I've done over 1,000 hours of voluntary work in the past two years, and while I enjoyed much of it, and learned a lot, there's also a little bit of a lingering sour taste. I feel I have had my face dipped into the soup-kitchen tureen of Mr D Cameron's "big society" and to be honest I have to say there's a bad aftertaste. There's something rancid in it.
Of course, it's probably me. Everyone said that after redundancy and all the attendant loss of self-confidence and self-esteem, etc, volunteering was a great way of rebuilding yourself. They didn't tell me it could also be the precise opposite.
I took the volunteer plunge early in 2012, striding into a local charity shop I visited quite regularly, and offered my services. I went through various interview and vetting stages, and started work in a delightful branch in a rather villagey area of SW4.
It was this charity shop chain that gave me both the best and worst of times.
I loved much of my time at the various branches of this well-known chain of shops. I have had a long love affair with charity shops as a buyer of clothes and books and records, and as my former career as a writer seemed to draw to a natural conclusion, it seemed fitting that I should give something back to the movement that had given me so much pleasure, over the decades.
The first few weeks were great fun. I learned a great deal about retail, and what a difficult and exhausting job it could be. It was a real a revelation being on the other side of the counter, seeing how the experienced staff (in particular, the excellent manager, M) dealt with the weird donations and the tricky customers. I was astonished by the dedication and commitment of both manager and volunteers.
I made it clear early on I was a book and music lover, so she handed all that side of the shop over to me. There were lots of other volunteers, though M relied mainly on a core of three or four staunch regulars, and she made it clear she hoped I would become another of these. There were also often young foreign students on short-term work-experience. Generally we all took turns working the till, cleaning, ragging the useless stuff, re-stocking shelves, etc.
As time went on, my manager was moved to a more prestigious branch of the charity, and I went with her. I would spend at least two or three mornings or afternoons each week at this shop, which was based in a very smart area of west London. That shop, like my first branch, had just been refurbished, and we were all called in to prepare for the re-opening - a great deal of heavy lifting and sorting, heaving boxes and sacks and bits of display furniture into and out of the charity's all purpose white van.
As the months went by I watched with admiration as M concocted beautiful and inviting window-displays from carefully selected donations - a crazy sequinned ball-gown, hats, masks, gloves, old paintings African carvings, Musical instruments, battered leather luggage, motorcycle goggles, old magazines and maps, decorative lamps, bakelite radio sets….
Every week, a new window. She would collect items for certain obvious weeks - Halloween or Valentines, Easter, Quattorze Juillet were the obvious ones in that street. Being a wealthy and cosmopolitan area that had not quite lost its bohemian fringe, the quality and eccentricity of donations was often a delight. Mind you that did not stop people handing in huge sacks of soiled children's clothes and broken toys and stinky old sports gear.
I quickly realised that charity shops, apart from their many other great uses, were also a vital link in the support chain for those fragile souls who had been cast out into the world by the previous decade's "care in the community" policy. We would often spend half hours, full hours, entertaining excitable young and not so young souls, who would want to try on every dress on the rail because they had been invited to the Ivy by a splendid Iranian prince. And so on...
We also had a lot of traffic from tourists visiting the big museums up the road, as well as - on - occasion - some of their staff. Antique experts, gallery curators, self-proclaimed experts, Portobello Road dealers, well-heeled amamteurs, they all made regular visits, some on the way back from an auction at nearby Bonham's, or was it Christies?
There were one or two distinctly unpleasant characters, ordering us to get items out of display cases, spending ages scrutinising them with their eye-pieces, then handing back with a sneer. "Paste". "Rubbish". "You're overcharging criminally for that".
And then there were the shoplifting families.
Anyway, it was all great fun. Except, of course, when the inevitable politics of the workplace came into play. I took an instant dislike to the head office crew who would swan around the many shops they ran, bossing staff and volunteers around like they were their personal servants.
Their management style was not the iron fist in the velvet glove. It was usually just the iron fist, with lashings of sharp tongue as well.
Inevitably, they used the divide and rule tactic ruthlessly. There was incessant gossiping amongst managers and volunteers, some of whom had worked there for many years and in many different shops.
It was difficult not to get involved in all this, and rather foolishly I accepted a paid part-time job at the charity. I loved the work, although it was very demanding, at least physically and the pay was derisory. For much of the time I enjoyed the company, at least the younger members of the team - but it got to the point where I fell into disfavour.
