Here's a necessary corrective to most recent posts. I love everybody

Looking back at recent posts, you'd be forgiven for thinking: "What a miserable, ungrateful, embittered old sod the author must be".

So, before the plague arrived,  I started writing a post which tried to celebrate some of the good things experienced in 2019.  To recall a few joyful moments. Even the freeze-dried husk of a human resident in a rodent-infested top floor flat in one of the wealthiest streets in one of the most selfish postcodes (reportedly) in south west London, is still prone to the occasional moment of pleasure, excitement, rapture, ecstasy ....dare i say love?

Now from the perspective of a third week in isolation a long way from London, the city I enjoy slagging off but which I really love, without which I cannot live, and which I miss more acutely than anything. I will publish this silly post. 

Here it is (author ducks out before you, mythical reader, can absorb any of it):

London, March 9, 2020: Someone quoted Wordsworth on the radio:
"It is the first mild day of March....this one day we will give to idleness."

The words triggered conflicting feelings. A rush of forgotten pleasures, against a shudder of shame, the guilt of a human wallowing in self-pity.

What about the good things that have happened in the past 12 months? What about the cultural riches on your doorstep?

Many things have cheered the soul. They're not necessarily fodder for the culture pages of Time Out mag (does Time Out do culture any more, apart from food and drink culture?)

(But hats off to Time Out for having the wit to rename itself Time In in the first week of the plague - ed).

Let's face it, for a depressive geezer of pensionable age, you had some good times, sometimes.

1. The local pub
A place featured in at least a dozen unpublished blog entries, the Bread & Roses. And a couple of published ones, such as this one from last summer.

This trade union-owned pub half way down Clapham Manor Street is still a gem. The times I  have been there,  knocked out by the talent and energy of performers, when there've been as many musicians on stage as punters on the floor.

This saddens me. Why isn't this place packed out? There's theatre, music, comedy and DJ entertainment most nights of the week, so I guess overall they must be pulling in enough custom. (Well, that was before the lockdown of course. Ed.)

The pub, previously the Bowyer Arms, occupies an impressive Grade 2 listed building designed by Thomas Cubitt. It was bought by the Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Union Council in 1995, and is run on solid socialist principles alongside the great Workers Beer Company (which slakes the thirst of crowds at Glastonbury and other big events around the country, year after year).

There are great music pubs keeping the flame burning in Brixton, Camberwell, New Cross and beyond, but the fact there's one here in the heart of affluent SW4 is just such a good, surprising thing, it needs to be celebrated, as often as possible.

Can you imagine property agents boasting about a trade-union owned pub with live music two or three nights a week to potential buyers of nearby multi-million pound houses? Well, who knows, it's such a gem I think they might. I like to think they would.

Long live this beautiful bastion of fairness, humanitarian values, and a sometimes unfashionable commitment to making all forms of performing arts accessible to all.

2. Meeting Damo Suzuki last March: a brief account of this almost life-saving event, a book launch in a record shop near Brick Lane, was published here.

3. Lambeth Libraries events team

Against Lambeth council's atrocious library closure policies, the Libraries' events team have been putting on some wonderful events in the surviving branches, right across the borough.

Thanks for loads of great evenings in Brixton, South Lambeth and other libraries. One of the most memorable for me was last October, held at Clapham Library for Black History month.

This event - Sound Systems, DIY Culture and 100 Years of British Black Music - was chaired by the  excellent events organiser Tim O'Dell. It kicked off with discussion on the history of black musicians in the city, led by author Lloyd Bradley. His latest book - Sounds Like London – uncovers lots of previously unknown stuff about black jazz musicians in Britain way back in the 20s and 30s, and the huge influence they had.

He screened a wonderful short film, Half A Century Carnaby Street, made by Lucy Harrison in 2013, celebrating Columbo's nightclub at 50 Carnaby St which introduced London to the delights Jamaican sound systems back in the early 60s. Lucy Harrison even managed to stage a breif return to the address - now the basement of Ben Sherman store - several original DJs and their sound-system.

Things became more contemporary with the arrival of all-round local hero and globally influential Jamaican-born musician and producer Dennis Bovell, who grew up in Battersea. One of his bands, Roots Radics, helped create that unique dub poetry sound in long-term collaborations with Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Bovell also produced The Slits' first album, helping them make music that you could dance to while laying down new layers of spikey feminist attitudes.

He talked about all this stuff that night, answering questions, for example, how he got Janet Kay to hold that incredibly high note climax to her big hit, Silly Games - in the process of which he invented (and named) a new genre,  lovers rock, which was a successful export, even to Jamaica.

He talked about his musical education, from his dad, from Sunday trips to the church in Brixton, his love of  Jimi Hendrix, hours spent at the Dub Vendor, then hanging out in clubs in Soho including Columbo's where he met visiting Jamaican stars (including Marley). He took reggae to far flung places with his first band, Matumbi, his sound system,  Jah Sufferer, and a mobile record store based on a VW camper van.

This was just one of many great evening events, mainly free, in all the borough's remaining libraries, organised by a small but dedicated team. Salute them, now more than ever.

(In the current lock down situation, libraries are closed but the events team have organised a full programme of online events and services, check it out! Ed)

3. Midsummer, a rare meeting in a Lambeth theatre-pub
One of those rare occasions when worlds I imagined would always be separate came together, briefly but to good effect. An old friend, who I used to work alongside at a Wapping-based educational newspaper, is now an increasingly busy actor. Like me and many others she'd taken voluntary redundancy in 2006 and thrown herself into the work she'd always wanted to do: acting.

By a strange coincidence she took part in a "Page to Stage" reading of part of a pilot TV series written by Stockwell-based writer, performer and podcaster - not to mention national treasure - Daniel Ruiz Tizon.

I was going to describe Daniel as having a wonderfully dark comedic style, until I saw the Italian Vogue had already used those words to introduce their rather good interview of him back in 2018. What a star!

Apart from being south London's finest and most devastatingly dead-pan podcaster and all round social commentator and good human (check his twitter feed for proof of this) Daniel is also this moribund blog's only fan, and even its occasional unpaid publicist.

So, on that warm June evening, I not only met old workmates, but also Daniel, for the first time in the flesh. I can report that he sounded exactly like he sounds in his podcasts, and that he looks just like his photo. Good facts to report.

I witnessed a read-through of part of an embryonic sitcom. It was classic Ruiz Tizon and left me wanting more.

