August, 2024 | >Re-PHOTO

Sean Rigg Memorial – 4 Years

Sean Rigg Memorial – 4 Years – Brixton Tuesday 21st August 2012

There is a lengthy piece on Wikipedia about the death of Sean Rigg whic states that his “case became a cause célèbre for civil rights and justice campaigners in the United Kingdom, who called for “improvement and change on a national level” regarding deaths in police custody and the police treatment of suspects with mental health issues.”

It goes into some detail of the circumstances of his death and the various enquiries that followed but fails to properly represent the huge effort investigating and campaigning by his family, particularly by his sister Marcia Rigg, which brought to light the many lies and failures of the police.

In 2023, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) made an unprecedented apology in a letter to Marcia Rigg which you can read in full with her response on the Inquest site.

The Inquest post also has a clear brief summary of Sean’s arrest and the detention that killed him ad the failures of the IPCC investigation, along with a comment by Inquet’s director Deborah Coles, as well as the background to the case.

*Mona Donle, Sean Rigg’s mother and his sisters Marcia and Samantha lead the march*

I’ve written on a number of occasions about the case – and of other suspicious deaths in police custody, including others involving Brixton Police Station, in particular the death of Ricky Bishop in 2001. Here I’ll simply write about the events in Brixton on the evening of Tuesday 21st August 2012.

Fortunately I did not want a seat in the Assembly Hall inside Lambeth Town Hall as every one was filled for the memorial event four years to the day after his death. By the time this was over people were standing around the side of the hall and others waiting outside for the vigil.

Around 200 people lined up behind Mona Donle, Sean Rigg’s mother and his sisters Marcia and Samantha to march with the Sean Rigg banner to the memorial tree outside Brixton Police Station. Some held placards and carried flowers with his sisters carrying a framed portrait of Sean.

People laid flowers and lit candles at the memorial tree and put up Sean’s portrait and there were some speeches.

Mona Donle, a Brixton resident described a disturbing incident the previous Sunday in Windrush Square when three police officers violently assaulted a man who was clearly disturbed and acting unpredictably: “One officer choked him by holding his forearm across the man’s throat. Then another officer stamped on him. The foot was on his face and then the man passed out – we kept telling them to call an ambulance.”

As I noted, “The police account reads differently, making no mention of the violence and suggesting that the ambulance arrived ‘approximately’ five minutes after the arrest.” An eye witness told me it was around 20 minutes before the ambulance came and that the man had only just come round.

Sean’s mother spoke briefly and then Mona Donle went in to take in a formal complaint about the incident she had seen. At first I watched them from the doorway but when others piled in I joined them.

It was very crowded inside the police station lobby. The complaint was handed in, and a signed and dated copy was returned to the complainant.

But they demanded to hear from a senior officer about what had happened, and after a few minutes Superintendent David McLaren came out, gave a short statement and tried to answer some of the questions, though clearly no-one was satisfied with his answers. The lobby was very crowded and getting hot and it was soon time for me to leave.

It didn’t seem likely that there would be much more happening. One of two people had tried to stir up a little trouble but the Rigg family had made it clear that they wanted this to be an occasion where respect was show for Sean and with others had helped to quieten things down.

More pictures on My London Diary at Sean Rigg Memorial – 4 Years.

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Highbury to Stoke Newington Church Street – 1989

Highbury to Stoke Newington Church Street: Continuing my walk from Sunday 1st October 1989 which had begun at Finsbury Park and continued to the Nags Head before returning to Finsbury Park. The previous post ended on Blackstock Road.

House, Kelross Rd, Northolme Rd, Highbury, Islington, 1989 89-10b-46 — *House, Kelross Rd, Northolme Rd, Highbury, Islington, 1989*

Blackstock Road continues south into Highbury as Highbury Park and I walked some way down this before turning east into Northolme Road. Highbury Park was developed in the 1870s but the houses in Northholme Road date from the 1890s. This and neighbouring roads were built on the Holm Estate and the LCC applied for permission to develop these roads in 1890.

