Finally, we have something to thank the Nine Elms developers for...OK, only joking.

See what the developers of the Battersea - Nine Elms riverside estate for the super-rich have achieved! They have blocked the view of the helicopter-killer St George Wharf Tower from the south! Rejoice, rejoice! So long as you stay on line south-east from the towers to Brockwell Park,  you no longer have to gape at that rude duracell styled middle-finger of a residential cylinder. Just at the three lumpen blocks of steel, concrete and glass that have arisen to block our view. But here's the bad news: you can still see the sorry erection from all other viewpoints.

Over recent months, as yet another huge new tower of (putative) luxury apartments erupts over the Vauxhall Cross, a new and truly dismal passtime is born for pissed-off residents like self.

It's a great hobby for the years of pandemic. Moving around, alone, in every direction from this transport node,  to see if there is any single angle or perspective from which all these buildings coalesce into anything other than a repulsive and callous "f**k you" to the established local populations.

Today, after weeks when things were just seeming to get uglier and more brutal (not 'Brutal' in the 1960s sense, I must stress), stumbled across a view that was actually slightly improved. 

It was from the highest point in Brockwell park.  Those three lumpy new residential towers closest to Vauxhall are at last blocking out the south-eastern view of that vile middle-finger of a skyscraper, the (helicopter slayer) St George Wharf Tower, aka Duracell, or (my favourite nickname as it has grim ambiguity) The Plunger.

As the Northern Line extension to Nine Elms and Batttersea Power Station opens for business, so the area's developers are working on two new tower blocks just southwest of the Power Station - showing just how desperate they must be to ensure no one living in Battersea itself can actually see anything at all of the once unmissable local landmark. 

I think these will be part of the "Upper Park residences" area, with one tower planned to rise to 27 storeys - which is as high or higher than the top of the power station chimneys. It's odd, I don't remember seeing any high-rise towers to the west of the power station in the original plans.

So, how about this new transport link? 

Surely we should be licking corporate bottom for their beneficence in making the new two-station Northern Line branch possible? Well, yes and no.

It could be good for residents of the estates between Sainsburys Nine Elms and Wandsworth Road overground station, allowing them to get into the West End quickly (but, outside rush hours, the 87 bus already does that quite well). 

But it's also ironic that this incredibly expensive two-stop extension is creating a worse service for long-suffering passengers living further south. The number of Charing Cross branch trains going all the way to Morden has been cut, from about one every 6 minutes to 10 or 12 minutes. Leading to more crowding on the grim old platforms at Kennington.

Overall, then, returning to the original theme of this piece: whichever way you look at it - almost - the prospect is grim. As the last of the grand towers in this phase rise, it's clear that there's not a single building worthy of the location. And that the supposed cluster of graceful towers is in reality more like the threatening arthritic fist of a killer robot. 

Maybe it should please me that these gruesome erections are just as much an affront to the wealthy residents across the water in Pimlico, Westminster, parts of Chelsea and even Belgravia. So many of those grand stuccoed terraces or red-brick mansion block estates around Westminster Cathedaral and Vincent Square now have their southerly views polluted by these great hulking presenes in the sky. Even from the Centopah in Whitehall, you cannot miss the rude stiffness of One Nine Elms. 

The one project I find quite entertaining is the bit which forms an outer wall to the Power Station's encircling walls of residential cement and glass. This bit, which  folds itself around the osuth-western aspect of the now almost invisible power station, has the amusing feature - a couple of massive holes in the buildings. Gaps, voids, about three floors deep. Peepholes so that the plebs can still get a glimpse of the promised land within, perhaps. They're the  gsps that let thelight in. Why ever they are there, they are a good thing. Quite good. 

Nine Elms Disease: is there a cure?

So, if the development is to redeem itself and win over the hearts and minds of local residents, that long-promised linear park is going to have to be bloody good. But, looking on a recent map, they no longer call it the linear park, and it is not so linear. Just Nine Elms Park.

Oh well, plenty of room for freebies for visitors from the other side of the tracks (zone 2, you know, and not the smarmily-bought "zone 1" trick the developers have pulled). 

What say you to free champagne fountains and iced-vodka sculptures? No? Ok, let's see a few hundred luxuriously appointed shelters, each with its own bathroom, for the homeless. Free music every weekend, and 24/7 facilities including lighting and PA for buskers, all through the park.

Any other ideas, please add to comments below.

As for the skypool, fill it up every morning with something delicious (alcoholic, or maybe not, maybe hot soup on cold nights); drill 2,000 holes in the bottom; attach 2,500 pub-style tubes with taps; except these will need to be about 500m in length, and clipped to refreshment stalls around the US Embassy, with washing facilities; to keep the protestors in good spirits. Employ 100 bungee-jumping staff to keep said sustenance flowing freely and happily. 

Just dreaming.

Come on get your bloody fingers out and spend some of those ill-gotten gains on something good!

View from Vauxhall Bridge, six months ago. It's
less interesting now...

Think we have it bad in Battersea? See what they've done to the view from
the stuccoed streets of Pimlico. No wonder they're furious!

This view from a Battersea footbridge shows just how deceptive some views are. Two of those towers
are in fact great big piles of stepped boxes....

Exhausted by the infantile antics of the automotive industry

What an awful lot of exhaust pipes you have, Granny Merc. Yes, all the better to engulf you in stinky gases, my dear!

