there's lovely for you

a little jar of sticky memories

Lately, many of my London journeys have taken me through the hipster valley of Shoreditch/Hoxton. In terms of being able to fit a little street art/graffiti photography into my working day, this has been very good news. So I've been going positively bonkers on Instagram over the last few weeks.

The single most productive spot for me has been Blackall Street, a tatty little alleyway not far from Great Eastern Street. Almost every available surface is decorated and it seems like there is fresh activity most nights of the week. New stuff seems to pop up on pretty much a daily basis. Spotted this week: a little piece by the prolific street artist Bortusk Leer.  The object depicted is something like a jar of Marmite or Bovril. Perhaps the latter, given that the label says EXTRACT OF BEEF CURTAIN.

This smutty expression transported me almost twenty years into the past, to a notable day on which a mispronounced version of that term was the cause of much hilarity for some. I was, that day, one of the weaker links in a seven-a-side football team playing in tournament on the rutted, unloved pitches of some university sports club in Kraków. My team mates were fellow Brits living in the city. We were the only non-Polish team, the other outfits including a group of (beatable) taxi drivers and a group of (bulky, intimidating) police officers. With one exception, no one in our side had paid any attention to the matter of the teams in the tournament having been given names. That exception was a guy named Phil. He had registered us as participants in the tournament and had deliberately failed to mention the team name that he had chosen. It was only when the results of the first tranche of games were read out over a crackly loudspeaker that the rest of us finally got to hear his joke. We were Beef Curtains F.C. That this meant nothing to any of our opponents only added to the hilarity of the gag for Phil and the other couple of goons who thought that our team name was the funniest thing ever. I thought I'd forgotten this entirely meaningless incident. But some things just stick.

PUDSEY'S ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR?

SAME OLD CRAP FROM AN UNEXPECTED VOICE

When Tottenham Hotspur F.C. is mocked, experience has taught me not to be surprised when the mockery takes an unpleasant anti-Semitic tone. Experience has also taught me not to be surprised when stuff of that nature springs from the lips or the keyboard of a Chelsea supporter. More surprising today, though, has been seeing this sort of thing from a Chelsea supporter who also claims to be a sports broadcaster working for BT Sport. It's good that she writes "all views my own" in her Twitter profile because presumably today's bit of unpleasantness is not quite in line with the values of the recent arrival on the UK TV sports scene:

BABY ON BOARD

those BABY ON BOARD badges
worn by pregnant women
when swaying around
on London's buses and Underground trains:
it feels like they're a good idea, conceived (pun intended)
with noble intentions
and high hopes
about the decency
of the travelling public.

but see what so often happens
and think again.
see the able-bodied
suits and brogues and cufflinks
acquire, suddenly,
a selective myopia.
and see them stare,
more intently than before,
at the bright little screens
in their laps and palms, never connecting
the dots between the unborn child slung
uncomfortably out in front of the living person stood inches away
(from the spreadsheet, the Twitter feed, or the game
of solitaire)
and the children spawned
from the loins
inside their own trousers. 

maybe it's more understandable
in someone who's not (yet) had kids
of their own.
think of that scene
in The Office
when that (admittedly creepily irritating) woman objects
to the plumes of cigarette smoke emanating from the nasty mouth
of that horrible sod from the warehouse... and he says
she's not special just because she let
some useless tosser blow his beans up her muff.
but look, even if you haven't had children and
even if you're one of those people who goes on about
how you're never going to have children, and
even if you're one of those people who goes on about
how it's other people's choice to have children and
how you don't see why you should have to listen
to someone else's fucking brats making noise
in a restaurant,
or how you don't see why you should stand up for some bird
just because SHE'S DECIDED to have a baby:
well,
let me put it this way:
one day you're going to be old,
infirm,
incontinent,
and confused.
and
when that time comes
and you've had no children,
or the children you've had think you're a mean-spirited arse...
then you'd better hope that enough fucking brats have been born
in the time it's taken you to become
a desiccated husk.
because if new humans
are in short supply
then who's going to wipe your backside
and listen to your peevish bullshit?

THE WALLS OF SCLATER STREET

LOOKING AROUND AT LUNCHTIME

it's good to be spending a lot more time in the Hoxton/Shoreditch area again. my little walks at lunchtime clear the head and offer up plenty of camera-fodder. these bits were seen on just one pre-prandial stroll this week: