John Gay, photographer
This remarkable picture taken by John Gay (1909-1999) shows Club Row Market in the sixties, looking south across the Bethnal Green Road towards Sclater Street. Still recognisable today, except the Bishopsgate Goods Station has now been replaced by the new Shoreditch Station.
From the late forties through to the early sixties, Gay took hundreds of pictures in our neighbourhood which you can find among more than twenty six thousand of his photographs spanning a career of sixty years, all archived on the English Heritage website. However, I recommend you go the Guildhall Art Gallery where there is currently a retrospective exhibition to celebrate the centenary of his birth, until 18th October. Here you can see a wide selection of John Gay’s photographic prints. I was fascinated to see how he started as a papercut artist and then transferred his graphic sensibility into photography. It is a beautiful selection of pictures and, to me, all of his work demonstrates a bold and humane modernity that remains fresh and charismatic today.
This evocative picture below from the late forties shows a winter’s day in Frostic Place where King Edward’s Potatoes are for sale alongside herring straight from the barrel.
Mr Pussy, natural born killer
Last week, as I was watching the final compelling episode of Ed Wardle ALONE IN THE WILD on Channel 4, I cast my eyes down to witness Mr Pussy biting the head off a tiny mouse on the living room carpet. With the headless body still twitching, I scooped it up with dustpan and brush, ran downstairs and threw the remains outside where Mr Pussy consumed them all, skin, bones, feet and tail.
I have to admit to you that Mr Pussy has a history of violence. In Devon, before he came to Spitalfields, he killed regularly. Often, I would wake in the night to the sound of him chasing some poor creature round the house. I used to leap from my bed, shut him in another room and then chase the creature out with a broom.
Most distressing was coming downstairs to find injured birds for whom there was no hope. I am ashamed to confess that I once caught him with a Snipe, which is a rare species, though I did manage to rescue a huge Moorhen that he brought from the river, it escaped to live another day. I know that Mr Pussy was just following his nature and maybe even bringing me (unwanted) presents. Once as I was setting up the Christmas tree – he brought in a mouse, laid it down in front of the tree and then chased it round and round the pot.
Although Mr Pussy’s urban life may be less exciting, I am relieved that since he came to Spitalfields, he only catches vermin – no birds. He may not be reformed but most of the temptation has gone. Nowadays, I am prepared to tolerate these small kills that satisfy his bloodlust, in the hope that Mr Pussy’s days of indiscriminate mass murder are over.
Dance fever, Waacking at the Angel
At the top of the City Road just before it meets the Angel is a miserable bar, almost empty at ten o’clock last Friday – apart from the dregs of office workers. But then something miraculous happened, a crew of energetic young street dancers bounced into the bar in twos and threes and began greeting each other with high fives and generous embraces.
As if on cue, the music changed and the dancers began delerious athletic moves, grabbing the attention of the tired office workers and holding them rapt. Suddenly, the dance floor was filled with a joyous spontaneous dance spectacle displaying such talent, delight and accomplishment that all the office workers were clapping and whooping and cheering, in spite of themselves. Outside, passerbys gathered in a crowd gawking through the windows. It truly was just like a scene in a movie, only better because this was real.
Let me admit I was tipped off, these dancers had been inspired in their heroic endeavours by Kumari Suraj of the Imperial House of Waacking from Los Angeles who is currently teaching in London. Princess Kumari herself is a pupil of the legendary Tyrone Proctor, one the originators of Waacking -which originated in gay clubs in Los Angeles and which you may know (in a very diluted form) from Madonna’s Vogueing. Waacking is evolved from the movements of models whilst being photographed. In the dance these gestures take on a vigorous, frenetic, rhythmic life, propelling the dancer around the floor at breathtaking speed.
I was so happy to be there on Friday because I am entirely in awe of these dancers – if you can dance as brilliantly as that, as far as I am concerned, you need do nothing else.
Columbia Road Market 5
September draws to a close with a glorious Indian Summer. It has caused the white Chrysanthemums I bought a month ago (30/8/09) to turn brown already, so I set off to the market in the golden light of early morning to replace them with something less extravagant, that would last the whole winter in pots. More Cyclamen was what I had intended to buy, though I was attracted by the bunches of Wallflower plants wrapped in newspaper, now on sale. But then I came across these two deep red Chrysanthemums for £4 each and even though, in the past, I never especially even liked Chrysanthemums, the intensity of their lush red flowers won me over. Whether it is the colour of these flowers or my own sensibility that has mellowed in recent years, I cannot ascertain.
Leman St, in a model universe
Walking home down Leman Street this week, I noticed a shop under the railway arch that had never caught my eye before and, intrigued by the sign Model Shop, I went inside. Here was the largest, most comprehensive selection of miniature things I have ever seen in my life.
But the adventure was only just beginning, because then I met Zyg Jarzembowski, the enthusiastic goateed proprietor, who kindly offered me a tour of the workshops. And so, like Charlie following in Willie Wonka’s footsteps, I set out with anticipation into the secret cavernous spaces beneath the railway arches that contain Britain’s largest manufacturer of all model things. This is where the parts for Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass came from and where James Bond’s passport was printed too.
In a maze of windowless workshops, bright-eyed enthusiasts explained their specialities to me. I was captivated by John, the tree man, who gestured nonchalantly to some shelves where they keep a permanent stock of at least 350,000 miniature trees and then showed me his colour chart for customers to select their preferred tone of foliage. I noticed “Foster green” on the chart – developed for our most distinguished architect, who gets all his trees custom-made here. In the tree department (below), there was a predominance of palms, reflecting the high level of activity by British architects on projects for the Middle East. In fact, they showed me the mould labelled “Foster arabs” for making the people to accompany these models.
London is a city of multiple hidden worlds, it is one of the qualities that characterises our metropolis and makes it so endlessly fascinating. Yet whenever I discover another of these microcosms, I am always surprised at its existence. If by chance it had not caught my eye that day, I should never have discovered this astounding miniature universe under the railway arch.
I was completely intoxicated by the commitment of Zyg and his staff of perfectionists. So that as I continued my walk home up Leman Street, I dreamt of commissioning a model of Spitalfields with every detail exact.
I think I may be going back to Model Shop one day.
The Bollards of Spitalfields
Down Hanbury Street, on the corner of Brick Lane and also on the corner of Wilkes Street, stand hefty cast iron bollards that you have walked past a thousand times. Put up in 1819 to mark the boundary of Christ Church Parish in Middlesex, they have been sturdy silent witnesses of life here over two centuries. 1819 was the year of the first financial crisis in America, the Peterloo Massacre and the opening of the Burlington Arcade.
Children run round them in play, young couples part momentarily to pass on either side and old people steady themselves by placing a hand upon them. Thus, years have passed and the marks of the iron casting have become smoothed by human touch.
No longer is the parish of Christ Church in Middlesex, because as London has spread to become Greater London, Middlesex has shrunk. While the notion of a parish itself might be redundant, these cast iron posts now serve to protect us from cars that could drive up onto the pavement.
There is another I have noticed, over in Durward Street, recently spruced up with fresh gloss paint by the council – crudely highlighting the lettering. At the back of Whitechapel Tube where it stands, there is nothing else surviving from then. It alone evidences an earlier world. I enjoy this contradiction, that what is most mundane, functional and disregarded might be the oldest thing.
If you share my interest in such minutiae, there is now a website documenting overlooked Design Details in our neighbourhood. Click on the link to learn more.
Onions from Leila’s Shop
These are the most beautiful onions in the world. I bought them for £1.10 in Leila’s Shop at 17 Calvert Avenue next to Arnold Circus. Not that the quality of Spring Onions was something that has ever come to my attention before, but I think this is maybe the point – Leila caused me to think differently and pay attention to quality of something as familiar as onions.
It is almost impossible for me to walk past Leila’s shop without succumbing to curiosity and stepping inside to see what is new. Regularly, I leave clutching a small brown paper bag with a dark moist slice of gingerbread inside to lift my spirits. This is something that can make my day. When they are in season, I have bought highly scented Narcissi from the Scilly Isles here and Bluebells from Cornwall too. Leila always tries to keep English flowers in stock, in fact whenever I ask where any of her stock comes from, whether a little bag of Lapsang Souchong or a large jar of Honey, there is always a story attached.
It is not fancy or posh, but everything about Leila’s shop is unique with a lyrical sense of poetry. Leila understands that eating should be never be just another bodily function, she knows that food can be an inspiration. There will not be a chain of Leila’s Shops and that makes this tiny place – the expression of one woman’s passion – very special indeed.
It touches me because I identify with her love of detail in simple things, and the aspiration that even a bunch of Spring Onions can bring joy.