 Look at the photo above.

That thing is a private conveyance, what we used to call a "car". It is something people choose to buy or lease, and often put an awful lot of their disposable income into maintaining.

Look again. The car in the photo is quite a new car. This is late 2021, and thanks to the ingenuity of engineers many cars no longer need an exhaust pipe as they are fully electrically powered, and do not emit stinky gases.

But this vehicle appears to have not one, not even two, but FOUR exhaust pipes. And this in late 2021, after London mayor Sadiq Khan's expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone. 

Why, if cars now have to have very low emissions, do they need four orifices from which to emit suchlike?

Especially if they are very expensive cars, such as the vehicle shown above, a highly respected brand.

As it is a coveted make, I assume only one of those pipes parps out toxic fumes, and the other three bathe us all in exotic fragrances of healing aromas, a touch of musk, perhaps, for the grieving macho driver, but also some gorgeous honeysuckle, sweetpea and lemongrass for the rest of us...

No, sorry, I cycle behind such lumpen machinery all the time and know they all stink of the same thing: money, testosterone and burning futures.

I've also noticed that the 4-pipe brigade are usually the most expensive top of range versions of the model, and are almost certainly the noisiest - in fact they seem to tune those pipes to emit a particularly angry racket.

I was tempted to brand this 4-pipe tribe as Clarsonistas, but this would be too limiting. Although many are ruddy-faced late-middle aged men still trying to wear Levis, but not really cutting it....no, you see, I just as easily fall into the trap of stereotyping people. Young, old, male, female, white, black, small, large, all types of people drive these things. It's depresseing to me that clearly highly intelligent people choose such cars in which to navigate the narrow, traffic-choked streets of old London.

These big speeding lumps of metal glass and plastic on wheels are bad enough in any form - but those extra exhaust pipes are just a provocation too far.  

Are the quadruple exhausts supposed to denote something? Are they helpful, or necessary? Do they make the engine more efficient? I only ask. But it's not as though it's a racing car, or even a derivative of one.  It is an SUV, and therefore more closely related to agricultural conveyances. 

Oh, and by the way, do you you see the designation of the vehicle? It says "GLC 43"

Do they mean to refer to our long defunct but much missed metropolitan government? Are they taking the piss? Show a bit of respect, Mercedes-Benz!

I only makes these points, and ask these questions, because I am puzzled with all the contradictions in this society we inhabit. Four exhaust pipes for one family conveyance seems to be a symbol for something at odds with wisdom, not to mention good taste. Even the fiercest, strongest, biggest tigers in the jungle get by on just one arsehole.

How many more arseholes can this poor city tolerate?

Afterthought: The vehicle in the photo does have two major redeeming features. First, it's by no means the fattest SUV in M-B range. Look at it: it hardly spills over the width of the parking bay, and those tyres are positively anorexic! How pathetically undernourished this car seems.
Secondly, and crucially, it is painted red. A colour! I almost forgive it its 4 pipes for this gift to our drab grey street environment. I counted vehicles in the normal traffic jam at Wandsworth Road/Queenstown Road junction yesterday. Among 40 vehicles, the only real colour was provided by two traffic-marooned busses. There were two enormous white cement trucks, 16 off-white or blue-black delivery vans. The rest were cars, mainly SUVs, some white,  many black, but most in varying shades of metallic grey. Why are people so keen to add to the dismal greyness of this murderously colourless December city?

Much-loved charity shop falls victim to Brexit

Farewell, Children of the Mekong on Lavender Hill - one
of the friendliest and most distinctive charity shops in
 the Battersea-Clapham-Stockwell area

Occasional postings on this site rating charity shops in the SW2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12 (and other) postcodes gave increasingly high praise to the tiny Children of the Mekong shop on Lavender Hill in Battersea.

Run by a charity based in France, this shop was  a treasure-trove for people looking for unusual, good quality clothing, interesting accessories, toys, and obscure CDs, amongst much else. A fair number of the donations were of French origin, perhaps given by the many French families who were resident in the catchment area of the big French/English bi-lingual primary school on Wix's Lane.

The shop has now closed, and will soon be replaced by an "artisan" craft beer shop. According to the shop's manager, the reason for clousre was not Covid-19, but Brexit. 

The shop not only raised funds to improve the living conditiions, health and education of deprived children in south-east Asia; it also offered internships for young people from France and other countries to get some work experience in an English language environment.

Over the seven years of its existence, 97 interns from France and other francophone territories worked in the shop, usually on five-month placements. 

Apart from boosting their language and business skills, these volunteers also gave the shop a great atmosphere - and of course a chance to try out your own shaky French if you had the nerve (they were usually encouraging).

After the covid lockdowns, the shop re-opened briefly this spring - but very soon it had signs up announcing its permanent closure. 

As the manager, Eugenie Munakarmi explained, the reason for this decision was all to do with bureacracy and the costs of obtaining work visas following the UK decision to leave the EU in 2016.

"Despite the challenging year we just had, it is not COVID that forced us to close the shop, but Brexit," she said. "How sad it can be, the new immigration law does not allow European students to carry out unpaid internships in the UK. 

"Our business model won’t sustain without the interns, and this is why we are closing down today."

Little did we know in 2016 just how apt this Edvard Munch
themed poster was. For now is surely the time to scream,
 scream scream!

