A new demographic marker - when Lime bikes descend like swarms of locusts

 Lime bikes are getting people's backs up in all parts of town, mainly for being thoughtlessly dumped on narrow pavements, blocking entrances, 

Here we're generally pro-bike, so it seems a shame to come down on these rental contraptions. But, apart from being a blot on the landscape (a grim achievement, given the beauty of a simple bicycle) and sometimes being ridden by dangerously careless or clueless individuals, these bikes are also a particular menace for other cyclists all over town.

For example, the racks for normal cycles outside most tube and rail stations in the most yuppified parts of London. (Sticking with the word yuppy for its perfect associations with young "professional" incomers to London, with plenty of money but little interest in the communities they barge into. The current use of Gen Z or X or Millennials seems ageist, too vague and too generalised).

You couldn't get more neo-yuppy than Clapham South, and that's where, at certain times, you'll see huge clusters of rental bikes around the station entrance. Trouble is those bikes are very heavy and very difficult to lug around, especially as they're locked/immobilised until you rent one. So you have to hunt for accessible bike parking.

Ironic to see full racks of Santander bikes about 30 yards down the road. 

I've never seen such a profusion of green, black and white plastic in other parts of town, but all around here they appear suddenly at some puzzling location, maybe near a new shop or café, where they're dumped and I suppose forgotten until the Lime collector does its rounds, if there is such a thing?

I've never tried one of these, mainly because they require use of a smartphone (I think).  I've tried Boris bikes and their equivalents in other European cities, and was generally impressed with their robustness and simplicity. But these were not electric-assisted and thus lighter (but still heavy by my standards).

As for Lime and their rivals, well it seems their time could be up. They are so dangerous for so many reasons. Brent Council is likely to be first to ban them unless they promise to provide designated parking places. But that would be very expensive to provide and also reduce their attractiveness to lazier commuters.

Only recently realised that the people taking phone snaps of these bikes are probably not bike-spotters but are taking them as evidence of where they dropped the thing. Oh, how very 2024, yee-euch.

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....

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. 

Leaf-blowers: one more reason why it's a bad idea to live in a wealthy area (especially if you're not wealthy yourself)

It's 9.30 on a Monday morning and all hell is breaking loose in one of the wealthiest corners of south west London.

Those people still "working from home" will be bashing their heads against their laptop screens. Even long-term freelancers, who should have become inured to the many minor disturbances, find this particular noise difficult to stomach. 

If this post is more disjointed than usual, it's because I'm being driven mad by intermittent assaults on my eardrums.

Every week, at about the same time, a pair of men working for a contractor spend 15 minutes or so blasting air onto the expensive paving stones outside a luxury "townhouse" development behind the block of flats I live in. 

There were a few leaves on the ground, six or maybe even seven, and they're chasing them, trying to corral them into a corner. Clouds of dust and grit are raised. 

One of them wears ear-mufflers - just as well because the noise this petrol-powered blower makes is awful, echoing around the brick-clad walls of this hidden enclave of luxury homes. It sounds like one of those unsilenced mopeds beloved of trainee bikers. But this one's going nowhere, except to the next gated development which has a contract with the same property management company. And all the noise and stink of two revving two-stroke engines remains within the high-walled confines of this generally quiet zone. 

For the rest of the morning we can hear their labours in the surrounding streets, as they move around the various gated "communities".

It's a sad refection on how easy it is for a privileged layabout like this writer to find an endless stream of things to complain about. Even in the depths of the worst global pandemic in 100 years, you find solace in moaning about trivial nuisances. But then it's the silly little things like this that finally break us.

The leafblower guy is cleaning the carefully calculated space outside these new houses, which used to be a wonderfully overgrown garden. The space is just big enough to allow a full-fat Range Rover execute a three point turn; assuming the person driving knows what they are doing. Sometimes they don't. So, more dreadful racket as the drivers mess up their turns.

But the leaf-blower men worry me most. At this time of year it's an unnecessary job, and it shatters everyone else's peace, as well as polluting the air.  If it had been necessary, say in October when there are plenty of leaves to shift, what's wrong with a broom? Can that be more tiring than having a howling motorbike engine strapped to your back?

But now come pangs of guilt, because, however much that noise and the stink of two-stroke exhaust gas annoys me, at least the man has a job, and is paid something for doing this. Compared to him or many of the other thousands of people working around here to keep things moving, I am wealthy, thanks chiefly to having moved in here five decades ago.

Whether the wealth-gap between me and the leafblower is bigger than the one between me and the owners of those houses, or the even more expensive houses along this street (£4 -5million, at a pinch) is open to debate. Whatever the answer, the property machine has to keep on polishing its many assets, and it does so around here with alarming amounts of energy.

Yes, lockdown or no lockdown, let us keep the economy moving on, like those leaves, whatever the costs.

To get away from the racket I move to the front of the flat. There's some really loud effing and blinding coming from the pimped-up house across the road. Since December they've had endless streams of builders coming in to do something to what used to be a perfectly pleasant front garden. We wondered - are they going for a new bigger, deeper basement? For weeks it seemed like it, as a temporary roof was erected.

As lockdown came into force, the inhabitants and their many showy automobiles, large and small but all very noisy - decamped, thank god, perhaps to some other home.

In their place came new teams of builders and scaffolders and decorators. The work has been constant now. Occasionally some sort of boss turns up in a big black shiny pick-up truck and shouts at everyone at the top of his voice.

A terrible silence reigns. He drives off in a huff. The next day different teams of builders and decorators turn up.

More recently, one of the occupants of the house, presumably the owner, returns in his monster two-seater sports car, which is parked on that now horribly bleak, entirely paved area. No doubt there will soon be a weekly visit from the blower-man, lest any fugitive leaves from next door's verdant front garden should dare to encroach upon this immaculate parking lot.

