An old shop sign - a ghost sign or shadow sign, as they are known - which adds a touch of class to a new business in Great Titchfield Street. I've been able to find out precisely nothing about J.H. Pepperell and his greengrocer business, even though it's the sort of unusual surname which usually makes online searches easier. The shop seems to have left no digital imprint at all - which is unusual. Perhaps it didn't stay in business all that long. Anyone remember it?
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A few bracing days in Iceland - cold, at times fearsomely so, but in Reykjavik (the world's most northerly national capital) it was bright and sunny too. What an enticing city. Stylish, prosperous, and surrounded by beautiful scenery. And at the City Pond in the centre of town, the ice was sufficiently sturdy to allow these kids to play a game of football. Thingvellir, below, was the site of the world's first Parliament. Iceland was settled by Norwegians in the late ninth century - Icelandic is basically Old Norse. After a few centuries of independence, it was ruled by Norway and then Denmark, becoming independent as recently as 1944. It has a population of 320,000 - about 10% of them immigrants - most living in and around Reykjavik in the south-west. 
Iceland is said to be the world's most feminist nation. So here's a conundrum. According to a tour guide - and it seems to check out with what I've read on the net - of the 25,000 or so original settlers who came across in the first decades, new DNA-style research has revealed that 70% of the men were Scandinavian ... and 64% of the women were Celtic. In other words, Iceland's national origins appear to lie with the mass abduction of Irish (and perhaps Scottish) women. Ouch!  Whale watching off Reykjavik delivered ... not a whale in sight, but hundreds and hundreds of white-nosed dolphins. They were everywhere, at times encircling the boat - and some showed off by jumping and shimmying. Magical! Our basic cameras are not fully up to the task of capturing now-you-see-them type wildlife - but you can get a sense of what it was like from the photo on the right, and Rohan's sequence of shots below (from now on, all the photos on this post are his) showing a dolphin leaping.
We were also in luck in our search for the Northern Lights - a wonderful display, with shapes dancing across the sky, and touches of lime green and traces of red. They are really difficult to photograph - you need a strong lens and long exposure times. But Rohan's photo here gives you some sense of the display: 
And some more stunning images - of respectively the dramatic Gulfoss (golden falls) waterfalls, the thermal water fountains at Geysir (Iceland has such abundant thermal energy that it's now - a guide told us - the world's biggest producer of aluminium even though it has no bauxite, the cheap energy makes it worthwhile to ship in the ore), and Reykjavik again. 
 I went to one of my favourite second-hand bookshops the other day - and came away with a brand new book. Ripping Yarns, close to Highgate Tube, is always worth a careful browse. It's run by the actress Celia Hewitt - who is currently working on a biography of her late partner, the radical poet Adrian Mitchell. A great performer too! I heard him read a couple of times, and was mesmerised. Come on Everybody is Adrian Mitchell's collected poems, more or less. It contains the work which made his name in 1964, such an iconic part of the anti-Vietnam war movement: 'To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam)'. If like me you love Ripping Yarns, then make the most of it - 'Don't Just Think About It, Do It!', in the immortal words of the Edgar Broughton Band. There's a rent review looming in the autumn, and Celia needs all the help that she can get to keep the shop afloat. Earlier in my life, I was in a position to commission a poem from Adrian Mitchell to mark New Year 2003, and then went round to his home (with my daughter, then six) to record him reciting it. I still have his signed manuscript - and with Celia's blessing, I'm posting it on this page (it's not in Come On Everybody): 
 Well, I've gone and done it again. Bought a book for its cover. As you can see, this dust jacket isn't in brilliant condition. But the cover design, and the novel itself, are just that ... . Brilliant!  This was Samuel Selvon's third novel, published in 1956. And the one for which he is most remembered. It's gone through many editions, with very varied covers - and indeed titles, as you can see.
