london – Page 2 – Where is Phil now?

Horizon 22

Sunday 19 November 2023 – London.

Horizon 22 is the viewing area on the 58^th floor of 22 Bishopsgate, a 61 storey commercial tower in the heart of the City of London. Construction of the tower finished in 2020, though Horizon 22 only opened to the public at the end of September 2023. It is the highest public viewing platform in Europe, it’s magnificent, and it’s free; though you have to book tickets online.

The whole experience is very well managed, access is controlled, but there are loads of friendly staff herding the cat-like visitors and the viewing floor is vast and a work of architectural art in itself. The lift takes 40 seconds, is very quiet and mostly smooth.

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I could have been quite happy just taking photos of the viewing area. That is the top of The Shard, London’s tallest building poking up in the middle of the windows. I very much appreciated that this huge viewing area is not overloaded with visitors, so you can choose the view you want.

The viewing area has views over three-quarters of London, sadly the view out to the north east where we live is the bit that is missing. The views are stunning.

We were lucky that we had a clearish day, apparently the day before all you could see was cloud, and we did get some lovely light.

My feet are not this big; definitely a trick of the camera.

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Horizon 22 is a hard recommend for anyone, local or visitor. Book your free ticket, it’s worth it.

Brutal Day Out – Bethnal Green

Saturday 25 November 2023 – Bethnal Green, London.

One month until Christmas, wow, where has this year gone? I’m sure I’ve said it on numerous occasions in the past but the older I get the quicker the years go by. Sadly the same can’t be said for working days and weeks, they drag interminably. It’s now Christmas Eve eve, Eleanor is at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium watching Spurs beat Everton 2-1 and I’m home in the warmth drinking a large gin and tonic, listening to The Stooges and finalising this post. A win-win for both of us.

This was the fourth Brutal Day Out walk I’ve attended and it was the biggest yet, with 13 walkers, which made the group too big. Organising photographers is like herding cats and I liked it best when there was only half a dozen of us. It’s cool that the original group still come as I like all of them (a rare thing), and there are always good folk in the extended group, but it does make it slow going.

These walks are a good opportunity to see parts of London that most would not normally visit; housing estates for instance; and these were the focus of the walk today. There are a lot of 1960/70 estates in east London. We ended up being invited inside two tower blocks and made our way into a third by following someone in. All three we visited had the most incredible staircases, these buildings may look a bit drab and square and concrete on the outside, but the interiors are quite beautiful, as beautiful as concrete and basic function can get anyway. The first block we entered we were invited by an elderly resident who saw us outside with our cameras and phones and said we had to come in and look at the stairs, and they were pretty cool.

We met outside Mile End tube station, it’s a lovely clear day but very cold, and there is a biting wind, I’m glad I wrapped up warm. The light is a little harsh for architecture photography, or at least my type of architecture photography, but it’s nice to be outside under a a clear sky, it feels like it’s been a long time. Once the group had assembled we crossed the road and walked to our first destination, the Lakeview Estate, opposite Victoria Park. I was surprised to find it was so close to Mile End station; it’s good to be reminded that walking is the best way to learn how a city hangs together.

None of the buildings we visited today were brutalist masterpieces, at least that was the case from the outside and the Lakeview Building typified that. These buildings see the birth of the age of modernism in building construction. Designed in 1958 by the pioneering modernist architect, Berthold Lubetkin, for the then Bethnal Green Council it is an early example of how simple design and construction can be made into something aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes you need to look past the ‘bit ugly tower block’ and look for the details. Lubetkin’s work features a lot on this walk today.

I particularly liked the way the sun came though the open passages between the stairwell and the flats; I may have been moaning about the harsh sun earlier, but the way it caught the steam rising from a gas boiler vent was a highlight for me.

Our next stop was the nearby Cranbrook Estate, another Lubetkin design, though this was a much large estate than Lakeview, comprising of six low rise towers and a series of small blocks making up 529 homes. It opened in 1963.

After walking around taking photos of exteriors we were regrouping outside Modling House when one of the residents arrived home.

She asked what we were doing and once we told her we were interested in architecture she invited us into the building to look at the stairs, ‘because they’re lovely’. They were, though I’m not happy with the photos I managed to get of them.