So it becomes one of hundreds or thousands of small ventures, relying on the EU's rights to freedom of movement around member states, that have had to restrict or abandon their projects - with an immeasurable impact on the education and life chances of  countless people of all ages.

Yes, I was a vehement remainer and still haven't come to terms with what seems like the sheer self-inflicted vandalism of the 2016 referendum vote. So yes, I am biased, and no, I won't get over it. 

And it's not just the fast rising prices of any decent cheese or wine in our supermarkets, but the ghastly new atmosphere of nationalism in the country, and the dulling-down of the variety of day to day social interactions anyone could enjoy in London while it was packed with Europeans from 27 other nations.

So this shop was just another example of how the freedom of movement enriched the lives of so many people in the "UK".

Including mine. I loved this shop so much I could not leave it without at least two or three items. I had to limit my visits. 

I decided to go there  only after having a hair cut over the road at the barber's I  finally chose following the loss of another great European community amenity in this area - Andy's in Landor Road. The Lavender Hill cutting shop, formerly Jazz Barbers and painted a nice shade of orange, was good - and I still use it, even though its name has changed to the corny London Barnet, and its decor has gone a bit blingy.

Meanwhile for the cheerfully diverse communities around Lavender Hill, the opportuntity to bag some great bargains in a strongly French-accented, Vietnamese-flavoured charity shop is to be replaced by yet another opportunity to buy and drink beer - undoubtedly of the rather pricey "artisanal" variety, at least according to to local reports.

Thessaly Road, The Who, the wonderful wizard of Battersea murals, and the Yellow Brick Road to profit

The luxury apartment development of Nine ELms and Vauxhall seen as a high-rise Emerald City in Brian Barnes' latest mural, on Carey Gardens Estate, Batttersea. The reality - which is horribly visible from the site of this work - is less of a mirage than an architectural and social nightmare, and it's getting worse.
Maybe an all over green colour scheme would help....

*PLEASE READ THE SAD UPDATE TO THIS POST IN THE FOOTNOTES*

Once you start wandering around Nine Elms, you realise the area is far from being just the industrial wasteland the developers would like to write it off as (mind you, cities sometimes need a bit of wasteland anyway, fertile territory for many things).

Not the Yellow Brick Road, but the multi-coloured Happy Street!

There are rich historical seams in this stretch of the former Battersea marshes, as covered in a previous post.  But the most recent visit wound me up so much that I forgot to mention the positive aspects of our long walk, with echoes of the surprisngly rich history of the area, from lavender fields to pioneers of aviation, and the occasional rock star. Plus some warnings of what the future might hold.

The good stuff begins on Thessaly Road. The cheerfully repainted railbridge underpass marks a division between old Nine Elms and the new development up to the river. Maybe the work - funded by Wandsworth Council - could be seen as an attempt to smarten up the neighbourhood for its new and much wealthier residents, but that would be overly cynical. 

It's there to be enjoyed by all, and unlike some of the public art scattered around the Embassy Gardens luxury development, this one was designed for, and with the help of,  existing residents.

Yinka Ilori's work - which in art-world parlance is an installation rather than a mural, using 56 painted panels as well as the structure of the bridge - remains amazingly bright and clean and the title, Happy Street, is well chosen. Local communities including children from St Georges primary school helped  design and choose the colours for this project, which also reflect Yinka's Nigerian heritage.

Quite how happy Thessaly Road is now and was in the past is debatable, but it had its moments. There were certainly some happy faces around in 1973 when The Who's drummer and notorious prankster Keith Moon donned the uniform of a lollipop man and stopped the traffic to allow schoolchildren to cross the road, which in those days was a dangerous rat-run (so, what has changed? Ed.).

Moon was taking time out from recording at The Who's Ramport Studios, an old church hall on the corner of Thessaly Road and Corunna Road. 

The building is still there, part of the NHS Battersea Fields health centre. There's a green Wandsworth Borough plaque on the wall to commemorate its former life. It was put there in 2011 after a campaign by the Battersea Power Station Community group, led by prolific local community artist Brian Barnes.

Brian's work brings colour and alternative narratives to many south London walls. One of his best-known pieces, Nuclear Dawn, covering a full-height wall on the former Cavendish Mansions in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, is now protected by law and is under restoration to its former glory as I write. 

If only that could be said of one of his earliest and biggest pieces - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly - which stretched from the southern end of Battersea Bridge all the way Battersea Church Street, on hoardings put up by the developers around the old Morgan Crucible factory prior to its demolition. 

I only saw this work once, in passing. Next time I crossed the bridge it was gone, smashed to pieces by the developers in a night-time act of vandalism for which, so far as I know they were never successfully prosecuted.

Looking at the photos on another brilliant website, For Walls With Tongues , makes me sorely regret that I didn't make the effort to look at it properly: there was a lot of brilliant and powerful art there.

Barnes's most recent mural, from 2017, is a couple of blocks away from the Ramport Studios plaque, and among much else it immortalises Keith Moon's zebra crossing duties.

This painting is literally in the heart of the community it celebrates - covering the entire end wall of one of the blocks of flats on the Carey Gardens Estate, just off Stewarts Road. 