Each short piece performed at this event, upstairs in a pub at Lambeth North, was critiqued by a front-row panel of theatre types. Some were kind, others less so, Daniel and the three other writers took it all on the jaw. Then we all went back to the bar.

We exchanged a few words.  I should've bought him one of the many drinks I owe him. I did not. Short arms, they used to call me. Another time perhaps.

I've always loved Jah Wobble and I think he loves us all. Seen here playing at
 the Cropredy Festival, Oxfordshire, in 2005, Mr Wobble recently became a 
part-time Stockwell resident, praise the lord.  Photo credit: Brian Marks/
Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

4. East end hero moves - temporarily? - into Stockwell
This truly happy piece of news hit me right at the end of the year, in an interview on BBC Radio London by Robert Elms.

Elms, a resolute north Londoner, managed not to sound too dismayed when top bass player, globally sought-after producer, ex-tube driver Jah Wobble, has found himself a gaff in Stockwell. He said they'd found a flat near the Wandsworth Road; it was ok, he said, nice and green.

At the time he was teaching "lonely old blokes" in the art and craft of dub music at an arts centre in Merton, as well as embarking on a new tour.

Now, who knows, maybe he's decamped to the Wobble family home back in Manchester. But how great to think that the musician and writer who finds divinity in Vauxhall Bridge should even temporarily be lodging not far away.

As any fan of the great man  will remember, the track on the Invaders of the Heart album, Take Me To God, expresses the bliss of religious experience in a way that only Mr Wobble could pull off so brilliantly. My favourite verse:

"I am limitless in space, time and matter
Simultaneously the planet Neptune
Part of the structural support to Vauxhall Bridge
I am your left breast
I am Stepney
I am Peru
I am divine and so are you.
I love everybody."

This is a turn-to song whenever things are really grim. (Like now! Ed.)

It always works. If you know his voice, if you know his bass playing, if you know the music of the Invaders of the Heart, then you'll understand. What a fabulous addition to the deep SW8 talent pool!

Has anyone ever been fined for breaking the 20mph speed limit in Lambeth?

If you're cruising down this street at 55mph in your
Audi - as you do, don't deny it - would you even notice
this little roundel hiding in the shadows?

Does anyone make a cheap, reliable hand-held speed camera? During 2019, that grim year now blessedly over, speeding vehicles became one of the worst of hundreds of other daily annoyances that further depressed all quality-of-life measures in the stinking rich slums of south-west London. Yes, we need something to fight back with, us beleagured pedestrians.

If such devices exist, they should be bought in bulk by local authorities and handed out at libraries, doctors surgeries etc so that people can give lunatic drivers a little scare as they blast down residential roads at two or three times the speed limit.

So tell me, has anyone ever been banned, imprisoned or even fined for going at 24mph in a 20 mph limit  area?

Tell me, honestly, have you ever seen anyone driving at less than 25mph in a 20mph limit area? Really? I cycle at more than 20mph in some parts of London and clever signs start flashing at me furiously, kill your speed! But not round here.

In this wide,  almost straight street with no speed bumps, we're used to rat-runners paying no heed of the pathetic 20mph limit signs, and having no thought for pedestrians (who include kids going to and coming out of the local primary school).

Lambeth introduced the 20mph limit all over the borough a few years ago. Seems putting up a few inadequate signs was a cheap solution to residents' demands for traffic calming measures, rather than adding bumps or chicanery, speed cameras, planting trees etc, as requested at various "your voice counts" meetings with the planners.

This flimsy little 20mph limit sign looks more like one of those
horrible pennants used by property developers to guide people
to their "marketing suites"

I regularly have to get out of the way of cars and even big trucks going three times that speed....and perhaps more.  Trouble is the road is also used as a sort of drag strip for drivers who like to prove their manhood by shattering everyone else's peace. Not just boy racers but plump 40-year-old city types giving their silly McLarens, Mercs and Maseratis a bit of an airing.

Then there are the speeding delivery vans. Don't get me on this subject, which is at least 300 of the other 364 things wrong with the past year. These huge boxes on wheels, whether scruffy old white Transits or shiny new DHL vans, are one of many reasons we should all stop using Amazon, Ocado, and all other delivery services, unless we really can't use our poor fat little legs to make it to a London's quite good variety of retail outlets.

There are 20 mph speed limit cameras on Wandsworth Road and Acre Lane and probably loads of other places in the borough. I've seen those two flashing four or five times in the space of five minutes. Are these drivers getting speeding tickets and fines? I've never even seen police doing spot checks on these streets. Presumably they couldn't spare the personnel.

Other things which made 2019 shit and will probably make 2020 even shitter:

• Linked to the above - the ever-increasing girth and ghastliness of SUVs.  Who on earth believes a fat black Range Rover is something to aspire to?
• Linked to the above - the ear-splitting loudness of car horns, the sort people pay extra for in order to add to the fuck-off factor of their vehicle. A possible legislative solution to this dreadful form of auditory pollution was suggested on this blog many years ago.
• Linked to the above - small motorbikes that make more noise than even big trucks and buses. And luxury cars that have clearly had their exhaust systems expensively tweaked in order to emit a much louder roar when the driver revs it at lights.
• Linked to the above: why is Lambeth still allowing so many of its super-rich residents to pave over their front gardens, or worse still, to dig out underground cinemas or swimming pools or whatever else it is they need, thereby wrecking their neighbour's lives for months with endless flotillas of four-axle dumper trucks, skip deliveries, and even those revolting portaloos for the poor workers half-blocking pavements?
• Linked to the above: more and more trucks, vans and even car-sized pick-up trucks displaying "Cyclists Beware" signs on their rear panels. Honestly, if you can't see what's behind you or alongside you on the nearside of your vehicle, from your driving position, should that vehicle be legal in this congested city?
• Linked to above: often the silliest most trivial things annoy most. Last year it was the proliferation of those multi-LED indicator lights on the back of the newest SUVs and other flash-harry vehicles - the sort that seem to lick their way around the back of the car. Like the flicking tongues of some venemous reptile.
• Linked to the above - over-use of phrases such as "linked to the above"; proliferation of old farts using blogs to evacuate their spleen into the idiot wind of the internet, which merely blows it all back into their own twisted faces?
• Case rested.

Two London blights for the price of one photo: the crazy congestion caused by delivery vans thanks to Amazon, etc; and the

continuing madness of paving over front gardens...removing green patches, adding to flood risk.

Rookery Road on Clapham Common: the re-surfacing job that time forgot...

Rookery Road cuts across the north-east corner of Clapham
Common. It gets very heavy traffic (as you can see) and yet it has
not been resurfaced in decades. Unlike all the other roads
around here. Why not?