 (nb: owning noisy cars seems to be another trait of the super rich. They pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for "supercars" with huge engines tuned to make that fuck-you roar when they hit the gas. Which is often at 6.45am when they rush off to their personal parking spaces somewhere in the City or Canary Wharf).

A few days later, an enormous removals truck pulls up, double parked. Two men in red company t-shirts jump out and are almost immediately on their phones, as there's no-one there to let them in. They sit around for hours, their truck half-blocking the street.

Only very wealthy people can afford to hire so many workers, and not even to be there when they arrive, presumably paying them for those wasted hours.

Truck jams are an increasingly common sight in the
wealthy residential streets of SW4,
even during lockdown.

Similar scenes are being played out at other houses up and down this street at any given time, and throughout most of the "lockdown" period. Every day massive trucks arrive with building materials or huge skips to remove debris. 

Sometimes they meet head-on and a sort of macho trucker showdown ensues.  And all for what? Houses that were fully refurbished three or four years ago are undergoing another total gutting, to suit the whims of their latest owners.

But at least these guys have jobs.

I've had several decades of being the strange old recluse on the top floor. I could name hundreds more annoying things my wealthier neighbours do. But you would almost certainly dismiss them as the ravings of a deranged and bitter old fool. And you would be right!

Nine Elms: Top marks for consistency in creating dismal-looking buildings

Funny how friendly and civilised the Vauxhall Bus Station now feels when compared with the murderous multi-lane
racetrack adjoining it, and the encroaching hell of the Nine Elms development. Here comes the next monster tower - the
DAMAC building.

You have to hand it to the Nine Elms developers: they are remarkably consistent.

In a decade of building on this previously neglected strip of inner-London riverbank, they have yet to erect a building which passers by might stop to look at and say, "Oh yes, that's not so bad".

The least-worst building in the whole Battersea
-Nine Elms-Vauxhall development? It's 30-plus
storeys of student accommodation.

Ok, hang on. Once, last year, from the top deck of an 87 bus heading north on Wandsworth Road, I caught a glimpse of that red-brick-look tower just behind the cylindrical block opposite Sainsbury's (the cylinder, it turns out, is called Sky Gardens).

For a few seconds, I really did think, "oh, that's quite pleasing".

I was looking at the narrow end of a 35-floor tower which, from that angle, seemed to mimic the shape of New York's  Flatiron building.

As the bus moved on the full blandness of this structure, a big nest of student accommodation, became apparent.  That said, it is one of the least worst structures thrown up on this tormented landscape so far. The  proportions are fair enough. It's not embarrassingly quirky like some of the stuff the other side of Wandsworth Road.

And it's not as lumpishly ugly as its new monster neighbour, the 50-storey "DAMAC Tower" , (aka the Aykon Building) now nearing completion. This tower boasts "Versace Home designed interiors" (presumably not,  however, in the 90 "affordable" homes promised in the 450-flat project).

An "interesting" combination of boxes aka the DAMAC
tower, furnished by Versace Home. A 1-bed appt yours
for around £980k

Can't help wondering what Gianni would have made of this unlovely construction. He famously rejected the idea of "good taste", so that wouldn't be the problem. But it's an awkward thing - not at all elegant, nor even very shiny – as it looms over the doomed Vauxhall bus station. There's some cladding which, in good light, evokes the colour of the Poundland store front.

Overall, it looks as if five or six mediocre office blocks had been swept up and squeezed together to create a rather lumpy, vaguely h-shaped totem pole, around which to worship greed.

All that can be said is that it's not as outright offensive as the One St George's Wharf tower - Le Plongeur, someone tried to nickname it, the helicopter-slayer, as I think of it - but it does make a reasonable try.

These buildings now dominate the view from my toilet window.

Very soon two even bigger buildings, already rising out of the mud,  will block this view of at least the rude up-yours finger of One St Georges Wharf. Work has re-started on the biggest tower of the whole development.  The architect's impressions show bog-standard luxury apartment stacks; but maybe they will help to pull this disparate group of sprouting steel and glass into some sort of cluster.

 You see, I like tall buildings, if they're well designed. They can be elegant, like the Shard. Or exciting, like those ultra-thin (size zero) blocks shooting upwards of 1200 feet in New York.

Even here - on the other side of London - there's a tiny sense of that thrill available from the first sighting of good high-rise buildings. I remember it in Hong Kong and Manhattan - now there's a hint of it in Docklands, if you choose the right vantage point.

The lumpy old Canary Wharf towers are surrounded, engulfed by lots of strange, shiny newcomers, many almost as tall; One Canada Square itself is losing its domination of the East London skyline. The view from across the river near Surrey Quays is as close as you can get to a New York-style cluster. Go there on a quiet, clear day at sunrise or sunset to see what I mean, when those two new tall buildings closest to the river are reflected on the water in afternoon sunshine.

Back at Vauxhall, it's not a cluster, just a scattering of nasty tall buildings.

Meanwhile, the only buildings that looked good on paper are going up around the disastrous remains of anyone's view of Battersea Power Station.

There's a large chunk of Frank Gehry studio blocks going up now, with the characteristic twisted, slightly wonky look, now a cliché, it has to be said.

How strange to think that, in 60 years time, people living in, growing up in these buildings will be enjoying or loathing their lives in SW8, just as much as we all have, hardly giving a thought to how their dwellings changed the landscape.

Guerilla advertising brings London's SUV drivers down to size

Well it's an old joke and maybe a bit childish, but after multiple bad experiences with the drivers of these fearsome things in London I couldn't help but smile at this poster featured on the Londonist website.

A Birmingham-based artist known on instagram as fokawolf has been busy in London over the past week or two, with lots of subversive posters pasted up in the busiest localities - including this beauty to be found in the Brick Lane area. Apparently that's a genuine phone number and the artist has already had some interesting answerphone enquiries about this NHS offer.