The mural is filled with clues to the history of this area, but the huge hourglass at the centre of the painting shows that time is running out for old Battersea, while a glimmering mirage of the future is a high-rise Emerald City. Those shiny green towers are the stuff of fantasy - the Land of Oz, which would make Nine Elms Lane the Yellow Brick Road. And maybe the US Embassy is the lair of the wicked witch...but hang on, they're not fantasy or sci-fi, they are just over the railway tracks, looming down at us all. 

There's a great article about this mural on the Inspiring City website, which provides a thorough explanation of all the imagery he uses. The mural's title is A Brief History of Time, and the spirit of Prof Stephen Hawking floats at the top of the wall, dancing with the planets in his wheelchair, and looking down on other high-flyers including the US Embassy's eagle, the Sopwith Camel WW1 biplane, and the Pink Floyd pig floating between the chimneys of Battersea Power Station.

My favourite bit of the painting is the man down on the ground at the right, a white-haired bloke holding what appears to be a

CND-style peace symbol. At first I thought this might be a self-portrait, but this is in fact Nick Wood, the modest but visionary local authority architect who designed the Carey Garden Estate. The peace symbol is also a plan view of part his design, the circular green spaces at the heart of the estate, surrounded by the low-rise housing. What a great tribute to another unsung hero of social housing!

The Inspiring City site also has an excellent interview with Brian, made in September 2020 as part of  Battersea Arts Centre's Radio Local project. It's a rewarding 30 minutes.

As so often, looking at a couple of great pieces of streeet art - both so different, but both uplifing - provokes a thirst to see more. In fact on a a good day and a decent bike you are less than 10 minutes from yet another Brian Barnes co-production, the 1988 "Battersea in Perspective ", filling a whole end wall of the former Haberdashers Arms pub in Dagnell Street. Like other works including Nuclear Dawn, this takes a bird's (or aviator') eye view of the area, a birdseye perspective from a great height, with landmarks receding from the great centrepiece of Battersea Park and its Peace Pagoda.  

This is a comprehensive celebration of Battersea's radical recent past, with portraits of social reformers such as John Burns MP, suffragettes, the great campaigning (and still very active) MP, and now Lord, Alf Dubs, and many others including artists and aviators. Battersea's place in aviation history is recognised, with the early workshops of the A & V Roe and the Short Brothers in railways arches, and a stately balloon hovering over this great sweep of south London  landscape. 

Battersea Perspective - still in great shape over 30 years since it was painted, and full
surprising details, including, if you look very hard, a tiny version of this
mural. 

Luckily many others examples of Brian Barnes' work survive, most but not all in south London. He usually works with other artists and always involves local communities in designing the paintings. The Stockwell War Memorial mural, for example, was painted by students from a local school where Brian ran a community arts project.

You can check them out on the excellent London Mural Preservation Society website, and next time you go along Coldharbour Lane in Brixton, take a look at the progress on restoring Nuclear Dawn, which many regard as Brian Barnes' master-work! 

Sad, sad footnote: Shocked to learn that Brian Barnes passed away on November 28, just five months after this story was posted. He was 77, and suffered with COPD which was the eventual cause of his death. The Guardian's obituary is by his friend Steve Lobb;  and there's a good obit on the MyLondon website, which also shows that Brian's campaigning continued right up to the end, with his fabulously laconic twitter post about the lack of affordable housing in the Battersea Power Station redevelopment. This post includes a photo of a self portrait  standing in front of his version of Breughel's Mad Meg (updated for Corona Virus). God, what are we to do without these wonderful humans?

Finally, watch a lovely brief tribute to Brian  from his family, on YouTube.

Largely unnecessary: now even the RAC advises against urban SUVs

 

Two cars, one from the mid 1960s, the other from 2021. This is progress. One of them was found to
be capable of containing 27 adult humans, the other is a six-seater with plenty of capacity for a
Waitrose shop.

I swore I'd lay off SUVs for a while but the strangely belated announcement by The Royal Automobile Club chief  that London residents might think again before buying an SUV - was an irresistible cue for a rant.

The RAC's Steve Gooding was commenting on a recent bit of research by the New Weather Institute which found more SUVs were being sold to city-dwellers than to people in country areas where their use might be more justified.

He used the quaint old term "Chelsea tractors" to highlight a finding that SUVs were indeed most popular in the London boroughs of Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Westminster.

I'm surprised these had not been overtaken by boroughs like Wandsworth, while the truly super-rich were these days more likely to be whisked around London in chauffeur-driven Mercs or Bentleys, or in a sleek Tesla - leaving their huge Range Rovers at one of their country properties.

Nevertheless it's good to hear this bastion of motor car ownership speaking against the bloated behemoths that clog London's narrow streets, even in such meek and mealy-mouthed tones.

Critics pointed out than many SUVs are as or more energy efficient than a lot of saloon cars. It's true that there are huge numbers of mongrel SUVs out there - basically an SUV shape body on the same chassis as a hatchback or saloon car. 

What they fail to address is that the pollution inflicted by the "real" SUVs is not merely atmospheric. Most residential streets in London's zones 2 and 3 are now blighted by the nose-to-tail parking of huge vehicles, mostly black or shades of grey. Many of London's handsome Georgian or Victorian terraces are now scarcely visible behind these walls of static or crawling motorised metal.

Many are wider than the parking bays and their bulging bodies and tyres infringe on road space shared by cars, bikes, delivery vans, refuse trucks, etc...with a resulting increase in road rage. All those "I got here first" scenes; the cursing and swearing, the raised fists and fingers, bulging blood vessels on puce faces.