Both Lambeth and Wandsworth Councils have shown exemplary enthusiasm when it comes to re-paving certain troubled areas of their boroughs.

Soon after the 2011 riots, the whole of the Clapham Junction area broke out into a pleasing arrangement of tastefully-variegated pastel-shaded paving blocks: the old dark grey filth-stained pitted tarmac and granite gave way to soothing garden centre chic.

Seven years on this lovely new work is already showing serious signs of decay; no material known to humankind can cope with the daily downpour of spat-out chewing gum, nor the vile stains of McDonald's toxic shakes as they dribble out from discarded polystyrene buckets.

Let alone the pollution from tens of thousands of combustion-engined vehicles passing through the junction every day.

Meanwhile, Lambeth labours away to make little bits of nice street furnishings: Clapham Old Town; Windrush Square; Stockwell Cross. Weeks and months of disruption to locals and passing traffic as gangs of workers rip up the old and carefully lay the new.

All jolly good - we suppose; if we are charitably-minded. What a splendid way to use our council tax quids.

Pity they totally fucked up the traffic flow in Clapham Old Town in the process - giving even more rat-runs to the mumsnet SUVs and off-white-van drivers, confusing cyclists with a ridiculous cycle-lane layout and sending pedestrians all round the houses to find safe crossings. Trouble with those rat-runs is drivers tend to speed up when sneaking into them, hoping they won't be spotted.

And - AND - above ALL! - what about Rookery Road? Yes that little but very important bit of road between Clapham Southside - the main A3 trunk route - and the left turn turn down to the Northside one-way system.

The deeply pot-holed surface of Rookery Road: enough to throw you off
your bike and under the wheels of a speeding SUV.or whatever.
Who will take responsibility for this death-trap?

This couple of hundred metres of road sees very heavy traffic. It is called Rookery Road because it passes under the great plane trees that still accommodate  some truly fine murders of big black bastard carrion crows.

But the surface of this road is also MURDEROUS! It's bad enough in a small car - but approach on a pushbike at any speed and you are dead. Especially if you are trying to position yourself centre road to take the north-flowing lane towards Old Town and Larkhall Rise.

Does this bit of road not fall into one or other borough's care? Who is responsible for this? Most of the other roads around there have been re-surfaced two or three times since even one bit of gravel has been replaced here.

Why?

Maybe Lambeth and Wandsworth think the crows should do it.

Open House London weekend celebrates 25 fantastic years: hurray! But what's with this Clapham Old Town walk?

Here we go, into the radical redesign of Clapham Old Town on the new cycle-friendly pathways....sort of.

If you're into London's Open House weekend, then your annual treat is getting very close, and this year's free booklet is packed with even more potential pleasures than ever before.

What's more, this year's weekend - on the 16th - 17th September -  is the 25th anniversary of Open House London, which took a brilliant, simple idea and made it happen: why not open up interesting buildings - however grand or however modest - to the public, just for one weekend in the year?

This year's catalogue includes a great Top 25 of the most popular buildings it has featured over the years - the perfect trigger for debates. It also includes several topical essays on the big issues facing the city now, notably affordable housing, transport and traffic congestion, and accessible open spaces.

As a creature of bad habit I turn immediately to my local borough - Lambeth - and find amidst a well-stocked selection of local treats, this slightly curious entry in the Walks & Tours section:

"Clapham Old Town and Venn Street: This guided walk...looks at a radically redesigned public realm which re-balanced the street environment in favour of the pedestrian and cyclist..."

This refers to the recent tarting up of the old Polygon area which was commented on by this blog back in 2014.

So here you are at the end of Bromells Road. Cars have to turn
left across the pavement. No signs to say what bikes should do,
even though a bike path starts just across the road...

Well, the patch of artfully sown wild flowers at the northern tip of the Polygon (or is it "piazza" now?) is gorgeous. The new public space around the Polygon and Rose & Crown pub is certainly neat and tidy but to be honest it's a bit sterile. Especially now that the old public toilets have disappeared behind hoardings.

There are a few of those metal chairs scattered around, single seaters which look like they were designed to give bankers who have just been told their bonuses are frozen, somewhere to sit and contemplate their futures.

There's a very celebrated upmarket restaurant, a trio of pubs (if you include The Sun and The Prince of Wales across the road)  and...well,  a couple of cafes, also over the road...but not much else.

As for it being more cycle friendly: well, how, exactly?

After a couple of years of trying to get to grips with the remodelled and supposedly bike-friendly traffic flows,  they still seem at best puzzling, often confusing, and in some places downright dangerous to both cyclists and pedestrians.

Here it is - so off you go, heading north against the traffic 

Firstly, far from "reining in" motorists, they have given those coming from the north two separate routes up to the Common and the High Street. They can either be good and follow the B303 past Orlando Road and stop at the junction with the one-way system around Clapham Common.

But if they're in a hurry, or just typical motorists, there's nothing to stop them going the old way, up past The Sun pub and the local Sainsburys and a load of new flats, then pushing their way back onto the one-way system via The Pavement. It's a new rat run beloved of big white vans and equally big black SUVs.

Originally under the new scheme, as I remember, this road was gated at the northern end, and should have been for resident and delivery access only.

A few yards on you get to this bit, but no explanation why
you might want to turn right across the road...nothing!

Most of the pedestrians coming from Orlando Road, The Omnibus Arts Centre and the homes and many businesses on North Side want to get to the tube station. So they continue to cross the road at the point, directly outside the old Library (now The Omnibus) where there used to be a very well-used pedestrian crossing.

Mysteriously they have now moved that crossing just 20 or 30 yards further east, past the Starbucks, and just far enough to make it seem an annoying diversion if you're in a hurry.

The trouble is, this road is now two-way and there is also a bus-stand a few yards to the west. There are almost always a couple of 249 double-decker buses waiting there, which completely block the view, making it impossible to see approaching traffic until it is literally upon you. This is so dangerous for all pedestrians.

As for cyclists, well it seems like the cycle route has been sketched-in by some town planner at the end of  a long liquid lunch; clearly they all forgot that this bit of the scheme was never fully planned.

Not that anyone expects joined-up thinking from a council that has recently shut down one of the finest, best-loved and most-used libraries in London.  (In case you missed the stories, I mean the Carnegie Library in Herne Hill).

But a joined-up cycle route through this complex junction of roads would be good. The route as it stands is, frankly, bonkers.