The paid work came to an abrupt halt, but I was happy to carry on as a volunteer. This did not accord with the charity's policy. One day I went in and was told by an almost tearful M that I was no longer to be a volunteer there. Well, there you go, so I went.
I have such good memories - especially of the other volunteers. I've written about some of this elsewhere. But I also now have that strange, nagging feeling that I offered as much as I could but was rejected: not even a charity shop wanted your services.
The next voluntary work I got was with a very busy community centre in Brixton, helping to give English lessons and conversation classes to groups of immigrants. I was amazed by the commitment of the other volunteers here. A few were clearly of retirement age and perhaps did not need the income, but the place was run by a team of very young, energetic community activists, and their enthusiasm set the tone for everyone else.
Most of the students were delightful; typically they would be working as cleaners all the hours they could get, and would often turn up late and exhausted, and yet they still made huge efforts to learn.
This was a great place and I felt privileged to be allowed to work there - I did have some teaching experience but not in the ESOL/TEFL area, and again I had to learn from the more experienced volunteers, who were endlessly patient with me.
I worked hard to get my lessons right, and sometimes they seemed to work (I now realise they were hopelessly ambitious). And yet, quite soon the slob in me felt threatened. It seems in all these organisations there's an undertow pulling at the feet of volunteers, wanting them to give more and more time. I felt that this organisation was doing so much excellent work - particularly its youth activities - that it should really not be so heavily reliant on volunteer who tenede to be either very young (students clocking up experience) or antiquated people like me at the dog-end of their working lives.
I would love to be volunteering now, but I am reluctant to risk it again: I will either not be good enough, or if I am good, they will want to devour me, they will make me feel guilty at not giving more and more of my time. We live in this ridiculous city where unimaginably rich people occupy the best properties, eat at the best restaurants in the world, and rely on immigrants to clean their houses and offices, look after their children, cook their food and wash up their coffee cups. These immigrants are taught English by unemployed teachers doing their voluntary hours, and they buy their clothes from charity shops run by out-of-work journalists. And so it goes on. It's all just too funny for words…
Anyway, just thought it might add soothing to some debate. I threw myself into volunteering at the age of 60, when it seemed the world of full-time employment had taken a quick look at my cv and laughed itself sick at my presumption that I might still be eligible for some sort of reasonably-paid employment (by reasonably I mean anything above the £12k pa pro rata I was getting from the charity job). Anything over £20k would seem marvellous.
So, having thrown myself into that world, I have, two years later, emerged shivering in the cold of the London employment climate right now. Loads of jobs for tough bright young things willing to do and say anything to get a job, even a minimum wages. Not much for old geezers who are not terribly good at boasting about their genius.
And especially not old geezers who've had the last few grams of their confidence knocked out of them by pushy managers of voluntary organisations.
Spinning happily at thirty-three-and-a-third revolutions per minute, not wanting to stop
Monday, 30 March 2015
Saturday, 21 March 2015
Losing the will to live (in London)
Sitting here, trying to write, a week ago, feeling glum as the bleakest and longest winter in living memory drags on, look out window, and see a huge pall of billowing, dark grey smoke rising from the middle distance, with an angry snake pit of snapping flames at its roots.
It's a serious fire, and it takes little time to work out where it's coming from - behind that church on Lavender Hill, it can only be the Battersea Arts Centre. No, surely I can't be - the place is so well loved, such a big part in so many lives, it is such a rare jewel in this godforsaken borough - it can't be BAC, can it, please?
Soon our worst fears are confirmed on news websites.
Heart plummets even further - and uncharitable thoughts rise. Why, with all these revolting new luxury apartment blocks going up in this area, why when there are so many hideous, ugly, lousy buildings in this area, does the fire have to choose this one last true beacon of democratic culture, art for all of us, high art, low art, entertainment, yoga - in the whole of south west London?
Drawn like a sad moth to the flames, by bicycle, this sorry individual cranks up Lavender Hill, which is still open at this stage though the cops are desperately trying to shoo cars through side streets. Half a dozen fire engines are there, the pavements around are packed with people, not the gawkers so much as people who have perhaps just been evacuated from BAC and neighbouring buildings, many clearly in a state of shock. Some are crying, others wandering around with that terrible look on their faces - grief.