Oh well, I broke my vow but I feel better now and will shut the duck up.

Read the New Weather Institute report, Mindgames on wheels, here.

A walk on the vile side: underwhelmed by Nine Elms' hottest properties

Not so inviting on a dull winter's day, perhaps. The much talked about Sky Pool, 10 storeys above the Embassy Gardens zone of the Nine Elms, Battersea and Vauxhall development - seen here with its sun screen half extended. 

 
Work never stopped on the Battersea, Nine Elms & Vauxhall development over the long months of covid-19, and many of its supposedly headline projects are nearing completion. We've seen 'em (nearly) all...the Sky Pool, Frank Gehry's skew-whiff apartment blocks, Foster's voids, the rich doors, and the poor doors. The question which arises most often is: Why?

In the third lockdown, I started doing longer walks, sometimes with my support bubble friend for some mutual grumbling about anything or nothing.

Several times the stroll took us a mile north to that strip of oddly mismatched new buildings going up along the river, from Battersea Power Station to Vauxhall, aka the "Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea opportunity area" (VNEB).

Each time there are new things to gasp at. Yes, we had more to gasp about this time as well - though not so much in admiration, but in dismay and disbelief.

Affordable housing? Maybe not quite within your average budget, but nice and close to the
Portuguese cafés and Tesco on Wandsworth Road.

We approach from the large area of industrial units and scrapyards that border the Patmore Estate, Wandsworth Road to the south and Nine Elms Lane. 

Turning right from Stewart's Road we come up against the first bits of the redevelopment. 

The first, and to be honest the only entirely positive note of the whole journey is struck by the cheerfully re-painted rail bridge, which is a defact gateway separating old and new Battersea at this point. 

Sorry, this dark photo does not do the brilliant colours of 
Yinka Ilori's artwork, Happy Street, any justice whatsoever.
I'll revisit soon on a sunnier day (or with a better camera)

The underside of this - one of many very wide railway bridges in the area - was transformed by the artist Yinka Ilori as part of the 2019 London Festival of Architecture. 

The installation is called "Happy Street" and the vividly coloured panels and patterns do indeed inspire happier feelings in what used to be a dark and dirty tunnel.

It's worth remembering that this street once housed the Ramport Studios, an old church hall where many of The Who's singles and LPs were recorded. And that their then drummer, the late Keith Moon, once took it upon himself to become a temporary lollipop man at the zebra crossing, after a number of accidents involving local schoolkids. 

All that's left of that era is a green plaque on the wall of the former studios, now a health centre. But at least it's still there and being put to good use (I know of Who fans who try to get onto those GPs lists, just to enter the hallowed former recording areas).

Our joy was short-lived, however, as we encounter the half-built "affordable homes", nondescript low-rise apartment blocks at the southern edge of the development, as far as possible from the showpieces around the power station and along the river. They appear to be using cladding in a most unappealing lilac shade.

A windswept and dusty walk along Nine Elms Lane took us to the "Embassy Gardens" district, with its Waitrose, the scattered sculptures (a massive bronze courgette and an even bigger disembodied foot) and its canyons of glass and brick cladding, which feel more like walking in an architect's computer simulation than real life. 

All this has been there for several years now - but then there are some newer bits behind and to the east of the US Embassy building. There you are faced with two large blocks clad in what look like ceramic tiles in a very fetching bottle green. Closer inspection reveals these tiles to be large pre-fabricated panels.

As you walk between the blocks, look up and gawp at one of Nine Elm's star turns - yes, it's the  Sky Pool. About 150ft from the ground, a large transparent water tank stretches from one building to another. It is certainly an eye-catching feature; you just hope the acrylic material is as strong as it needs to be.  As we stare upward, a sort of sunblind slowly extedns along the bottom of the pool. Presumably this is to protect it, and to prevent the pool focussing  the sun's rays onto to some unsuspecting parked supercar below (as happened, notoriously, with the Walkie Talkie in it firsto autumn). 

Or maybe it's to preserve the modesty of some of the less exhibitionist super-rich bathers; imagine a crowd of long-focus paparazzi just waiting down below for some minor celeb or a footballer's girlfriend or whoever. A cheaper solution of course would be to swim in a different pool.

Meanwhile, pity whoever gets the flats just beneath each end of the pool. Imagine the dread of hearing that first drip, drip, drip sound. An interesting Guardian piece on the development includes interviews with just such early occupants of some of the more affordable apartments - which do not, of course, have access to the luxuries of the penthouse floors.

The US Embassy itself stands there silently, watching your every movement, behind its many layers of security and defence, including a full-blown medieval-style moat. The new Embassy had its unofficial baptism by protest last summer when the Black Lives Matter demo crossed the river from Westminster to take its message to the US front door. It was a peaceful and dignified demo, but the Embassy building seems so unreadable, impenetrable, and aloof that it was hard to tell if there was anyone in there to listen to the speakers.

One thing for sure - would be residents of the nearby apartments must get used to sounds of hovering helicopters and sirens, armed police and road closures on a regular basis.

We were hoping to move south from here to get to the nearly-complete Nine Elms tube station, then around to the huge towers that are rising across the road from the dreaded St George's Tower, aka the lethal Duracell.

But there's no quick access at this point at the moment. Eventually the "linear park" will link the two sides of the rail lines which divide this bit of the development, apparently.