13 photographers milling about in a small space does make it difficult. I was also conscious that this place is home for lots of people and just because we were welcomed in by one resident didn’t make us welcome by all. We took up a lot of space in the lobby, which in itself was photo-worthy. I like the clean lines and uniformity of the lobby which are verging on ‘Wes Anderson’-ish. Lovely.

The next two stops were quick, single towers, fenced off, similar in style and both designed by Denys Landon. The first is Trevelyan House.

The second is Keeling House; very similar in design to Trevelyn House, but with added scaffold.

Sivill House on Columbia Rd was my favourite building of the day, it wasn’t overly interesting to look at from the side we arrived on, with just a 19 storey brick cliff face with windows, though the other side of the building with its curved stairwell exposed was much more interesting. Completed in 1962 it’s another fine Lubetkin designed construction.

As with Modeling House earlier in the day we were invited inside to have a look at the stairs by one of the residents, though the stairwell is completely different; a 19 storey tightly wound circular staircase that would make anyone dizzy running down.

At the behest of the resident we took the lift to the 19^th floor to take a look down the lift shaft and to take in the amazing view from the top. I would have liked to explore this building a bit more, it looks fun.

Our last stop was the least inspiring for me, or at least the exterior was. However, James Bryne had the maddest staircase I’ve ever seen. I tried to take a photo of it from below but it didn’t work very well, there seemed to be loads of interconnecting short stair cases crisscrossing all over the show. It looked very confusing from underneath. I just took a photo of the entrance instead. It was way less mind boggling. The architects really were into curvy concrete stairs in the 50 and 60s, and I like that a lot.

From James Byrne house most of us went to a pub near Liverpool Street Station, I had a swift pint and then caught the tube back home. It was a good day out and I took an awful lot of photos!

The brutal buildings of Poplar, East London

Saturday 16 September 2023 – Poplar, London.

I enjoyed the third #brutaldayout photo walk today. I’m familiar with the core of the group, though today twelve set out from the coffee shop outside Blackwall Tube station. There were thirteen in the group for a moment and we either lost someone before we set out or this person accidently joined in as we assembled then realised it was the wrong bunch of people. Either way, it was the largest group we’ve had on a walk. Herding photographers is like herding cats, and we managed to lose two people over the five hours. It was a good group though and there was a lot of chat going on.

Boe and Irony mural outside All Saints DLR station.

Poplar is an area of East London that I don’t know well, though it is home to the first king of brutalist housing, the Balfron Tower and there will be more on Balfron in a later post. Poplar is proper London east end, it’s a working class area with a post-war mix low and high rise estates. It’s a multi-racial suburb and has, in parts, been allowed to rot, though I’m not necessarily saying race was a factor in allowing that decay. There are too few loud voices here nor enough of those willing to risk standing up to push the case for the borough. Poplar is part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and let’s just say the council is not unafraid to make decisions very unpopular with its citizens, though seemingly very popular with developers.

Poplar should be fortunate as it rubs up against the global financial centre of Canary Wharf, whose shiny glass towers stand proudly over, but maybe casting disapproving shadows over its rundown neighbour. You would hope the wealth would roll on down to its immediate neighbour, but, as always, that is not the case. Poplar is being gentrified, and not in a ‘nice’ way. Social housing residents are moved out and those who have bought their home in ex-council properties are ‘encouraged’ to sell. The estates are flattened and ugly new shiny things are built in their place; of course there is the promise that tenants can move back in, or new housing will be built for them nearby, but as we all know this rarely happens. ‘Cost over runs’ or other excuses means the developer can never quite meet their social housing commitments. Councils just roll over and let their expanding tummy get stroked and accept the heartfelt apologies from those poor developers. The worst part is a lot of those shiny new flats are left empty, unsold or with absentee owners, almost taunting those who were dispossessed. More on this with my post regarding Balfron Tower.

Our first visit was Robin Hood Gardens Estate, or what is left of it anyway. The estate was completed in 1972 and comprised two low rise blocks, one seven storey and the other ten, with a large green space between them. It was designed by Alison and Peter Smithson and was their only housing estate to be constructed. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets was the landlord. After a battle to get the estate listed failed developers demolished the seven storey West Block in 2017 and new flats are now under construction.

