Saturday 24 November 2012

Death pRattle


Well well.
Perched, waiting on a kiddies ride this evening in the Morpeth branch of Morrison, I heard a quiet, little mechanical voice coming from the next machine -a motorbike affair, sayin, in a most persuasive tone "Come on, have a go?!" This message was being beamed out from the very bottom of the machine, only audible to those around 2 to 3 feet high. 'I always told they were broken', said mother dear.

My mind can turn up ver little from the past few months. The deluge of photos I have just upoaded from my camerphone would tell a different story, and thus I must backtrack, complete and repose a few worthy projects, and one ballad of dread in pale, by means of note for excuse, for public consumption, if one dozen counts as public. Let's take it one day at a time, okay?

Stumbling as I have been through bad weather to worse, it has to be said it has on occasion been from interesting place to place.  I've shot a lot of film, much of which has yet to be developed and printed, let alone scanned in, but we have a few phone shots, as means of grainy illustration
startling here;




As the cracks start to widen and heave under the sheer weight of legislated misery dished out  to the country's non-super rich, in the post Olympic drizzle, the large unoccupied semi derelict business buildings in central London's Holborn district fill rapidly with all kinds of new squatters. The anti-residential law recently past has pushed many out of once safe homes, and a the city center throbbing the rhythm of the damp dead Olympic London spectacle. 


The skill of experienced buildings crackers soaks up the need of the city center homeless and several buildings in central London are, in turn as each is evicted and moved a few doors down or across, housing upwards of 60 persons.
The mesh of middle class politicos, artist-come-activists, alcoholics and crusties now find themselves in new unexpected roles they generously, out of a humanity lacking a short walk away in Whitehall fulfil, such as carers for mentally disabled people, who have been literally dropped off in squats by their  now defunct carers and social workers, as they are, despite not being able to even clean themselves, booted from their housing as the Disability Welfare is withdraw.


On a fully serious and horrific point, there are folk being housed in huge ex-corporate buildings in London who are badly, sadly disabled -able just to string sentences, suffering dirty (though not unfed, as through mass activity on part of the skip-divers and the compassion of the chain food stores in this part of london where it is possible to see 5 branches of Eat, Starbucks, Wasabi, Etc, Etc form any one standpoint).  Able squatters pour out their plastic cups of cider and allow them free reign of the computers where they blast out Bon Jovi on repeat - the stress and unrewdared responsibility of this is enormous, of course it's not terrific to placate the unproductive desires of ones who should be getting a lot more help, but these new carers have their own lives to sort, and it is better, after all then leaving them, as the 'Coalition' is apparently happy to, on the streets as the weather starts to freeze.  They'll die.

Helping a friend move from this thoroughly spent building, we packed up and headed on to another property, which was rather special, in being an ex-masonic lodge in a beautiful west London pub, left with fully stocked alcohol and food, by an owner who very clearly bought the property at a loss so as to  convert it into flats, much to the chagrin of Chelsea Marina residents. No-ones happy are they? Apart from anyone who happens to be in the squatted pub, which rather a luck-out!



After a slap up meal and a few nips of the green fairy, I took a very long walk away, stopping by Oscar Wilde, one of the neighbours', house. We're all in the gutter, as he said..I can't remember the rest of that one. It was a cloudy night.