January 2023 – Where is Phil now?

St Magnus House

Saturday 07 January 2023 – London.

London, London, London. I do love you so. Sometimes I question that love as it’s very one-sided, and, though today wasn’t the best outing, it also wasn’t a day to be questioning how I feel about this magnificent, crowded, dirty, occasionally smelly and deeply frustrating city I have chosen to (mostly) live in. I wonder if you can have a truly bad day here; other than something untoward happening, which I guess is always a possibility, however unlikely it seems. Of course, if I lived in Paris, Rome, New York or Berlin or any other major city I’m sure I’d feel the same way there as well. Much as I love the wilderness. if I’m honest with myself cities are my real habitat. I should just embrace that more. You can be alone in a crowded place if you want to be, and today I was after a little solitude.

It’s cloudy and grey and cold and windy and rain is threatened, there’s also a train strike affecting all the mainline services into London, though thankfully not the tube. It sounded like a perfect day for a random street walk photo mission into a Saturday deserted city. I had a loose plan, walk about a bit and then take some photos of St Magnus House on Lower Thames St then cross London Bridge and take some photos of Colechurch House on the direct opposite side of the River Thames. Both brutalist buildings. The owners of Colechurch House appear to have big plans for a renovation which I suspect will lead to the destruction of what is already there so it would be nice to capture a little bit of its brutal loveliness.

I have been wanting to take photos of Colechurch House for a couple of years. It is directly opposite the always busy London Bridge Station which is where I leave the train when I go to St Leonards and it’s always busy with far too many people hanging and basically getting in the way of my image taking. I was hoping that with a train strike today it would be quiet. I was going to be disappointed.

Popping out from the tube into the ‘London fresh’ air at Liverpool St Station I was pleased to see it was pretty quiet on the streets with only a handful of people on the ever crowded footpath. I usually come to this part of the city on a Sunday morning; this is the business area so there is little need for anyone to be on the streets, the shops are closed and other than a few stumbling zombies heading home from the Shoreditch clubs the whole area is quiet. I crossed the road and went straight into the back streets and the private Devonshire Square.

I took a couple of photos here, nothing worth sharing and carried on walking through, with no real plan other than ending up by the Thames near London Bridge. I was happy to be aimless and let my camera lead me around.

On the far side of Devonshire Square to Liverpool St is the Middlesex Street Estate, built between 1965 and 1970, with the 23 story Petticoat Tower as the centrepiece, it is named after the much older and world famous Petticoat Lane Market which crowds Middlesex Street during the week then explodes into many of the nearby streets every Sunday. The estate was an unexpected brutalist bonus.

The walk took an unplanned turn for the negative once I left the estate and discovered to my horror there were loads of people about, not thousands but enough to put me off, there didn’t seem to be any reason for the volume of strollers, maybe everyone else thought that a random stroll around London on a train-strike day was a good idea?

I crossed Whitechapel and plunged into the back streets, usually the best bit of any city. I have no idea of the names of the streets I actually walked down as I looped back and forth towards the river. I took a turning here and popped through an alley there though found very little that piqued my photographic interest.

I ended up much nearer Tower Bridge than expected and walked down the riverside towards London Bridge, capturing this reflection of The Shard on the way.

St Magnus House, it appears, was built in 1984 though has the look of classic late 60s brutalism, though missing some of the flourishes. It’s a tough building to photograph as it rubs up closely with its neighbours.

There is a dance school in the building and a number of young dancers were eating lunch and practising on the balcony between the building and the river, prowling around taking photos felt a somewhat inappropriate so I took a couple of images from other sides of the building and then left, hoping for better luck on the other side of the Thames.

For a strike impacted city and train station there were loads of people milling on the streets outside Colechurch House. The roof bar was unexpectedly open, it’s late morning, and there were two bouncers minding the door on the walkway outside; a graffitied area I wanted to take photos of. I left without getting the camera out of my bag, crossed back over the river and walked up to Chancery Lane where I caught the tube home.

it was great getting out for the first time in a while and I really enjoyed the walk, but was ultimately disappointed that I didn’t get to take many photos; however, as I said at the start it’s hard to have a really bad day walking in London.

Needles and Plastic–A history of Flying Nun Records by Matt Goody

Sunday 08 January 2023 – Leytonstone, London.

Eleanor came back to bed with the morning’s first ‘coffee in bed’ coffee with the news that there had been a not quite record shaped parcel left for me outside the front door this morning, perhaps it was left last night, who knows. Nevertheless it was on the doorstep before 8:00am on this miserable grey damp Sunday morning and I had an inkling as to what it was; mainly because I don’t actually have any records on order at the moment. I was a little excited but played it cool, drinking that first coffee while mindlessly scrolling Twitter in between casually looking at pictures of dining room tables that Eleanor showed me.

When it seemed like an appropriate amount of time had passed; and a new table had been chosen, I took the cups and headed back downstairs to make the second coffee. As soon as the first pod was in the machine and the milk frother was frothing I ripped open the package and there it was, in all its, slightly damaged on one corner, glory; Matt Goody’s epic history of Flying Nun Records 1981-1988, ‘Needles and Plastic’. I have been waiting for this book to be published and released in the UK for quite some time.

Matt contacted me via Instagram in May 2021 regarding some photos I had uploaded to social media of Flying Nun bands from gigs I attended in the 80s. He said he was writing a book about Flying Nun Records and asked if he could use those photos and whether I had any more. I, of course, said yes, then caveated this with my usual lack of self-confidence, by saying they were probably not good enough for a book but he was welcome to use them if he liked.

The good news was he did like, and I was excited to find this morning there are a number of my photos in the book. The book is a weighty tome, an encyclopaedia-like review of every Flying Nun release from 81-88, when the label moved from Christchurch to Auckland. 1981-1985 were prime gig going years for me and bands on this New Zealand record label put on shows that I frequently attended; I now regret not taking my camera to more of them.

The label is highly regarded, probably more so globally than it is at home, and it’s first few years saw some fabulous, influential and very collectable records released; it still releases fabulous records, and I have quite a few of them in my collection.

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The book was released at the end of last year in New Zealand and the US; to rave reviews and I jealously watched on social media as Matt undertook a tour of New Zealand’s main centres promoting the book alongside some of my favourite writers and Flying Nun musicians. What makes this book more unusual is Matt is Canadian and still lives in Canada, he just happened to fall in love with Flying Nun Records from afar. Like so many others of us have.

There has been an element of sadness with the release of the book, Hamish Kilgour, the drummer with seminal band The Clean, as well as a number of other groups, tragically took his own life just before Christmas. This meant there was only record to play as I opened the book for the first time, The Cleans first 12 inch record ‘Boodle, Boodle, Boodle’. This has been made a sadder affair as Hamish is the one standing up on the cover of the book.

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Having my photos printed in a book is really special for me, unexpectedly special I will add, and I really appreciated Matt making contact. Here are a couple of phone snaps of some of my photos in the book.

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It’s not something I talk about much but I have a ‘thing’ about legacy, an unhealthy obsession with leaving something behind; other than my children of course. This obsession with legacy is balanced by completely lacking self confidence, hopeless will power and an overall laziness, brought on in some part by that lack of self confidence. I know I’m not a bad photographer and I know I can string words together coherently if I put in the effort and I know I could have, or could still do something with those skills, but something always prevents me from doing so. Maybe this is a start of a new phase , though at least the pressure to leave something tangible behind is gone.

I still have the camera I took those photos on, I just wished it still worked!

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Hollow Pond in the snow.

Monday 12 December 2022 – Leytonstone.

The temperature has taken a turn for the cooler in the past couple of days, though I was still surprised last night when Eleanor called out from the kitchen to tell me it was snowing. I jumped out of a slump on the couch and stood watching a decent fall out the window for a few minutes. I love fresh snow fall and was a little disappointed that it was coming down in the dark of a late December Sunday afternoon, never the best time to be going out to take photos. I was even more surprised, pleasantly so, to see the snow was still coming down when we went to bed a few hours later and there was already a good layer on the ground. I got the camera and some clothes ready for the morning; just in case.

Which as it turned out was very wise. I was awake early (as usual) and a quick peer out the window showed the snow had stopped falling but there was a good solid four inches on the ground in the garden. The most I’ve seen since coming to the UK ten years ago. I had to be patient as it was still dark and there wasn’t sufficient light and it’s Monday so I’m going to be a little late for work; oh well.

I waited till there was enough light to take photos and headed out the door, given how much snow there was on the ground it was surprisingly warm. Or rather it wasn’t that cold and by the time I got home I had my beanie off and my jacket mostly undone, the gloves didn’t even make it on to my hands.

I took a photo of the front of the house before I left.

I’m not writing much these days, nor am I doing much photography, or much of anything else either if I’m brutally honest with myself. Due to this lack of writing I have failed to mention that we have moved house. Eleanor sold her house of 26 years in Walthamstow and has bought slightly further east, in nearby Leytonstone. We moved in early November. The ‘new’ house is 150 years old, doesn’t appear to have any 90 degree angles inside it and is very charming and we are quite happy now we have fully moved in and unboxed our stuff. Though I must confess to not yet putting my records into any sort of order; and I hope they all made it to the new house.

The walk from the new house to Hollow Pond is about 10 minutes, significantly less than the old house. Once I get back on my bike, which I promise I will do in the new year, I can easily ride from Hollow Pond to Epping Forest, though there will be a few shorter rides to be made to get my legs and lungs back into shape. Unsurprisingly the streets were quiet for a Monday morning, it was slippery. Suburban London looks lovely on the first morning following a night of snow.

I was surprised to find there was hardly anyone at Hollow Pond, I expected it to be busy with people experiencing the snow or like me and taking photos, I guess many have to go to work and perhaps schools were open, I don’t know. Maybe folk just don’t like the snow as much as I do. I like it on day one anyway, London snow on day two and onwards is more a grey icy slush than a pristine cold white blanket.

I took a few photos as I gingerly walked around the outside of the lake; it is beautiful.

I’ve tried to take photos of this tree on numerous occasions in the past, it’s my favourite dead tree, though I’ve rarely been successful enough with the images to share them here. I liked both of the ones I took today.

This is a Monday, a work day, and while I was happy to be a little late to the ‘office’, I didn’t want to linger too long, though I could easily have wandered for much longer and tried to get a few more photos in the trees. I did take a lot of photos though and was very happy with my work and with getting out of the house.