The East Block is now empty and awaiting the same fate as the West. 213 families lived here, now there are none.

After taking a photo of the scaffold surrounded front door I tried the door handle and remarkably the door wasn’t locked…

All the doors to the ground floor flats were covered in steel, so to be able to access the stairwell was a real surprise. A surprise too much to resist for some of us, so we took a quick foray into the building. Ignoring the ‘no trespassing’ sign. Bad I know. We didn’t go far, up a flight of stairs to the first balcony. All the flats are blocked off and we didn’t do anything other than take a few photos and then exit. It was a cheap, no harm, thrill; and no security or police turned up (phew).

There is a short row of terraced houses at the end of the estate and those are all boarded up ready to be knocked down as well. I wonder what monstrosity will be built on this site and when? All these empty properties and we have a major housing crisis in this country. I shake my head sometimes.

From a small, litter strewn and slowly overgrowing hillock in the gardens we could get a glimpse of our next stop; Balfron Tower in the Brownfields Estate; a 10 minute walk away. My first proper view of Balfron was through this filthy graffiti smeared window. I was quite excited; this is a major work of brutalist architecture in the UK, though maybe not from this angle.

Anyway as I said above, Balfron gets its own post later. The Brownfields Estate also has the much shorter Carradale Tower situated at right angles to Balfron. Unlike Balfron, Carradale is still very much lived in. Though here is a sneak preview of why Balfron so cool.

The entire area around Balfron is fenced off, including the, possibly, excellent play area. We could only see if from afar.

The towers were both built to complement each other and to create ‘communities in the sky’, by the Hungarian design genius (and inspiration for the name for the Bond villain) Erno Goldfinger. They were built between 1965 and 1967 and (thankfully) listed in 1996, else I’m sure someone would have tried to knock them down. Goldfinger lived onsite for a few months on completion and spoke to residents about what did and didn’t work and incorporating their ideas in his next project of similar design, the Trellick Tower, which I walked past back in August last year.

As Carradale is a lived-in block there was some space to wander around the perimeter, while I don’t support taking photos of people in or near their homes, I also think it is important to acknowledge that there are certain buildings that are important works of art and need to be preserved for what they are. One way to do that is to take and share photos.

Glenkerry House sits over the road from Carradale and is also part of the Brownfields Estate. It was designed by the Goldfinger practice to mirror its predecessors opposite. Construction was completed in 1977. It’s supposedly the pinnacle of brutalist design and was the final brutalist tower constructed in London. The building is owned and run by those that live there.

We stopped at the pie and mash shop in Chrisp Street Market for lunch and a short rest, Chrisp Street is the oldest purpose built pedestrian shopping area in the UK. It’s the heart of Poplar and thankfully is yet to be ‘regenerated’, though you can see it’s coming. It was busy. A lot of the flats around the market are empty, including a nearby tower block. The market has a marvellous clock tower, designed in 1951 for the Festival of Britain delays meant it wasn’t finished until the following year.

St Marys and St Josephs Catholic Church was our next stop, a magnificent building, completed in 1952 to replace the original church that was heavily damaged during the Second World War. It definitely has a mosque vibe to its construction and wouldn’t be out of place as a Christian church somewhere in Asia.

This was followed by the equally impressive, for its amazing tower, Calvary Charismatic Baptist Church.

We completed the walk at another post-war church, St Pauls at Bow Common. Built in 1960 it has been voted the best post-war church in Britain. It was certainly different with its pulpit in the centre of the building and the parishioners sat around the minister. I quite like it.

Actually we completed the walk at a pub near Mile End station where we stopped to refresh after a hot afternoon of walking, talking and photographing modernist and brutalist architecture. It was another enjoyable outing and if you’re interested in joining the next one then let me know via a comment, we don’t have a date or a location yet; though it will probably be around Kilburn.

Urban Drift #1

Saturday 10 June 2023 – North London.

