Lingua Franca

Issue 7

Lingua Franca

Issue 7

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A quick word from the editor– Hey, Finally a new issue of Lingua Franca. It has been a while. I’ve been busy. Changing country, changing lifestyle and a bunch of other things have changed too. For one thing, I can’t afford to print this anymore. It’s too expensive. This issue I have written mainly about the past year here in London, where I’ve been living. Just observations. Some, uninformed rants, and others, sneaky, bitter stabs at things disguised as harmless little funny stories. I always count September as the beginning of the year rather than January. It makes more sense for me. It’s been a Productive year so far and I can feel it’s going to be a very busy and productive year ahead indeed. Vanessa Govinden shot the photos for this issue. I really appreciate it. –Turlough Oct 2010

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We started in archway. The summer was finally over. It didn’t really matter how many times I tried to tell everyone there would be a second summer. There wouldn’t be one, and no one was listening anyway. It was sad. That melancholy kind of Sunday evening feeling. End of the week, end of the summer. Similar in ways. sometimes both can leave you feeling tired and defeated. A drinking walking tour of London would help ease us into the other half of the year. I had been meaning to go cycling around exploring parts of London I hadn’t ever been before during the summer. I hadn’t done it and was regretting it badly. Walking around drunk for a day would perhaps make up for it. After a few beers, we found a prewar A-Z map in a tiny junk shop that would hopefully guide us down to Chalk farm road. We didn’t really know the way. From there we would be fine. The road would

lead the way. We looked over the city skyline from suicide bridge, sat in a scorching Highgate park and waddled along down the hill. These areas seem to have some nice junk shops. Some dusty and cheap, others clean and expensive but pretty interesting too. Vanessa was waiting for us when we arrived at the station. We scooped her up. We walked down to the Hawley Arms in Camden. We made a friend and dragged him along with us. His name was Andy. An aging punk from north London. I knew of the annoying old punks he talked of from Dublin he had met before. We talked about bands and places we’d been. Andy insisted we walk the canal around to a place called The Constitution. A quiet pub on the water. We chatted, drank, took pisses and then moved on. We worked our way into the city, stopping at Euston so Caroline could

Archway

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offer London tours to tourists. Andy had done it before he said. It didn’t work. Why would you take a tour from a girl with a swedish accent holding a crumpled beer can? Actually, I probably would. By the time we got to Soho the last of the days amazingly crisp golden sunshine was gone. It was dark. Andy left us at Crowbar because he bumped into some mates and it was now up to us to make it to the London eye before it closed. Oh yeh, that was kind of our mission. But, of course, we missed that. By miles. Instead we took stupid tourist pictures, went on bumper cars and shouted at Big Ben. It felt like beer was coming out of my pours by the time we finally surrendered to public transport. Caroline tried to eat her oyster card too on the way home.

Why would you take a tour from a girl with a swedish accent holding a crumpled beer can?

Amhurst cafe on Amhurst road near Hackney central station is a pretty nice place to get a quick, cheap and friendly greasy morning munch. Family owned. Husband and wife in their seventies run the kitchen and their son runs the front. Totally sweet bunch, good hot food with a veggie breakfast including toast and tea/coffee/juice for only 3.75. Four doors up to the left is a very decent place called Mess cafe but they seem to be gone or under construction for the last while. They take a while to take your order and a further while to deliver the goods but the wait is kind of worth it. Two doors down from Amhurst cafe beside New York Nails is Star Nergz. Same deal as Amhurst here really, food wise but falls down on service. Their chef never showed up One Sunday morning,the boss cooks now and the place has never really been the same since. The way they mix up and ad weird things to

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Breakfast reviewyour order is pretty funny I suppose but in a breakfast review this place loses points for this. To eat on Amhurst road in the morning you have to be prepared to eat in a surprise cafe each time really as one of these will either be under construction or closed that particular day. My loyalty lies with Amhurst cafe though I think. Mainly because the folks there are so nice, forcing the paper on you to read while you wait and telling you that you’re welcome for everything.

I don’t really travel back alleys in London as I did when I lived in Dublin. I think generally Dublin has more deserted back alleys than London does, at least in central. I knew my way down alleys in Dublin although I have discovered some really handy short cuts over here. Ways that would really have come in handy while working as a messenger, but I didn’t know London then like I do now. The alleys that do exist in London generally seem less threatening than Dublin ones as far as I can tell. Dublin’s inner city alleys have a consistent flow of junkies and limping, wheezing weirdos sneaking about down them. But Dublin has a heroin epidemic, and the current one has been the second major wave since that of the late seventies and early eighties. Much the same scenario as today, areas with people who are devastated by high rates of unemployment, bad housing, crime and a decaying environment. So many kids were turning to the drug and dying at such an alarming rate in Dublin during these years that the CPAD (concerned parents against drugs) was organized. The idea was to directly get pushers out from local communities. Sometimes involving citizen-led evictions. While initially a positive force, the CPAD began to collapse into vigilante groups in some areas. The lack of knowledge about Heroin at this time in Ireland inevitably led to confusion between addicts and pushers and in some ways worsened the situation. There was practically no help schemes for users in Ireland and the number contracting Aids and HIV rose rapidly. Todays situation is still dismal. Although an availability of help schemes prescribing regular Methadone and other services is available a huge number of young and old people on heroin are dying or being sent to prison. Heroin addicts are victims of capitalism and with little to no jobs available to all classes in Ireland during the current devastating recession and a refusal to house those who are deemed as “anti-social” the future for people young and old addicted to heroin looks hopeless and bleak. Yes, the back alleys.

Back alleys

a huge number of people on heroin are dying or being sent to prison

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An old Irish man walked across the canal gates and came over by us to shout at the water. Something about drowning or saving somebody. “A lifeguard’s job”, he told us. After that he walked back out on the canal gates and shouted about the state of the rubbish in the water. There was a tire at the bottom apparently. His friend then announced that cobwebs were the sign of Satan and that they were all over the big bolts on the canal gates. He climbed on and began dusting them off. We watched him do this for quite a while. The Irish guy told him to tighten the bolts while he was at it, as they were loose. He disappeared off somewhere after that. When the cobwebs were gone and the bolts tightened he too pottered off somewhere in a hurry. We got up and passed the Irish guy arriving back with a very long wooden pole to get the tyre out. He nearly fell in. Me and Vanessa then talked a bit about mental health. How it can be hereditary and also how it can be in our own hands to steer our own personal stability throughout life. Take care.

