saturday November 20th.
The Milk Float that became a Carnival Float
There was an air of mystery when Henry Jones, the third generation dairyman of Jones Brothers in Middlesex St, summoned me over to see him in the Summer. Closing the office door discreetly and looking me in the eye with a good-natured intensity, he revealed he had a story to tell me – but first I had to agree not to disclose it before the Lord Mayor’s Show. Once I had pledged my word, he proudly unrolled the blueprints upon his desk, confiding that Jones Brothers had accepted the honour of entering the Lord Mayor’s parade and had been placed at an impressive ninth position in the hierarchy of the running order, out of nearly one hundred and fifty entrants. The elaborate designs, which Henry showed me with such conspiratorial delight, were to transform a milk float into a model of one of the medieval gates of the City of London, complete with crenellated turrets.
In 1877, the first Henry Jones drove his herd from Abergavenny in Wales to Middlesex St and founded the dairy in Stoney Lane. Today his grandson Henry Jones presides over the longest established family business in Petticoat Lane, where his young son, the fourth Henry Jones, also works. This is a family with a long relationship with this particular web of streets at the boundary of the City of London. “I was born here,” Henry will tell you proudly, referring to the former dairy, which has since disappeared beneath the modernist concrete development where he now has his office.
So it was in the light of this family history that I came to appreciate Henry’s passionate enthusiasm for the parade, demonstrating that the language of pageantry is as vibrant as it ever was. The design of the gatehouse refers to the gate (or ‘Aldgate’) to the City of London that once stood here, where Geoffrey Chaucer once lived up above the gatehouse. Henry Jones – who is an independent councillor in this ward known as Portsoken – told me the name Portsoken is Norman French and refers to the ‘soke‘ (or district) outside the ‘port’ (or gate), once used by the knights of old for jousting. Consequently, he was employing a knight in armour to ride with a lance in front of his milk float, representing the ‘knightengild’ who were given land here for service to King Edgar. And the Portsoken Militia, the eighteenth century police force, reformed recently for ceremonial occasions would be marching alongside the milk float in their scarlet uniforms as guard of honour. Once Henry had conjured the beguiling image of how the float and entourage incarnated the history of Portsoken, he pointed out the Teddy Bears adorning the gatehouse, which were puzzling me. These were Henry’s whimsical gesture to his friend Mike Bear, the Alderman of Portsoken, who was due to become next Lord Mayor of London.
Henry’s conception was exactly in line with the original function of the parade when the burghers of the city used their floats to declare their status and demonstrate allegiance to the new Mayor. Eager to share his big secret, Henry was excited to inform me that he had already submitted his design to the Pageantmaster and won approval for its suitability. I promised to keep my lips sealed and he agreed to invite me over on the day before the Lord Mayor’s Show for a privileged glimpse of the grand design.
And so last week, I was ushered into the garage in Middlesex St where the float was being assembled behind closed doors. Men on ladders were attaching painted panels to the modest milk float and staging a metamorphosis worthy of the ugly duckling that became a swan. I shook hands with Stuart Stanley, veteran West End theatrical designer, who had been hired to fulfil Henry’s vision. As the gatehouse came swiftly together, Henry proudly explained that he and the other members of the Portsoken Ward Club, who were co-presenting the float, had been staging raffles and fundraising for four years to raise the money to realise this dream.
On the day of the parade, I greeted Henry outside the Guildhall. He was resplendent in his robes as a deputy Alderman and radiant with joy as he prepared to climb into the open coach to ride behind the Lord Mayor, while the rest of his family including his son, the fourth Henry Jones, drove the float. I never learnt what Mike Bear said when he first saw the bears upon the milk float transmogrified into a medieval gatehouse – on the glorious morning of his inauguration as the six hundred and eighty third Lord Mayor of London – but I am sure he cannot have been disappointed by this magnificent gesture which comprised a heartfelt tribute from Henry Jones, the third generation dairyman of Middlesex St.
Henry Jones on the day before the parade.
The milk float gets a makeover.
The team that transformed the milk float, Stuart Stanley the designer is on the far left.
A moment of hilarity for the Jones family prior to setting off.
In the centre is the fourth Henry Jones with his sister Lucy, and flanking them Trevor Jones and his wife Hazel.
Photographs copyright © Ashley Jordan Gordon
At the Lord Mayor’s Show
One of the highlights of November is the Lord Mayor’s Show, and each year I walk over to London Wall early in the morning where this extraordinarily multifarious parade gathers, to observe the elaborate preparations at close quarters, before it all moves off at eleven with the new Lord Mayor in his gleaming fairytale coach at its head. I cannot think of a more vibrant image of the diversity of human social endeavour – in all its paradoxes and contradictions – than this three mile long parade which takes over an hour to pass by. The City is closed off to traffic on the day and you walk through streets where a dreamlike hush presides to reach the assembly point where glorious chaos reigns as six thousand overexcited participants, both military and civilian, all take the opportunity to mingle and show off their gorgeous outfits.