The initial design is, for me, the most memorable. Which is why I am particularly disappointed that I haven't been able to find out who designed it. Even that guru of Selvon scholars Bill Schwarz doesn't know. But there's nothing like a challenge. if you know anything about the artist, or the design, do let me know.  Little Feat last night from their Facebook page In the confident knowledge that my teenage kids never read my blog, I can reveal that I went to the Shepherds Bush Empire last night to see Little Feat. And sing along to "Willin'" - their most evocative song, with that famous line about "weed, whites and wine" - never quite understood what that's about, perhaps I should ask the kids. It wasn't the greatest concert ever - the band were upbeat, but the music never quite kicked, not helped by a fairly grim sound system. But my guess is no one felt cheated - and it was good to hear Bill Payne and his bandmates play 'Fat Man in the Bath Tub', 'Dixie Chicken' and, of course, 'Willin'. This last song was written by the late Lowell George almost forty years ago, and is said to be the reason why Zappa turfed him out of the Mothers of Invention so leading to the creation of Little Feat - still Sailin' On after all these years. I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow I'm drunk and dirty don't ya know, and I'm still, willin' Out on the road late at night, Seen my pretty Alice in every head light Alice, Dallas Alice I've been from Tuscon to Tucumcari Tehachapi to Tonapah Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine And you show me a sign I'll be willin', to be movin' I've been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet Had my head stoved in, but I'm still on my feet and I'm still... willin' Now I smuggled some smokes and folks from Mexico Baked by the sun, every time I go to Mexico, and I'm still And I been from Tuscon to Tucumcari Tehachapi to Tonapah Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine And you show me a sign I'll be willin', to be movin And to my teens, if you are reading this I want a map showing 'Tuscon to Tucumcari Tehachapi to Tonapah' as extra geography homework!  Mr Patel and his family have been delivering our morning newspapers for fifteen years or more. They have an old style corner shop on Dartmouth Park Hill - at the junction of Bickerton Road, in what oldtimers would probably call Upper Holloway. It's got papers, ciggies, sweets, a bare smattering of groceries and, that signifier of the struggling local store, top shelf porn. Mr Patel has handed over his paper deliveries to another provider. He tells me that in a few weeks the shop will undergo renovation. I am not clear how extensive that will be, or indeed whether the Patels will remain in charge. But clearly it's a landmark in the history of a local landmark.  The shop has been stubbornly resistant to change - it hasn't altered in any appreciable degree since I first came to know the place in the nineties. Mr Patel and his family are often watching the TV or chatting in Gujarati in a small room just beyond the shop counter, and come out to serve as they hear the door open. It's that sort of business. A few years ago, as I recall, a modern signboard or hoarding was removed to reveal a much older sign. 'Crick's Corner'. It's still there. I've no idea whether it will outlast the renovation, but I guess it's odds against.  I took a photo of the old sign today - graced, in the bright morning sun, by the slightly menacing shadow of a street lamp. There are much better shots of the sign to be found online. I have often wondered about how Crick's Corner - not that I have heard anyone use the term in conversation - came by its name. Thanks to Sebastien Ardouin and his excellent website, I now know. Albert Crick ran a bookshop and lending library, flourishing in the 1920s and probably stretching back quite a bit earlier. He seems to have had two sites - here on Dartmouth Park Hill, and a short distance away on Swains Lane. By 1937, he was selling off his ex-library stock. The corner lending library, such a huge part of popular access to literature, couldn't compete with the rise of the cheap paperback. It seems that Crick's Corner came to an end - in its original manifestation - one side or other of the Second World War. Just the old painted sign survives. And if you want to see and savour this lingering vestige of an older London, don't hang around!  LATER: my old friend and collegue Bob Trevor, who grew up in these parts, got in touch to say: Another landmark of my life gone. Mr Crick used to cash cheques for my father, deliver newspapers and the "Boy's Own Paper" for me. His son and daughter-in-law lived next door to us in No 79. My mother and Mrs Crick jnr were great pals. In those days there was a parade of shops stretching from Chester Road to Raydon St. Happy memories.
 Of all the Chartist leaders, James Bronterre O'Brien is the one that most captures my imagination - it's the splendid name, of course, and also the corruscating polemic, his interest in the French Revolution, his role in propaganda and political journalism. And there's the remarkable following he attracted, particularly among radical artisans in central London, which kept his name and ideas alive for a generation after his death in 1864. The O'Brienites, indeed, contributed abundantly to the socialist revival in London in the late 1880s. I was delighted to pick up this Bronterre O'Brien pamphlet from 1851, in the dog days of Chartism - quite pricey, but a choice item. The final page carries a note about O'Brien's health - for years he was chronically ill, and but for his poor health he may well have achieved a still greater political legacy. He is buried in Abney Park cemetery in Stoke Newington, and I've posted photos of his grave elsewhere on this site.  |
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