North Holme is near Helmsley, North Riding of Yorkshire and although it has been described as a “township” is a small cluster of buildings, more a farm than even a village close to the River Dove. “The Revd Joseph Parker, DD (1830-1902) … lived in 1866 at a house in Highbury Park he called ‘North Holme‘. The sites of Northolme Road, Sotheby Road and Ardilaun Road were on part of the grounds of his house.” He was the “Minister of the City Temple, 1869-1901, author, preacher and twice
Chairman of the Congregational Union“.

This house is at the eastern end of Northolme Road, where it meets Kelross Road and is a detached villa rather larger than the terraces along long the rest of the road.

*Clissold Park, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-35*

From here Kelross passage leads to Highbury New Park, a street with villas built from around 1850. But I pressed on across it into Collins Road, making my way towards Clissold Park and Stoke Newington Church St.

Clissold House was built as Paradise House for Quaker City merchant Jonathan Hoare, a noted philanthropist and anti-slavery campaigner and brother of banker Samuel Hoare Jr. The water here was a stretch of the New River which brought clean drinking water from Hertfordshire to London, but I think at some point the river here was culverted, although the bridge taking Stoke Newington Church St across it remained until the 1930s.

The park was first created as grounds for this GradeII listed house. Hoare got into financial difficulties and lost the house and grounds, which passed through several owners before being owned by Augustus Clissold. When he died in 1882 the estate was bought by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners who intended to make money from developing it as housing, but the Metropolitan Board of Works were persuaded in 1887 to buy it to be a public park.

By 1989 the house and park were in a poor condition and Clissold House was put on English Heritages ‘at risk’ register in 1991. Since then both park and house have been restored with the aid of lottery money.

*Park Crescent, Spensley Walk, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-23*

Grade II listed Park Crescent at 207-223 Stoke Newington Church Street was built in 1855, but by the 1980s was in a very dilapidated state and became home to around 90 squatters alongside only a handful of legal tenants. The houses were then owned by Hackey council who planned to sell them to housing associations.

*Park Crescent, Spensley Walk, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-11*

Three motorbikes parked outside one of the houses of Park Crescent. You can clearly see the poor state of the buildings which need Acrow props to support the porches, with the steps at right being roped off to block access to the unsafe building.

Park Crescent now looks very neat and tidy compared to this.

*Shops, 185-189, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10c-51*

The building at 185 Stoke Newington Church St had been sold when I made this picture in October 1989, but The Modern Man, a hairdressers, was still alive in another shop on the street, shown in my next picture.

This row of buildings with ground-floor shops is still there and like the rest of the area has become rather better kept and is now that epitome of gentrification, an estate agents which has also expanded into 187.

Perhaps surprisingly the 5 Star Cleaners at 189 is still a dry cleaners, though under a different name.

*The Modern Man, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10c-52*

I found The Modern Man still in business at 121 Stoke Newington Church St at the corner with Marton Road. It didn’t survive the gentrification of the area and the shop has passed through several hands as ‘frere jacques’, ‘search and rescue, ‘Ooh Lou Lou Cakery’ and ‘The Caffeine Fix’.

I don’t know how long Tanya’s Cafe-Diner Take away lasted but around 2009 it became Lydia Cafe Restaurant and retained the name Lydia until recently becoming ‘The Tiffin Tin.’.

My walk was almost at an end, but I’ll share are few more pictures in a later post.

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Krishna Celebrations & A Police State

Krishna Celebrations & A Police State: On Sunday 19th August 2007 I went to photograph a religious celebration in Southall, around 11 miles from where I live. I don’t drive and it takes well over an hour by public transport but I could then ride there on my bike in perhaps 45 minutes. At the time the Climate Camp was taking place near Heathrow at Harmondsworth, but having read their “media policy” I had decided not to go there, but in the event I got drawn into it a little. Here I’ll re-publish, with some slight corrections what I wrote on My London Diary in 2007 together with pictures from from the day, both in Southall and on my way home along the north of Heathrow.