That great angry tangle of flames was so shocking - like seeing some ferocious wild animal stalking prey in the south London suburban streets, a terrifying force, blind greed of those licking flames. It was amazing to see how much water the LFB can get onto a high roof in such a short time, the thick plume of dark gray smoke lightens as steam replaces the burning wood smoke.
Here, now, a week later we know this story had a relatively happy ending. The brilliant LFB caught the blaze in time, so that only the grand hall is ruined - it is now roofless. But the front two-thirds of BAC is fine and open, and they're busily trying to raise more money…..
Thursday, 19 March 2015
A little glimpse of paradise on the Wandsworth Road
As so often seems to happen, I switch on the radio and hear, within seconds, someone talking about something that has been cooking away at the back of my mind for years.
As so often seems to happen, I switch on the radio and hear, within seconds, someone talking about something that has been cooking away at the back of my mind for years. Usually it's on BBC Radio London, and even more usually it's on the Robert Elms SHow. As indeed was the case today.
Today, it was hearing someone from the National Trust talking about an amazing house interior, created entirely by one man in his spare time from a busy job in the Civil Service. I immediately thought they had to be discussing 575 Wandsworth Road - a house I have walked past thousands of times - and which is now owned by the National Trust and is also about to open to the public after years of restoration.
This NT person mentioned a free lecture on the topic to be held later the same day in Twickenham Public Library. Oddly enough, for someone spending more than half his life in SW LOndon, I'd never been to Twickenham town centre before (well I have been through it, but never to it). That day, I was there within an hour, thanks to SW Trains.
It was an excellent lecture by the NT's conservationists, who helped to bring the house back to life with her discussion of the owner and creator of this place, Khadambi Asalache. Mr Asalache came to London in the 1960s as a student. His multiple talents - poet, novelist, mathematician, philosopher - flowered in the fertile climate of that age, even while he was holding down a full-time day job in the Treasury.
She added that he first spotted the house when travelling to work on the 77 bus - a route that we all know only too well, and still love, even though it's now the 87.
Next day, I more or less run down the road to scope the place out. There's nothing outside to give the slightest clue of the treasures within, nor even a hint the tit's a National Trust property. The place is so fragile that the trust is having to limit visitors, and advance booking is essential. But what a place it is, to enter the house is to enter one man's dream, a secret dream world of East African artistry, heavily influenced by both indigenous art from Kenya but also the Islamic art of North Africa and Spain, the art of Granada.
He needed a place nearer the office. He bought the house in 1983, and began decorating it to his taste - but persistent damp in the cellar led him to line the walls with fretwork panels which now characterise the whole place. It's a fretwork Alhambra, built in a tiny Victorian terrace on an unglamorous stretch of an unglamorous south London trunk route, and it is magical.
Visit!
Great to hear the NT has employed a musician in residence this year - check out the programme of events on the NT's 575 Wandsworth Road website.
As so often seems to happen, I switch on the radio and hear, within seconds, someone talking about something that has been cooking away at the back of my mind for years. Usually it's on BBC Radio London, and even more usually it's on the Robert Elms SHow. As indeed was the case today.
Today, it was hearing someone from the National Trust talking about an amazing house interior, created entirely by one man in his spare time from a busy job in the Civil Service. I immediately thought they had to be discussing 575 Wandsworth Road - a house I have walked past thousands of times - and which is now owned by the National Trust and is also about to open to the public after years of restoration.
This NT person mentioned a free lecture on the topic to be held later the same day in Twickenham Public Library. Oddly enough, for someone spending more than half his life in SW LOndon, I'd never been to Twickenham town centre before (well I have been through it, but never to it). That day, I was there within an hour, thanks to SW Trains.
It was an excellent lecture by the NT's conservationists, who helped to bring the house back to life with her discussion of the owner and creator of this place, Khadambi Asalache. Mr Asalache came to London in the 1960s as a student. His multiple talents - poet, novelist, mathematician, philosopher - flowered in the fertile climate of that age, even while he was holding down a full-time day job in the Treasury.
She added that he first spotted the house when travelling to work on the 77 bus - a route that we all know only too well, and still love, even though it's now the 87.