Of course when it comes to  SUVs and luxury 4x4s I have plenty of previous. I'm a cyclist, yes, but also a pedestrian and a car driver. I've found these bloated vehicles to be not only the most aggressive and arrogant of road users but also plain nuisances, they way they block pavements and narrow back streets with their morbidly obese bodywork. But be patient, read on.

fokawolf's other London-themed efforts include a satirical take on the moped-mugger phenomenon, a worthy poke at the heat suffered by passengers on the Central Line, and an even better poke at the inexplicably popular London Eye ("only £74 per rotation").

It's worth checking out their instagram feed for loads of other timely takes on what passes for life in 2018 UK.

Caught short in the city of steel bladders

It is always wonderful to find a public loo that's
well maintained and free. Thanks and praise be to
Westminster City Council for keeping this one at
the north end of Queensway open.

You only get to know the true meaning of "desperate" when you're an old bloke with limited cash and a weak bladder looking for somewhere to relieve yourself in London.

It happens so often that you begin almost unconsciously to limit your excursions and explorations to areas where you know you can get to a toilet easily and quickly.

Last week, doing what used to be a quite frequent stroll around the Dalston and Hoxton area, I quickly realised I no longer knew where to go.

No doubt apps exist which direct you straight to the nearest urinal....but ancient phone can only run a couple of apps at any given moment.

You could ask a policeman? Don't think so, especially now so many cops look like intergalactic stormtroopers with their big guns and armour.

So, what happens most often these days, you're forced to go into a pub, see if it's possible to slink into their loos without anyone noticing....and if not, buying a half of something. In my case, embarrassment prohibits the most obvious behaviour - asking the bar staff if they'd mind...in case they did.

So you end up temporarily relieved, but 20 minutes later that half of nasty lager is already tickling the nerve ends of your confused and inefficient bladder.

You could try a café, but be warned quite a few of the big-name chains keep their bogs locked; you have to beg for a key, which in the case of one such bar near St James Piccadilly, was attached to a massive chunk of heavy timber. Honestly, it is outrageous: charge £2.50 for maybe 20p worth of coffee, then don't make allowance for the highly diuretic effects of caffeine.

And whatever happened to those much-heralded scheme to pay private businesses (pubs, cafés etc) to allow the general public to use their loos? If anyone ever actually had satisfaction from one of these schemes, which were in the news about 15 years ago, do let us know.

When all else fails we often end up doing what an increasing number of desperate humans do in this city which no longer recognises any duty of care to the public - we find a dark, quiet (and usually very stinky) corner.

What's going on there? What is it with this crazy city, where even the most basic, pitiable needs of the elderly and weak-bladdered are turned into an opportunity to torment and humiliate, then part them from their cash?

London was one of the first big cities to introduce public toilets back in the mid-19th century, but then as now it was seen by many as an opportunity to turn a profit. Hence the phrase "to spend a penny". Mind you, in those days they did give their clients a superior piddling experience for their pennies.

It was still a penny when I was a kid - one of those big pre-decimal pennies that you dropped through a slot in the lock of the heavy green door to give you access to the WC. Urinals were usually free.

Now you're lucky to get a wee for less than 50p - although the recent brilliant decision to liberate toilets at the railway termini was a massive victory for common sense, health and decency.

Are we at last waking up from a 50 year slumber in which we allowed councils to close dozens of magnificent old loos, with their beautiful tiles and mosaic floors and brass fittings and stained glass?

These underground temples to the gods of excretion were a product of the Victorians' new found understanding of the importance of public hygiene; and also a desire to avoid, at all costs, the horror of men - and yes, women too -  pissing in the street. But, as so often, their efforts went way beyond the purely functional:  many of the public toilets built in the late 19th century were ridiculously ornate, expensively decorated with beautiful tiled floors, solid brass fittings, stained glass light-panes and mature oak seats.

There is a wonderful website - one of the absolute best - called Derelict London.
One of its most fascinating and indeed thrilling sections is devoted to derelict public conveniences.
They are exhaustively catalogued, with hi-res photos showing the extent of the vandalism which has been sanctioned for so long.

Once one of London's most beautiful subterranean loos -
the Chancery Lane conveniences - have fallen into this sorry
state, after being closed down back in the 90s. Good
lord, City of London Corporation, at least give this
rotting corpse a decent burial!

And yet, these places survive. They were built to last and last they did - through two wars and bombing raids - until in the 60s and 70s they were left to rot, and went into a rapid decline.

Councils no longer thought it necessary to employ attendants for every loo; rather than repair damage to the beautiful craftsmanship, the old tiles were often covered with cladding. In some men's loos, sheets of metal were erected between stalls, to discourage cottaging (See Broadwick Street gents, in Soho).

In some but not all cases, the underground loos were they replaced by those ugly and scary dalek-shaped  huts - self-cleaning loos, they were supposed to be. If you had the 20 or 50p required to use them, you then took a gamble on whether the sliding door would work, or decide to slide open mid-performance.

More recently, some of these subterranean caves of delightful convenience have been sold off, privatised to re-open as - believe it - bars and restaurants.

A beautiful, witty, useful and sadly short-lived idea...the
Kennington Cross ArtsLav. Need to check out if this is still
open...

One of the first to do so was outside the Hawksmoor church in Spitalfields. Another was the stinky gents at Clapham Common underground station, now just another eating and drinking place called, amusingly, Joe Public ( so presumably they kept some of the loos working).

Another old convenience had a different fate - the toilets at Kennington Cross in Lambeth famously became the  Artslav exhibition space in 2005. But that seems to have gone now too.

On a recent visit to Portobello Road, it was a really surprising delight to find that the Talbot Road conveniences were once again open and free to use. This is quite a gem in its way, with lovely tiled floors: the real joy (apart from the obvious physical relief) felt on using these loos was that they seemed just the same as they had about 20 years ago: no charge, no annoying notices, no bragging from any council or charity; no welded steel sheets; no turnstiles.

Thank you Portobello Road for giving me this relief,
and the free aesthetic high of once again walking over
that beautiful mosaic tiled floor (Talbot Street Lavs,
 London West 11)

It's obviously a great asset for the the market, which welcomes thousands of tourists from all over every weekend. Open up and liberate all those other locked and chained public loos across the city still in public ownership - can't the Mayor add this to his list of responsibilities? It would surely be a massive vote winner for Sadiq, as well as providing endless opportunities for witty pre-election sloganeering.

Meanwhile, like many thousands of other London street-crawlers, I will continue to rely on building my own mental map of free pee-ing places. They include, of course, public libraries (but even these are not always a good bet in these days of PFI-style operations); museums and art galleries (but it is such a shame that you might be forced to walk into the National Gallery with the sole genuine purpose of needing to take a leak, rather than wanting to check out a Holbein or a Vermeer); and, if you have the nerve and the swagger, any one of London's multitude of posh west-end hotel lobbies.

It is still shocking that some of the loos in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens charge for use; but the ones by the Serpentine Lido do not. Veteran Covent Garden frequenters might remember the wonderful and entertaining free public toilets neside St Paul's Church in the Piazza; memories of cheerful attendants and operatic music as you went about your business. Now, you have to pay - and on weekends, queue and then pay.

So,  praise and cheers for those who - against so much pressure, comparable indeed to bladder pressure at that - are keeping a few really useful public loos open. Huge praise, for example, to the staff at Finchley Road, Highbury and Islington, and New Cross stations - for keeping a free toilets open for all sexes. If these stations can do it - why not all the others?

Anyone who stands to be London mayor in the future must surely be asked to promise that - on their watch - every overground and underground station in the the Greater London area must have working, open, clean toilets for everyone! ENd of manifesto-style moan.....


Postscript: How encouraging, a couple of days after this was written, to open the May 2018 edition of the Brixton Bugle community newspaper and to find half a page devoted to a map of public conveniences in the Brixton area. There are plenty there that are new to me - but it is also accurate , showing for example that (very sadly) you now have to pay 20p to go into the formerly lifesaving Pope's Road toilets. No wonder they're complaining about people pissing in the street in the Electric Avenue area!

Things about 2018 I am already sick of....

2018, like every year since about 1986, is dumping even bigger, even uglier, even more arrogant-looking SUVs on our narrow streets. What is the enduring appeal of these ghastly, gurning thug-mobiles? And why are they nearly all black, with tinted passenger windows?

I confess: all the things about 2018 that are already getting on my wick are exactly the same ones that were doing it back in 2017, and long before that.

Restricting it to the bad things about London life, they are things that became noticeably worse in 2017 and show every sign of continuing in that direction - because nothing really goes in discrete years, does it? Apart from calendars and academics, perhaps.

There are the obvious exceptions: things we did not expect to have to put up with. Like the new £10 notes, which pull off the impressive feat of being both slippery and sticky at the same time.

These apologies for currency are the perfect embodiment of everything that is wrong with the UK - perhaps the whole western world - in 2018. They're meant to represent progress, to be "greener" and cleaner and more efficient. But everybody hates them (and not just the vegans).

I've already lost at least one new tenner, handing over two stuck together. Whether the shopkeeper knew or not I don't know - but all the checkout staff I've talked to say they hate the new notes, for similar reasons.

This nasty plasticky stuff is no longer real f-f-folding money. Try and crunch one up into a little ball and it gradually unfurls itself. Horrible, horrible things, like the nastiest shrink-wrap packaging on the nastiest foodstuffs.

Trouble is I dislike them so much that I have an urge to spend them quickly just to get them out of sight, i.e I am wasting a lot more money. Doing just what the Treasury wants, spending with the new notes. Is this really a government scheme to kill off cash completely?

That was a long digression! And not a London story, but affecting every poor cash-user in this crackpot country. But, as I am no longer a journalist (never really was, in truth), and do not need to care about the attention span of readers, I'm going to write as much as I like about whatever I like.

Roving which range, exactly? All those big black shiny new SUVs with
their dark tinted windows are making suburban streets look like the overflow
 parking lot for a convention of undertakers

Groan: more bloody SUV stuff

All the other complaints are carried over from previous years, previous decades. Have already moaned endlessly about the curse of ever-more-bloated four wheel drive cars cramming the tight suburban backstreets of south London.

I'm going to keep on moanin', lord yes. Much more, louder moaning for 2018.

These fat bastard vehicles are killing us in so many ways. Go down to Northcote Road ("Nappy Valley") on any weekend and watch the latest Mercedes, Audi, Rover, BMW, Volvo and Porsche versions of these hearse-like conveyances lumbering up and down this little road, jousting for access into the small side-streets and limited parking places. If you're not inside one, watch out for your life. The drivers do not always deign to look down their elegant noses at us mortals on the streets beneath them.

There's another, linked phenomenon which is quite hard to understand: the majority of the newest, biggest, shiniest SUVs in the poshest streets around here are jet black. The bigger and newer the SUV, the blacker  and shinier it seems. One street in particular seems to have become a sort Mafia parking lot.

All the SUVs are black, and they all have darkly-tinted windows for the passenger area. Often you see big blokes in black suits, white shirts and black ties polishing these vehicles. Who are the owners, are they so famous and important that they are at risk of car-jacking and abduction? Are they frightened the hoi-polloi will throw rotten eggs at them? If only....

While on the subject of automobiles, there is another annoying and dangerous trend - the fondness manufacturers have for LED lights, mainbeams and sidelights alike. They are so bright as to temporarily blind anyone unfortunate enough to be in their glare. The stupid fairy-light adornments, eyebrow shapes over the headlamps, zig-zags around the rear light...are just vulgar and annoying. Adding to the extreme ugliness of so many of these confections of plastic, steel, glass and rubber.

Also they can be extremely dangerous - as, coincidentally, the RAC yet again pointed out the day this entry was posted.

Anger!

But the next one is linked: the rise of generalised, unfettered, foul-mouthed rage.  Anger, so much anger; impotent rage, cursing, shouting, fists raised and blood-vessels disteneded rage; and then turns to physical violence. Twice in a week I witness this. The bike hits the pedestrian at the Half Moon junction in Herne Hill. Felled cyclist springs up, stares in disbelief at the bits of expensive plastic that have broken off his machine, then takes a groggy swipe at the dusty pedestrian who has only just got on his feet.

And then, at the Brixton Town Hall crossroads, a cyclist stops and raps on the driver's window of an Addison Lee people-carrier. Window winds down, big snarling face stares out, about to mouth obscenities, but the cyclist gets his pre-emptive strike in first - a stream of saliva, spat fast into the driver's cabin.

Cyclist zooms off, Addison Lee in hot pursuit, makes as if to ram bike, then rams on brakes instead. Common sense, perhaps, prevails; the looming court case, the lost job, local news reports ...maybe these flashed through driver's consciousness. Let's just scare the shit out this fucker.

Anger, rage. On trains, buses, in the queues at Sainsburys, at the post office. Parking worst of all.

Worst-case media horror trend of selfish UK public behaviour so far this year - the rude scrawled notes stuck on ambulances parked briefly outside the houses of these angry vehicle-obsessed people, whose anger - once mainly confined to in the forums of certain newspaper websites - now seems to be spilling out all over the shop.

I feel my own anger mounting, as I write. None of us is immune - this is the prevailing psychic environment; anger; fear; it's contagious.

Beep! Beep!

Expressions of anger are all around us at all times in stressed-out, tensed-up London. Again, the worst and most visible is on the roads. The screech of tyres as an over-hasty driver slams on brakes at a junction. Absurd over-revving of expensive but poorly silenced engines: an intimidation by accelerator pedal and exhaust pipe.

The realisation by murderous psychopaths that cars are very effective weapons, especially if you want to kill several people at one fell swoop, and permanently injure many more. A new motor-psycho sickness.

At the merely annoying end of same spectrum:  the inevitable, ever increasing use of the car horn to express rage - the high-powered air-horns, weaponised, enough to make you jump in the air, to make your heart tremble. This topic was covered here before - see "A pox on your blaring horns" from 2013 – and it is worse now.

Time to revive the notion of the Inverse Blare Bill, as recommended on this site all those years ago. The simple idea was to legislate to make sure the most macho and aggressive vehicles emit the feeblest, silliest, most embarrassing noises when the hooter is activated. Only the smallest and sweetest of cars - say a  2CV or Topolino - would be allowed to make a strident beeping sound.

There are many other topics to get het up about - such as the proliferation of dogs and the their doings. Why have so many dog-owners stopped picking up their darling doggies' turds? How many times must we get home, get all the way up the carpeted staircase to the fourth four flat, and only then notice the vile, tell-tale stink.

Fed up with all this food

Then - another cause of mounting Calvinist-style intolerance in this bitter old bastard - there is this constantly increasing London hyper-obsession with food.

So ironic, so typically bonkers British, that at exactly the same time we are told ours is the fattest population in Europe, we are also bombarded day in, day out with editorials heaping praise on obscenely extravagant food-feasting....

Latent annoyance at the gourmet-gastro-masterchef culture burst to the surface when handed a free copy of a fat, luxurious magazine called Foodism.

Yes, Foodism! Here it was, a great beautifully printed wodge of nosh-porn. It didn;t get my juices flowing, I'm afriad - but it did make my blood begin to boil, gently. Trouble is, I love food. Most of us do - and we certainly depend on it for our existence, unless we are vampires. I love what I think is good food; what you can get in a cheap, ordinary restaurant in almost any local bar or cafe or restaurant in France, Italy or SPain, at normal prices.

Because in those and many other countries, good food is nothing to do with "foodism" or gourmet cooking, it is what everyone expects as a right. Decent ingredients, well cooked, in simple, classic styles.

Alas, even these fine countries are being invaded by the Anglo-American industrialisation of food, a phased invasion of fast food and junk food and then - the ultimate paradox, the final insult - selling them back bastardised versions of their own dishes as something healthy and fashionable to aspire to.

That's why it's so annoying to be told that London is now the world's food capital or similar rubbish. London is just the place where there are enough rich and gullible and ignorant and incompetent and fashion-addicted people to allow all manner of tricksters to open stupid ridiculous new on-theme eateries, and to get people queuing in the rain to spend a week's average wage on some sickening variant of a hamburger and chips.

All of this comes wrapped up with another paradox: how can London be a city both of extreme Veganism and extreme carnivores? How many different "gourmet" burger joints does a suburban high street need? The Five Guys/Byron/Haché thing seems to be outstripping Americanised Italian coffee shops in this blighted area.

A few years ago, the fashion was all for "pulled" meats. Even if I ate pork, I can't imagine asking for a pulled-pork bun or whatever. Don't the images this coupling of words evokes put you off these juicy meaty products, as well?

Obviously not.

But these days the food fashions seem to have got even less delectable. Weird rainbow-colored doughnuts; great gloops of stringy cheese in warmed buns; ill-advised hybrids, such as the awful cronut.

Am stopping here before I blow a gasket. Good night!

Extreme ugliness and London's embattled skyline: which new tower is the worst eyesore?

St George Wharf Tower at Vauxhall - is this the nastiest of all the new-ish, tall-ish buildings in London? 

The near-completion of the big tower block with a bulge on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge adds yet another grotesque silhouette to London's much abused skyline.

For sheer "wtf?" factor, this new building, One Blackfriars,  is not as offensive as the lumbering goon of the Walkie Talkie as it gobbles up air and light over the City of London.

As hideous as these two recent arrivals to London's new skyline may be, there's a third contender for the crown - surely, the most dismal of all the ugly high-rise London brothers.

This third structure is only too well known in the SW postcodes.

Mention a downed helicopter, a rude finger pointing up to the sky, and you all know it -  St George Wharf Tower at Vauxhall.

Look at each tower in a bit more detail.

1. The Walkie Talkie

The Walkie-Talkie - a "lumbering goon" of a building
which blocks light and ruins views in the City of
London – looks just as bad a mile south in Bermondsey.

A 34-storey, 160 m (525 ft) tall office block at 20 Fenchurch Street designed by Rafael Viñoly, completed in January 2015. The tower was originally to be nearly 200 m (656 ft) tall but was scaled down to preserve views of St Paul's Cathedral and the Tower. In 2015 it won the Carbuncle Cup for the worst new building in the UK.

Does anyone love this tower? Well, possibly those making a fortune out of letting it. It still dominates views of the City from the south bank of the river, despite much taller new buildings shooting up behind it. Wide-shouldering its way into a billion tourist photos, this is a true monument to City greed.

2. St George Wharf Tower, Vauxhall (pictured above) is a 180 metres, 52 storey cylindrical tower poking out from a sharp bend of the River Thames. It is one of Europe’s tallest wholly residential buildings and the tallest residential tower in London. 

The tower's "green" credentials, with a wind turbine at the top supposedly generating 27,000 kWh of energy per year, are fine, but hardly make up for the disastrous impact this structure has on views from all over London, and especially from Whitehall, Pimlico and my back yard.

St George Wharf Tower - one of very few
skyscrapers that looks even worse at night.

The word ugly is too good for this rude erection. It is just too nothing at all, to be ugly. It is offensive, though - a straight shiny finger held up to everyone in London. It's saying, buzz off, plebs, this town's for rich bastards only.

Even if it hadn't been the scene of a tragic helicopter crash in 2013, people would still have hated this building.

You know how bad it is because no-one has been able to find a decent nickname for it - one that sticks. I've heard "The Battery" - but the Duracell AA batteries it resembles are much more elegantly styled. Someone else called it "The Plunger" which is nearer the mark.

It's one of very few skyscrapers that actually look worse at night when the lights come on. There are vertical stripes of light going the full height of the tower, then shorter bars of light surrounding the corona-style penthouse at its peak.

The lights have that harsh brightness, reminiscent of DHSS office striplights back in the early 1970s. Maybe the builders got a job of old neon tubes and slapped them on. That's what it looks like: cheap, cold, nasty.

3. One Blackfriars, aka The Vase and The boomerang. Designed by architects SimpsonHaugh and Partners, this 49-storey, 535ft tower at the south-west end of Blackfriars Bridge is a worrying sight. What was supposed to be an elegant tribute to an iconic Scandinavian glass vase now looks like a pot-bellied man (or, according to other observers, a pregnant woman, or a flasher concealing a large erection beneath his raincoat).

From some angles it looks like a the companion of the Walkie Talkie, as they could both be large drunken men bending over in the street to vomit on the pavement.

One Blackfriars is almost 100ft shorter than originally
planned, which might account for its almost comic
and definitely ungainly fat-bloke silhouette.

Ironically, its appearance has been made worse by a decision to reduce its original planned height of 225m to the current pygmy-like sub-200m stump. Result: scaled down it just looks all wrong. The cut also meant the one public benefit the tower was supposed to offer - a free viewing platform at the top - had to go. As they usually do.

Ah, but I hear you shout, there's a fourth and fifth and a sixth contender for this sorry crown.  And of course there are lots of other monsters out there. Just look. For many, the most ridiculous new tower in London is the thing that pokes its Batmobile ears and turbines into the sky above Elephant & Castle, name of "Strata SE1".

The building was famous for the three highly-visible turbines at the summit of the tower which were supposed to supply about eight per cent of all the 400 flats' electricity. Apparently as soon they were switched on the owners of the pricey flats on the upper floors complained of noise, vibrations, heat etc - so they were switched off most of the time.

The pricey blades were soon being mocked as a prime example of developers' favourite past-time, "greenwashing".

This joke of a tower block has since been crowded out by a load of bland high-rise residential towers, so now the silly old Strata - already nearly 10 years old - looks like the one guest at a party who actually bothered to wear fancy dress.

Other people will cite the Cheesegrater at Leadenhall, the Shard, and some of the clumsy towers of Canary Wharf. Personally I think the Shard is beautiful, elegant design; such a shame that it should be the preserve of the rich and the super-rich. What happened to all those democratic ideals that the young architects of the 60s, like Renzo Piano, must have been imbibing at their radical architecture schools?

Why I write this stupid blog/ Why do I write this stupid blog?

Macaulay Road, Clapham, in autumn. Sometimes it is good just to celebrate the beauty of the place you live in.

It's always a joy to have some time - and the necessary drive - to write something for this blog.

What's wonderful about writing a blog named Microgroove 33 is that i can write about anything I bloody well like.

It doesn't have to be local, it doesn't have to be news, it doesn't have to be about music or art or people or linguistics or bicycles or Penguin Classics or charity shops or architecture  or even about London - although those are all things I'd love to be expert enough to write a blog on.

It doesn't even have to be about dogs.

Like I said, I have been looking back at the blog, and especially at dozens -  five dozen in fact -  of unpublished entries that are scattered around in the blogger editing and design area, like so many unfinished projects in a bike workshop.

I trip over them, frequently - especially two or three unpublished updates to the totally subjective south-west London charity shop survey for bibliophiles first published in 2013.