On Sunday I cycled through the light rain to the Shree Ram Mandir (Temple Of Lord Rama) in King Street, Southall, which was apparently the first Hindu temple established in Britain, although recently rebuilt. They were holding their Janam Ashtami Shobha Yaatra, a procession in honour of the birth anniversary of Krishna which this year is on September 4.

I have to admit to finding the Hindu religion confusing, but processions such as this are lively and colourful events even if their full appreciation may require a rather different mindset to mine.

It is easy to share the feelings of celebration and of community, and to feel the welcome given by so many. I also met for the first time the newly elected MP for Ealing Southall who held the seat for labour in last month’s by-election, Virendra Sharma, taking part in the procession; many were eager to pose for their picture with him.

I took a route back from Southall along the north side of Heathrow, close to the Climate Camp at Harmondsworth. On my way to Southall, along the Great South West Road which runs along the south-east of the airport, I’d been stopped and searched by police at Hatton Cross.

Its a power that police are using more and more – on average around 11,000 a month in London now, and one that makes me feel uneasy. We now seem to be in a kind of police state I’ve certainly never voted for and don’t wish to live in.

I won’t appear in the Met’s figures, despite being searched in London, as the two officers concerned had been drafted in from Surrey for the day. They were polite and we had a pleasant enough conversation, but to me it still seems an unreasonable intrusion.

Under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, the police can search anyone in an area designated as likely to be the subject of a terrorist attack – such as airports. they don’t need to have any grounds to suspect you, being there is enough.

Cycling back along the pavement by the Bath Road (a shared path) there were rather more police around, but they were too busy with more likely targets to stop me. As I came along the road I found myself riding along with a woman who was obviously hurrying to get somewhere. We both stopped at the same point, opposite where three activists had scaled the side of a small building with a banner reading “MAKE PLANES HISTORY”.

She jumped over the fence between the two carriageways to approach the protesters, while I stayed on the opposite side from where I had a better view. Later she came back to talk to the TV crew beside me which was talking to one of the protesters – obviously she was proud of her daughter’s action.

And she had every right to be proud. We need action over Heathrow, action to prevent the takeover of even more land for the Third Runway. I’ve long opposed the expansion of Heathrow – and was on the local march against the Third Runway in June 2003. Now there shouldn’t even be a possibility of further expansion, but the government must look at ways of running down the activities at Heathrow, or it will be failing not just West London but the world.

Further along the road I found protesters gathering around the British Airports Authority offices, which were ringed by police. Nothing much seemed to be happening and the media were there in force, so I left the guys to it.

I’d previously been upset by the restrictive media policy adopted by the Climate Camp, which had the effect of preventing sensible photographic coverage of the event. So I was rather less interested than I might otherwise have been in putting myself out to take pictures.

Along the road I met a few groups of demonstrators and did take a few pictures of them, including some on the bridge over the road into the airport, and a couple of the Clown Army being harassed by a police photo team, but my heart still wasn’t really in it.

The British Airways offices had seemed to me a likely place for a confrontation – and obviously the police had thought so too, as teams of black clad figures paced up and down spoiling for a fight, watched over by the guys in uniform and a group of suits. At the top of the mound in front of the offices were a couple of officers on horses.

It was like some painting of the field lining up before a medieval battle, and I wish I’d stopped to take a picture, but they were so obviously looking for trouble I decided I didn’t want the aggravation that this would most likely have caused. For once you will just have to imagine it!

More pictures on My London Diary:
Janam Ashtami Shobha Yaatra
Heathrow Climate Camp Protestors

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Wimbledon Chariot Festival – 2010

Wimbledon Chariot Festival: On Wednesday 18th August 2010 I went to Wimbledon to photograph one of London’s more colourful annual festivals, the procession by the Tamil community from the Shree Ganapathy Hindu Temple around their local streets.

The temple was opened here in Effra Road, in a building that had been built as a mission hall by Trinity Presbyterian Church, a ‘Scottish Church’ founded in Wimbledon in 1883.