Walking is something I really enjoy and it’s something I’ve done for a long time (I guess it’s been since I first learned to walk), an unfocused walk around the streets of a city or out in the countryside brings me great pleasure; or at the least is act of de-stressing. It’s rare i come back from a walk feeling worse than when I left. I’d always thought that the best walking for me was under trees or near the sea but since Covid and coming back from the seven months we spent in Auckland I’ve realised that I’m the most comfortable walking in the city. This has nothing to do with safety or about getting lost, it’s just I’ve finally admitted to myself that I’m a city boy and I like the grot and grime and variety of the urban environment.

Over the last few years I’ve wandered a reasonable amount of the centre and inner east of London, it’s a vast and incredibly interesting city to walk in and the inner city is a treasure trove of buildings and streets and artefacts from its 2000 year history. Each walk has its ‘wow’ moments and I never fail to find something I’ve not noticed before, rain or shine they can look amazing if you allow it.

Over past few months, and again, probably since we came back from New Zealand I’ve become more and more conscious that I’ve been enjoying just spending time on my own or with Eleanor and I’m starting to worry I’m hermiting a bit. While I/we go out a reasonable amount I’ve not made a huge effort to see other people while we are out, so in an effort to try to change this and to meet new people I signed up for a walking group with a difference, ‘Pedestrianists’. Today was my first walk with them.

We were given notice via email to meet at a coffee shop near Euston Station at 10:00 am and to expect to walk for four hours; that was it, nothing other than a start time and place. There is no plan, there is never a plan. This walk was what they call an urban ‘drift’ and drifting with others was the exact reason I joined up, most of my walking has no plan, it felt good to do it with others for a change. This was drift number 7. There were a dozen or so drifters, a couple of other newbies but most had done these before. They were mostly young. The concept is that a random walker selects a card from a small deck then tosses the card in the air. Each card is marked with a direction on each side and the side that lands face up is the direction the walks start off. We walk for an hour in that rough direction, aiming to keep off main roads where possible, then repeat the card toss. No one knows where the walk will end up. I liked it.

It was the first brutally hot day of the summer and for a change I had packed and dressed appropriately, I had the big camera and I wasn’t sure I could walk for four hours; the most I’ve walked in the past couple of years has been two and a bit hours. I hoped my knees and hips would cope.

Our first direction was north and we immediately left Euston Rd for a parallel street and meandered our way through Mornington Crescent and Camden.

We walked past the amazing Isokon Flats building in Belsize Park, I’ve see pictures of it but didn’t realise it was in London, it’s a very lovely grade 1 listed low rise block built in the early 1930s. The building had three very important creatives who fled Nazi Germany before the war; Walter Gropius the founder of the Bauhaus movement, Marcel Breuer, an early designer of modernist furniture and Laszlo Nagy the head teacher of the Bauhaus School. As well as being beautifully designed it also homed designers of beautiful things at a critical time. I only had the fixed 50mm lens so wasn’t able to capture the building in its full glory, which obviously means a revisit.

The second hour had us going further north, though Highgate and onto Hampstead Heath; drifting around residential backstreets rather than marching more directly along busy main roads. This is supposed to be a walk for conversation and feeling part of the environment, relaxing and enjoying what the surroundings offer. This is not a walk to get anywhere or be first. The group stayed together through most of the walk, splitting off into groups of two and three, changing members regularly. I think I spoke to everyone at one point or the other, they were a social and engaging bunch and it was quite enjoyable.

We stopped for ice cream, water and a loo break and Kenwood House before heading east for the third and then fourth hours, taking a slightly executive call to follow the Parkland Walk to Finsbury Park from Archway, the only place I had more than a passing knowledge of.

We ended up at the Finsbury Pub near the park of the same name to get some very well earned liquid refreshment. It had been a hot and enjoyable four hours and we knocked off over 15kms. I stayed for a quick pint before heading home with enough time to have a cool shower and head back out with Eleanor. It was a busy, but very enjoyable day and I will be back for another drift when I next get a chance.

That London

May and June(ish) 2023 – London.

The last couple of months or so have been a bit of blur; mainly a happy blur of family and friends from New Zealand and excessive eating and drinking. I’m pretty sure I’ve added more weight and gotten slower in the last two months than the preceding two, and I thought those were bad. Much as I’d like to break the cycle it’s going to last until the end of summer. I’m not complaining. I like eating and drinking with friends.