Next day, I more or less run down the road to scope the place out. There's nothing outside to give the slightest clue of the treasures within, nor even a hint the tit's a National Trust property. The place is so fragile that the trust is having to limit visitors, and advance booking is essential. But what a place it is, to enter the house is to enter one man's dream, a secret dream world of East African artistry, heavily influenced by both indigenous art from Kenya but also the Islamic art of North Africa and Spain, the art of Granada.
He needed a place nearer the office. He bought the house in 1983, and began decorating it to his taste - but persistent damp in the cellar led him to line the walls with fretwork panels which now characterise the whole place. It's a fretwork Alhambra, built in a tiny Victorian terrace on an unglamorous stretch of an unglamorous south London trunk route, and it is magical.
Visit!
Great to hear the NT has employed a musician in residence this year - check out the programme of events on the NT's 575 Wandsworth Road website.
Tuesday, 3 February 2015
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
me think he must be talking about the empty BT building, Keybridge House, on South Lambeth Road.
 |
| Eyesore or brutalist gem? Ex-BT office block, Keybridge House, Vauxhall. |
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.
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!
But what of poor David Hepher? He needs to get on his bike like I did and start painting soonest!
Tuesday, 20 January 2015
Bugger hyperlocal, it's just a good solid local paper that we need
Bugger hyperlocal, it is plain, old fashioned local newspapers that I love. In fact, what I mean to say is - if only we could have a local paper which is half as good, a quarter as brilliant, an eighth as entertaining, and a sixty-fourth as campaigning as the Camden New Journal.At the end of every week I make sure I enter the holy borough of Camden - even if it just means walking a little way up Tottenham Court Road from Goodge Street - to pick up a copy of this excellent free sheet. I will even go to Angel to get a copy of sister paper, the Islington Tribune. But it is the CNJ itself which, I believe, has made itself essential reading for anyone who takes an interest in inner-city London life.
The CNJ is one of the original free-sheets, leading the way for a host of much less honourably motivated publications including the sadly un-phoenix-like Standard. It was born out of an NUJ strike at the Islington Gazette in the early 1980s, and unlike many similar ventures at the time (e.g., the still sadly missed City Limits) it has not merely kept going but has gone from strength to (at least editorially) -strength.
The word free sheet suggests something of little worth - a free sheet, at least in London in recent years, has generally mean a dismal, unedited tabloid publication stuffed with undisguised advertorial about new homes, posh new eateries and private schools, and a bit of press-release based news coverage. (I'm talking specifically here about the Battersea, Wandsworth and Clapham Guardian titles, which used to be ok-ish but are now simply not worth the bother of picking off the floor onto which they are occasionally flung by some underpaid delivery man). Then there are those thin and thinly disguised bits of propaganda for your lovely local authority
The CNJ is still a real newspaper, still independent of either the big media groups, private equity gangsters or the local authorities. It is one of the very few survivors of community-based local newspapers. And one which still pays its journalists - or so I have been told.
For years we've been told, we have been believing the mantra, that local newspapers are dead, that the way ahead is the hyperlocal blog. Well, the CNJ is alive and (I hope) reasonably well - but where are hugely successful hyperlocal blogs?
In London, there's a curious hierarchy. You have the dominant regional free sheet - the Evening Standard - but also competing regional listings sites (Time Out, the Londonist, bits of the Standard, and the London editions of national papers Guardian, Indie etc).
Then there are the surviving local paper groups - Ham & High, Islington Gazette, CNJ, the Advertisers south of river along with the South London Press; that Richmond-based lot once owned by the Dimblebys but owned by Newsquest, and all the horrible estate agent porn (Kensington Magazine etc).
Online, things are editorially healthier but financially not so solid: look how hard the Brixton Blog and Bugle had to to try to crowd-fund a paid news reporter. This is a volunteer-run operation, and has become a popular online news and features focused blog with a monthly print tabloid, both of which seem, oddly enough, to fit in nicely with their competition) Its sort-of competitor, the Brixton Buzz site, seems to have done a good deal with the fortnightly listings and leisure sheet, Lambeth Life, which offers a very readable and genuinely informative take on the cultural life of the borough every other week. At the moment, you could say SW2 & 9 were super-served, blogwise.
New imaginative ventures such as Goldsmiths' Eastlondonlines do a great job, but …I still wish we had a CNJ down south….
Sunday, 11 January 2015
Bingo! Another slice of Wandsworth Road's history is about to disappear in a cloud of dust
Just a hundred yards west of the former Tearooms des Artistes, there was another hub of social life on the Wandsworth Road, Rileys Snooker Hall, just opposite the Baptist Chapel on the corner of
Victoria Rise.