In 1887 they had set up a mission Sunday School in South Wimbledon and numbers grew so they built St Cuthbert’s Hall on Effra Street in the mid 1890s. Around 194 this became St Cuthbert’s District Church. On my 2010 post I wrongly called it Anglican rather than Presbyterian.

The Church was still a party of Trinity when falling membership led to the decision in 1956 to sell the building to the Sir Cyril Black Trust, who renamed it Churchill Hall. Black, who died in 1991, was MP for Wimbledon from 1950 to his retirement 1970 and was a strict Baptist, known for his far right views and opposition to liberal reforms, but strongly supportive to the local community and a founder of the Wimbledon Community Association.

The hall in 1981 became the Shree Ganapathy Hindu Temple and its church hall the Sai Mandir prayer hall.

As I noted in 2010, “As well as traditional temple activities for its Tamil community, the temple has a “more holistic approach to providing for the spiritual, moral and emotional needs of our devotees” with various talks, classes and health seminars. Together with the Sai Mandir it also takes part in a wide range of community projects in the London Borough of Merton and more widely, including meals on wheels, food for the homeless, and conservation work as well as welcoming local children, students, teachers and others to come and learn about Hinduism. In recent years it has also worked to support Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka.“

On My London Diary as well as the many pictures there is quite a long introduction about the event which involved a procession around the area with statues of three of the Temple deities, two on chariots and one on a palanquin.

The chariots are pulled by crowds of worshippers, there are musicians, women with bowls of flaming camphor and huge numbers of coconuts, many of which were flung onto rocks in large wooden boxes and shatter, while others ricochet dangerously. All of us were soon covered in coconut milk.

Men stripped to the waist roll along the street holding coconuts in front of them. People present baskets of fruit and coconuts to the Temple priest on the chariot to be blessed and the priest distributes flower petals and other gifts.

It took a couple of hours for the procession to travel what would have been at most a ten minute walk, after which celebrations were to continue inside the Temple

I and my colleague who was also photographing the event were made very welcome at the festival and invited to continue inside and eat a meal, but we had to leave. I’ve not returned as I felt my coverage in 2010 had probably covered the event sufficiently and I would only been repeating myself. This year, 2024, the festival was on Sunday 11 Aug 2024.

Much more on My London Diary at Wimbledon Chariot Festival, where there is also an account of another Tamil Chariot Festival in Ealing.

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Blackstock and Brownswood

Blackstock and Brownswood: Continuing my walk from Sunday 1st October 1989 which began at Finsbury Park and continued to the Nags Head before returning to Finsbury Park. The previous post to this ended on Blackstock Road.

*Gillespie Neighbourhood Office, Blackstock Mews, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10b-63*

The buildings at the right of this picture are those on the left of the final picture in my previous post. Here I wanted to contrast the deco style of the Gillespie Neighbourhood Office at 102 with that of the solid Victorian house next door and its more utilitarian infill at 98.

The border between Hackney and Islington runs here along the centre of Blackstock Road and this is on the Islington side, though I was standing in Hackney to take the picture. I was in Hackney’s Brownswood Conservation Area, but the more interesting side of the road here is not in a conservation area and this Art Deco office does not even appear on the local list.

*House, Brownswood Rd, Wilberforce Rd, Finsbury Park, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-52*

The development of this area was delayed by the setting up of the park in the area as in the early years of its planning the actual boundaries were not fixed. So much of the area was built up in the 1870s, giving it a unusually homogeneous architecture.

Brownswood Road runs though the area with two peculiar staggered junctions and this picture was made at one of these.

*Frinton Metal Ltd, 145a, Brownswood Rd, Finsbury Park, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-53*

I think the house number is from Blackstock Road – the scrap metal and Gold and Silver buyer was in the back yard of the house at the left, 145 Blackstock Road. Although there were no ‘TO-DAYS PRICES’ listed for Gold & Silver and the shop was closed on a Sunday, there is a light on inside and I think it was still in business.

Google Maps labels this section of Brownswood Road as Lydon Row and there is no sign that there ever was a business here.