May was a mad busy month, I’d started a new job and it’s been pretty full on, but so far I’m enjoying it and it’s been good being back with some familiar faces in a department I’d worked in before. My Auckland sister came to stay with us for a couple of weeks after attending a conference in Valencia. She timed it perfectly to arrive between the kitchen being renovated (contents of the kitchen stacked in the dining room and dust everywhere) and the bedroom she is staying being converted into a bathroom (contents of the bedroom/bathroom stacked in the dining room and dust everywhere).

I have been reading Tom Chivers’ book about what lies beneath the feet of Londoners, ‘London Clay’, and he mentioned the Mithraeum Museum, a small, free museum in the Bloomberg building near Bank station. It seems that very few people know of it’s existence, which absolutely adds to its allure… It was the perfect place to take my sister to. History mixed with something underground; in both sense of the word.

In 1954 while digging the foundations for a new construction on one of the many World War Two bomb sites archaeologists discovered the ruins of a Roman temple. It proved to be a temple to the Roman god Mithras. The ruin was moved to a nearby site so the construction of the building could be completed. This was subsequently demolished in 2014 for the Bloomberg Building to be built. Archaeologists we given access to the site again and hundreds of artefacts we found. Bloomberg had the temple moved back to its original site, now the basement of his modern building. It was very cool.

There was an installation on the ground floor above the Mithraeum; a bunch of small vessels, such as jugs, vases and small barrels, hung from the ceiling with microphones in them, created a weird drone as we walked around them. I really liked it. Definitely a hard recommend for something to do in London that is slightly different to the norm.

After the Mithraeum we took a slow stroll along the north bank of the Thames then up to the National Galley where we saw a post-impressionist exhibition which was quite interesting, though impressionism remains my favourite period in European art. We had a walk around the gallery’s impressionist collection as well.

This was followed by an even slower stroll through China Town and Soho where we had an early dinner booked at the utterly fabulous Gautier restaurant. The food was amazing, as was a remarkable red dessert wine we had.

In an attempt to bring my sister back down to reality we decided we would go back to North Cheam, in the south London borough of Sutton and do a walk-by of 177 Windsor Avenue; the house we lived in before we went to New Zealand in 1973. I had visited in 2013(ish) but my sister hadn’t been back since we left. I lived there for three months or so when I came back to the UK in 1985 and stayed in a shared flat with some old school friends and I often wonder if they still live in the area and if they are still friends. I guess now I’m over 60 I should wonder if they are still alive.

It was an interesting experience, and I enjoyed more than I did ten years ago; maybe because I was visiting with family and maybe because it was sunnier. North Cheam was seemed less rundown than it did then. We did a short loop walk, past Allerton Gardens where I stayed in the 80s, past my old primary school and then on to our old street and house.

177 Windsor Gardens.

We then looped back to the high street where we stopped for coffee and a wee in McDonalds; the other option was the Nonsuch Inn, which was the pub we frequented in 85, but is now a Wetherspoon’s pub and I won’t give their scumbag owner any of my cash.

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The following day my sister attended evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral, not something I wanted to attend at the time, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and it sounds like it was a magical and uplifting experience, even for those who don’t believe. It’s a beautiful building and I’ve never really explored the inside. I must add it to my to-do list.

While my sister was singing songs to someone’s Lord, I took the opportunity to drift around the streets around Smithfield Market. I had no plan, just wander where the streets take me and grab some photos on the way if I saw anything interesting. I have yet to explore the Clerkenwell area, but with only 30 minutes available today I didn’t get far.

My sister was here for two short weeks and it was great having her stay with us while she was in London and her visit was over all too soon. Before she had even left some friends from NZ arrived in London, though they were staying with other friends for a few days when they arrived. Two days after my sister left I took one of our friends on a walk from Camden, down the canal to Kings Cross for lunch at Spiritland, then further down the canal to Shoreditch; stopping for beers on the way. Out first stop was the Hawley Arms, where Eleanor and I had our first date ten and a bit years ago; not that we have been there much since Eleanor stopped working in Camden. The Hawley is a rock n roll pub and was a hangout of Amy Winehouse, The Clash, The Libertines and many others.