The place has a kind of ominous presence. Sitting on the skyline, always poking up. I see it at a certain angle between trees from Hackney Downs park beside my house. I see it when I walk back from the green shop on Lower Clapton rd and when I tie up my bike beside work on Regents Canal. I see Canary wharf when I am on a boat going past Canary Wharf too. It is big, but way bigger from afar. This is strange. I look at the City Bank logo up on the building and think about it scribbled on Paula Scher’s napkin, the woman who designed the logo, at one of the first meetings of many with the bank. The largest financial institution in the world. Somebody told me there were no roads in Canary Wharf, but that’s not true. There are. When I look at the buildings I feel like I’m in London. A big city. A place I always wanted to be. The longer you stay the more you forget what it was like before you came.

CobwebsCanary Wharf

“The wharf” view from the boat

The Irish guy told him to tighten the bolts while he was at it, as they were loose

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I’m going to get all the writing on drinking in this mag out of the way here. Dragon stout is next up for review. It comes in a small yet tall bottle and is a fruity Jamaican strong stout at 7.5%. In south London I got high Jamaican praise for buying it from the Jamaican dude running the shop off Tasman Rd. in Clapham. I made him very happy. He told me the minute he got off work he was going to chill out and drink two of them himself. Another amazing thing about boozing it up in the capital is that the shop people all offer to open your drinks there and then like it’s obvious that you’re out on the fucking tear and can’t waste a minute without an open drink. Thank you. Providing you live in a mixed area with lots of working class kids and estates with little to no police around, you should be able to find a few decent all-night corner shops to stock up in the dead of night. In Ireland it is illegal to sell alcohol take-out anywhere after ten at night. I’m not joking. Fucked up and dumb law. What people do now in typical Irish fashion is get mindlessly drunk in the pub as they know take-out is not an option for afterwards. Who even goes out before ten o’clock anyway?

Special Brew is really popular in the U.k. which was kind of new to me. I was always just used to drinking regular strength beers. Then I tried it. Most people don’t drink it, but a hell of a lot of people do. More and more young people too, I’ve noticed. So not just tramps and alcoholics. Every corner shop stocks it and it comes in a filthy looking maroon coloured can. Quite fitting, I think. The taste is surprisingly bearable, actually quite nice, and at 9% and just over One pound a can, you’re winning. Friends of mine drink it along with Strongbow Black which is the cider equivalent except not as strong. I would just like to point out here that I do not drink everyday. Someone asked me that a while back and it made me embarrassed. I don’t drink everyday.

Dragon Stout

Dangerous booze

Dragon stout helps you be creative

In Ireland it is illegal to sell alcohol take-out anywhere after ten at night. I’m not joking

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!I don’t really do it at all anymore. Although me and everyone I used to be surrounded by was stubborn, proud and defensive about it. Now I’m just surrounded by new people who are proud, stubborn and defensive about it, and I’m not. Eating supermarket throw-aways is many things. Tasty, money saving, fun, cool, and rad bonding time. I sense it may be getting trendy. Perhaps just to say you’ve done it, but trendy none the less. We will talk a little about trendy in the T section later on. Anyway, I love my bin-mates dearly. I have gotten lazy since I moved here from my smashed up house in Ireland with broken windows, no heating and rats.

Eating out of bins

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! Situated in the borough of Islington. A stretch of road that runs from upper street at Angel to where St. Paul’s Rd meets the Balls pond road. On one side some of the nicest smooth coasting dreamy tarmac in London to cycle on, and the other without warning dangerously descends into a hellish moonscape of craters and melted tarmacadam cliffs. This is a warning!

Essex road

Empty “lots”

Empty city

They’re really more of an American thing and I guess that’s why you don’t come across them here in London. An empty lot is basically a disused space in a city or town with a fence around it and nothing else. Tramps go here to make little fires and drink and sleep. Anyway, I have found one. It’s at the end of Abbot st. off Kingsland high st. Check it out if you fancy doing this sort of stuff when a night out in Dalston is winding down. Pissing in it is how I know it’s there, by the way.

Tower bridge all to yourself, the dark rivers edge by the Tate Modern that stands dead and cold, huge chimney stack looming. Crossing over the structure that was initially criticized as “the bouncy bridge”, an eerie 28 days later feeling . Not a single moving car or person crosses any surrounding bridges or duck down the underpass nearby. This is central London! St. Paul’s is yours. So are salt and pepper shakers at the cafe and clumps of Lavender growing in the Garden out across the street. St. Paul’s clock is even totally wrong. Weird. I steal an orange battery-powered flashing road-works lamp that I can’t turn off and runs out in my house a week and a half later. Yes, the dead of night on a bank holiday is the best time to creep around London town.

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Foxes in London don’t give a fuck. They eat kids, chill on front lawns, graze on picnic tables and screw in public. They run along side me and terrify me as I cycle home late at night. They look rad standing on traffic islands in broad daylight and they don’t sleep. I saw one in a hammock. Ok, I didn’t. But they are pretty impressive animals over here. I had maybe seen a couple of foxes in real life before I moved to here. All the Irish ones are wimps and hide in holes all day long and get run over by cars. The wildlife that manages to survive under the circumstances in London is impressive. The foxes for one, and then there’s the Parakeets. They can be found in west and in south-east London mainly. Having allegedly escaped and been set free by various rockstar/celeb types over the past 20 years these green Ring Neck parakeets have managed to out-number native English birds! Mental.

Colombia Road flower market is on Sunday afternoons from around 9am till 2/3pm. You get flowers there. I managed to see the market from a completely different angle while limping through with my bike after crashing it one night. I crept past with blood on my hands and trousers as the men were unloading the big metal stands. The smell of pollen was strong in the air. I thought of the young professionals and families all wholesome and fresh buying their bunches of posh flowers the next morning. This made me feel like trash and my shoulder ached like all hell. I didn’t go to the flower market the next morning.