*Mountgrove Garage, 115, Finsbury Park Rd, Finsbury Park, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-56*

I walked a little further on down Blackstock Road and then turned down Mountgrove Road. The house at right is on Mountgove Road and that on the left – along with the garage – in on Finsbury Park Road. Rather to my surprise Mountgrove Garage is still there, now offering ‘MOT Tyres Servicing Bodywork’ and claiming ‘ALL VEHICLES REPAIRED HERE’, though all of the notices in my picture have been replaced. I think it looks rather less impressive now.

*Shops, 162-176, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10b-41*

Back on Blackstock Road I photographed this nicely detailed row with ground floor shops and facing more of the same on the opposite side of the street. I chose this one for the sign which I think at the top read OFFICIAL BOOKING OFFICE with MOTOR COACHES between the first and second floors and lower down ALL ROAD ROUTES and RAIL SEA AIR.

That sign has I think been restored since 1989 and is clearer now, but the uppermost word, already difficult to read in my picture has disappeared. Rather than a booking office the shop is now a book shop.

*Head, 198-200, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10b-42*

A little further down Blackstock road was this head above BESTOCK FURNISHING, a secondhand furnishing shop, the kind of place we bought chairs and tables when we were poor, and on the shop front of RITEMARKS LTD FOOTWEAR MANUFACTURERS a variety of symbols – a sunflower and two leaping fish. I think the window between these is a reflection of the building in my next picture.

*217, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10b-43*

Built as Highbury Fire Station by the LCC in 1906 it was one of many closed in 1920 after the replacement of horse-drawn engines by motorised fire engines meant that stations could serve a wider area.

As a young man around 1920 my father worked for a short time at Dennis Brothers Limited in Guildford. He was (among other trades) a carpenter, having grown up working with his father making horse-drawn carts, and they were then still making wooden fire engines, as well as ‘charabancs’ – open motor buses. Cutting the curved doors for these was a tricky three-dimensional job and he did it freehand.

Since I photographed it this Edwardian Arts & Crafts locally listed building has been converted into the Little Angel Day Nursery with flats above.

Marikana Massacre Remembered – 2017

Marikana Massacre Remembered – Two events in London on Wednesday 16th August 2017 marked the 5th anniversary of the massacre when 34 striking miners were shot dead by South African police at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine.

As well as those killed in what “was the most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the Soweto uprising of 16 June 1976” at least 78 miners were injured and around 250 were arrested.

A press statement three days ago from SERI, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa gives more details of the event and the failure of the government to compensate many of those involved and the continued denial of criminal responsibility.

This states that “of the 315 claimants, about 129 people have received nothing, including all eleven family members of the murdered Thobile Mpumza” and accuses the police of attempting to tamper the evidence in the criminal cases. Although there are six officers on trial for an event in which three miners and two police officers were killed three days before the massacre, “No one has been charged for the events of 16 August.”

The mine was in 2012 owned by the UK based Lonmin plc, formery Lonrho plc, which became notorious under the leadership of CEO Tiny Rowlands from 1962 until 1993. It was a company at the heart of the British establishment. Duncan Sands, the son-in-law of Winston Churchill and a minister in several Tory governments, became is chair in 1972, and Sir Angus Ogilvy, the husband of Princess Alexandra was a director until he had to resign after the company’s involvement in breaking the sanctions against Rhodesia was revealed – described by then Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1973 as “an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism.”

Lonmin was acquired by multinational mining and metals process group with its headquarters in Johannesburg in 2019 Sibanye-Stillwater, making the group the worlds largest producer of platinum and rhodium among its other precious metals and other interests. It is one of the four largest private employers in South Africa.

In August 2017, Lonmin was still in charge, and protesters met outside its London offices in Mayfair for a lunchtime protest.

They held up large photographs of the dead and called for a public apology by Lonmin and the ANC government, particularly Cyril Ramaphosa, in 2012 on the board of Lonmin and now President of South Africa, of as well as the payment of reparations to the dependent of those killed and those injured and arrested, both on the 16th August and at the police killing and injuring of women a month later. Ramaphosa had urged the police to take firm action against the strikers before the masscre.

