…but where is my thrumming heart? Perhaps it is in these greenbelts and hinterlands. In the unmanaged cryptoforestry. In the overgrown churchyards – laced together by malnourished corpse paths. In the gentle murmur of the wide eyed oak.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all the contents of Monday Morning.
Currently swamped in Super 8mm paraphernalia over at Busking Ghosts Headquarters (that’s “BGHQ” for the acronym fetishists).
Not dead. Busy.
EVOL, Stencil Estate (2011)
EVOL, Stencil Estate (2011)
Contrary to popular belief, I am not above taking shittily narcissistic webcam snaps.
In other news: 8mm projector is up and running. Next on the list is building a makeshift lightbox so I can embark on an adventure of direct hand-scratched cinema experiments. I figure if I’ve completely over/under exposed my reversal rolls (which are far pickier than negative film but look far prettier when shot successfully, and can be projected without selling your kidneys to afford to have Andec make prints) I can still use it for typographic tomfoolery.
Phase one of Busking Ghosts’ future intervention into tangible space is nearing completion.
![London Beer Flood
The London Beer Flood happened on 17 October 1814 in London, England. At the Meux and Company Brewery on Tottenham Court Road, a huge vat containing over 135,000 imperial gallons of beer ruptured, causing other vats in the same building to succumb in a domino effect. As a result, more than 323,000 imperial gallons of beer burst out and gushed into the streets. The wave of beer destroyed two homes and crumbled the wall of the Tavistock Arms Pub, trapping teenage employee Eleanor Cooper under the rubble.
The brewery was among the poor houses and tenements of the St Giles Rookery, where whole families lived in basement rooms that quickly filled with beer. Eight people drowned in the flood or died from injuries. The brewery was eventually taken to court over the accident, but the disaster was ruled to be an Act of God by the judge and jury, leaving no one responsible.
[The Boston Molasses Disaster is a similarly bizarre and unfortunate event]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9wd0znIg71rnseozo1_500.jpg)
London Beer Flood
The London Beer Flood happened on 17 October 1814 in London, England. At the Meux and Company Brewery on Tottenham Court Road, a huge vat containing over 135,000 imperial gallons of beer ruptured, causing other vats in the same building to succumb in a domino effect. As a result, more than 323,000 imperial gallons of beer burst out and gushed into the streets. The wave of beer destroyed two homes and crumbled the wall of the Tavistock Arms Pub, trapping teenage employee Eleanor Cooper under the rubble.
The brewery was among the poor houses and tenements of the St Giles Rookery, where whole families lived in basement rooms that quickly filled with beer. Eight people drowned in the flood or died from injuries. The brewery was eventually taken to court over the accident, but the disaster was ruled to be an Act of God by the judge and jury, leaving no one responsible.
[The Boston Molasses Disaster is a similarly bizarre and unfortunate event]
“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.”
—Charles Dickens, Bleak House
“Tread carefully over the pavements of London for you are treading on skin, a skein of stone that covers rivers and labyrinths, tunnels and chambers, streams and caverns, pipes and cables, springs and passages, crypts and sewers, creeping things that will never see the light of day.”
—Peter Ackroyd, London Under
Addendum, Jan 27th 2013.
Note: The beautiful organic entity behind Secondfloorsceance will be helping with my upcoming adventures in DIY perambulation. At least I hope she will be, I haven’t officially asked her yet but I’m 99.5% sure she’ll enthusiastically agree.
The current episode of the Londonist Out Loud podcast invites the listener on a tour of South London’s ever resonant Heygate Estate, led by the always bloody brilliant Vanessa Woolf-Hoyle of London Dreamtime.
If you’ve never encountered the London Dreamtime project, I highly recommend you give this episode a listen and educate yourself. Likewise if you’re still uncertain as to why so many of us are intoxicated with that monolithic slab of fading brutalist utopia.
Community regeneration of Elephant & Castle’s monolithic Heygate Estate.
(Source: elephantandcastleurbanforest.com)
The abandoned Heygate Estate has more shades than both Southwark Council and the typically gloomy “ruin porn” photographers would have you believe.
(Source: elephantandcastleurbanforest.com)
