Columbia Road Market 6
Sometimes, at this time of year, my father would return from work with a mysterious parcel wrapped in newspaper and, to this day, I feel the allure of anything wrapped in newspaper, whether fish and chips, old china from a car boot sale, or wallflowers. It was Wallflowers that my father bought wrapped in newspaper each autumn and today I bought a bunch to plant in my garden from Columbia Road for just £1.50. These are the most egalitarian of plants because they are so cheap yet come in such rich colours and have one of the most attractive scents.
Thinking back, I remember walking through an old passageway into a tiny medieval stone courtyard at Merton College, Oxford, one spring, and the soft breeze blowing through the passage carried the scent of the wallflowers that grew in the yard beyond and it stopped me in my path with its beauty. I like to think it was the contradiction of that austere yard paved with its ancient stones and the ephemeral moment of the lush wallflowers in bloom that overwhelmed me, but maybe it was simply the pure sensuous thrall of their scent.
What more could you ask for a mere £1.50?
Rob Ryan, the art of the knife
Robert Ryan is a paper-cutter of genius who has single-handedly reinvented an art that lapsed in Western Europe somewhere in the nineteenth century. In common with my other favourite paper-cutter Hans Christian Andersen, he invests the idiosyncratic visual vocabulary of folk art with his own personal sensibility.
Unlike Andersen, Rob Ryan has a wide range of modern technology at his disposal to reproduce his designs on tiles, mugs, plates, vases, glasses, skirts, bags, rainwear, cushions and tape, not to mention innumerable book jackets, illustrations, posters, calendars and cards – and also famously the cover of Japanese Vogue.
If you know Rob Ryan’s work through reproductions, it is easy to forget the immense skill and painstaking work that goes into the making of it, which becomes vividly apparent when you see the actual papercuts. Take the opportunity to go along to Ryantown (Ryan’s shop in Columbia Road) where, until 15th November, he has returned to the purist roots of paper-cutting with an entire show of works in black and white. And if you fancy a trip to Denmark, Hans Christian Andersen’s papercuts (including the one below) are on permanent display at the City Museum in Odense.
Autumn Crocus
Walking through Lincoln’s Inn Fields this week on my way to Covent Garden, I was pleased to see this fine annual display of Autumn Crocus in the autumn sunshine and then, taking a different route home to Spitalfields, I came upon some more in St Paul’s Churchyard (below).
In 1996, I walked the whole length of the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and, in the eastern Pyrenees at this time of year, I came upon Autumn Crocus growing wild in the mountain valleys. Although I saw some growing among grass, I was most impressed that they forced their way up stubbornly through the hard crust of the beaten-earth path to pave my way with flowers.
There’s something magical, and perverse too, about these Crocus that come out of season and stick up straight out of out of the ground without leaves – as if someone had stuck plastic flowers into the earth. They are nature’s genuine late bloomers and all the more welcome for it.
Early days for Spitalfields Life
Over a month has passed since I started writing my posts back in August, and from now on I shall be changing the banner monthly. Above is the full iphone picture of the squirrel sitting outside a house in Buxton Street, that I used as my first banner.
Let me confide, it has become a great passion for me to write to you each day. There’s never been any problem finding subjects, more difficult have been the choices of which subjects to write of, because the possibilities are almost infinite. Truly, all of human life is here in Spitalfields.
To this end, I must now disclose to you my ambition to write ten thousand posts about Spitalfields life. At the rate of one a day, this will take approximately twenty seven years and four months. Who knows what kind of life we shall be living in 2037 when I write my ten thousandth post?
No longer your new acquaintance, from henceforth you will know me as the gentle author.
Like Good Deeds and Everyman in the old play, let us travel together. I promise to keep writing to you every day and it will be an eventful journey we shall have together.
The story is only just beginning.
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.