Ever since I have been promising myself to update and extend this series, and have even written new stuff, about the charity shops of Streatham, and Stroud Green, and Kilburn, for example (there are lots, and lots).

Recent visits to the Barnado's shop in Brixton confirm and re-confirm my feeling that this would be the number one shop if I were to update that silly top 10. It's solid on my staples - books and music and good old clothes - and it keeps throwing up interesting oddities. This week there's a whole glass case full of vintage cameras, and a whole shelf of cut-price bath products.

Not long ago it had a rack-full of over-size string vests - you know, the type some Rastas wore back in the 80s? But these were not just in the Rasta red green and gold, but in the colours of lots of other African flags. Reader I bought one - but no-one outside this blog will ever find out, and no-one will ever see me wearing it either!

So, there you go ....maybe one day I will complete some more of these beached, stranded stories.

Like the one on the strange increase in people getting caught short and crapping on the streets. Twice within 150 yards of where I am now sitting, in the past two months. I'm talking humans, not dogs. Young humans. I could continue but I will not.

Or the story on the mystic Xanadu of Dawson Heights.

Some of the articles are no more than a headline that  for some reason I liked at the time. In a long career as a mediocre journalist, I remember how every so often a sub would come up with a perfect headline for a story that did not exist, and we'd try to find that story and write it.

I also want to write about the beauty of the wisteria in three streets, and the beauty of Californian Lilac in another three; or maybe one just about the beauty of the residential streets of SW8 in spring.

I could write a hundred more posts on my curious work pattern, which takes me to Vauxhall, Bermondsey,  Camberwell, Dulwich, Forest Hill, New Cross and New Malden on a regular basis, sometimes in the evenings. And once to Stoke-on-Trent.

And to converted shops in Angell Town ...

I want to write about the writers I love, and about places I love; about bikes and bike shops.

But I'm sure I will soon be back to ranting about Range Rovers, posh types and luxury apartments.
It's so much easier to write when you're really stirred up with anger!

Clapham Library's cafe remains closed – pity they didn't take some tips from Southwark

It's odd but true that two neighbouring south London boroughs, Lambeth and Southwark, have such different approaches to public libraries, despite having so much else in common.

These and several other thoughts emerged as I sat hunched on the terrible little narrow bench that passes for seating in the public library in Clapham High Street.

Clapham Library, half five on a Friday, the café is shut, and no-one can
use the seating. 

Thought one was: I should sue Lambeth council for doing my back in, as sitting on this bench for 20 minutes trying to find some info had revived long-buried lower back pain.

The bench was one of the only vacant seats in the library late on a Friday afternoon.

There were lots of empty chairs and tables in the café. But the café is closed. It seems no-one can enter what used to be the biggest seating area at ground level in this strange building, and it also seems that this café - which opened less than a year ago - has already shut down, at least temporarily.

No-one could explain why it was closed again last Saturday morning - surely a potential peak time. Have the operators decided to cut their losses? All the equipment is still there.  And why on earth can't we use the seats, whether or not it's selling its pricey hot drinks and snacks?

Absurd or what?

Given that most library users are schoolkids, students, OAPs, or young parents with toddlers attending storytime groups etc, it would seem that the cafe was aiming at the wrong market. The 30-something folk who love to spend their high earnings on small cups of coffee with silly names would not really need to come here - this area is full of twee little coffee shops, not to mention the obligatory Starbucks etc.

If the cafe had sold cheap and cheerful coffees, teas, and some simple grub, it might have worked. No item more than £1.

Mind you the café was well used, particularly in the exam season when there was really nowhere else to sit and study - but probably most of those customers bought one drink and then stayed the whole morning, revising or whatever.

You couldn't really blame the cafe operators - they probably thought Clapham, that's a wealthy area, let's go for the yuppie market. But the yups ain't there, they're all over the road at Cafe Nero. It was surely the fault of the council for agreeing to let this bit of public space for a private business.

They even threw in the toilet as part of the deal - outrageous or what?

Well, I'll check out this café again later in the week. Maybe if they have gone the council will be seeking another taker for this space...who knows. Maybe they should offer it to a food bank?

But then, this new library building was always a bit compromised. We only got it because they let the developers build that clunky edifice of expensive flats above and around it.

This library is rightly popular for its wide range of events and classes, especially for very young kids. The staff are great and someone clearly goes to a lot of trouble to try to maintain an interesting stock of books.

But from the start, it's been clear it's not really a very good space for what should be a core library activity - reading!

Yes there are some "teen" study areas, and a very cramped little general reading area up the top, plus a few small PC rooms. These are nearly always fully occupied. Right at the bottom there are cell-like meeting rooms, which are hidden away; you feel you are not really supposed to be there. The large floor area at the very bottom of the building has several tables and chairs for studying and a couple of sofas - but this is generally considered to be the children's area, and again you feel like you're breaking rules if you go down there to read.

In fact as I sat on my tortuous bench, two women with young kids came down the ramp, one saying in a very loud voice, "Oh I do hate it when grown-ups sit in the kid's area, it's creepy..."

Well I wasn't in the kid's area but halfway down the ramp. Every so often very young children zoom down the ramp on their scooters. Any moment you expected to hear a thump followed by much wailing. Luckily, no such disaster today.

All this made me think again what a wasted opportunity this library was, especially when you compare it with some of the much older libraries Lambeth has been closing or compromising under its heavily criticised scheme.

Lambeth only has to look east towards its much more competent neighbouring borough, Southwark, to see how to run libraries.

I've been working in Borough High Street for a couple of days a week, and have got to know the Harvard Library, close to St Georges Church and the tube station.

Despite its historic origins, explained on a blue plaque, this famously-named library also now occupies a fairly modern building, quite a bland one compared to the over-designed Clapham project.

There's nothing very pretty or exciting about it - it is simply a good, sensible building, which could just as well be offices or shops. But it provides plenty of space for all the activities a modern library has to offer.