If you do cross the road, you end up on this scary contra-
flow bike lane where you are glared at by drivers of big
black shiny SUVs (and OK, other vehicles too...)

If you're coming from the Brixton direction, or from Clapham Common tube station, and aiming for Lavender Hill or Wandsworth Road - well, you have to think hard about where to go. Most cyclists just follow the roads. The pavements around the tube station offer no bike routes (although quite a few cyclists use them, to the annoyance of crowds of commuters and school-kids milling around here at the busy times).

There are no signs to encourage cyclists to use, for example, Venn Street - which looks pedestrianised, but is it?

So the bike lane seems to start quite arbitrarily on the edge of the Common, 100 yards further north, opposite the junction with Bromells Road. This is a one way street with no bike lane. Cars and bikes have to cross the wide pavement to rejoin the road (which, confusingly, is called The Pavement at this point).

Cyclists can then cross the road and get onto a little bit of bike lane going north; but a few yards further on it sends them back across the road and onto a contra-flow bike lane which is frankly scary.

If you follow the cycle path past the above-mentioned wild flower patch, it sends you back west towards the Common - and to re-cross the main traffic flow, this time on a zebra crossing - so

As you can see, parked cars and oncoming traffic both
habitually impinge on the so-called cycle lane.

that you've negotiated four of the five sides of the Polygon to get back to a point a few yards from where you were 5 minutes ago.

There's a tiny bit of pavement here which has one of those joint use cyclist/pedestrian symbols in one paving slab - but who notices that? And the path is not wide enough for this dual use.

Like you, I hate seeing cyclists charging around recklessly on footpaths - but around here, it's sometimes almost understandable.

Lambeth Council is still open to changing these arrangements, apparently, so let's hope this Open House Weekend walk makes the crazy layout of these bike lanes clearer to all.

Plenty of really great stuff in the Open House programme, though. In Lambeth, the residents of the threatened Cressingham Gardens Estate have organised a tour, as have the residents of the Central Hill estate in Crystal Palace. Both these estates were built in the 60s and 70s; a Lambeth architect, Ted Hollamby, was involved in both; they are both largely judged to be successful in meeting the need for low-rise, high-density, housing - important in the 70s, absolutely vital now.

In neighbouring Southwark, there's a chance to learn  more about the Dawson Heights Estate, a place that has always caught my imagination. From the distance, say in Brockwell Park,  it has the look of some re-imagined version of a medieval hill-town. Somewhere, in other words, where I always wanted to live!

There's so much to see, and only one short weekend to see it all in! Until 2018.

Meanwhile, September's also the month of the Lambeth Heritage Festival. Plenty of fascinating things are promised: must try to digest all this info, and get along to at least some of these events. Thanks!

Two films, two Brixtons, many gentrifications

Went to Ritzy to see A Moving Image, the new film about gentrification in Brixton. Emerged 75 minutes later without much new light on the topic and rather disappointed. Another, very different two-part film, coming at the same topic from a different angle, was far more evocative of at least two of Brixton's dispersed communities. This film, For What We Are About To Lose - was coincidentally the centrepiece of a small exhibition in Brixton Library, next door to the Ritzy.

Talk about keeping it local!

A Moving Image started with a strangely low-key sequence of a young woman emerging from Brixton Tube station into the street with a smart wheelie suitcase. The underground arrival in Brixton is surely one of the great full-on London experiences, but it seemed underwhelming here. Maybe deliberately, as this young woman was supposed to be returning to Brixton after a few years out east in the artistic community of Shoreditch. Maybe Brixton seemed rather unthrilling to her, what with her memories of an even livelier high street of the early 2000s.

 If so it underlined not only the problem of gentrification, but also  the whole concept of the movie, which was constantly struggling against itself.

On her return to her home patch, this young mixed-race woman, Nina,  played by Tanya Fear, stays in an enormous and ridiculously fashionable loft apartment owned by a friend of a friend. She explores the area, wandering the streets with her top-end digital SLR, filming what she sees.

She has debates with her equally smart girlfriend who agrees to help with her "project". At first she doesn't know what she wants the project to be but when she gets mixed up in a Reclaim Brixton demo she decides that's her subject - gentrification. Not a documentary, mind you, but an art piece, a piece of art.

One great moment in the film only works if you see the film in this cinema: during the demo we see the Ritzy strikers calling for boycott of the Picturehouse group cinemas until they're all paid the living wage. It was one of the few moments in the film that triggered some cheering in the audience.

It takes a while to dawn on Nina that she is part of the gentrification, even though her friends keep telling her, and interviewees make it clear. It's as clear as day to the audience, because the dear girl is wearing a totally different designer outfit in every take, and speaks the lingo of the casually moneyed hipsterish young.

She befriends a young black guy who is meant to be part of the community but he's also an "artist" and the art and music he makes is a truly terrible. The villain of the piece is a young and very successful white actor who falls for the girl and has bought a flat in formerly-squatted Rushcroft Road - you know the buildings - as a "good investment". He's a villain, sure, but he's also, as we learn later on,  a working class lad from Bermondsey made good, whose own family have been driven away from their old neighbourhood. One of the admirable things about this film is that it shows just how complicated this gentrifcation busines is.

In the course of making her art, Nina interviews a few people, and these are the highlights of the film; the bloke from Peckham is especially entertaining. The black members of a local community group are suspicious of her motives and one of their members cruelly tells her that her project "doesn't mean shit".

By the end of the film you can't help but agree with him. It was really much more about Nina's internal struggles with depression (rather clumsily revealed by the discovery of a strip of anti-depressants) and her romantic life.  Maybe it was me, but  the scene where she makes the white boy actor dance with her was very odd: were we supposed to be entertained or what?

The other main character in the film is Big Ben, a mysterious, homeless black busker and ranter who acts as a sort of conscience of the movie. She films him a lot, and perhaps he should be the real subject of her movie. But as soon as she realises this he dies. There's a nice scene where she dreams he's in her flat and sitting on her bed, and then he disappears in a ball of blinding light.

 So, perhaps that's it: the revelation that the true soul of Brixton has already departed.

The interviews with anti-gentrification people from New York and Berlin popped into the film were intriguing; it's only when you go to the community bit of this film's website you realise these videos are part of a bigger project to collect voices from threatened communities around the world.

In other words, the director of A Moving Image, Shola Amoo, is trying to do exactly what Nina is doing: he is Nina, and suddenly it all sort of makes sense.