This place was always regarded as one of the ugliest buildings in a street that was not exactly beautiful.
And yet, once the demolition team got to work, they began to uncover details that made you stop and look and think - hang on, what the hell was that place?
According to a fellow blogger this surprisingly large building was almost certainly a Temperance Hall.
Once the hideous facade had been pulled away (I always thought of it as corrugated iron, but it is actually some sort of plastic cladding), you see this elaborate stucco work, all very garish and mock-exotic. Surely this is all a bit much for what was supposed to be a former Temperance Hall?
No - a little more research soon turned up a load of information on the Temperance and Billiard Hall movement of the early 20th century. The images on this site are of buildings very similar in design to the one on Wandsworth Road which is now on the brink of demolition.
It's clear several very similar buildings were erected across south London in the early 20th Century. Maybe they were designed to be alluring enough to tempt wayward souls away from the pubs and gin palaces. Once inside they'd get a nice game of billiards and a glass of ginger beer, or a tea. And maybe a pamphlet or two?
Oddly enough, Rileys always seemed quite a sleazy place. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing Bingo Nights advertised there - I can remember discussing this with a friend who wanted to go along as she wanted to film it. Like an idiot I never went inside. You can sewe from the outside it was a big space - there's a second hall behind the first, and they appear to be interconnected.
In recent years, I think - I am sure I remember this - it sometimes ran club nights, which would be policed by massive bouncers wearing lots of gold chains. Can't imagine there was an awful lot of temperance in the air inside - just walking past you almost swooned in the exhalations of after-shave.
I knew this area had been famously teetotal - even poor Graham Greene noticed this when he had to cross Clapham Common to buy beer for his visiting guest, Julian Maclaren Ross, from the Windmill pub. It seems the heavily disapproving temperance mood of the Clapham Sect - for all the good they did in parliament in pushing through abolition - had a deep and lasting impact on the social fabric.
Ayway, the Temperance Halls, for all their worthiness, could not resist a distinctly racy, kiss-me-quick architectural details. Look at the photos below of the poor old building, before it is pulverised. Beneath that hideous facade lurked a bit of dandy, a man or girl about town with its exotic curves and curlicues.
Love it. Now it's on the way out - and I am sure the Travelogue (is that the right name?) that replaces it will be haunted by all manner of randy but alcohol free ghosts.
The Wandsworth Road itself is changing very fast, but at least two of its very well hidden treasures should be safe from the developers of Nine Elms. The Larkhall Estate close to Wandswroth Road overground station, with its deeply shaded quadrangle gardens and steep pitched roofing - is grade 2 listed - while ornate and flamboyant interior decoration of Khadambi Asalache's 575 Wandsworth Road is now in the hands of the National Trust.
 |
| As it was: Riley's snooker hall in the Wandsworth Road, complete with lovely cladding |
This place was always regarded as one of the ugliest buildings in a street that was not exactly beautiful.
And yet, once the demolition team got to work, they began to uncover details that made you stop and look and think - hang on, what the hell was that place?
According to a fellow blogger this surprisingly large building was almost certainly a Temperance Hall.
Once the hideous facade had been pulled away (I always thought of it as corrugated iron, but it is actually some sort of plastic cladding), you see this elaborate stucco work, all very garish and mock-exotic. Surely this is all a bit much for what was supposed to be a former Temperance Hall?
No - a little more research soon turned up a load of information on the Temperance and Billiard Hall movement of the early 20th century. The images on this site are of buildings very similar in design to the one on Wandsworth Road which is now on the brink of demolition.
It's clear several very similar buildings were erected across south London in the early 20th Century. Maybe they were designed to be alluring enough to tempt wayward souls away from the pubs and gin palaces. Once inside they'd get a nice game of billiards and a glass of ginger beer, or a tea. And maybe a pamphlet or two?
Oddly enough, Rileys always seemed quite a sleazy place. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing Bingo Nights advertised there - I can remember discussing this with a friend who wanted to go along as she wanted to film it. Like an idiot I never went inside. You can sewe from the outside it was a big space - there's a second hall behind the first, and they appear to be interconnected.
