Love letters to Lambeth's threatened libraries

Here's a case of a campaign banner which intrinsically explains why the campaign is necessary. Tate South Lambeth Library, November 2015

I'm not Joni Mitchelll's biggest fan, but two lines of one of her old songs have been playing over and over again in my head of late.

You know the lines…."Don't it always seem the way….", and if you live in Lambeth (and plenty other parts of London, etc) you will know how horribly meaningful it has become, in relation to pubs, cafés, shops, music venues, much-loved murals and even whole council estates…and now, of course, our libraries as well.

And that nagging refrain is driving me mad, sending me out to make sure that at least I will know what we had until it was gone, if the plans laid out in the borough's "Culture 2020" programme actually come to pass.

So it became essential to revisit all of Lambeth's libraries, and especially the ones which are under threat of closure or having their hearts ripped out. There was a practical reason for this pilgrimage as well. I need to go out of my home to work. I don;t like working in cafés. Libraries are by far the best place.  But every time I've been to my own local library (Clapham) over the past few weeks it has been a problem finding somewhere to sit. The place has curiously limited desk space, there are strange little rooms where I don't think I'd be appreciated, and there some incredibly uncomfortable benches.

So - I'm off. Over the next few weeks I want to visit all 10 libraries in the Borough. I already use Brixton quite often (and that's at capacity as well).  A few weeks ago I wrote about the Carnegie Library in Herne Hill, so that, retrospectively, can be the first of this occasional and probably never-to-br completed series.

The Tate South Lambeth Library was next  on this itinerary, admittedly because it was on the route home from where I was working last week.

What becomes immediately apparent, as you enter each of these libraries, is how very different each is from the next. And how expertly each one has adapted itself and developed services to meet the needs of their surrounding populations, again so different across this hugely diverse borough.

This handsome old library was a case in point. It was also where the protest march of three weeks ago ended, and where the Councillor who devised the 'healthy living centre' plan was holding her surgery. It's a well-positioned building, bang in the middle of the Little Portugual section of South Lambeth Road and facing that colourful parade of  Portuguese cafés, delicatessens and restaurants.

The big banner outside, "SALVE A NOSSA BIBLIOTECA" says it all really. This library is real hub of the local community, including the large Portuguese-speaking community.

From the outside it's an imposing Victorian municipal building, red-brick with ornate terracotta tile work, grand but inviting. Inside the two main rooms are light and airy, but every square foot of space is being used - and even at this quiet time (2.30 on a Tuesday, before schools are out) there's a good mix of people using the building, the photocopiers.

Given to the people of Lambeth nearly 120 years ago, the
library has survived two world wars, depressions and
recessions, only to face the indignity of perhaps being turned
into a gym. So much for social progress.

It's only when you look at the noticeboards or the Friends' website that you realise wheat an amazing range of activities are held here - from a gardening club through to IT sessions for blind and partially-sighted people, a classic film screenings, ESOL classes, a knitting group….the list goes on. In other words it is doing exactly what a branch library should be doing, and would do much more of if it had the resources.

Lambeth's ongoing so-called consultation on the future of this and other libraries has put forward the idea that either Tate South Lambeth or the Durning Library, a mile and a half away in should become a "Town Centre" library for this part of the borough.

Whichever one is chosen, the other will be doomed for conversion into a bookish gym.

This is a desperately unfair and invidious tactic, pitting two of their own libraries, one  against the other, when the staff in each  are working so hard to meet the needs of their own users,  with quite different needs despite their proximity. Is this how a co-operative council behaves?

Next stop: The Minet Library

Black pudding, the after-life and the best barber in south-west London: Daniel Ruiz Tison is still available, thanks be

Dear reader (s) (in the hope that there's more than one of you),

Please let me draw your attention to the latest episode of a south London radio series which is a bitter-sweet classic of an as yet not fully-defined genre.

It's Daniel Ruiz Tison Is Available, Episode One Hundred and Two, first broadcast on ResonanceFM on Monday 10 November 2015, but now available in perpetuity (until hell freezeth over) as a podcast from iTunes via Daniel's own website.