All in all, a film's a curate's egg; it's intriguing and ambitious, but also annoying, and it seems that some opportunities are wasted. But, if you've never visited Brixton you at least get some moody rooftop views; but not enough, even of this, for my liking.

Still, you have to commend the director for attempting such a complex project, and the film has had plenty of good reviews in the media, so please don't take my criticisms too seriously ( I know that won't happen!)

The other film, For What We Are About To Lose, is a very well-crafted example of the traditional documentary style, with many interviews intercut with archive photos and some lovely footage of Brixton in the 50, 60s, 70s and 80s.

It was made by the Clapham Film Unit, and is in two parts. The first 20 minutes covers the history of the Carlton Mansions squat from the 70s to the final evictions of 2014; the second half looks at Somerleyton Road community. Together the short films are a precious record of what was once the true heart of Brixton, that little bit where Coldharbour Lane crosses Railton and Atlantic Roads, which is now undergoing transformation as part of the Somerleyton Road redevelopment scheme.

You might say that the Carlton Mansions film is only representative of a small fraction of the old Brixton community, the squatters, and that would be true. "Maybe we were all misfits," says one of the  first occupants.  Former squatters are interviewed inside the astonishing and huge buildings where they made their homes and workshops and studios. There were poignant moments, and also painful memories.

One of the original squatters, Dale, reveals how they were actually invited into the building by Lambeth Council, which at the time ran progressive short-life housing schemes, helping people set up housing co-ops and handing out grants to make the places habitable. Dale also worked with Brian Barnes on the famous Nuclear Dawn mural on the huge side wall of the mansions - a mural which is still there but rapidly disappearing under new graffiti.

 Another guy talked about how they had to secure and guard their squat because Brixton was such a "difficult place" in the 80s. It was not only sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There were hard times, hard winters, fights, a suicide, rows. But also a lot of creativity, and we hear from several successful artists and makers who got their first big break in the Mansions.

The Somerleyton Road part of the doc is only 10 minutes or so but an utterly joyous film. Some former residents are brought together in a community centre on Railton Road, and they talk about their lives back in Somerleyton Road back in the 60s and 70s - even before the Barrier Block went up.

There are some wonderful memories of blues parties, some fantastic old footage of Brixton market, and even an impromptu performance of by former members of a lover's rock group, who reminisce about the excitement of seeing Jamaican DJ Peter Metro at a Somerleyton blues before letting on they were part of a group of  five women who took over the stage from him...."we were not deejays but sing-jays, we took a broadway melody and we ride the rhythm...."

One woman at the end sums up the process which is sometimes referred to as social cleansing: "It seems like a plot. They sell your house, move you into a block of flats. Why are we knocking wonderful buildings down to build atrocious things like that?  To me it was like a con. That was the beginning of the change."

You must watch these films! Catch them on the Clapham Film unit website now; there's also a very good, well illustrated free booklet about the films; copies were available in Brixton library, last time I was there.

Something strange is happening on the Wandsworth Road

Trying but failing to hide itself behind the quirky 1900s facade, the boxy bulk of a new Premier Inn looms over the southern end of fast-changing Wandsworth Road.

Do you remember that scene in the original Alien when the vile creature burst out of John Hurt's chest? Pretty damned unpleasant. Now something very similar has happened at the Battersea end of the Wandsworth Road, where a strange old 1909 building seems to have been harbouring the sperm of a terrible 21st century parasite - and now it has erupted all over the skyline!

A couple of years ago I wrote about the beginning of the demolition of the old Rileys Snooker Hall, which was one of the strangest and most abused buildings down this (Queenstown Road) end of my local arterial route. A little research revealed that this was a historically significant building, completed in 1909  - one of 17 Temperance Billiard Halls built in South London  in the 1900-1910 period, all designed by the architect Norman Evans.

The idea, which began in the teetotal heartlands of England's non-conformist north-west, was to create big, attractive social centres that could lure working men away from the pubs and bars and gin palaces. Inside they got most of the entertainments of a pub, but without the alcohol. Ironic, looking at the building's subsequent history, but still.

Eventually they destroyed the entire, massive complex of old billiard halls, meeting rooms, a lounge bar and a later attachment of a pub/nightclub (anyone remember Inigo's? Often had some of the biggest bouncers I've ever seen, hanging around outside).

Over the course of the year, they destroyed the whole place - except for Norman Evans' distinctive ornate, mock-oriental facade, which was (as is the current way) kept up on a matrix of props and jacks and scaffolds. Then the building work began in earnest; the whole place was shrouded in green plastic netting, there was even more congestion at the always bad Queenstown Road junction, and a crane was erected.

It was widely rumoured that the budget hotel chain Premier Inn was building its latest branch right here on Wandsworth Road, but it seemed hard to believe. Why here? What's there to tempt tourists or even businessmen to this strange, forgotten bit of South west London that doesn't even know if it's Clapham, or Battersea, Nine Elms or what. It more or less straddles the border of the boroughs of Lambeth and Wandsworth, and is a good 15 minute walk to the nearest underground station (Clapham Common, or 10 minutes to an overground rail station (Wandsworth Road).

So we sort of forgot about it. Then one day  back in December, you look up and see this great bulky six-storey building looming over the old Temperance hall frontage, now tarted up of course. There are big hoardings up at street level still, but they are painted in those distinctive Premier Inn colours.

And, after Christmas, the final wrappers come off, and out pops - not a nasty, sharp-fanged space monster, but  a brand new Premier Inn. As you can see in the pic above, the clash of styles between the flamboyant, almost Disneyland look of the old Temperance Hall and the boxy industrial estate chic of the human storage facility behind it could not be greater.

And, on the Premier Inn website, you'll find an entry for their new hotel "opening soon" in Clapham: a "leafy green oasis in the heart of lively South London".

You can find out exactly how this bulky addition to poor old Wandsworth Road got planning permission here on the London Borough of Lambeth planning site. It's a long and interesting document; some of the objections to this plan are swiftly dismissed. Now we see the reality, we must wonder if our planners had a very clear view of what was being proposed.

Then again, compared with the glass, steel, concrete, gold, marble and bronze nightmare that is being acted out down the road at Nine Elms, you have to admit this is very small beer. It could have been so much worse.

You still have to wonder who will stay there.  I can't imagine the Clapham High Street weekend ravers will find it much use - a long stagger across the common in that state? Besides, they now have a night tube to get them back home.

Meanwhile, now that it has gone, more or less, it's great to read a good architectural history, and Historic England's account of the Temperance Hall movement is an excellent record.