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It was a good walk. I’ve not done the canals in a while and it was a nice reminder of how many nice places there are to walk in London.

It was a really hectic couple of months, with visitors and work being done on the house, but it was fun and I’m grateful we had visitors from NZ over to stay. I’m writing this in mid-July, a month after our friends have left and since then we have had a bathroom fitted, but the work is almost over.

Pere Ubu with Valve @ Rich Mix

Friday June 2 – Shoreditch, London.

Pere Ubu was conceived in Cleveland, Ohio in 1975 and came to my attention probably in 1979 or 1980 when their 1978 debut LP ‘The Modern Dance’ appeared on the shelves of record shops in Auckland. As was common in that period anything unusual was lumped in with punk or new wave and I bought the record unheard, as this was how I shopped back then. I didn’t like it, though I tried. It wasn’t punk enough for me and it was one of the records I didn’t miss when my flat was burgled in the early 80s. To be fair to Pere Ubu, they never advertised themselves as a punk or new wave band; influential as they were to many artists who didn’t mind being categorised that way. I never really gave them another thought. Until earlier this week.

To be truthful, I gave them a first thought about two months ago when a friend of mine from New Zealand asked me if I would by tickets to a concert they were putting on in London when he was here on holiday. I bought tickets for him and some friends, not planning on going myself.

The gig was tonight and my friends ended up with a spare ticket so as they were staying at our place I decided I would go along as well. In preparation I’d listened to their recently released album and thought it was pretty good, not that I was going to buy it; especially as the cost of living has gone up and I need to be much my circumspect with discretionary spending.

We arrived at the venue, Rich Mix, just as the support act, Valve, arrived on stage. I mostly enjoyed their set, there were some interesting instruments and a couple of very good songs; the names of which allude me now unfortunately.

Rich Mix is a great venue; big bar, airy and spacious; the gig was sold out but it was not overcrowded inside. The sound; while not loud, was perfect and the stage lighting was great for photography. An unusual combination of goodness in a venue.

Pere Ubu came to the stage at the scheduled time. David Thomas is the only original member and as he said before the music started he has been living in London for 40 years. While Pere Ubu is a band it is very much David Thomas’s vehicle, it won’t exist when he is gone; and he definitely isn’t well. He was pretty cantankerous as the set went on. Age allows for that I guess. I’m heading that way myself.

I found myself right in front of him, be design, and took a few photos over the first couple of tracks. “Three songs, no flash” was, and still should be, the mantra of any gig photographer. The first song, and the first track on the new LP, ‘Love is like Gravity’ was absolutely fabulous live and had quite a different feel to the recorded version. I loved it and it set a good precedent for the music that followed; especially as the sound was so good.

The band have a theremin player for their live sets, I’ve never seen one on stage before and watching it being played by someone who knew what they were doing was a highlight and a joy. The theremin is an electronic instrument and the player does not touch it; it senses the movements of the musician’s hands and responds with an eerie amplified sound. It was really very cool. Just watching her play made the gig worth attending.

The band mainly focused on songs from the new LP, but early in their set played “30 seconds over Tokyo” a track I knew from the first LP, though one I’ve not heard in decades. It was good, rowdy compared to the rest of the set we saw.

It was a good set, though we didn’t stay to the end, David Thomas was getting frustrated with the band, in a similar way to the late Mark E. Smith did with his band The Fall. We got a bit irritated by his grumpiness in the end and left. Apparently his band have been with him for years, close to 30 in one case, so I guess they are used to his antics.

I otherwise enjoyed the show and have been playing the new album a bit as I work.

The gig was put on by the promoter Baba Yaga’s Hut and it seems most of the shows I’ve been too lately have been theirs. They retweeted an image I took from the gig and the band contacted me to ask if they could use my photos; I was quite happy to let them do so.

The Battleship Building

Tuesday 25 April 2023 – London.

If I count weekends then this is day four of ten days off between jobs; next Monday is the May Day bank holiday in the UK. I’ve prepared myself a massive list of things that need to be done while I have both time and the mental capacity available. There is a massive backlog on the to-do list that I hope to get through, and getting though it will release the weight I feel building on my slowly sagging with age shoulders.