Unforgivably I was not aware of his series until he stumbled across a piece I'd written about the the best men's haircutter in all of the south-west London postcodes, Andy's of Landor Road. He has now interviewed Andy – who sadly for us, is on the verge of retirement – for a special podcast which is expected go live very soon.

Meanwhile I am struggling to find time to catch up with his back-catalgoue, as well as keeping up with the weekly broadcasts.

Last night's was another classic, and it had me doing that thing which I don't really do anymore: laughing out loud in private.

I was laughing inwardly, with only my cheap Phillips headphones for company, most of the time.  About the hipster coffee shop somewhere in north-east London. About Solo Electric in Clapham High Street in the 1980s, and everyone else, failing to get Daniel's name right.  About the English and languages.  About the wearing of winter coats. Gingevitis.

About what we're going to find in heaven when we die, assuming we get there. Free music lessons, apparently, on a synthesiser. So not as good as Lambeth back in 1983 then, when you could get free lessons on a range of musical instruments, if you were unemployed.

Honestly, I don't laugh easily, but as soon as the show starts, I am primed. Like all great commentators on our times, he has his obsessions. He has certain phrases which, in his voice, open up great chasms of absurdity. As soon as 'Attempts on the gate' are mentioned, I get this surreal image in my head, and…I laugh inwardly.

It was when he got the bit where he overhears a Portuguese trucker speaking Spanish in a South Lambeth Road Portuguese cafe that triggered the explosion of hysteria.

Daniel repeated some of overheard Spanish dialogue, which was all about the full English breakfast they had just been served. Seems they were wondering why it included hash browns but not black pudding.

He then translated the punchline: "Black pudding is nice. Anything with blood is nice."

Reader, believe me, I woke the sleeping bankers up and down this wide and tree-lined Clapham street.

But like I said it's bitter-sweet. You must also listen to this to get the latest news on Stockwell - on Brenda's fruit and veg stall,  or to be reminded of Jack Cornelius, the wrestler of Stockwell who ran a cafe which is now the Sainsburys local. Or the graffiti about Jazzman of Battersea.  I remember that graffiti, I also remember thinking it must have been about George Shearing…but somehow Shearing and graffiti don't seem to mix.

Keybridge House, Vauxhall - London's worst eyesore or a brutalist beauty?

As so often happens, I'm listening to the Robert Elms show on BBC Radio London and hear something that propels me out of the house to look a for something mentioned by one of his guests.

Last week it was 575 Wandsworth Road. Yesterday it was a tower block at Vauxhall which Elms' "Listed Londoner" for the week, artist David Hepher, chose as his favourite building.

Hepher is famous for painting massive photorealist canvasses of some the bleakest of London's council estates, so it was no surprise he should choose an anonymous tower block from the brutalist era. He did not know  what it was called or what is was for - he just liked it for its uncompromising industrial presence. He said he it reminded him of big grain silos in France - obviously a good thing. This made

Eyesore or brutalist gem? Ex-BT office block,
Keybridge House, Vauxhall.

me think he must be talking about the empty BT building, Keybridge House, on South Lambeth Road.

It really is a horrible building - so horrible that it exerts a grim fascination. Maybe it could even be beautiful.  Look harder, look again. This is definitely the purest bit of concrete and steel brutalism in south London. There are no real clues outside as to what this building was for, apart from the dull name. It was easy to  imagine it being some grim outpost of the intelligence services, somewhere hooded victims would be bundled into for some government-sanctioned extraction of information.

 There was no real entrance visible at street level, and the only vehicle access was guarded by huge terrorist-proof steel barriers. Razor-wire topped steel fencing surrounded the place, which looms its heavy steel-clad 15 or so storeys over a perfectly innocent primary school next door.

Turns out its not some sinister back annexe of the flash MI6 block over by the bridge, but a former BT office block.  A useful Guardian article from 2007 provides plenty of background on the building and its architects, G W Mills and Associates. Now it seems it has been sold and according to the Evening Standard is likely to be pulled down as part of the Nine Elms redevelopment.

The place looks so solid, so armour plated, that you imagine it would be a great challenge for demolition championships.

But what of poor David Hepher? He needs to get on his bike like I did and start painting soonest!