Free event. Booking required.

“If there were water…
If there were only water amongst the rock…
If there were the sound of water only
TS Eliot, The Wasteland
The Walbrook River was one of the largest and most important rivers in London. A Roman river, the Walbrook takes us back to ancient London, when south of the river was a group of islands, and much of what we now understand as this city was more marsh than land.
The Walbrook has been lost for over 5 centuries. With the help of a dowser, artist Amy Sharrocks has re-mapped this river, and is attempting to reclaim this great body of water with a huge public walk along its course.”

Amy Sharrocks has re-mapped the ancient buried Walbrook River from its source in Islington its mouth at the River Thames. Participents are asked to wear blue and be llosely tied at the waist, the idea being that this will be a process of re remembering the boy of water using a body of blue people!!!

A lovely Idea, I really hope they get a good turn out…

Details:
Artsadmin | Toynbee Studios | 28 Commercial Street | London | E1 6AB
Box office 020 7650 2350 | Online booking
Tel 020 7247 5102 | Fax 020 7247 5103 | Textphone 020 7247 5182 | admin@artsadmin.co.uk

Brisbane News – London police find dead man after G20 protests.

I couldn’t believe this at first when I saw a comment posted on a friends facebook… Strangely its not in th UK News as of yet.

He added later “I was in the vicinity. I had to get away from the main area as it was getting very heated indeed. I could just about see what was going on. Some people were covered in blood…. Felt like a horror movie. Some of the protesters were throwing things at the police therefore delaying medical attention to the dying man – Police version: natural causes!! I am shocked”

OK, I don’t know why this central London building (occupied by the FilmLight digital film technology company) was covered in giant black-and-white stickers. And the pictures are gone now. But I thought it was cool enough to post photos of anyway…

You may have noticed the weird little Google street view camera cars trundling the streets of Londinium over the last year. At long last the pics have been processed (Boots the Chemist, I expect) and put online.

Yay! Of course this is extremely cool. A modern wonder: fabulous, fascinating, useful, funny etc etc.

And how does the crap press react?

Evening Standard:

Daily Mail:

Google forced to black out thousands of Street View photos after privacy protests.

THOUSANDS of privacy protests in a day? Really? I doubt it. I smell journalistic licence (commonly knows as “making up numbers out of thin air”)

The London Paper:

Google privacy protest

Google forced to black out new service after London sex shop pics outrage

What a load of crap. There’s nothing in these pictures that you couldn’t get by going outside and walking around with your eyes open. As if we have anything to worry about, with about 15 CCTV cameras for every citizen.

Anyway – have a look around on Street View – it rocks!

In the meantime, here’s screengrabs of 2 of my favourite local shopfronts.

^^ I like this one  because of the lovely old advertising paintings on the walls.

^^ And this one, because it’s so cheeky and naff.

So – I took this pic of a pair of jeans in the window of a clothes shop in Dalston.

WTF??!!

One gets used to seeing mangled English on T shirts and jackets of cute Japanese tourists.

But what local English-speaking person would want to be seen wearing this load of bollocks? You’d do better to print out some Spam and wear that instead.

as voted by Gareth S.

Do you have a place that is cooler?

Oh man.. Le Corbusier @ the Barbican heavenly, dont miss it! 19 February 2009 – 24 May 2009

Map

Wherever you go in London, even in the poshest, trendiest, most-upcomingest areas, you will find little secret corners of urban decay and neglect.

Maybe they are in use, but not tarted up. Maybe they are areas that are subject to dispute between contending landowners. Maybe they are owned by someone who doesn’t give a shit. No matter. They are interesting.

I like to think of them as London’s subconscious. London Dreaming. Maybe a taste of what London would be if we all move out to The Country, or turn to zombies and eat each other, or fly to Mars.

Here, with the (in)famous Clissold Leisure Centre in the background (cost: at least £32,000,000!!!!), a lovely bit of crumbling concrete, rampant creeper and weeds.

Looks like no one has been there years. Yet it’s actuallly on super-trendy Stoke Newington Church St.

Here’s a gallery of simply stunning aerial pictures of London at dusk and by night.

What an extraordinary place we live in!

The photographer is Jason Hawkes and here’s the link.