The break isn’t just going to be work and today I popped my camera into my day bag and caught the tube to Liverpool St just after 9. I was after some photos from the interior of the Barbican Centre and (forlornly) hoped that by getting there soon after it opens at 9:30 it would be quiet; I was then going to go on and find the magnificently named ‘Battleship Building’, which is located somewhere behind Paddington Station.

Arriving in the Barbican Centre I was frustrated to find it busy, with people huddled in conversation or slumped over expensive laptops in every corner and on every photographically nicely spread-out set of table and chairs. I should’ve realised this would be a popular place for remote workers and those who want to be seen hanging out in a creative environment. I bought an expensive coffee and took one of the few empty seats and joined those getting in the way of anyone who had the same mis-thought idea as I did. Perhaps we are all frustrated photographers waiting for space to clear?

I wandered about and took a few photos, though I didn’t really find much that excited me and just wished I had the wide-angle lens as it would have been useful; even more so at the Battleship.

The men’s bathroom is fantastic though, very mid-century modern. It must be one of the best looking urinals in England. Fortunately no-one was in here, or came in while I was taking this photo.

I hopped onto the tube to Paddington Station and found the Battleship Building easily enough, only taking one wrong turn down a dead-end street. It was cold among the mid-rise building canyons that have, and continue to be built behind the station.

The Battleship building was constructed during 1968 and 1969 as a maintenance depot for British Rail but was converted into offices in 2000. It sits under the very noisy (and equally iconic) Westway section of the A4 motorway. I might do a Westway photo-walk one day, it could be interesting, or equally it could be properly dull.

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It was difficult to photograph with a standard 50mm lens as it is crowded between other buildings and a slip road; as I said just above I wished I had brought the wide angle lens with me as well.

The building isn’t particularly brutalist and doesn’t appear on the main Brutal London maps, though it has some classic brutalist features and is, in part, lovingly made from concrete; perhaps it’s too curvy, too faux art-deco? It’s a great looking building though, just difficult to photograph. Those concrete towers are great.

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I passed this great derelict frontage on my walk from Paddington to Oxford Circus to get the tube home, though I don’t recall where it is; my path was rather meandering. To meander is the best way to traverse inner London.

The bluebells of Chalet Wood

Sunday 23 April 2023 – Chalet Wood, Wanstead Park, London.
I finished my job on Friday and much as the last couple of weeks have been pretty chilled I’m kinda glad to be moving on as I’d definitely lost interest in the work and had been struggling with motivation for most of the last twelve months. It’s fair to say that I’ve been struggling with motivation in the rest of my life as well, so it wasn’t surprising it impacted my work experience. I have a week off before starting a new role at the place I was at prior to the one I just left. I remain a civil servant, part of the shiftless workerati establishment blob; or something like that.

I’m looking forward to both the week off and starting the new job. I’m hoping this change of employer and work, along with an improvement in the weather and that it’s lighter for longer each day, will encourage a few changes in other areas; like not sitting on my butt in front of the telly scanning social media every 15 minutes night after night. I also plan to re-arrange my workspace in the spare room to refresh the routine and have a load of other tasks planned as well. It won’t be a complete rest.

We had planned on going to Chalet Wood in Wanstead Park to see this season’s bluebells last weekend, but we completely forgot about it, and I only remembered again yesterday. This will be the final weekend they will be out in full bloom. I’m glad I remembered as they were magnificent. I love that this glorious wood is a 30 minute walk from home, roughly the same amount of time it takes to get into the centre of London on the tube.

We were up pretty early by our standards and were at Chalet Wood soon after 8:30. I was surprised to find only five other people as I expected it to be quite busy. The London Marathon is on today as well as an Extinction Rebellion protest in Westminster, the forecast of rain perhaps kept some punters away as well. I was certainly busier when we left and went for coffee in the small lakeside café. The coffee was terrible by the way.