Foxes

Flower Market

Hackney fox

I crept past with blood on my hands and trousers as the men were unloading the big metal stands

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“Bullshit

Bullshit Bullshit!!!”

I feel like a total pathetic rookie writing about graveyards in London. I’ve only been in one. But I said at the start how this was just a collection of observations of mine anyway, and I really like this graveyard I’ve been in. It’s the Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington in Hackney. Massive overgrown graveyard that hosts a confusing labyrinth of trails and paths throughout it’s dense foilage. I think old gay men go there to pick each other up. There are also some pretty creepy old tramp-looking guys hanging about on the benches at each clearing. Thing is, I don’t think they’re actually tramps, they just smell, drink and dress like them but live in houses which is way more worrying. Hundreds if not thousands of old forgotten lob-sided grave stones stick out of the ground choked in weeds and ivy. I don’t think people still get buried there anymore though. It’s more of a seedy park to go walk the dog in. In the centre there’s an old burnt out church where I’ve seen bands do photo shoots before. I don’t think I’d go there alone, it doesn’t feel quite safe enough. Too many creepy creeps lurking about in the undergrowth. Go for a stroll with a friend on a nice day though maybe, by all means. This reminds me of the graveyard on the Howth hill that juts out into the sea on Dublin bay. Me and Ciara went to find Phil Lynott’s grave. We lurched around for a while in the sun looking at every grave. This wasn’t working, there were thousands of them. A nice care taker guy asked us if we were looking for Philo’s grave, we told him we were and he pointed us down to the one with all the flowers, photos, lighters unopened beers, bracelets and fan notes surrounding it. Duh. We stayed for a while but decided to leave an aging motor cyclist rocker dude have his beer and smoke with Philo. RIP

Graveyards

Beware of Guitar hero the arcade version, says Caroline Nordin. This is serious! It is fucked up! It’s not how it is in the original version. It’s not fair! It’s bullshit bullshit bullshit!!! We laughed awkwardly and encouraged her to leave quietly from the tourist amusements arcade beside the London Eye. We should have left on a good note after the bumper cars. We were all tired and drunk from our adventure. The Security guy grinned as she complained at him about the game. I had already told her the whole place was a scam.

GuitarheroBullshit

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I fell asleep on the train to my college interview and woke up in the middle of nowhere. No train back, no taxis, no one working the little train station either. There was no-one. I began walking in the sweltering sun to the motor way and stood there with my huge ridiculous portfolio case and bag. A while later just as I was giving up on life, a Polish decorator guy picked me up and saved my life. He drove me to the college doors and wished me luck. The interview went well and was told I pretty much had a place. This was good. I didn’t really know anyone in London so I got drunk alone to celebrate. Someone had told me Hampstead was nice so I went there and walked around the quaint streets drinking beer. I looked at the fancy houses, shuffled past the well-dressed groups of young people up little hilly streets and phoned my friends back home to try and tell them I was lost. I got drunker and drunker, and more and more lost. I stopped and sat on a park bench and listened to angry music and thought about the future for a while. Later I wound up in Highgate, I know that now but didn’t at the time. Two nice girls showed me the way and got the tube with me. Later on, I hung out with a bum and drank special brew on the streets at King’s Cross. He showed me his bed which was a pile of dirty blankets by some bins on a back street and I bought him some cans before I said goodbye to leave. Back at the hostle I fumbled about in the dark in a room of sleeping travelling hippies before conking out cold.

Hampstead

I didn’t really know anyone in London, so I got drunk alone to celebrate.

Hampstead, from the heath’s edge, Sept ‘10

Pretty much every house on our humongous ex-millionaire street was vacant, burnt out or boarded up except for ours and the one next door. Recession was hitting hard. Still is. I could write a whole book about my old rad smashed up house but I can’t here. I can only tell you a small bit about it. Five of us rented a large five bedroom house with a one and a half acre garden from this ropey cowboy landlord for practically nothing. It was perfect for what I was plotting at the time which was make a portfolio to get into college to and lay low. I had just broken up with my long-term girlfriend too. The lord would swing some really odd deals with us to get lump sums of money that he needed real quick for something. He would ring up

to desperately propose we give him two months rent the next day in exchange for six months free rent. This was a little worrying, yet too good to refuse. We would also never see him apart from when he turned our garden into a Christmas tree supermarket complete with flood-lights, marquee, carpark for the public and signs outside. I had the smallest room in the house on the opposite “wing” to everybody else. When I visited at first to see the house it was a wreck. Everything appeared smashed up. It turned out to be a good kind of chaos though. It seemed to be ok to build and smash whatever we liked so I kicked through the back of the large cupboard in my room to make an entrance into the old coat room that lead

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I miss my old house

out to the garden. I smashed away the door into that room and built a wall in its place and this became my office. It was a cave. A nice, carpeted cave where I hid and did my work in secret. It would have been an amazingly easy house to burgle. A rotting shed door separated the house from the outside. This was also worrying. Travellers kept appearing around the side of the house digging through our dump pile of smashed up furniture and plasterboard. I found an old man wandering around the back garden one day. Bonnie just waved at him. We told him to go. With risk of sounding really wholesome, we had many good times there. So many laughably cold nights where we would huddle around the gas cooker for heat together.

So much vinegary wine and so many seedy hook-ups with people. In theory we didn’t need to use our fridge during winter because it actually got so cold sometimes that stuff indoors froze and the olive oil changed into weird buttery stuff. There was no heating and the electricity bill was so cheap by mistake of the company that we almost lived for free. I lost my job during this period due to the recession, but really, that was kind of ok. I am an avid saver. Ben built a water slide in the garden out of scaffolding and had a sunny st. Patrick’s day piss up. Meanwhile, I was hiding in my room, curled up in an alcohol-binge-induced anxiety nightmare with the curtains drawn. I miss my old house.