Ever since I saw her remarkable photograph Girl on the Kingsland Road, which was shown as part of Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery, I have admired the work of Ashley Jordan Gordon and so it was my pleasure to invite her to join me at the parade on Saturday as Spitalfields Life’s newest contributing photographer. In the time before the parade moves off, a curious photo party takes place when everyone wants their photograph taken and Ashley did her best oblige as many as she could. There was a pervasive surrealism to this situation where all were in costume and it engendered a joyful camaraderie of equals in which the boundaries of normal life dissolved. I saw a platoon of soldiers dancing with a rock band, children climbing on a tank and, among so many braided uniforms, it was only upon second glance that I realised two were toy soldiers from Hamleys.
Meanwhile down at the Guildhall, in an atmosphere of high seriousness, the berobed dignitaries of the City of London were gathering, the Aldermen, the Sheriffs and the former Mayors. For these people the parade is one event in an entire weekend of formal dinners and arcane rituals that attend the inauguration of the next Lord Mayor of the City of London. And in the surrounding streets, their transport awaited as it has done each year since the event was transferred from the river after a drunken flower girl unseated the Lord Mayor in his barge in 1710. An array of immaculately preserved historic carriages were poised with magnificent horses and freshly shaved coachmen in uniforms to match – perfect in every detail as if they had just travelled through time to be here that morning.
I stood at the junction of Lothbury and Moorgate, at the rear of the Bank of England, to see the parade pass by. Even here the parade outnumbered those in the crowd, enforcing the sense that this was an event for the participants, not a performance for an audience but a moment of glory for those involved, in which our role was simply to be their witnesses. A costume implies an assumed identity, yet for many in the parade their clothes exemplified their roles, carrying a reality established over centuries. It took me a while to accommodate to this notion that I was not witnessing a reenactment of an historical event but the event itself. The outfits were not fancy dress they were real.
When a marching band in ceremonial uniform comes marching straight towards you, with a hundred musicians with playing simultaneously, looking sharp and displaying perfect focus, and the loud music echoes through the narrow streets, then the vivid intricacy of the spectacle is overwhelming. Here we were in the heart of the ancient City of London. Soldiers who returned from recent conflict were met with cheers, and respectful applause was forthcoming for the nurses and firemen too, public services that we all value, now facing cuts. Among all the carnival animals, the puppies on leads, the seven man bicycle and the veteran trucks, it was sobering to see a bomb disposal robot in the parade, rolling along with the innocence of a remote controlled toy.
From the playful to the grim, from the charitable to the corporate, from the raucous to the majestic, all the pageantry on display fused with an inescapable emotionalism into a wondrous vision of humanity. From the dignified seniors to the young crazy ones dancing on floats, and from those who take themselves alarmingly seriously to dumb clowns with painted faces, there were so many different proposals of what it means to be human.
Photographs copyright © Ashley Jordan Gordon
Columbia Road Market 59
It was damp and misty and mild when I left Spitalfields early this morning to pay a call upon Stuart Crump, his daughter Alice, and Curly who works with them on their stall. A man of substance yet a relative newcomer to the market, Stuart has been in Columbia Rd for ten years and worked this pitch for the past two or three years. “My mum was a lecturer in floristry at the college in Southwark,” he explained proudly, “so when I left school in 1994, I opened a flower shop in Tottenham and then I had a place in the Edgware Rd, before I came here.” Stuart flies to Holland every Tuesday where he spends two days of each week buying plants for the coming Sunday at the huge auctions in the West Land. This week, Stuart has a fine selection of Orchids at competitive prices, and Chilli plants and Cyclamen are popular too.
At this point, Stuart’s enthusiastic daughter Alice bounced into the conversation to explain that she takes responsibility for rousing her father from his bed each Sunday at three-thirty in the morning, which caused Stuart to place his arm round her protectively as he rolled his eyes at the very thought of these reluctant awakenings. Alice takes great delight in the market, working here alongside her brother Charlie most weeks, and she is eager to follow her father into the family business, even though Stuart is dubious of the imminent changes coming to Columbia Rd. Stuart told me the stalls will be widened to twice the breadth and separated. “It won’t be good for the market, people like the hustle and bustle, and we haven’t got the stock to fill the width.” he confided with a shrug.
At the other end of the stall I had a chat with Curly. A celebrated character in the market, he has been employed on this pitch for the past twenty-five years – working for the previous owner Colin Roberts for twenty-three years. From Mondays to Fridays, Curly has a job at a tyre and bodyshop in Tottenham but, after a quarter of a century, his regular Sunday foray into market life has become the highlight of his week. “It’s something different, very sociable, you meet great characters and the stallholders are quite friendly,” he said, taking a bite from a hasty beigel, “It’s been like this as long as I’ve known it.”
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