Among those taking part were Primrose Nokulunga Sonti and Thumeka Magwangqana from the Marikana women’s organisation Sikhala Sonke (We Cry Together) who had come to the UK asking to meet with Lonmin representatives – but were ignored. They tried to take a letter into the offices for Lonmin but were refused entry, eventually giving the letter to the receptionist who promised to deliver it.

In the early evening there was the annual vigil outside the South African High Commission in Trafalgar Square on the anniversary of the massacre, organised by the Pan-Afrikan Society Community Forum (PACSF) and Marikana Miners Solidarity Campaign.

People again held the pictures of the murdered miners which also had their names and a brief description. Some had come with yellow flowers and these were handed out to those who had come to take part in the vigil.

Among those who spoke at the event were the two women from Sikhala Sonke who gave a powerful presentation about the effects of the massacre. I had to leave as this ended and before the pictures were taped to the locked gates of the High Commission and people came to lay flowers.

More on My London Diary at Justice for Marikana vigil and Marikana Massacre Protest at Lonmin HQ.

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Nags Head to Blackstock Road – 2019

Nags Head to Blackstock Road: Continuing my walk from Sunday 1st October 1989 which had begun at Finsbury Park and then gone along Seven Sisters Road to the Nags Head in Holloway.

*Coleridge Rd, Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10a-12*

I turned around at the Nags Head and walked back towards Finsbury Park, taking a little detour down Hornsey Road, Tollington Road and Medina Road befor returning to Seven Sisters Road and photographing from the opposite side of the road I’d walked along earlier.

These shops at 218-230 Seven Sisters Road are those I had photographed earlier in the walk but had mistaken for some further down the street but the location is clear from this picture. They have been more greatly altered since 1989 than those further down, and those at the right, closer to the camera demolished.

You can also see the ‘Sisters Gowns’ doorway featured in the previous post at the right on Coleridge Rd.

*Shops, 220-224, Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10a-13*

A view of some of the shops in the row. At the centre of the picture you can see the sky through two of the windows. I think these shops were still all open, though closed on the Sunday morning when I took the picture although the buildings are up for sale. There are lights on in HARRY .O. Fashions and FANTIS BUTCHER still has its shop fittings and scales.

The middle shop was I think a café with a price list at the right, although like many in the area I think was probably more of a social club. When I went past when many of these small cafés were open there were a small group of men drinking coffee around a table and having animated conversations and it would have been rather daunting for an outsider to enter.

*Rainbow Theatre, Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10a-14*

Built as Finsbury Park Astoria in 1930 it became a music venue as The Rainbow Theatre, finally closing in 1982. When built it was an entertainment venue and its interior included bars, cafés and there were concerts and variety shows as well as films on offer. It was Grade II* listed in 1974 largely for its interior which was described as a Hispano-Moresque fantasy.

From 1956-82 it was a music venue, featuring performances by Tommy Steele, Duke Ellington and many others. The Beatles Christmas Show had a short season here in 1963-64 and it was here that Jimmy Hendrix first burnt a guitar. In the 1970s almost every name in pop music played concerts here.

For some years it was then largely unused, with occasional unlicensed boxing matches taking place. Plans to convert it to a bingo hall came to nothing. When I made this picture it seemed to be empty and unused but had been bought by an evangelical church, The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God who are still using the building.

*Man at Telephone Kiosk, Police Box mural, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, Hackney, 1989 89-10a-15*

One man makes a phone call, while the murals show Dr Who running out from his Police Box and a Hokusai inspired wave. The notes on my contact sheet locate this on Blackstock Road. I think it was the wall in front of a Victorian college which was demolished and replaced by the City And Islington College, Centre for Lifelong Learning which opened in 2005.

*Shops, 56-58, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10a-16*

You can still just make out the sign above 60 Blackstock Road, though it has faded significantly since I made this picture. Then there was no doubt it had once been a CHEMIST and it is now a dentists. But 58 is still a coin operated laundry although it has changed from Launderama to LAUNDERETTE, and the sign between the first and second floor windows has been refreshed to reflect this.

*C Richards & Son, 98, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10b-62*

C Richards & Son, next to the entrance to Blackstock Mews at left, were Typefounders and makers of printing machinery. The house is still there but the entrance at right and the two floors above it have gone, along with the Honda garage, replaced by modern housing and I think the house is now simply residential.

A Day At The Seaside – 2004

A Day At The Seaside: It was Saturday 14th August 2004 and a day at the seaside seemed appropriate, and where better than Hastings where the Old Town Carnival was taking place.

Rather than mine my ageing and probably false memories, I’ll here resurrect the text hidden away on the August 2004 page of My London Diary, with a few minor corrections. Since then I have decided that it makes sense and greatly improves legibility to make appropriate use of the Shift key and upper case characters. So here it is, along with just a few of the pictures I made that day.

OK, so Hastings isn’t London, but it is only a short day trip down to the coast, and many of the people down there with me to watch the carnival were from London. Hastings Old Town Carnival was once a traditional English Carnival, but now is more eclectic, though still with relatively little input from our more recently arrived ethnic groups.

Being Hastings there were a few references to the events of 1066 (though not in the pictures I put on line.)

There was a well-supported float for the Hastings/Sierra Leone Friendship Group, but we also had King Henry VIII, Noahs Ark, Pirates, a Tropical Island, Fairy Tales, Chicago-Style Gangsters and more.

I’m not a great fan of majorettes, but there was certainly some virtuoso baton twirling on display, including one lady who needed a lorry to carry her prizes.

Judging from the pictures of previous years there was perhaps a little less zany invention this year than before, but it was a good-natured event, and the centre of the Old Town was crowded to watch it.

Rather than battle it out through the streets I adjourned to the Kings Head for a couple of pints, only to find the carnival was still making its way round as I made mine to the station.

I wasn’t entirely happy with the pictures I made that day; too many were of people posing for the camera and I would have liked more spontaneity. But the kind of things I was searching for just didn’t happen.

The following day I photographed another very different carnival in London, the Carnaval Del Pueblo billed as the largest Latin-American festival in Europe, taking place around the Elephant and Castle in south London. We have few traditional English carnivals left in London, but others have taken their place, reflecting the changing population, adding colour and spice to our city. You can see more pictures here.

More pictures from Hastings
More from the Carnaval Del Pueblo

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A Week In Iona – 2008

A Week In Iona: In August 2008 I stayed a week on the remote island of Iona, a small island of the southwest coast of Mull in the with a long and illustrious history.

The island is well-known as ‘The Cradle of Christianity’ in Scotland, where Columba landed with his twelve companions in AD 563 and began to spread their Celtic Christianity through the islands and across Scotland.

St Columba founded an Abbey here, but later it was destroyed by Viking Raids. Benedictine monks came here around 1200 but after the Reformation their Abbey became a disused ruin.

The Abbey was still in ruins when the 8th Duke of Argyll gave it to the church of Scotland in 1899, and some rebuilding took place in the following years. But it was the Iona Community, a Christian group started in the 1930s in working class Glasgow by George MacLeod, who brought together unemployed craftsmen and young ministers which did most of the work, starting in 1938 and only completed around 1965.

The Abbey is now looked after by Historic Scotland, with the Iona Community now tenants who run various events here and in a more modern centre a couple of hundred yards away.

I was fortunate to be able to stay in the Abbey together with a group of friends as guests of the Iona community, and joined in with the daily services and had to take a part in the running of the centre, serving food and setting and clearing tables, as well as chopping vegetables in the kitchen – including more onions than you can imagine. As I commented, “although I enjoyed my stay, Iona to me will always be remembered as a place of tears!”

Iona is a small island – around 1.5 miles long and under a mile wide, with some isolated crofts and open ground with beautiful beaches and bays. Although its small permanent population – now stated as around 170 – is augmented by large numbers of tourists in the summer months, a short walk from the main street still took us away from it all.