So, back towards Battersea and another of the jewels in the developer's crown. As you approach the southern end of the power station, to your left are the near-complete, twisty looking apartment blocks designed by Frank Gehry of Bilbao Guggenheim fame. 

Frank Gehry's trademark wonkiness looks interesting close up, less so from 
any distance. No two apartments are the same, they say. 
Doubt I'll ever have the chance to check that out.

From some angles they look quirky, with apartments sprouting outwards like the segments of some exotic fruit. 

Seen from a little further away, however, these buildings have the bulky look of all the other blocks which now entirely enclose the old power station. 

The pattern of light and dark grey cladding which zig-zag over this set of buildings resembles, from a distance,  arctic camouflage of old warships, though a very undazzling version of it.

The great pièce de resistance of this part of the development - Gehry's titanium-clad Flower tower - is not yet visisble, at least not from the route we took. Early architect's impressions of this building were indeed more like what one expects from a "starchitect", and they featured in the hoardings lining Nine Elms Lane at one point.

Is it yet to be built, or is it hidden behind all these other bulky blocks?

Just to the west of the Gehry buildings is another huge, serpentine  construction, 15 storeys high with two large  voids acting as giant peepholes in a colossal barrier. This building, a product of the local Foster & Partners studio,  has echoes the famous Byker Wall in Newcastle, or in Sheffield's Park Hill estate. Or even closer to home, the Barrier Block on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton - though I doubt the developers would welcome these comparisons.

This forms another layer of the defences surrounding the Power Station, and is also the site of the much-lauded Battersea  roof gardens. Together the Gehry and Foster developments trace the route of a new "high street", all or part of which will be named "Electric Boulevard" - a nod to the former purpose of the power station, rather than a trbute to the famous shopping avenue in Brixton.

As for the power station, well this grand old dame has been given a thorough wash and brush up, a scouring and re-glazing, so that it looks as good - and as bland - as new. In fact it looks like the whole building has been replaced by a giant cardboard model. At the southern end, work is progressing on what seems to be small amphitheatre. 

I remeber my first visits to the Canary Wharf area in the late 80s, and feeling I was in a film set for a Dallas-based TV series: the people were all too smartly dressed and well-groomed to be real, everything was too clean and shiny. The VNEB area has the same feel only more so, and it also lacks something that Canary Wharf has in all too obvious abundance - a reason for being there. 

The smells of London's lockdowns, part one: Toilets, toilets everywhere - but never a place to pee...

It's surely one of the most stinging ironies of these lockdown months. While the number of available public conveniences has reduced drastically as a result of austerity and Covid-19, there are actually many more toilets horribly visible to anyone who walks the streets of this or any other gentrified or gentrifying inner-London suburb.

Apart from the loos in the larger supermarkets, which are often as not out of order, I can only think of one public toilet in this postcode that is reliably open during the hours of daylight. 

Remember those first hot weeks of the first lockdown when parks - and especially Clapham Common - began to reek, not just of the normal dog-shit but of something more acrid? Beer and prosecco-tinged urine. It got to the point where the council had to provide portaloos.

But padlocked, private versions of these same, sentry-box sized erections were already popping up all around us. 

Thanks to the phenomenon noted in much of the media, the bored super-rich all seemed to get the same idea - use their lockdown time and loose change to effect complete gutting and refurbs of their metropolitan properties. 

So you suddenly see lots of those blue or yellow plastic boxes outside every house that is having its innards replaced by something even more expensive.

Yes, I'm referring to those portaloos for builders that are now overflowing  (hope not literally) onto the residential pavements of South, North, East and West London. What's happened? In the past builders and decorators were quite happy to use the owner's loo when it was needed. And owners always used to let them do so, as well as offering them cups of tea and coffee, assuming there was a functioning kitchen.

But now, the entire family moves out to one of its other properties - maybe in the Cotswolds, or maybe somewhere more exotic.  So the builders have the place to themselves. Except, it seems, for the bathrooms. Perhaps the owners cannot bear the idea of not-quite-so-rich people using their gold-plated sanitary facilities. 

I can't help feeling slightly uneasy as I pass one of these private conveniences, which are sometimes only inches from a narrow pavement.  Or even on it. 

I side step, as if trying to observe social distancing: in doing so I often forget to look down and end up treading in the latest dog-do, miniature or massive. (Why do lockdown dog owners not seem to know about bagging the dirt? Another article there - but, no, don't worry,  that's one thing I can't face writing about.)

In theory the builder-bogs are emptied at least twice a week. I know this becuase I have watched the waste removal tankers pulling up across the road, to that house which has been undergoing god knows what improvements and additions for more than a year now. 

Even if you don't see this operation, you hear it as the powerful suction pumps blast into action. It's almost as noisily annoying as the dreaded leaf-blowers, which continue to shatter everyone's peace every Monday morning.

So, this is lockdown, Clapham style. Around five of the 120 or so houses in this streeet have had new super-basements excavated during the last year. There's hardly been a days when there have not been teams of workers arriving at 8am, followed soon after by the first deliveries of cement, sand, timber, steel, paving, glass, grass, porphyry washbasins and marble baths, Aga cookers, elizabethan bedsteads, Hollywood size tvs. You name it.

