July 2006

Cuttings from the gutter press.















Artwork from a carnival near Euston, in memory of Congo dead.



















Largely forgotten memorials in the crypt of the church of Saint Pancras.















Chalkwork in the public gardens in Highgate.





















Televised performance of Turnadot in a sunlit Covent Garden piazza.















The Beastly Boys in support of going Beyond Petroleum.

Evening of Poetry at the Red Cross

This evening of poetry was aired at the restored Red Cross Gardens at Southwark, originally laid on Octavia Hill's commission, to accompany her housing for the poor.

Themes of mental health, the dispossesed and Saint George were prominent ( see www.into.org.uk/mentalfightclub ). There was a good range and variety of local people present.

Youths on the adjoining road struck up with thier motorbikes part way through.
















"I didn't plan to read a poem tonight".














A wordsmith of some proportion: Liza Hayden.

Salisbury

The jouney took place on the same day as the World Cup Match between England and Portugal. Despite taking refuge within the Cathedral for evensong while the game was in play, the Curate felt it necessary to inform those present that Mr Rooney had been sent off and that the match was going to be put into some extra time. About the same time as the English side bowed out of the tounament, and during one musical refrain, one of the young choristers dropped to the floor and did not get up for the remainder of the service.

The day was puctuated with the usual details: argumentative customers in the charity shops haggling down prices; adolescent drinking in public parks; crying children; visits to the usual shop chains; the trying of locked church doors; the watching of telivision from out of the windows of electronic stores; the occasional tying of shoelaces; the application of lip balm; the examination of cafe menus; the reading of book dust covers and the judging of book by thier covers; the searching of pockets for train tickets; the entering of pin-numbers into payment card readers; the carrying of plastic bags; the application of a handful of water to one's head of hair; the thinking of home; the looking at the time; and the returning to home.

The parish church of Saint Thomas and Saint Edmund, Salisbury, has one of the best surviving Doom portraits (medieval wall painting) in England.



















Reading material given away but there is a moratorium on the donation of milk bottle tops.
















A dog with what appears to be a David Bellamy book in the foreground.















Street scene with telephone boxes and supporters of the football.















A Fish shop since 1917.



















Dozens of carved statues of kings, saints, prophets and angels on the front of Salisbury cathedral.




















This 'lunar disc', what looks like a massive communion wafer, of onyx, was made by Emily Young, whose memorial (the face of an angel, below) for those who died when bombs went off in London on 7 July 2005, is in the churchyard of Saint Pancras church near Euston Station in London. This disc was surrounded by a rather feeble run of red and white tape, presumbaly to prevent someone leaning on it and knocking it over.

Trip to Cambridge
In Iain's private rooms, where he checks his emails, while Olivia reads the College year book.















Ruth Davis, Olivia Rowlands, Iain M... & Chris O'Rourke in the churchyard of Great Saint Mary's church, Cambridge with fried noodles and seed crackers (for Olivia).




In a public house for the England verses another team in a footballing World cup match. Iain can be seen.

London Reception for the Alsager Pal's Battallion

Elanor's Twenty-third birthday party on The Green Park and Afterward at All Bar One Wine Bar

This exhange of company coincided with a football match in the World Cup, and several of the male members of the sex started the first part of the afternoon watching this televisually. Clare O'Neill had to depart for some time, travelling to ascertain whether her lodgings had been properly secured from the members of the public and the private fraternities, and another member of the group travelled, in vain, in search of a supermarket for provisions. The fruit of the cherry tree was in plentiful abundance, with cans of lager, some wines and a jelly impregnated with marshmellows also consumed. Jeremy Davies and his female companion were noticable in thier attendance, having travelled down from a different nation, and some other choice acquaintances were present also. The second stage of the afternoon was a walk to a wine bar, for refreshment, whereupon the group was collectively asked to provide proof of age (beyond a badge, if it was indeed present, reading '23 today'). John Russell ordered an evacuation of the wine bar, in protest and removal of custom, but the birthday girl shyly clung on.

Elanor begins to inflate a plastic football. Later to be used as a tool of anti-social disturbance.










Jeremy writes his salutations.































An older gentleman with a carrier bag.



















The party faltering on the Strand on its way to a wine bar/bistro.

Archiepiscopal Jaunt to Canterbury


Canterbury is partly rounded still by walls which you can walk on. Down below a troop of Brownies (I think) struck up under the command of a dynamic lady in a cap. Around the bandstand there were sunbathing teenagers with cigarettes and lager.















The narrow alleyways toward the Cathedral precincts.





















Anglican Church in the name of Saint Thomas More. It is quite rare to find these, with Thomas more often serving as a Catholic saint.




















Elaborate modern stained glass with More at the centre.

Art exhibition by students in redundant church. The students played a recording of the sound of birds and the rustle of the wind through trees, which suited the church quite well: as if the roof had come off and the natural world had come inside.

I could not here anything as part of this installation apart from the fizzing sound of the electric tube lighting.















Don't Push the Button.

















I pushed the button.





















It was a glorious day, and ended cooling off in the cathedral during evensong.

Family walk with guide over Stanage Edge and moorland.














Ian with abandoned millstones. There were a hundred of these.


















Alison Blaney with hot coffee.















Robert Blaney with cold water.















Restbite.














Umbrella (or hat) stand in corrigated iron and stone outhouse.

Ruth Davis' Twenty-third Bithday Party & Greenwich Coda (or 'The Many Disguises of Mister Matthew Westlake')


The happy birthday girl with one of her many bottled wines.






















Olivia Rowlands and Helen Gunn with fingers to temples.


































The demure Clare O'Neill














Ruth tentativley picks at the Champagne she has kept since her twenty-first birthday.



















Ruth persistantly works contrary to John's attempts to convalesce and to rehabilitate his stomach.















Ruth and the ladies chatting.