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It’s pretty normal to find yourself in the same places every weekend wherever you are in the world if you hang around long enough. I used to sit in a field in the rain every weekend with my pals in Ireland, then we moved onto a full-size room we had dug underground. In Dublin I went to the pub by the canal, and in another area I would end up hanging out at home a lot. Now I was sitting outside The Joiners Arms, the east London gay bar seeing double and wondering why I was here yet again. I remembered how I thought London was a city with endless variety and opportunities that I would relentlessly pursue. But, well, it is but I didn’t. It’s just too fucking easy to get lazy living in an area where you know where is cheap, reliable and going to be open late. Tuesdays is karaoke night. Two huge hairy men in pink clothes shout at you to sing. The

song “menu” is huge too. Although only a handful of my friends are actually gay, they’re the ones who don’t go there much anymore. It’s been criticized for being too straight, and I guess it’s true. Trendy guys go there to find trendy girls now and vice versa. That’s just how it’s turned out. Where do you draw the line, or should you even draw one at all? That’s for the folks who run the bar to decide I suppose. Dancing on the pool table and spilling drinks everywhere is fun. Being screamed at by the owner for going behind the bar to get my jacket isn’t. I just waved goodbye to her face and walked off. She was furious. I heard something about it being closed down due to noise complaints. I actually wouldn’t fucking care less to be honest. You have to pay in now anyway. And for what? To stand in a crummy room and buy drinks from them? Feh.

Joiners

The journey through Stamford Hill on a bus is interesting. Especially interesting the first time round if you are like me and from a country where religious minorities are extremely small and hidden. There is a large population of orthodox Jews in Stamford Hill. Perhaps they just appear sinister and strange to me because I am ignorant and unused to seeing them. But sinister and strange it is all the same. Black clothes, long coats, white shirts, tall black hats and scull-caps, long black locks and beards. I see them disappear around corners and into houses. I queue with them in the silent Jewish super market after getting confused by the selection of seventeen different hummus dips. I don’t mean to make them seem like a different species. They’re not. They’re just like me, obviously except they devote their lives to the Torah and wear all black. I used to wear all black too and worship at the alter of crust punk. My friend Ciara has a Jewish dad she never met. It is embarrassing while in Stamford hill with her sometimes when I have to stop her following Jewish men while calling out “daddy”.

Jewish Safari

Dancing on the pool table and spilling drinks everywhere is fun

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This actually happened

Just off under the Centre Point building on St Giles High St. is Seoul Bakery. A tiny Korean eatery that serves suspiciously cheap tasty sushi. I recommend the tuna sushi roll. 12 pieces sushi for only 3.50. The vegetarian one is also good and is only 3 pounds. Other niceties include alovera and grape juice and the seafood pancake, unless the thought of eating tentacles in an omelette type thing makes you puke. It is a super small place with maybe only 10 seats inside but I’ve never been turned away and always get a table within a few 5 minutes or so. The walls are completely covered in various scribbles and futile statements from various travellers and locals. They encourage this by leaving markers everywhere for you. But there must be a catch. Not really, they make the food fresh in front of you and the service is super friendly. To use the toilet you have to go down stairs and walk through the Korean hair dressing salon in the basement below, which in itself is interesting. Open till 7/8 I think.

Korean secret sushi

I don’t think I believe in karma. It’s just a bit stupid really. People love believing in it for no reason and pretending other people are going to get bad karma because of dumb stuff they did. Rubbish. Will I get bad karma for talking shit on karma? No, because it’s not real. Having said all that, I do get a bit spooked about braking mirrors and seeing the wrong amount of magpies and all that sort of thing. That’s actually even dumber but I can’t help it. I broke a mirror that was teetering on the edge of a window sill a while back. It fell off and smashed and two bits of glass popped out onto the floor leaving a perfect letter T shape in the mirror. The first letter of my first name. This was worrying. I took it down stairs panicking, ran it under the cold tap to dispel the bad luck (obviously) then I threw salt over my left shoulder seven times while wailing seven pathetic begging prayers to God himself. I actually did all this. Except for the prayer part to stop the bad luck from getting me for seven years. Is that a mental thing to do? Perhaps.

KarmaWill I get bad karma for talking shit on karma? No, because it’s not real

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I’m not sure why, but I am quite fond of Leather Lane just off Theobald’s Rd. near Farringdon. My feeling is that it’s because in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of central London, among all the rushing suits, cosmopolitan restaurants and cafes, and in a place where everything moves so fast, Leather Lane just sits there sleepily selling discount clothes, hair scrunchies, phone chargers and belts. That actually makes it sound absolutely shit. It’s not. I got some decent plain t-shirts there and there’s other useful bits and pieces. It’s a pretty dreary street to be honest but it’s like a little slice of Dublin in central London so I like it. A very skinny long slice. The market seems to be there till four o’clock most days.

Leather Lane

LostOn my first weekend in London we went to a squatted warehouse party down near Bow in East London. We were brand new to the city and didn’t really have any idea where we were going. Ciara got so fucked up that she was puking at the bar. She told Declan to set an alarm to wake her up and went to sleep on some rubbish bags. Meanwhile we traipsed about the party. Our friends band happened to be going through London that night and were playing there. Ciara ended up leaving her bike with me and got a taxi home. Later on, when I found myself eying up rubbish bags I decided to split. I don’t think I even saw the band play. Some girl who was unlocking her bike beside me cycled me in the right direction as far as her place and then pointed the way home. I got so fucking lost it was funny, then not funny anymore, then annoying and after that, just kind of worrying. I would approach whoever I saw to ask where places were, but there wasn’t really anyone anywhere. To make matters worse I was drunkenly cycling my bike while dragging Ciara’s alongside mine. This stopped me from gaining much ground. I had to keep stopping to crash or untangle the bikes. Women would hurry on as I would come crashing up to ask them directions. I had a map but I was seeing double and couldn’t read it. Eventually I found somewhere I recognized. Mare street. The sun was up and melting me by the time I made it in the door.

