A Walk on the Canal Side

It’s late and I’m walking on my own along a canal, something an unarmed female is told never to do.  But the night is cool and calm and the few street lights are softly amber like a cigarette silently burning the dark, it makes me feel immune.  Or perhaps immune isn’t the right word as it implies that there’s something of which to be immune, something dangerous.  Perhaps it’s more a feeling of invisibility.  Hot from the gym, sweated off make-up and a thick hoody over my wet hair I walk with an easy stride.  Along the angular contours of the apartment blocks and the inky water of the Thames I make my way.  I feel like a voyeur, passing my time trying to catch a glimpse through an ill shut curtain or angled blind.  There are canal boats moored permanently next to the high rise apartments.  All stained glass, weathered garden gnomes, and wind chimes – a new age haven.  I look towards the mass of London beyond the water and see the pinkly lit eye glinting back at me.  In the canal is a tern raft and a family of swans have made the place their home.  Two majestic parental figures, thick necks strong enough to break a man’s arm, and three large ugly grey cygnets hold court.  They approach passers-by moving together gracefully as one unit, expectant of food.  It’s almost as if they know they are the queens own.  Further down past the canal is another story, scavenger foxes roam busy streets hungrily eating scraps and fearlessly standing their ground should I chance upon one who has found a worthy morsel.  

Cross-dressing and the City

Like a disorientated salmon caught in shoals of grey tuna fish I ineffectively try to navigate myself along the uneven, cobbled streets snaking away from the primly imposing walls of The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.  The air is thick with toxic fumes and day-old heat built up between the walls of The City.  The names of the streets are regally familiar; Prince’s Street, King William Street, Queen Vitoria Street; its old imperial London.  Inside these offices I imagine moss green leather chesterfields, decanter bottles with amber liquid in them, cigar paraphernalia – the stuff of gentlemen’s clubs, not of the stripper variety but of the self-congratulating, middle aged kind.  My vintage style, damson heeled shoes are making it difficult to keep pace amongst these serious looking men and women marching home or to a bar in monochrome uniformed unison.  Something bright catches my eye, a bright tropical bird – all tangerine orange bob, skyscraper heels and mini skirt.  He swaggers brazenly amongst the downturned gazes of the greying men around him, mischievously daring them to look at him.  He notices my stare as he goes past and in that second it’s as if he recognises a kindred spirit, he lifts both fluorescent pink eyebrows at me in collusion.      

    

Love Quotes: Hard to Speak

“Julie can’t speak.  Wet feathers jam her throat or perhaps tufts of rabbit fur and lard.  Whatever it is, she is choked up… Only shreds of that afternoon occasionally tear loose, then she shoves them back into her head, where what’s left of her brain, a grey pillow, has a hole that keeps letting out the stuffing.” They Is Us. Tama Janowitz.

Feeding the Senses

"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster" Jonathan Swift

Down the darkly drizzled roads snaking around behind Borough market sensory sanctuaries can be found bursting with Friday-night Londoners.  The sky above is cut into segments by the railway tracks carrying weekday commuters back outwards to their Home Counties and expectant families.  Stepping inside one of the many inviting doorways and I’m transported to a Whitstable dockside oyster shack except the fishermen have been replaced with expensive suits and lazy wealth.  Candles drip thick, warm wax onto the deliberately rough tables whilst the rain soundlessly dapples the skylight above the open kitchen.  The oysters are muscular and creamy in my mouth leaving me with a taste of the ocean on a cold day, a memory of salted sea spray hitting my face in icy pinpricks as waves crash against the sea walls.  There is something decadently primal about eating a thing raw, whole, after it has been presented to you it all its naked beauty, savouring its delicious liquor like a Roman emperor with his concubine. 

A Walk on the Dark Side

    

There’s something slightly sinister about Canary Wharf, or as a friend of mine likes to call it – Gotham City.  I think this description sums the place up perfectly, bringing to mind an unreal comic book glossiness of glass and steel together with a darkly gothic and threatening undertone.  Walk through the underground marbled floored arcades early in the morning and the native edifice dwellers can be seen, glass eyed and unseeing as sleepwalkers.  Obligatory disposable coffee cup in one hand they can be seen striding to their destinations, avoiding collision by some unknown orchestrating force like ants in the amazon.  Synthesized buttery toast and coffee perfuming the warren pathways, flanked on either side by gaudy footballer fish tank shop window displays and enticing video advertisements played on loop down the centre of the walkways.  The security guards are smartly uniformed, complete with radio headsets and large black-leather belts that could easily take the weight of a pistol, and watchful.  More like ex-Soviet special service agents than the stereotypical shopping centre security.  One of them looks like she stepped out of a Lara Croft video game complete with a long platinum plait pulled back tightly that looks like it could be used to silently strangle.    