It includes some great observations, eg: "The buildings often used the same decorative materials that pubs used, such as tiled facades and stained glass windows, to create the congenial atmosphere of a public house without the pitfalls of available alcohol. 

"The Temperance Billiard Company Ltd targeted the suburbs of south London, where many new pubs had been built in the late C19, as well as in the north-west of England where the firm originated. Thus, temperance billiard halls by the company are a distinctively south London and north-west England building type, although there are other temperance buildings elsewhere."

There are in fact several other Temperance Halls in this area - one on Battersea Rise, a smaller version of the same building, is now a pub (the Goat). And at Clapham High Street, there's a different, later design, but with the same distinctive tiles and turrets, now the offices of an architect.

Perhaps the best example is in Lewisham, and this building is covered in great detail here.

Meanwhile, poor old Wandsworth Road continues to carry its bus, car  and lorry loads into and out of the city centre, while the residents of the three big and many smaller council estates along its route continue to attempt to make ends meet in the shops, pubs, cafes, bookies, parks, gyms, colleges and charity shops of that long central swathe of the road that is still pretty much unchanged.

This road has long had a truly shabby charm all of its own. Over the past three decades, as surrounding areas gentirifed, it remained a bastion of the old, scruffy south London, with car breakers' yards, junk shops, scary boozers,

Now, at the Northern end it has been totally transformed by the Nine Elms development. Sainsburys, Tesco and now Premier Inn at the other end signal the beginnings of an inevitable change, which will surely accelerate as money from the Nine Elms development washes up this way.

Yes, look out, it's coming. They are nibbling away at both ends: watch out!

Bottom gear, Ep.2: How come these bloated SUVs don't get parking tickets?

Face to face: a 20th century car meets an enormous and very shiny van, also known as an SUV, in a street in Brixton. Note
how about a foot of the Audi oozes over the white lines of the parking bay. How come this is allowed?

Years ago I was mortified to find a yellow envelope stuck on the windscreen of my decrepit Renault, which I had left, a week earlier, in a residents' parking bay near my flat, one I paid £140 a year to use.

It turned out that the back wheels were more outside the white line than in it, an inexcusable bit of  sloppy parking. I paid up, and tried to forget it. But these days it seems cars can park with much more of their body mass outside the lines, with impunity.

If you drive or cycle, walk, run or even skate around London's inner suburban streets you'll have noticed that the bit between the parked cars on each side is getting narrower and narrower, as the cars themselves get wider.

It becomes a dreadful farce trying to drive or cycle down these streets. Lots of flashing of headlamps, a quick dash to the next space, letting or not letting the other driver through, wondering if that white van is really going to keep coming on at that speed. And whether there's a space enough for your narrow handlebars between the wing-mirrors of the SUVs and the sharp front end of the fast-approaching Porsche 911.

What I am really moaning about today, in this second episode of a long-term, lonely, hypocritical and very personal war against cars (see Episode 1 about hooters here), is the width of some of the things that are now sold as private conveyances, rather than HGVs.

If you are stupid enough (as I am) to live in a wealthy zone 2 suburb you will know that the majority of vehicles parked outside those humble £2.5million workers' cottages are whacking great wagons. They're called SUVs, and they are made by many different firms, but under their flashy skins they are all much the same.  The angry, aggressive styling which their buyers seem to crave often makes them look even bigger than they are: some resemble children's inflatable toys that have been pumped up to the point where they are in danger of bursting. Many look to be (perhaps reflecting their owners) morbidly obese.

These vehicles are indeed big -  most of them are over 2 metres wide - that is, nearly 25 per cent wider than a 1970s Renault 5.  That's 20cm wider than the national minimum width for parking bays. Why, you might ask, didn't the manufacturers check this out before selling these monsters in the UK? Surely it's easier and cheaper to slightly re-design a vehicle than to widen all of the nation's streets. You get the feeling such vehicles are designed for the US market where there are wider roads, wider bottoms and fewer pedestrians. Or for the Gulf States, where there are lots of sand dunes. Or of course for Clarksonshire or whatever they call the Cotswolds these days, where most of these elephantine carriages will be parked on a private crunchy gravel drive.

No-one would mind much if they were genuine utility vehicles, like ambulances or delivery vans. No, they are "sports" utility vehicles. It's the sporty bit that rankles, along with their flashy styling and often thuggish aspect. Plus the sad fact that their owners usually have nothing more than a few bags of Waitrose shopping in there. And they seem to think it's OK to just stop outside their houses, and not to attempt parking manoeuvres of any sort.

Disagree? Just look at some of these monsters:

One of the worst offenders. This BMW XL5 (named after one of the Thunderbirds) is about two feet over the line. It
was there in a Clapham street for days and didn't get a ticket!

Another BMW in another Clapham street. This is parked as well as it possibly can be and yet it is still over the white
line. Why doesn't the council charge extra for parking these behemoths?

Sometimes it's not just the width of the SUV, but the fact their sheer size makes them difficult to park accurately up against
the kerb. Or maybe the drivers are just as arrogant as their cars look.

Yes, the original SUV - Range Rover was the first, and is still the worst of this baleful species of suburban battle-wagons.

Fast and bulbous? Typical that Porsche should get onto this fat band-wagon, as though their sports cars were not annoying enough.

What is it about these vehicles, why are they so popular, and why do the authorities let them get away with it?

The huge popularity must come down to a few basic human weaknesses:

A) As humans get richer they eat more and get fatter, and so have wider bottoms. So they need wider seats to accommodate these bottoms.

B) As humans get richer, they also feel more threatened, so they need things that look like military APCs to protect themselves and their families. Hence the popularity of these tank-like vehicles.

C) As more humans get richer, fatter and more aggressive they need to express these qualities in ways that differentiate them from their rich, fat, angry, aggressive neighbours. So they compete to get the biggest, widest, loudest, angriest, most fuck-you car.

That's all obvious - but why doesn't our lovely council do something to rein in these very basic human failings?

The police stop people doing lots of things in public. Sadly there's not as yet a law to prevent these very rich people, albeit living in the what used to be the modest homes of 19th century clerical and working classes, from splurging their wealth in the faces and eyes and ears of the few remaining members of that older layer of resident.

Even when they're young and single and without wide-bottomed offspring in super-wide pavement-clogging buggies, these rich ones often acquire big fat sports cars which are just as wide and difficult to park in south London parking bays as SUVs.

God, we have no hope.

Parking bays are supposed to be at least 180cm wide from kerb to white line. But to my horror I hear that some councils are thinking of widening bays  just because the car industry has decided it can make more money by selling over-wide vehicles.