This is the fourth year we’ve managed to catch the bluebells and I swear they get better each time; the display seems to be expanding its reach across this section of wood and there are larger numbers in the fields. Bluebells only really grow in quantity in ancient woodlands and there are few of those left in the UK. We’re lucky in that Wanstead Park was once owned by royalty and was preserved for the hunting of deer and other edible wildlife so it was still a woodland when it came into the ownership of the City of London in 1880 when the owner went bankrupt. We walked the weird past the Temple construction that is one of the last remnants of the once grand set of buildings on the grounds.

I took a few photos, but they really don’t do the place the justice it deserves. You just have to go and experience it yourself, it is a beautiful sight. You need to visit mid-late April, preferably with flatish light, and it’s best to go early in the morning when you can take a seat on a log and enjoy the solitude; get in before the groups of families and loads of other people arrive to disturb the peace.

MeetUp Barbican photo walk

Saturday 11 March 2023 – Barbican, London.

We’ve been back from the sabbatical in New Zealand for just over a year, and the year seems to have completely disappeared. I haven’t shared a lot of news over that time, in some ways it felt like not much happened that was worth reporting; however, when I put everything down on ‘paper’ it was a very busy time indeed. In no particular order we’ve;

· Both had at least one (thankfully) mildish dose of Covid.
· Eleanor sold her house of 26 years in Walthamstow and bought another one in Leytonstone.
· We’re in the middle of having the kitchen replaced and have been microwaving and air-frying dinner in the sitting room and washing dishes in the bathroom for the last three weeks.
· There has been a lot of work being done on the building my flat is in and as director of the residents association it was a very busy, and stressful time.
· I’m trying to rent my flat so I can save some money when my mortgage goes up in June.
· I’ve got a new job that I start in May.
· Eleanor’s one year contract has been made a permanent position.
· I turned 60, (sad-face).
· We’ve taken two short and enjoyable breaks in Europe.

We want to do more of the European thing; and if I can rent the flat and save some money then European holidays will be definitely be on the plan over summer.

In the meantime, other than being busy with house related things and going to concerts I’ve been trying to beat my lethargy and get out and do more photography. I’m also keen to meet some new people and expand my friendship group a bit beyond the group we mainly hang out with now.

With those things in mind I signed up for a MeetUp Photography walk in the Barbican, which I think is one of the best places for brutalist architectural photography in London. I was hoping to be shown some new spots to take photos and had my fingers crossed I would meet some other photographers interested in walking round taking photos of buildings and things while not talking about camera kit as we go. I’m not that sort of photographer; I like the exploring and act of taking photos rather than all the technology that goes with it.

The Barbican Estate was constructed between 1965 and 1976 and comprises of some 2,000 flats and houses across three towers and some low level blocks. There is also the Barbican Centre mixed usage venue which has a fabulous mid-century interior. I’m planning on going back just to take some photos of the interior, a lot earlier in the day.

The whole thing is comprised of lovely concrete and to my constant surprise is mostly open to the public and the security guards don’t stop people taking photos. I hope this never changes.

It was an enjoyable three hour session, there were about a dozen of us photographers led by Alex from the London Centre for Photography who shared a few ideas and things to look out for to make the most of the environment we were in. We had 20 minute sessions across a number of zones in the Barbican precinct and I was shown couple of places I hadn’t been to before. Objective one met. I can’t believe I missed this place before.

While objective two was to meet more photographers I pretty much spent the three hours shooting on my own, which is I must confess, absolutely my preference. I chatted to people when we all got together between assignments and I did share Instagram names with a couple of people, one who I got on well with and had similar photographic inspirations to me. The rest of the group were really nice, but I didn’t specifically click with anyone. I will do one of these again though as it was fun and interesting and most of the things I wanted from the day.

After the session ended I went off with a couple of photographers to a nearby parking area to take these two images. we were so lucky this taxi was there and the driver was more than happy to move and stop under the light well. This is my favourite from the day.

I was really pleased with my photography though, liking most of the images I took. I am a fairly selective photographer and tend to shoot like I was still using film and rarely taking more than one photo of any given subject. I have been very happy with the standard of photo I’ve been taking lately and I take that as a good thing.

Here are the rest of the images I took. I’ve converted most to black and white as that format perfectly suits 60s and 70s architecture.

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.