Love Quotes: An Interpretation of the Underground

“As the fine denizens of London town know, each tube line has a distinct personality and range of mood swings.  The Victoria Line for example, breezy and reliable.  The Jubilee Line, the young disappointment of the family, branching out to the suburbs, eternally having extensions planned, twisting round to Greenwich and back under the river out east somewhere.  The District and Circle Lines, well, even Death would rather fork out for a taxi if he’s in a hurry.  Crammed with commuters for King’s Cross or Paddington, and crammed with museum-bound tourists who don’t know the craftier short-cuts, it’s as bad as I imagine Tokyo.  Docklands Light Railway, the nouveau riche neighbour, with its Prince Regent, West India Quay and its Galleons Reach and its Royal Albert.  Stentorian Piccadilly wouldn’t approve of such artyfartyness, and nor would its twin uncle, Bakerloo.  Central, the middle-aged cousin, matter-of-fact, direct, no forking off or going the long way round.  That’s about it for the main lines, except the metropolitan which is too boring to mention, except that it’s a nice fuchsia colour and you take it to visit the dying.  Then you have the oddball lines, like Shakespeare’s oddball plays.  Pericles Hammersmith and City, East Verona Line, Titus of Waterloo.  The Northern Line is black on the maps.  It’s the deepest.  It has the most suicides, you’re most likely to get mugged on it, and its art students are most likely to be future Bond Girls.  There’s something doom laden about the Northern Line.  Its station names: Morden, Brent Cross, Goodge Street, Archway, Elephant and Castle, the resurrected Mornington Crescent.  It was closed for years, I remember imagining I was on a probe peering into the Titanic as the train passed through.  Yep, the Northern Line is the psycho of the family.  Those bare-walled stations south of the Thames that can’t attract advertisers.  Not even the stair-lift manufactures will advertise in Kennington tube station.  London is a language.  I guess all places are.”  Ghostwritten.  David Mitchell.  

        

Open Draw Lucky Dip

“Thrust your hand deep into life, and whatever you bring up in it, that is your subject” – Goethe.

To take this suggestion literally and use a draw as a kind of lucky dip of inspiration I pulled out the below ticket.  Bought last minute on eBay for a knocked down price I found myself in the centre of Twickenham stadium and very close to the main stage of a Lady Gaga concert one Sunday night.  I was there to have a few drinks and a laugh with some old friends, some of whom I hadn’t spoken to in years, and just enjoy the randomness of my situation given that I’m not actually a fan.  Amid the eclectically enrobed (or barely robed) thrumming crowd I waited for the star to make her entrance with building anticipation.  As the late evening light slunk lazily out of the packed stadium she rode slowly out onto the stage on a huge horse dressed like something from a late 80s sci-fi movie, the crowd responding in unison to her commanding presence.  From simulated oral sex, flesh suits, the ‘birthing’ of a host of dancers to the very exposed, vulnerable and humble person playing a piano whilst comforting a completely overwhelmed fan beside her, I was drawn in.  Amid the contradictions and the lunacy of the performance one message very was clear: be fearless, believe in yourself and take risks. 

Perfectionism: The Enemy of Creativity?

This is my first blog, my first post and it’s taken me quite some time to get here.  There is no logical reason for this; I have finger dexterity, easy access to the internet and, most importantly, I love to write.  So, what’s holding me back?  The need to get it right, first time, with no mistakes -perfectionism.  As I write this, I stop and go back to the ‘design’ button on my blog page.  Previewing the last few lines I decide that the the font I chose is not completely perfect after all and it will spoil the post, so I waste some more time trying out some new fonts to see if I can get it just right. Irritatingly compulsive, perfectionism is the reason I haven’t blogged yet or at least it’s the delaying tactic I use so I don’t have to.  Really letting go and accepting that I’ll make mistakes is the key, I’m sure, to really creating something new.  So, that’s what I’m going to try – to accept that life is imperfect and it’s those unexpected messy situations that have made the biggest impact on mine.  To the fearless mess!