In recent years, I think - I am sure I remember this - it sometimes ran club nights, which would be policed by massive bouncers wearing lots of gold chains. Can't imagine there was an awful lot of temperance in the air inside - just walking past you almost swooned in the exhalations of after-shave.
I knew this area had been famously teetotal - even poor Graham Greene noticed this when he had to cross Clapham Common to buy beer for his visiting guest, Julian Maclaren Ross, from the Windmill pub. It seems the heavily disapproving temperance mood of the Clapham Sect - for all the good they did in parliament in pushing through abolition - had a deep and lasting impact on the social fabric.
Ayway, the Temperance Halls, for all their worthiness, could not resist a distinctly racy, kiss-me-quick architectural details. Look at the photos below of the poor old building, before it is pulverised. Beneath that hideous facade lurked a bit of dandy, a man or girl about town with its exotic curves and curlicues.
Love it. Now it's on the way out - and I am sure the Travelogue (is that the right name?) that replaces it will be haunted by all manner of randy but alcohol free ghosts.
The Wandsworth Road itself is changing very fast, but at least two of its very well hidden treasures should be safe from the developers of Nine Elms. The Larkhall Estate close to Wandswroth Road overground station, with its deeply shaded quadrangle gardens and steep pitched roofing - is grade 2 listed - while ornate and flamboyant interior decoration of Khadambi Asalache's 575 Wandsworth Road is now in the hands of the National Trust.
Sunday, 4 January 2015
Losing our society: what next for the former home of The Tearooms des Artistes?
Some things you take too much for granted. Like who did not think there'd always be an interesting drinking place in the cranky old building once famously occupied by The Tearooms des Artistes, at 697 Wandsworth Road, London SW8?
Yesterday, walking back past the junction with Silverthorne Road and North Street, I see there are
estate agent's boards all over the big brash pub-club on the corner, latterly the Artesian Well. Not surprised or even sad that place has gone, but unnerved to see that it is being sold without any requirement to keep it as a place of refreshment.
Yesterday, walking back past the junction with Silverthorne Road and North Street, I see there are
.jpg "Lost Society: the former home of the Tearooms des Artistes in Clapham, London, is changing hands again") |
| This old building, said to be partly a 16th century barn, is a jewel of the Wandsworth Road. Home to the much-loved Tearooms des Artistes until 2006, then the much less interesting Lost Society bar and restaurant, the building is once again empty. What next? Photo: Ewan Munro |
But then, you see similar signs up on its neighbour, which in recent years has been a rather overcooked and expensive restaurant-bar-party place and sometimes theatre calling itself Lost Society. Big steel shutters over the windows, no messing here. On these boards they state they might be interested in restaurant proposals.
You can only imagine that any restaurant opening here in 2015 will be a couple a galaxies away in culture from the famously eccentric Tearooms which survived and even thrived here through most of the 1980s and 90s.
It really was the strangest place, and only now does the absurdity of having such a gem on one's doorstep, and hardly ever visiting it, hit you hard in the gut.
Once, long before I lived in the area, a friend invited me to meet at what she said was a crazy and rather beautiful place near ILEA's Batttersea TV centre. I was living in Dalston at the time (1982 or so) so it was long cycle ride, but worth the effort: the Tearooms des Artistes on Wandsworth Road, about midway between Vauxhall and Clapham Junction, was even then a rare survivor of a genuine late-60s style alternative meeting place space. Part bar, part cheap veggie restaurant, part art-gallery, nightclub, performance space - a veritable mini-arts lab for the shrinking bohemian populations of SWs 8 and 4 and 11. Somewhere you could sit and read and talk most of the day, or just find a dark corner to hide in.
Occupying what felt like farmyard buildings (and it did apparently incorporate much of a 16th century barn and -according to some accounts - slaughterhouse), with low-ceilinged rooms and passageways going off in directions, plus a garden area if you were adventurous, creaking floorboards and furniture, it seemed , sourced from skips across all 35 boroughs.
We met there at about 4pm and we were hungry. The chef that day, a young woman with blonde dreadlocks, showed us the choices: one dish. A huge aluminium tray filled with the most delicious vegetarian moussaka I had tasted, before or since. We had several large tumblers of rough red wine and piles of heavy hippy-style bread with it. I can't remember the cost, but I do remember she a had some trouble working out our bill and sort of shrugged and there was change from a fiver. OK it was the early 1980s, but even then, this was ridiculously cheap.
What I also remember clearly was the background music - actually more foreground, especially when she cranked up the volume on The Fall's Repetition. As a sort of house in-joke, I think, she played this track twice, with a bit of Miles in between.
I had clearly found my spiritual bolt-hole - so why, when I moved into a flat less than a quarter mile from the Tearooms did I not become an habitué or fixture there? I wish I could explain my own stupidity as a 30-something cut-price yuppie. I always recommended the place and kept my eye on the listings mags, where more and more often you'd see the Tearooms' club nights starred up to the hilt.
I guess I already felt too old and drab to go there any more. The next visit I remember was in 1986, when I left a dreary trade magazine job. I was asked where I'd like my leaving do, and as many of the staff lived in the SW area, this seemed an obvious choice. So it was that the full staff of this mag, 12 or so of us including its thrusting new editor, sat around creaking tables in one of the upper rooms, draining litre flagons of wine and consuming more slabs of delicious vegetarian lasagne. You wondered if the floor would hold.
This bearded editor was clearly much more used to fine dining at expense account hotel restaurants, but he looked quite cheerful when the final bill came in. We left just as some DJ was setting up and a new younger clientele was arriving.
By all accounts the Tearooms flourished in the E-fuelled clubbing boom of the late 80s-early 90s, becoming famous as a place to chill down at after a night at one of the more frenetic music barns of a Sunday morning. By morning, I mean 5am onwards - it was on the map as one of the few places that was open at this time. Hardened clubbers kept going right through the day, and it was in this milieu that some big-name djs - notably Rob Da Bank - cut their teeth.
His weekly Sunday Best slot on the Wandsworth Road was the little seed out of which grew his worlwide dj-ing empire and the Bestival festival on the Isle of Wight. Slightly bigger crowds, same basic ideas.
All I can remember is on some summer sundays, lying in bed and hearing weird and beguiling mixtures of house, disco, psychedelia, new wave, jazz, prog rock and world music drifting over from the Tearooms garden direction. Sometimes the sounds mingled with raves being held at the squatted Lease-Lend Cottage up on Hannington road.
If anyone reads this who was there, or has any other memories of this lovely place, it would be great to hear from you.
At some point in the early 2000s, the Tearooms finally went belly-up, but after a while - in 2006, I am told - it was thoroughly tarted-up and re-opened as Lost Society.
The new place attempted to keep the arty bohemian spirit going, but in a much more lavish, way. You can see some photos of the interior as it was on the website of interior designer Lee Broom, from 2006.
It had chnaged, of course it had, everything had changed. But it did still put on some good music nights, as well as setting up a theatre spot. The Reggae Philharmonic were playing gigs there in recent years. But clearly rents had soared and the emphasis went more and more onto pricey food, and party nights for well-heeled.
It was no longer a place for misfits. It had a rather nice fit with the rich kids of a wide swathe of south west London, thank you very much.
It still had a clubby atmosphere, but now it was more of the OK yah genre, or so it seemed to grumpy old fools like me. It all just seemed a wee bit too snotty for some of us old ex-punks, rare groovers, acid-house ravers and undead freak-out-o-philes.
Good god you'd even see stretch limos parked up along poor old Wandsworth Road, although they were even more likely to be dropping people off at the Artesian Well next door - a rather grim meat-market for the well-off youth of the Surrey fringes. That too is now closed.
You can only imagine that any restaurant opening here in 2015 will be a couple a galaxies away in culture from the famously eccentric Tearooms which survived and even thrived here through most of the 1980s and 90s.
It really was the strangest place, and only now does the absurdity of having such a gem on one's doorstep, and hardly ever visiting it, hit you hard in the gut.
Once, long before I lived in the area, a friend invited me to meet at what she said was a crazy and rather beautiful place near ILEA's Batttersea TV centre. I was living in Dalston at the time (1982 or so) so it was long cycle ride, but worth the effort: the Tearooms des Artistes on Wandsworth Road, about midway between Vauxhall and Clapham Junction, was even then a rare survivor of a genuine late-60s style alternative meeting place space. Part bar, part cheap veggie restaurant, part art-gallery, nightclub, performance space - a veritable mini-arts lab for the shrinking bohemian populations of SWs 8 and 4 and 11. Somewhere you could sit and read and talk most of the day, or just find a dark corner to hide in.
Occupying what felt like farmyard buildings (and it did apparently incorporate much of a 16th century barn and -according to some accounts - slaughterhouse), with low-ceilinged rooms and passageways going off in directions, plus a garden area if you were adventurous, creaking floorboards and furniture, it seemed , sourced from skips across all 35 boroughs.
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| Want to bring some joyful bohemia back to Clapham? Put on your sunday best, visit your bank manager, then ring this number! |
What I also remember clearly was the background music - actually more foreground, especially when she cranked up the volume on The Fall's Repetition. As a sort of house in-joke, I think, she played this track twice, with a bit of Miles in between.
I had clearly found my spiritual bolt-hole - so why, when I moved into a flat less than a quarter mile from the Tearooms did I not become an habitué or fixture there? I wish I could explain my own stupidity as a 30-something cut-price yuppie. I always recommended the place and kept my eye on the listings mags, where more and more often you'd see the Tearooms' club nights starred up to the hilt.
I guess I already felt too old and drab to go there any more. The next visit I remember was in 1986, when I left a dreary trade magazine job. I was asked where I'd like my leaving do, and as many of the staff lived in the SW area, this seemed an obvious choice. So it was that the full staff of this mag, 12 or so of us including its thrusting new editor, sat around creaking tables in one of the upper rooms, draining litre flagons of wine and consuming more slabs of delicious vegetarian lasagne. You wondered if the floor would hold.
This bearded editor was clearly much more used to fine dining at expense account hotel restaurants, but he looked quite cheerful when the final bill came in. We left just as some DJ was setting up and a new younger clientele was arriving.
By all accounts the Tearooms flourished in the E-fuelled clubbing boom of the late 80s-early 90s, becoming famous as a place to chill down at after a night at one of the more frenetic music barns of a Sunday morning. By morning, I mean 5am onwards - it was on the map as one of the few places that was open at this time. Hardened clubbers kept going right through the day, and it was in this milieu that some big-name djs - notably Rob Da Bank - cut their teeth.
His weekly Sunday Best slot on the Wandsworth Road was the little seed out of which grew his worlwide dj-ing empire and the Bestival festival on the Isle of Wight. Slightly bigger crowds, same basic ideas.
All I can remember is on some summer sundays, lying in bed and hearing weird and beguiling mixtures of house, disco, psychedelia, new wave, jazz, prog rock and world music drifting over from the Tearooms garden direction. Sometimes the sounds mingled with raves being held at the squatted Lease-Lend Cottage up on Hannington road.
If anyone reads this who was there, or has any other memories of this lovely place, it would be great to hear from you.
At some point in the early 2000s, the Tearooms finally went belly-up, but after a while - in 2006, I am told - it was thoroughly tarted-up and re-opened as Lost Society.
The new place attempted to keep the arty bohemian spirit going, but in a much more lavish, way. You can see some photos of the interior as it was on the website of interior designer Lee Broom, from 2006.
It had chnaged, of course it had, everything had changed. But it did still put on some good music nights, as well as setting up a theatre spot. The Reggae Philharmonic were playing gigs there in recent years. But clearly rents had soared and the emphasis went more and more onto pricey food, and party nights for well-heeled.
It was no longer a place for misfits. It had a rather nice fit with the rich kids of a wide swathe of south west London, thank you very much.
Good god you'd even see stretch limos parked up along poor old Wandsworth Road, although they were even more likely to be dropping people off at the Artesian Well next door - a rather grim meat-market for the well-off youth of the Surrey fringes. That too is now closed.
A search for the history of the Tearooms has not so far turned up very much of interest, apart from this review by Serena Mackesy from the Independent in June 1994 (so it was still going then). She described it as "a delightfully eccentric bar-restaurant in a former slaughterhouse (for a while holes in the walls where the blood used to run out remained open to the air) on the corner of North Street, and serve very palatable vegetarian food and lashings of plonk".
Adding: "They also provide a weekend service to insomniacs by opening (for a pounds 2 entrance fee) for breakfast, board games and wacky ambience from 5am on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Close to Clapham Common."
Adding: "They also provide a weekend service to insomniacs by opening (for a pounds 2 entrance fee) for breakfast, board games and wacky ambience from 5am on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Close to Clapham Common."
Oh, please let's get back to some of that wacky ambience, for pity's sake!
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