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I miss her now. Although only staying for 3 months in our place, her humour, clumsiness and natural filthy crudeness somehow acted as a crutch to a relationship where animosity was beginning to sprout up through the cracks. I had lived with Michelle before and it had been a lot of fun. We had shared the smashed up house together I mentioned earlier on. We had both been working on conceptual art portfolios at the time trying to get into college. I would rustle around down the end of our garden in the jungle putting hand prints in paint on trees and cutting type out of grass sods. Michelle would make pretend full-size people and make me play football with them in the garden while she took photos. She got food, chewed it up into mush and spat it back out and photographed it. She pegged out a load of toast on our washing line too. All in the name of “art”. We both got into the colleges we wanted. Now Mika was in London trying to make it, but if we’re talking about getting a job, she didn’t make that. Although she did dedicate all day everyday to trying to get a job. In a way she did spend the summer here working, only she didn’t get paid. I was having a hard time finding work too. We would look for most of the day and reward ourselves for another day of failure together. Finally she laughed and sat back. “Fuck it” she said, “I might as well enjoy myself while I’m here, I’m done with pretending I’m going to get a job in this city” I finally got a job soon after this and Michelle finally began taking medical trials over in Hammersmith to earn hard cash. She would go in and eat a pill and then go on Facebook for a week while hooked up to tubes in quarantine. She would emerge, looking much the same and we would booze and carry on all week until she would have to go back in again. It was all very healthy. But now she is gone. Back to Dublin, back to Alva, back to college and back to art. I don’t miss art, but I miss her hocking up her dinner for photographs and the soggy toast she left out on the line. I miss you Michelle.

Michelle

Michelle screaming at our old house

Michelle would make pretend full-size people and make me play football with them in the garden

Neighboursn

The mental painting in question

On one side we have a sweet bunch of people we’re friends with. One being my house mates girlfriend. And on the other the sweet old couple from El Salvador. They are polite, smiley and generous. Ciara’s heart especially melts as the little old woman wobbles to the front door to tell her of the package the postman left with them for us. “For you, big post, very heavy” Ciara goes in next door in her classy red dressing gown covered in stains and collects the box. They blazed music out the window of their house for the jumble sale that was had out the front of our house. Their son even donated an extremely shit painting of an American guard standing beside someone crucified with a sack over their head, U.S. flag draped on the side. It was funny, in a ridiculous way.

Notting Hill

The sale I wasn’t at outside my house

I had forgotten how shit the Notting Hill festival was last year. The journey there, alone and drunk during the day was enjoyable though. That boozy afternoon feeling. Listening to my angry music on headphones, looking at people, walking through the tube stations, taking my time. Thinking about things, feeling drunkenly inspired, having ideas for projects that I would forget about by the next day. I like going to areas I haven’t been to in London. Taking tubes further than I usually would and looking out the window at new places when you go above ground. I want to walk or cycle through it all. I want to experience it all, even if there isn’t much to experience anyway and it turns out to be just never ending roads of chicken take aways in the east and Indian and Thai to the west. I don’t care.The thought that there are so many street corners, little parks, canals, snooker halls and cozy pubs out there makes me hungry for adventure. Then my hunger for adventure meets my laziness and commitments and it gives up or promises that it will be productive some other time. This is annoying. I am annoyed. So after all this looking drunkenly looking out the window of the train I get off at Westbourne Park and traipse through a few horrific streets of screaming chavs. “Rar! we can scream and be fucking pathetic because it’s the Nott Hill festival!!! Have it!!!!” - Oh please. I meet the girls and already they look semi-defeated. We stroll along through the rubbish wondering why we came all the way here to walk along a road of cops and chavs, and rubbish. We turn to vodka and the evening goes black. All that remain are glimmers of trying to hail taxis forever and pissing in someones garden and walking straight into them as they return home. I am proud of myself again this year. Next year I will not be going.

o

Probably the most famous writing on photographic theory out there is Susan Sontag’s collection of contribution essays to The New York Times entitled “On Photography”. The book explores photography’s moral and aesthetic issues, capabilities, as well as it’s responsibilities and potential effects on humanity both good and bad. Sontag writes extensively about the unknown, the ugly and the voyeuristic often using the work of Diane Arbus as a reference point and also touches on the sometimes powerful authority photographs can hold for and against us. Although this is probably rated as light theory it does get a bit heavy in parts. It has made me think in different ways about photography, and suggests the importance of using photography appropriately and ways it can be applied. Penguin, modern classics.

Cut through Finsbury park from the entrance, up the hill a little and then turn left through the skinny overgrown entrance to the bridge that crosses the current train tracks. The tracks below run national rail to greater London and beyond, but what looks like a dusty overgrown path ahead is actually the old rail line that used to run from Finsbury park, through Strode Green, Crouch End, Highgate, Muswell Hill and up to Alexandra Palace. Building finished in 1874 and the line ran until it was finally closed for good in 1970. The route passes through Islington and Haringey and has rad tunnels and the platforms at Crouch End still even exist. Stephen King has said his short story Crouch End is inspired by this eerie setting. I found this out afterwards though unfortunately. Kids spraypaint the tunnels in broad daylight, people walk their dogs and cyclists struggle and skid along the dusty surface. Eventually about four and a half kilometres later you pop out at Highgate station. You somehow don’t feel the gradual climb. Sparse and open by winter, shaded and tunnel-like by summer. As I cycled up it on a hot summers day I pretended I was an old London train carrying well-dressed commuters up the hill. I didn’t actually do that.

On photography

Old train line

Sontag circa 1982

“To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed”

-Susan Sontag

p

I know that not everyone can sleep anywhere, some people can only sleep in their own beds. In fact, some people can’t even do that. I am luckily able to sleep most places. I have slept in many interesting places over the years. A stinking French squat with large rats in the room. In a creepy abandoned house with my old girlfriend, in the room an old lady died with the wind howling outside. I slept on a trampoline once and woke up covered in morning dew. My friend Greg tried to sleep in a coffin in the back of an abandoned hearse in a field, but couldn’t go through with it, understandably. I’ve slept in toilets and in bath tubs. I used to go and climb into a school yard on my lunch break from work and sleep there. I slept in a wooden bird watchers hut in northern England when really stuck. A police jeep nearly ran over my head in the middle of the night while I was asleep on a river bank. I have slept on beaches in the summer and tried to in winter but we shook so hard we couldn’t. Sleeping in parks though is pretty nice. Under the shade of a tree, rolling about in cigarette butts on toasted pale grass. Waking up kind of cold and surrounded by new sets of people. All the people from before you dozed off have moved on somewhere else.