Just read this crazy article in AutoExpress. Oh so it's safety features that account for this shoulder-padded look is it? Safety for whom? Not for me as I try to squeeze my bike past your paddy-wagon with another one approaching fast with its quartz-halogen mainbeams and LED fairy-lights blazing and its super-loud horn inverting eardrums of all in the block.

And yet National Car Parks says it is willingly widening bays to help the drivers of these vehicles. At least half the people interviewed in this BBC news item seem to think that's a good thing - all the while people are complaining that our roads are too crowded.

A final straw? Yes. Now I understand those kids who go up and down the zone 2 streets with a sharp key in their hand.

'Tis the season to download some fine podcasts

The battered, dust-filled shoebox with the motley collection of Christmas decorations is once again dragged out of its hideaway above the hot water tank.

The remnants of five decades worth of tarnished tinsel, plastic baubles, one surviving glass bauble, papier maché angels, lights that no longer work. Add to this a 2009 Waitrose Xmas pudding with real cognac, a gift that has yet to be opened, and probably won't be - and you're ready to face the season.

For a decade or two my personal Advent treat was listening to John Peel's Festive 50 countdown. Then Peel died, the 50 was no more, and there was a big gap in that strange collection of repeated experiences that - for me - made Christmas Christmas.

But now that gap has been filled. Yep, I've acquired a new listening habit, the depleted stable of Christmas/New Year traditions has a new, very 21st century member. It's an Advent Calendar, but not the type that offers stale sickly chocolate behind cardboard shutters. It's Daniel Ruiz Tizon's Advent Calendar, a sequence of 24 daily podcasts recalling his past Christmases, and always asking the question: will it ever be possible to love Christmas again as much as we did in those distant times?

These bundles of memories, deeply autobiographical and rooted in a certain area of south London, but also deeply resonant for anyone who has grown up in the UK over the past few decades. Each 12 minute episode arrives like a little gift-wrapped memory bomb. I'm a lot older than Daniel but the references to life in the 80s and 90s are as powerful as any Proustian madeleine.

"When you live in Lambeth, you learn not to pick up the snow". Well, that was true in almost any urban area where dogs roamed the parks and pavements.

If you like your wine extra dry, your lemon very bitter, and your oil extra-virgin, this is the advent calendar for you. Catch it today: we're not even half way there yet. Listen, and like me get hooked. But don't cheat - one day at a time please. As with the chocolate variety, there was always one lirttle piggy who scoffed the whole lot on December 1, and suffered as a result.

Literature has Dickens' A Christmas Carol; TV has  The Snowman. Now podcasting has its own Christmas classic. Listen!

The stupidity of the EU vote: problem one, how to control the rage?

Been feeling physically sick since about 2.30am today when it became clear the "leave" people were going to win.

The feeling, at 7am, that if I didn't look at the internet or turn on the radio, it might not actually have happened.

The feeling, during the day, cycling around south London, that every sighting of a Union Jack or St George's flag triggered an immediate desire to deface it with red or brown paint. You know, a bit of reciprocal vandalism, a sort of childish urge to hit back at the types who have shat all over our (and our children's) futures.

Sadly, many such flags, sodden with the earlier rain, are flapping around in this very street.

A sort of provocation, a squad of dangling insults, these flags were strung out two weeks ago for some snooty street party, ostensibly to celebrate the queen's birthday, actually to celebrate just how frightfully rich most of the residents here are.

And they left the flags up. Last week they seemed merely pathetic, today they seem insulting, in a borough that voted 80 per cent to stay in the EU, that voted overwhelmingly to support and extend the supra-national European project.

So the sodden flags dangle and flap. At least many of them are pink versions of the flag, LGBT jacks perhaps, nice thought, maybe that's OK. The tolerant UK flag. But maybe not....check out the fake blue plaques on a wall at the southern end of this street, celebrating two earlier street parties to celebrate two other events in the life of the dreary Windsor family.

Please, take down these flags!

It's a time to grieve and mourn the destruction of 40 years of efforts to bring people together, to soften borders, to encourage mobility, to increase understanding.

Nine Elms disease: so not even the super-rich want this two-mile strip of ugliness

Battersea-Nine Elms development: Spot the remains of Battersea Power Station amidst this swamp of architectural mediocrity

Fascinating to read in yesterday's Evening Standard that the boss of builders Taylor Wimpey, Peter Redfern, is warning developers not to expect vast profits from speculative investments in the new Battersea - Nine Elms development.

By which he means that ribbon of hideously bland luxury apartment blocks going up between Battersea Park and Vauxhall Cross - a great flood of mediocre architecture which had already swamped the remains of Battersea Power Station and is blighting the view for about 80 per cent of people living in south west London.

The development, which has made life hell for anyone living within vibration distance of the main artery roads used by the ready-mix cement tricks which have been thundering around this circuit, one a minute, all day long, for the past five years or so….well, it seems it has all been a bit of a waste of time.

Property developers, it seems are no longer confident of making sky-high profits on these luxury units of accommodation. The currency of the Thameside apartment block has slumped. They'll still make money, but not enough, it seems, to satisfy their infernal greed. They'll go elsewhere.

From the way he was talking, with his mentions of a "glut of expensive flats in south London",  it seems this two-mile stretch will become London's next ghost town slum, a sort of Thamesmead for south west London.

Actually, that would be fine. Then at least those blocks could be commandeered by Lambeth or the next mayor to provide shelter for the increasing numbers of homeless people we see all around us every day….or they could be squatted. The power station could be returned to its proper use as a location for raves and parties and art happenings.

All the artists and dreamers priced out of Shoreditch and Hackney and Bow and Peckham could come and squat in the penthouses with Thames views. Tens of thousands of refugees from the camps of Calais could be housed here; give them Eurostar tickets now. Together, they could all throw parties in that 8th floor infinity pool they are so keen to show us. Then this new development might have some value: it might become a new tourist attraction, knocking Camden Market, Brick Lane and co into a cockenry hat.

There could be non-stop car-boot sales all along this linear park they are boasting about. The new  Northern Line extension would never be switched on, and those tunnels could be used to grow top quality weed and other vegetable delights.

 What a glorious thought. A dream. It would almost make the loss of the view of London worthwhile.

Microgroove33 and a third quiz fun time: 

Mark the spot on this photo where you once would have seen the dome of St Paul's Cathedral. Answers on a postcard, please. The person who is closest will win our splendid first prize!