So, there are lots of computer workstations for schoolkids and students as well as local workers seeking somewhere to wile away their lunch-breaks when it's cold and wet outdoors.

There's a kids' area of course. And yes, there is a café. It's right at the front of the library, but unlike the Clapham one it does not usurp any reading space. Anyone can sit in that large area, where they have sensibly located the magazine and newspaper racks. Anyone can stay there all day reading and not buy a single coffee.

But every time I've been in there, the café has been busy. It's a lunch destination for local workers, an after work place to relax for a while before meeting up with friends. And a wonderful sanctuary for all the drifters, the lonely, the homeless, the old, freezing construction workers, the young, tired tourists, whoever happens to pass.

That's what a public library should be! And by the way, they had two different complete translations of Proust on the shelves,  and their CD loan collections were amazing - 40p for a week's loan.

Talk about grass being greener over the administrative boundary fence.

Two more art enterprises fall victim to London's property vultures

It's hardly news that London's rapacious property developers are driving anyone who's not rich out of newly-fashionable areas. Among the victims are artists, who are being pushed out of their studios and work-spaces. It's a cliché (and therefore true?) that struggling artists, musicians and their ilk, who always tended to migrate to areas with cheap, large work-spaces, helped to make those areas fashionable and desirable. And then these very people who made the area popular get driven away as rents soar and the bankers, advertising execs and the hedge fund mob move in.

Any hopes that this dismal trend was slowing down have been dashed. It's only February and already, two very different artist-led enterprises in south London have been given notice to vacate their premises, both in once-despised areas that have recently become highly desirable: Vauxhall and New Cross Gate.

These are just two examples that I happen to know personally. The same thing is happening to dozens of others, typically in the areas which have been made more marketable to city commuters by the arrival of the London Overground.

These two places are at different ends of the art world.

The first is LARA - the London Atelier of Representational Art - a well-respected independent art school, known for adapting the classical atelier system for teaching the traditional skills of drawing, painting and sculpting the human figure. The tutors are all successful practitioners, and the students learn by example. They spend weeks and months and years learning to use the sight-sizing methods developed by Italian renaissance artists, to build their knowledge of paints and brushes and pigment, canvases, papers, the lot.

Who could guess that in the basement area of the buildings to the right,
on the busy Vauxhall gyratory system, there's an amazing hive of artistic
activity - the London Atelier of Representational Art.

It runs full-time diploma courses and a  busy schedule of short courses, evening and weekend masterclasses, exhibitions and excursions. It's a hive of intense artistic activity, and at the moment it inhabits the basement of a big old office/warehouse building on an unremarkable part of Vauxhall's one-way traffic system.

Recently LARA was given notice that the building they've been in for several years is going to be demolished for re-development later this year. They're going to have to leave by late summer, meaning students on their three-year diploma course could face disruption (although LARA already has its sights on alternative premises).

So here's a unique, creative organisation which provides employment for dozens of artists, tutors, models and others, which is at the heart of an international revival of the atelier method, and which has also played a part in the re-energization of this fascinating part of London. So close to the centre, and yet so different. And now of course the money-men have noticed, and the place - which survived so much, including one of the most murderous traffic systems in London - is now being torn apart for the development of high-rise luxury flats and "serviced office accommodation".

Ironic that, as a new upmarket Newport Street gallery owned by Damien Hirst opens in Vauxhall, so the organisations that will create future artists are being pushed out.

The second sad story is another hive of creativity: the ASC Studios in Bond House, Goodwood Road, New Cross Gate. This big old former factory, just round the corner from the railway station,  currently hosts over 100 artists' studios of varying shapes and sizes as well as exhibition spaces.

Amongst them are a celebrated community project, The Gate Darkroom, which started in 2011 and provides  studio, developing and printing facilities for hundreds of photographers, students and other artists.

These studios are just over the road from Goldsmiths; they are part of that incredible ecosystem of creative talent that's existed in this corner of south east London for decades, and which every so often erupts into international notice, as with Hirst and Co back in the 90s.

There's no doubt that proerty people - estate agents, the lot - owe a huge debt to these artists, students, the punks and poets and actors and activists who have between them, over decades,  created a unique atmosphere in the Deptford - New Cross - Peckham - Camberwell valley. That's one of the reasons this area is now so sought-after.

But alas the area is also succumbing to the Overground effect. Wherever this extremely useful railway lines goes, it carries a parasitic virus with it: the dreaded virus, Luxuriosa domos. The Overground trains arrive, then sure enough, along come outbreaks of "New-London-vernacular" flats, which pop up like a bad case of measles alongside the stations.

No doubt Bond House will go the same way, soon after the artists are kicked out on March 26. There's already a crop of them just round the corner.

ASC is one of several organisations that exist to secure affordable spaces for artists and craftspeople of all types, all ages, all nationalities. But no-one is immune to the squeeze: and there is no government or even local London legislation to ring-fence certain types of property, apart from the listing system for buildings "of special architectural or historic interest considered to be of national importance and therefore worth protecting".

Perhaps they could add: "and cultural, educational or local community" interest to those, as well as building up a strong "continued public access and purpose of use" to this admitrable system.   This is what should be happening NOW!

Or maybe legislation that forces developers to provide alternative, equally well-positioned accommodation to any of the above that they displace, and that that should only happen with full agreement on all sides - current occupiers, other local businesses and residents.

But this is pipe-dream stuff in the world of Theresa May and co.

In both the cases I cite above, hard-working dedicated artists and students will have their long-term plans disrupted, even wrecked by the impatient greed of property people - these ones who are perhaps trying to squeeze the last millions out of the London property market before it goes pop when all the money men leave for Paris.

Then maybe the cycle will start again. Meantimes there's only one sane response for those with the strength and energy to do it: Squat!