So, it's clear that London's wealthiest homeowners can assume they are exempt from all lockdown restrictions when it comes to building work. And are those builders also exempt? Have you ever seen a builder wearing a mask on site? Maybe they have the same immunity as professional footballers on the pitch.

I will stop moaning here and now, for a day or two. It was good to get that off my chest. I envy those workers the easy access to a toilet at work, as well as the many cigarettes they get through on the porches and open upper windows of thier clients' fourth of fifth homes. This is good: as I say in almost every posting, these days, at least these guys and (not so often) women have some paid work during lockdown. 

Thank you and good night. 

Developers seek permission to demolish historic Tearooms building

Is this the end for the building that once housed the famous Tearooms des Artistes?

This entry comes quite soon after the last one, which I hope is not too much of shock to my readership. The reasons for this hasty posting will become clear.

Passing the still intact Tearooms building at 697 Wandsworth Road for the thousandth time since lockdown, I noticed something distinctly sinister.

Tied to a signpost there's a laminated notice, stained by rain and rust, but still legible.

It was one of those Lambeth Council Planning Permission notices which, when you see them, you instantly know another beloved local feature will soon disappear to make way for yet another apartment block. 

The notice looked like it had been there for years, so I thought maybe those developers had had second thoughts.

No such luck. I took photos and read it at home, with a sinking heart. You can read the whole thing on the Lambeth Planning Applications database - including around 100 supplementary documents, as well as 8 comments (all in favour). If you don't have the time, here are a few crucial points:

"20/01227/FUL | Redevelopment of the site, involving refurbishment and extension of the existing building at no: 693-695 and replacement of no : 697 with 3 new storey building to create nine residential units (Use Class C3) and the retention of the Public House at no 693-695 at lower and ground floor levels, together with the provision of cycle and refuse stores, landscaping and courtyards. | 693 - 697 Wandsworth Road London SW8 3JF

To make this clear, the application relates to two buildings. 693-695 Wandsworth Road is the big old pub building on the corner of Wandsworth Road and North Street. 

In its final incarnation it was a nightspot, the Artesian Well, a place which specialised in lavish faux-Bohemian decor and (according to a friend, who went once) a clientele including many public school kids from Surrey who were competing for their Duke of Edinburgh's Award in decadence. But maybe this is unfair. It was certainly extremely popular right up its demise in 2014, seen by many as the interesting face of Clapham nightlife, as opposed to the meat-market reputation of the High Street clubs.

The second building, at 697, was the Tearooms des Artistes, a place which was known and loved by many from the early 80s through to its demise in around 2006, when it became a posher and more pricey bar called Lost Society, which lasted another few years. Since 2014 it's been left in the hands of Lowe property guardians, and looks little changed.  Well, at least it is providing some genuinely affordable housing.

I shared some of my own happy memories of this place a few years ago, and was delighted when several others added comments and  links to more info on this lost gem of south London's alternative hospitality spots.  Some great memories emerge, including the fact that the late Marc Bolan's pink Bentley was parked outside for a long period in the 90s. 

I have to thank Baz for some amazing info, including some history he found on the Wayback Machine web archive, which suggests the building went back to the 16th century, when it was a barn on the Clapham Manor estate (any further info on this would be amazing). Baz also built a site for the Tearooms, and some of his extremely evocative photos - can still be seen on the Wayback Machine, here - including bits of the ancient structure. Surely evidence enough to slap of high-grade listing on this building!

One attempt to redevelop was kicked out by Lambeth council in 2015. The new application, from April 2020, still awaits a decision.

The architects for the developer and would-be demolishers, Marston Properties Limited, are dismissive of the old building. It's useful to quote their reasons at length:

"At ground floor the fascia and shop front has been completely replaced with modern fabric of no visual or architectural merit. In the process, a large steel beam was inserted to open up the shopfront which was used as ‘Regional Tyre Services Ltd’ in the 1960s-70s, which has subsequently resulted in structural damage to the façade.

"There are no features of merit internally.

"At most the building makes a neutral contribution to the character of the conservation area. It’s (sic) relationship within the streetscape is awkward; it lacks connection with the terraces to the west and the former Artesian Well to the east. 

3.28 Given the assessment that the building is at best a neutral contributor with many detracting elements (shop front etc.), Heritage Collective concludes that overall the high-quality replacement building as proposed would represent an enhancement of the Conservation Area. 

Even if the Council remains unconvinced in this regard and retains the stance that the building is a positive contributor, its loss as proposed is acknowledged by the Officers to fall within the less than substantial harm category. 

3.29 In such cases a weighing exercise is required setting on the one hand the less than substantial harm and on the other the public benefits that flow from this scheme. In this case the benefits include the redevelopment of a poor quality redundant site, removal and replacement of harmful features, poor quality windows, railings etc., securing a beneficial and long term future for the site, the re-opening of a community facility (the pub), the provision of nine new high quality homes and the delivery of a highly efficient, sustainable new building..."

And so on, and on, and on. Thus do developers nail all opposition to the floor, thrashing them with fine phrases and vacuous arguments.

Not that the quoted "Heritage Collective" is a consultancy, not to be confused with an official heritage body.

Quite what a "neutral contributor" to the conservation area means is unclear to this writer at least. To us, and anyone who once visited the Tearooms at any point through its various phases, from hippyish vegetarian restaurant/wine bar/club to the après clubbing chill down nest of Sunday best in the 90s and 2000s, the sight of this unique place is a blessed reminder of a more interesting Clapham, before the anodyne clumps of tasteful luxury apartments started popping up like weeds.