This peace and quiet was only interrupted for a couple of hours during our week there, when a large cruise ship came up and anchored off the island, with small boats ferrying hundreds for a short visit. They set foot on the island, took pictures of the Abbey and left – without really experiencing the island at all.

We did something of the same on one day of our visit, taking a boat trip on a powerful fishing boat to the island of Staffa – around 8 miles away – on 13th August. Fortunately the sea was fairly smooth, though the small boat ploughed through the waves with enough motion to make some feel seasick.

On the journey we passed close to the shore of Mull where seals were basking, and a couple of sharks put on a display as we stood to look into the giant caves in the south cliffs from the sea.

The largest of these, as I wrote in 2008, was named by “the great naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks, whose former house in Spring Grove I used to cycle past daily on my way to school who named the largest of these Fingal’s Cave, linking them with the Irish giant who in legend constructed a causeway starting from similar hexagonal basalt columns in Ireland across to Scotland.”

“Previously it had been known in Gaelic as ‘the melodius cave‘ (Uamh Bhin) from the sounds made by the waves lapping in its 150 foot channel, echoed by the roof like a giant natural cathedral. Later as I approached the cave on foot, the melodies I heard were distinctly female, but it was truly disappointing to find they came not from mermaids but the a cappella singing of my fully dressed wife and a few women friends.”

A weekly event we were able to take part in was the weekly pilgrimage around the island organised by the Iona Community which goes from the Abbey and around the island to various key sites, including the marble quarry, the beach on Columba’s Bay where he landed and the Hermit’s Cell, one of the few places on the island where midges were very much more than troublesome.

Visitors are generally not allowed to bring vehicles to the island – and there is very little in the way of roads outside the village where the ferry lands. It was good to get away from traffic and have a week of peace and quiet.

Many more pictures on My London Dairy:
Fingal’s Cave and Staffa
Iona: the Weekly Pilgrimage
the island
the Village (Baile Mór)
the A b bey
the Journey

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Edinburgh And the Festival – 2013

Edinburgh And the Festival: We came by train to Edinburgh and the following day, Monday 12th August 2013 was the first of a full week we spent in the city and the first week of that year’s Edinburgh Festival.

Ten years before this we had spent an enjoyable week in the city, three of my family staying in a very comfortable flat close to Haymarket station, and had spent a very full week exploring the city and some of the surrounding area – including Leith and walking a little of the Fife coastal path. That year we left just as the festival was about to start.

2013 was very different. Linda and I were invited to join a group of friends to stay in a large flat in Bruntsfield a short walk from the city centre who were there for the Edinburgh Festival, and although we didn’t have a great interest in many of the festival events had found a number which seemed worth attending over the week.

Between these and our share of the housekeeping for the dozen or so of us – including taking our turn at preparing an evening meal for the group – we managed to fit in quite a few other things during the week, including another climb up Arthur’s Seat, and I even managed to do a little work, covering a protest by the Scottish Defence League and a counter-protest by Unite Against Fascism on the Saturday.

But unlike on our previous visit we stayed inside the city, and spent most of the time in the central area where most of the festival takes place around the Royal Mile.

A few of the events were very much to my taste – such as a guided tour around the elegant Georgian New Town, which took us to a few places I’d not been before, and the City of the Dead tour turned out to be rather more interesting than we had anticipated.

And there were some interesting poetry and threatre performances as well as several talks. We also bumped briefly into a few old friends at some of them or on the streets, though usually then we were going different ways to other events.

On My London Diary you can read more about our packed week. It was tiring but largely enjoyable, but we left feeling going there once was probably enough and we’ve not gone back. We might return to Edinburgh but not to the festival.

There are also pictures from the other days – all of those here are from Monday 12th August 2013. I had travelled light and they were all taken with a fairly compact Fuji X-E1 using either a 35mm standard lens of the XF18-55mmF2.8-4, equivalent to 27-83mm on full-frame.

Edinburgh & the Festival
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

SDL and UAF in Edinburgh

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