Park snoozing

This is important apparently. My friend Cian has had amazingly embarrassing comedy experiences where the entire comedy act has been turned on him for walking in late. This consisted of the comedian making him sit on the steps between isles and relaying an abbreviation of the entire 25 minute show especially for him, expecting him to laugh. The comedian then gave him a free ticket for her next show. He showed up late for this too but managed to creep in shielding himself with an Asian family who were also late. Unfortunately it was only him, the Asian family and 3 others there as the audience. I went to a few nights in the comedy store down Piccadilly that were good and an evening in a free Wednesday place in Shoreditch. This was a cringey one. Bad jokes and aggressive heckling from the crowd. If going at all, pay more than a fiver I’d say.

Paying for comedy £ ££

q

I’m shit at quizzes. Don’t ask me to come to one with you. I won’t be any use. I’m not dumb, but I’m not great at general knowledge either. In any way. Why? I ask myself. Why not? I would do well in the obscure punk band round, but there just isn’t going to be one of those rounds coming up really is there? No. I can be there for team spirit if you like, to sit about and drink pints and say “hmmmmm, oh yeh, what was her name again” while not actually knowing the answer or what anyone is talking about. It’s nice to know about things, and I do know about things, just not the pub quiz answers. What’s the point in knowing all this stuff anyway if you don’t apply it to your life in any way except win quizzes with it? Ok, I’m just bitter really.. I used to love playing the seventies version of trivial pursuit because no one would know those answers except your parents or whatever. We would play it for hours in my friends Eoin and Ed’s house at Christmas and everyone would give up because no one knew the answers. I especially didn’t know them, but would be the winner as everyone else would bail before me. Then the 2008 trivial pursuit came out and it was somehow even harder than the seventies version. At least for me. I could answer more pop ones about the seventies than the present. This was confusing. So the answer is no, I’m not going to the quiz with you. Sorry.

Quizzes

It’s nice to know about things, and I do know about things, just not the pub quiz answers

r

Some of my friends lived in squats in Central London for a while. Their roof tops always had great views. The skyline of the city. These views always remind me of where I am. The squat roofs in central, Gabby’s balcony up in Archway, Primrose Hill, Greenwich park. All great views that make me think about my friends at home and what they they might be doing. I think about fun shit I got up to in my previous house. Smashing bottles in the shower room, sitting on the peek of the roof at sunrise, flying the pirate flag and throwing bottles off there too. Not everyone in the house liked smashing glass though. No. Then I realize where I am, who I’m with and what I’m doing, and It usually makes me really, really happy. Sometimes it takes getting up somewhere high where you can observe everything from above to see how inconsequential and small everything is. How small our problems sometimes really are and how they will probably be forgotten by next month or next year. It’s something to do with clearing your head and getting out of the cluster of everything. Especially in a big city.

Recession does not seem as apparent in London as it does in Ireland. I’m sure in the north of England it is much more visible and harder hitting. Nearly all of my friends in Ireland are broke and jobless. On the dole. Jobs in pubs are hard to come by in Ireland. Even Tesco. That is proof things are extremely bad. A lot of people I’ve talked to here didn’t really realize that it was bad in Ireland. Funny that. Everyone in Ireland would be fairly clued into what the U.K.. Recession is like I would have thought. Maybe not. Anyway. Everyone’s on the dole and time has seemingly stood still in Ireland. At least that’s how it felt when I was there during the start of the recession. I eventually lost my job too. I guess they felt as though it might be risky keeping me on. I’d been there for nearly two years. I liked that job too. Recession scare. Bad times.

RecessionRooftops

I had been pestering my Swedish friend Caroline to make princess cake for a while. The famous Swedish birthday cake. Its basically a couple of layers of sponge, jam and clotted cream all stacked up on top of each other and then all wrapped in a thin blanket of marzipan. Its very tasty. Her boyfriend Simon had been pestering all of us to do a Slayer themed bbq with him. We put the two plans together and went to Kairos’ squat to worship Satan. Not actually, but like y’know. We brought the slayer princess cake, barbecued, drank beer and listened to Slayer for 5 hrs. Kairos’ house mate hates Slayer so she went away. Another one will be planned and it will be bigger, better, louder, cakeyer and will be publicized too.

Slayer bbq

s

The fire blazed and the cake was tasty as hell

I hadn’t traipsed through grey sludge for years. London weather is usually about 5 degrees warmer than the place I’d come from. I imagined being an old person while out in the snow. I thought about how hard and miserable and melancholy it would be to not have anyone to look after you. Imagining it with snow on top of that would be so much worse. I thought London was a big tough city, but once the snow hit it seemed to all fall apart. The trains were either cancelled or were too scared to run after four o’clock and everyone here just started complaining about everything. Let me take this opportunity to say that you have it good. It’s way shittier in a lot of other places. I mean, what do you even want? The buses are on time and regular. You have a good underground system that usually has a good service, bar south London, and the fares on buses are reasonable too. When the snow hit, London became one low drone of moaning. I moaned too, but then I stopped to think about being old in the snow. Some people just moan about everything, all of the time. I used to be sort of like that until an old girlfriend gave me a book on the story of an Auschwitz survivor to stop me moaning. It really did work. I will be passing it onto my Spanish house mate.

Snow

t

12:01

12:02

12:03

12:04

12:05 12:06

Tinsletown just off Clerkenwell road down St. John’s lane is an underground American style dinner that stays open until 4:00 am on weekends and 5am on weekdays. From a deserted street, big asshole bouncers control the door down into this sketchy lair of over priced grease. I just got a coffee when I was there. It was 2am. Me and Ciara just looked at the movie star photos and at the coffee. A Rianna video on the screen. Ciara told me about how big Rianna’s thighs are in real life. Big. This place is recommended if you’re wasted enough to blow your cash on expensive yet delicious looking burgers and cheesy fries.