The application was still active in January this year, when the architects submitted some modifications to their designs. All of these are available to view on the planning archive. According to the website the application expires on April 15. 

It's too late to submit objections, but I do wonder why the wealth of history associated with these buildings seems to be entirely ignored in this application. I wonder if any archaeologists have ever been there to look for some Tudor era oyster shells....

 

Eleven years on: where the hell did it all go wrong?

Mauleverer Road, SW2, January 2021: remembering a lost paradise.

At the end of its tenth year, this old blog is still spinning, much to its creator's surprise. Maybe not  at quite its youthful 33 and a third rpm, but at least at one story per season. 

So after a prolonged winter interlude,  it's time to take stock. The question hovering just above this acrylic as opposed to woollen hat is: Why bother?

The first postings appeared in February 2010, when I had the unlikely job of teaching web-based journalism to undergraduates. It seemed a good idea to have a blog of my own to practise on, before I attempted to show them how to do it. Poor dears.

The blog began with a post about the difficulty of finding stories that anyone else would want to read. I think that was also my first big mistake - no-one is interested in the agonies of would-be writers, except perhaps other failing writers.

The second post described my joy at finding the community/arts radio station Resonance FM, just as I crested that hill on the M11 as you drive south back into London, and see all those distant towers.

The  eclecticism of that station on 104 fm leeched itself into the fabric of this blog. I started to write about the things I enjoyed, such as vinyl LPs, tape, 35mm film, print as opposed to Kindle,  bikes, charity shops, cheap cafes, live music in pubs and dodgy bars, crumbling houses and so on.

The absurdity of the project (original title, Old Bill's Analogue Blog) just made it more necessary to do. Write abut things I valued most, with the realisation that they were all under various forms of threat (except, ironically, vinyl records, which were suddenly the height of fashion).

Over the next decade, the blog became peppered with outbursts about the impact of the most insidious weapon of social change - gentrification - on all the most desirable aspects of life in a city. 

The many attendant insults to the senses that gentrification inflicts: ridiculously expensive bars and restaurants and "artisan" outlets replacing useful shops; the cramming of every residential street with massive, ugly, noisy, expensive cars (worst of all, the increasingly vile SUVs); the inevitable driving away of older communities, replacing them with a brash, young(ish), wealthy and seemingly rather selfish monoculture. 

So, what's changed? Have three (to me equally) catastrophic events - austerity, Brexit and pandemic - made gentrifiers hide in their expensively created cellars? 

Sadly not. They are just digging bigger, deeper cellars. 

I'm going to use this and the next few posts to check back on some of the places and events written about in recent years, starting with a shocker in 2015 that was an eye-opener: the destruction of the Mauleverer Road mural in Brixton.

This story still smoulders in the memory. Those wonderful painted walls of the old brewery were a highlight of the backroad cycle route from here to to the old Lambeth College on Brixton Hill, where I was taking a course. 

These paintings of a tropical garden of Eden, fountains, luscious plants, trees, even a stable  with beautiful horses, transformed what would otherwise be a perfectly normal south London residential street. 

Read the original posts for more on the creation of these murals. The story since then has been just as dismal as expected. Having destroyed the art, the developers appeared to leave the site fallow for about three years. Some plywood hoardings went up, and at one point a few planters were added with some sad plants withering and uncared for. 

Peaking through the  shutters, you could see a massive hole in the ground, which at one point seems to be full of water. 

Finally, building got going, and now the development is complete. Go and take a look if you want to see how clever modern architects and builders are: they have created a carbon copy (no, a 3d-printer style copy) of the Victorian terraced house opposite. Except that these are stripped all character. It looks as though it could be an ironic and cynical response to Turner Prize winner Rachel Whiteread, who cast the inside of an old house just before it was demolished for redevelopment in Mile End. 

There's also a near-identical terrace of new four-bedroom Victorian style houses on the other side of the site, fronting on Mandrell Road.

Nearly all of the houses have To Let or For Sale boards up. You can snap one of these four-bed, three bathroom clones up for a mere £1.44million. And as the estate agent's blurb points out, you are within easy reach of "The Village", Market Row, the Ritzy and other attractions of an area which is not actually named in this blurb (Brixton).

So, there you go - you lose a life-enhancing piece of public art but you gain strangely unreal seeming copies of your own house. You almost wonder if the occupants will be as immaculate as these buildings - like those computer-generated smart, smiling young people who populate architects' impressions of all new developments. 

The far end of Mauleverer Road was redeveloped in the 1980s, and it's fascinating to see the totally different styles of domestic architecture. 

My jaundiced view of the new houses was challenged last time I cycled through, when a group of cheerful young people were unloading their stuff from a big van and were clearly moving in. 

A lovely new home for someone, in a fascinating area of London. And at least they will be looking out at the real Victorian houses over the road. 

Over the next few weeks (or months) the plan is to revisit plenty of old places and topics this blog snooped around over the past decade. They might include:

• The Tearooms des Artistes (RIP)
• Peter the Greek's Lock-up treasure shop (RIP)
• Lambeth Libraries (lost and found)
• Nine Elms disease (there's no vaccine)
• Er...lots of other things, with a south London bias.

Look on the bright side, it might never happen.