First prize: one year's free subscription to this blog.
Runners-up: lifetime free subscriptions to this blog for yourself and all your friends and family.
Terms & conditions apply*

* Terms & conditions: there are no prizes at all, obviously. But the question is real so if you want to do it just for the joy, then please ….

If Spain can afford beautiful public libraries like this one….why can't Lambeth?

This is the children's library - about one eighth

of the total floorspace of the splendid

Biblioteca di Gandia

Gandia, at the southern end of the Spanish province of 
Valencia, is not only the home of the infamous Borja 
family of popes and one saint, it is also where you find 
the best paella in Spain…and one of the best public 
libraries it has ever been my privilege to visit.

Apologies for long silence on this here blog thing. Have been holed up in a quiet and lovely Spanish city, an hour's train ride from the big bad port city of Valencia.

The small city in question is Gandía, and despite being the birthplace of the Borgias (or Borjas, as I have now learned to called them, yes they of the lurid 2011 TV drama starring Jeremy Irons etc), it's an immensely civilised place - at least in the winter, before the tourist hordes arrive.

I'm here to teach English, on a brief training placement paid for by that magnificent institution, the European Union, via an even more admirable, erudite and loveable body known as Erasmus. It's not a holiday: I teach 21 hours a week, in a Catholic secondary school, with classes of up to 40 13 to 18-year old kids. They're very noisy, sometimes a bit cheeky, but essentially they are delightful. It's absolutely worth the sweat we all put into it, on average two hours' prep per one hour teaching.

There's a very welcome lack of that oh yeah teenage "attitude" that I've seen so much of in the UK. Most of these kids are more interested in learning English than in seeming cool. But then to them English (or at least American) is cool, so we have an advantage.

Beautiful, spacious, cool, clean and stuffed with books and
resources and lots of helpful staff. A public library,  Spanish style,
helping to equip its citizens for a tough century ahead.

So, it's not exactly the EU gravy train I'd imagined. The work is exhausting, the accommodation is paid for but basic. I am unpaid but have a subsistence allowance, which covers most of the food and drink and travel.  Food and drink from the local Mas Y Mas supermarket is excellent and excellent value, compared with Tesco - or even Brixton market.

And you can get a good coffee or beer or glass of wine plus a massive tortilla sandwich in any bar, spend an hour using their wi-fi,  and come away with plenty of change form a five euro note.  Plus a smile and as much conversation as you can manage.

If you're lucky, like I was, you might fall into conversation with a photographer who retired here after half a century of astonishing, world changing photojournalism. This guy was German: he fell in love with this area thirty years ago, after a career working in South Africa, photographing Mandela and the ANC.

He also enjoys the café culture, where the unemployed, the migrant, the teachers, the bankers, the ex-pats, the students, aspiring writers, artists,  and the wealthy all meet to drink and talk in the same place.  The local cafe. Good coffee and good food: a simple human right. No-one here would dream of paying more than a euro (75p) for an espresso. They'd laugh at Costa Coffee. A simple human right.

Like a good library.

Where can you do that in so-called sophisticated, metropolitan, multi-cultural London? Here, they split off into cliques and clubs and age-groups. Horrible. So, where in London is my ideal Spanish café?

Tell me, tell, please tell me. And this is provincial Spain.

The apartment looks like it was abandoned in 1971, and even then it was badly in need of new plumbing. There's no internet, a big problem for someone used to doing all my lesson planning online.

So every night, I go out in search of wi-fi, and have visited many interesting and a fair few rowdy bars in this quest. Which brings me to the main point of this entry.

Complaining about this lack of connectivity in the absurdly small staffroom (there'd be a teacher riot if this was in a British school), my charming, always helpful mentor suggest I might try the local Biblioteca.

It's three minutes walk from the school, housed in a beautiful medieval building in a sun-drenched square complete with impossibly tall palm trees. I walk up to the door; it slides open. To the left is a relaxation area, about the size of the main room at Tate South Lambeth; there are comfortable chairs, tables with computers, racks of magazines and newspapers. To the right through another sliding door is the library proper. I pass the desk. Two staff are there to answer all queries. There's a big children's library, and beyond that a courtyard with orange trees, and a small cloister with  and a pemrnanet display of local historical photographs. I begin to learn a bit about Gandia's important role in the SPanish Civil War (this whole region was one of the most strongly anti-Fascist areas , and it was singled out by Franco for some particularly vile treatment.

I wander into the cafe for a cortado and a boccadillo, fresh chewy bread filled with newly-made, warm tortilla. Well stuffed, I go back to the main desk to ask about wi-fi. There's a sign there giving the pass word, and one of the staff points me upstairs. On the first floor is the main adult lending library (again with a floor area about the size of most of Lambeth's branch libraries), as well as a study area
(five groups of four-seater classroom style tables); a computer room (PCs at individual desks lining three walls) and a big music and DVD collection.

On this floor there's also a lecture room.

But there's another floor above housing specialist academic collections, as well as a big collection in the local dialect (Valenciano) and other languages, again with plenty of study space in three rooms.

Above that there's the city archive.

On each floor there are four or five staff at work, working toilets and bathrooms, power points for charging your laptop, stationery to borrow. It's a dream of an ideal public library and it is always busy, but never uncomfortably packed, even though I arrive towards the end of the year's main exam season. Oh yes, because of these exams the library is open up to midnight on weekdays.

As a whole this library brings together aspects of our very own Minet, Carnegie and Tate South Lambeth Libraries in a building that's bigger than the Brixton central library, more spacious, better equipped and better staffed. I'm not sure if the staff here are as knowledgable and friendly as you lot in Lambeth…in fact I doubt if they could be. But they have secure jobs….

Anyway, this place becomes my spiritual home, and I can't help thinking….Gandia is a small city, 80,000 population, and this is not its only library. Most of Spain has been hit far harder by the 2008 economic crash than the UK. I'm not an economist but I see that Spain's GDP per capita is about 29,000 pounds per annum compared with the UK's 44,000 pounds…

…But then we need all that extra cash to buy our ludicrously overpriced apartments, oh and for all the advanced features of our society that, as well know, don't really do much to add to the sum total of human happiness.

So for as long as I can I will enjoy the marble-floored, light, cool spaces of this library. I know that until recently I would have told a SPanish teacher that at least in Lambeth you will find some good local libraries, where you can work, relax, study, meet people. Now, of course, I know that this will not be true for large areas of that borough very soon…unless.

Will be back I hope in time for the next big march. Thanks and love to everyone working so hard to Save Lambeth's wonderful libraries!