Travelling alone on the tube with a beer late at night is a good feeling, depending on what has happened that night and what the night still holds. I’ve always loved the journey to get to a party or a night out. Quite a lot of the time more than the night out itself. But that was Ireland. Now I find I don’t have to travel very far to something lame, and if it’s lame it’s easy to find a way out of it and something else to do instead. I first met special brew on a lone tube journey from a night that had failed to a night that flourished. It was midnight and I wanted to “catch up” with the people I was meeting. We went to a long thin bar with a balcony that had people doing free hair cuts in the corner. We ordered drinks and ran off with them without paying and danced to 50’s music. Then Gabby got thrown out. I can’t remember much after that. So proud of myself.

Travelling alone

Tinsletown

12:06 12:07 12:08

12:09

12:10

12:11

u

The stairs in my

house that lead to

the basketball court

My house

mate plays

basketball

upstairs above

my room late

at night

Had never been to the University Of London Union space before. Had never even heard of it. Turns out it’s a good venue. I’ve heard people bitch about it, but whatever. Nice medium sized venue, cheap drinks and fairly decent sound makes this better than your average pub. That’s what I’m used to. My preferred gig space is usually dirty European squat with rats and Nazis waiting outside but this would have to do. I don’t mean rats waiting outside with Nazis, I mean rats inside acting like they own the place. This particular night Kylesa from the U.S. were playing supporting Converge. I don’t like Converge much. Never did. Vanessa was with us and she did. I enjoyed looking at everyone in the crowd as the bands I hadn’t come to see played. An all new crowd. Lots of check shirts and Vans shoes. Lovely. We went outside during one of the bands and Kairos sent us on a beer mission. It wasn’t meant to be a mission, it just turned out to be one. We finally returned with ten cans of Special brew. I know this sounds like a lie, but it’s all they had, pretty much. Kylesa were good. Had seen them a bunch of times before but it was still impressive. I don’t get a great vibe off the band though. So much touring makes the band seem as though they’re just going through the motions rather than enjoying it. Converge were good too although I only knew one song. People there seemed to like it. The singer stayed on the edge of the stage to talk to everyone for a while after the show which I though was cool. The whole place is just strewn with plastic cups to point where you kind of gather them in piles while shuffling out with everyone. Good first impressions. Bouncers there were not ago in anyway and it all went super smooth. 7 out of 10 I’ll give it. We just pissed about afterwards and went somewhere crappy.

Ulu reviewUpstairsUpstairs people stomp around. People talk like they are shouting and people fuck loudly. My Spanish house mate plays basketball upstairs above my room late at night and also bowling. Not actually, but it sounds like she is playing the two noisiest sports possible to play in doors that I can think of. When she drops things I jump out of my fucking skin. She has a wooden floor and It sounds like a large stone from the beach being dropped on it. That’s how I imagine it as I recover from my heart attack. Having said all this, I did choose to live down here.

My house

mate plays

basketball

upstairs above

my room late

at night

It is curious why people want old stuff. Stuff that was probably cheap and wasn’t liked at the time but is now expensive and loved. Oversized pensioners jackets with weathers wrappers in the pockets, shit olympic tracky tops, and dumb looking bleached out denim. I guess you can find some nice bits among all of the shit out there but I wouldn’t be in these places to know anyway. One exception though is speeds vintage furniture and home ware shop on the Bricklane side of Redchurch St. Speakers, record players, chairs, couches, kitchen interiors all from the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. The guy even has the shop wall papered with hideous hippy wallpaper. Interesting place even if just for a quick browse around.

Vintage

v

My first visit to the East end thrift store down Mile End was for one of their sale parties. Clothes were as mentioned above and of no interest but we managed to get blazed on all the free beer and wine anyway outside on the curb. That’s pretty much what everyone there did. Boring.

Even to go with no cash at all, as we did, Lassco, the architectural, salvage and curiosity house down on Wandsworth rd. near Vauxhall station, is well worth a visit. It’s set up in a large house converted to display all this rad antique shit you aren’t likely to find most other places. Everything is for sale. Full animal skin rugs with the heads and everything on the floor, old globes, antlers, a parrot stand, bath tubs, old tube signs and even a stone column form the old V&A. Many nooks and crannies to creep around through. An irritating man may follow you around insisting that the past is where we need to be and that everything these days is shit. Say thanks and keep moving along. He has the same potential as a guy who approached me in a magazine shop once and rudely talked at me about all his political interests for forty-five minutes. I was too polite to excuse myself or to even speak at all. I would just nod. After half an hour of this though I made a horrific realization. This same old man had stopped me and my friend Brian a year earlier and talked at us for close on an hour and a half. Annoying asshole. Ok maybe just old and totally mental and selfish. Don’t let this discourage you from visiting this sweet trove in Vauxhall though. They even have a turtle from some old posh person’s gaff.

Vauxhall antiques house

The window man on my street was fucking cool. Jamaican dude who would blaze out the reggae all day long while sitting by the window waving and smiling everyday of the year. We would pass by in the sun and he would shout and wave. I even passed by in a snow blizzard during winter and he was smiling waving at me and overloading his sound system. Ciara even saw him one day with a microphone free-styling to the music about who he saw on the road. We decided considering you never saw him outside the window that he was either agoraphobic or had no legs. I was passing by the other day and noticed a sign in his window that read: “The window man does not live here anymore, he left his wife for a whore! He now lives at 56A, do not look for him here!” A few days later he reappeared, on legs, outside his new place. Its an upstairs apartment with no window so he just kind of stands around in his doorstep with no music. It’s not the same.

Window man

w

Parties in warehouses in London generally have the potential to be fun. Although the odd one ends up not picking up or gets closed down by the cops. The spare of the moment ones are the best. That eerie 6am atmosphere where everyone is similarly mangled and the sound system grinds on. Really ropey people seem to show up at around this time. Proper dangerous people. Girls with drugs round their nostrils and leering creeps. Basements with really low ceilings, sweat, beer and dirt. Tube lights and lasers. Thick cigarette smoke. Waking up with strangers picking you up after passing out from a massive Nitrous hit.. Not good. Keeping an eye on your bike outside as kids stand around in the shadows, not good. Or there’s the warehouse parties that are relaxed, friendly and not shady at all. They’re better.

Now that I cycle everywhere I don’t do so much walking around. It’s too slow and you don’t get to see as much. On a bike you can coast around areas you would never go walking through, either because they’re too boring and you have no reason to go that direction or because they’re just plain dangerous. Usually though, you don’t know an area is dangerous. It’s just really quiet. Other times it’s more obvious. Walking around suburbs has always sucked anyway. Around where I used to live was nice to walk around. There was tons of huge abandoned houses to explore because of the recession, kind of like our own house except we payed a little bit of rent. There were hills with decent views. Quiet lanes and back roads, supermarket bins to dive into and the nice smell of grass and soil when it rained. I miss that stuff. All of it.

Warehouse parties

Walking around

Inside window man’s door when buying a cat from his wife

x

X, the punk rock band formed in 1977 in L.A. And managed to stay together on and off all the way to the present day. Male and Female vocals. Around the same time on the other side of the world in Australia, a bunch of kids formed there own punk band, also named X. They played songs like “home is where the floor is” and “I don’t wanna go out”. Apparently well known as one of Australia’s best original punk bands. They’re all dead now. There is The Ex, the Dutch band. Very well known in the underground circuit, originally starting out as a highly political anarcho punk band, The Ex later broadened there style and became known for there increasingly experimental music. They still play and tour to this day. They played London this year. Then there’s The XX, London group, formed in 2005, various names involved working previously with Diplo and Kwes. Ambient sort of new wavish pop feel. Nothing to write home about though I don’t think.

X, X, The ex, and The XX

X-rays are fucking expensive. I managed to make it to the dentist a while back in Ireland to get my teeth checked out. I needed a little work done. They x-rayed the hell out of me. X-ray isn’t a new thing obviously, but I think it is in dentistry. I never got x-rayed when I was younger at the dentist. They jam a big pad of some sort into your gob to shield the opposite side of you mouth from getting grilled by the rays and then point the ray gun at you before running out of the room as it becomes a highly cancerous environment for a few seconds. Fuck sake. It can’t be good. I give a shit about my teeth though these days. I do. My friend Greg drank so much Coke and smoked so many fags without ever brushing his teeth that they all rotted down to little teetering spikes. They reminded me of that rock from The Goonies film. Little cliff-like match-stick offerings. I don’t really know what that means, I just wanted to say it. We were in Belfast eating lasagna and one fell out onto the floor and a dog made off with it. It was kind of funny and also gross. Jokes aside. They all fell out and he got a full new set and looks fab now. The lesson is though, brush your teeth etc.

X-ray

y

It’s September. I finally admit that summer is over. First to myself as I shiver and sneeze properly in the morning and then to everyone else as we walk about in the rain in Camden at two in the morning. I find myself trying to trick myself it is summer again a week later when the sun shines through my window one morning and I apply sun screen, just for the smell. The nostalgia. But really though, when Ciara lost my sun glasses at a festival in August I should have known it was over then, at least the weather. I complain that summer isn’t long enough. Someone points out to me that it’s just a season like any other one and that seasons aren’t all that long, really. That makes annoying sense. I want to be sixteen again. Not actually, but for a summer perhaps. I acknowledge you would need to have the mind of a sixteen year old to experience it like you used to. So be it. I would drink four cans of beer and be drunk. I would have a skinhead girlfriend who was half a foot taller than me who is now married with 3 kids. I would sit on the golf course hill at night way up above the entire town with people and draw dicks in the sand bunkers. I would chase cute girls who had pink hair and wore baggy pants and skate shoes. My skateboard would be joined at my hip, the griptape waring big holes in all my clothes as I walked along. I would try and sleep outside on the beach under a scribb of blanket with a girl that my friend would

eventually marry and bring up kids with. I would live in my friends Eoin and Ed’s house instead of my own, eating their mom’s food and taking away any downtime she had after work with our noisy music. I am eternally grateful for this. She supported us till the end. Being sixteen again would also majorly suck in many ways. But why reminisce about that stuff? When I think about it though, I sort of miss things that I thought sucked then, like not having bus fare and walking home along the train tracks in the pitch dark for five miles. Living in a small village with nothing to do but skate and hang out. Having to live in my parents house. Having to sneak about and stand against walls to drink beers as violent winds whipped us and it poured with rain on a friday night. Actually, that really did suck. That was eleven years ago. I’m twenty-seven now, and in that time since, some things have changed. I have loved and lost, I have seen people come and go, watched many bleary drunken sun rises and experienced summer weather actually end in Ireland. I’ve worked loads of crappy jobs, played hundreds of gigs and clocked up thousands of miles. I’ve lived in Four different houses and I have, like anyone else, experienced lots of other great and lousy times alike. Too many to try and sum up in just a short piece of writing. And besides, this is now, and that was all yesterday x

Yesterday

z

Sometimes I just want to get home and hide from everyone in my house and sleep. I usually hide from everyone in my house for most of the day anyway, but sometimes you just need complete serenity. Calm. From busy bar work to silence with the cat and the newspaper. When I say I hide from everyone in my house anyway, I don’t mean I dislike them. I don’t, I love them really. I just need my own space. I like to read and do my own thing during the day. Work on projects. Alone. With me only. My concentration is broken easily. Staying in without going out all day is bad too though, so I don’t really do that. I know I’ve already written about sleep in here but that was just me going on about places I’d slept that weren’t beds. This is about bed-sleep. About the place you feel most comfortable and relaxed. Even if things are going completely shit, you can usually go back and hide there, but not always. I don’t enjoy sleeping in anymore these days, unless I’ve “earned it” or am with someone else who’s going to waste the day with me. It somehow feels like I’m not wasting it then. What is wasting the day anyway? Being in bed isn’t really wasting the day is it? Maybe if it’s really sunny outside and your mates are swimming, barbecuing in the park and having good conversation. Then just staying in bed is a waste. That’s why sometimes it’s nice to wake up on a rainy Saturday after working the Friday night and just kicking’ it in bed. Zzzzzz.

Zzzzzz

I like to read and do my own thing during the day. Work on projects. Alone. With me only

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