Mayday Mayday Mayday

It's going to be a rather busy Mayday I think. First on the agenda I am running a workshop ( remember when that word was only used with reference to light engineering? ) for Hounslow Community Farm. Next up is get into town for the Meltdown insanity and I suppose that I really should try and get over to Hackney and lend moral support to my son's Green Party campaign. All go innit?

Looks like we're in for stormy weather.

If we don't end up with a hung parliament after the election it wont be for the want of trying. The three main party leaders and the media seem unable to talk about anything else. A crushing defeat for New Labour would mean some very serious heart searching not only in Victoria Street but in Labour Party branches throughout the country. All kinds of unreconstructed old Stalinists, closet Trots and the like will emerge from the woodwork and all in the context of a tough on public spending Con-Lib alliance in Westminster. It don't need a weatherman .....

Sunday Times Rich List.

It's just as well that all three main political parties are completely relaxed about people getting filthy rich or the publication of the Sunday Times Rich List so close to a General Election might have proved a tad embarrassing. It appears that in spite of all the economic hard times and the pressing need for us all to tighten our belts, that the top 1,000 fat cats are a cool £77.265 billion better off than this time last year. Who will be the first election hopeful to remind us about all that wealth that the mega rich somehow "create"?

Sweet Gene Vincent, there's one in every town. Even Bexhill.

Last week saw us take the train down to Bexhill to have a look at that gem of modernist architecture, the De La Warr Pavilion. The pavilion itself is a real classic and well worth a visit but what a strange town Bexhill is. Until the 1880s Bexhill was a small village on a hill a mile from the coast. The main industry seems to have been smuggling and Bexhill's only claim to fame was as the site of a pitched battle in 1828 between excise men and "the boys". When the local landowner, Lord De La Warr no less, hit upon the idea of creating the up market resort of Bexhill on Sea the area was transformed. The Victorian upper middle class flocked to the luxury hotels. They walked along the genteel promenade, breathed great lungfulls of bracing sea air and even participated in the new and pretty raffish pursuit of mixed bathing. The first ever motor car race was held here in 1902 but by the time that the De La Warr Pavilion was built in the 30s the writing must have been on the wall for the pretentious little resort.
To visit Bexhill today is to witness a gentility that has faded to the point of disappearing altogether and been replaced by nothing at all. We counted just two pubs and both looked so dreary that we just could not face them. There is an air of deprivation about the place with seemingly every other shop a charity shop. I used to love those dodgy "exchange" shops that could be found in most towns and around London's major stations. I hadn't seen one for years but there was one in Bexhill complete with the usual window full of knives, airguns and electric guitars. That and the tattoo and piercing facility opposite was a clue to there being at least some youth in town. One can but weep for them. What must it be like to be the only Goth in Bexhill?

Brown takes ash action. Saves bacon.

A national shortage of South American flowers and African bobby beans. The PM launches a Dunkirk type rescue mission for stranded Brit holidaymakers. BA's Willy Wonker says it's all a big fuss about nothing and that a bit of volcanic ash never harmed anyone. Possible UNITE conspiracy. Icelandic eruption pushes election off the front page. Only Klegg can really make a difference. Airlines force government to climb down and re-open Brit airspace. Whoever you vote for big business rules. African grown luxury vegetables dumped while millions go hungry. Gordon opens skies. All is well.

Taking a stroll into town.

I suppose that London has always been a destination . Always been a place to arrive at having journeyed from near or far in order to find work, escape persecution, seek excitement or make a fortune on those famous gold paved streets. Empires, the British, the Roman, the Russian, they have all resulted in legions of incomers from exotic and barely understood corners of the world. The spread of the suburbs and the coming of the railways brought about a whole new order of human being-the commuter. This much maligned object of pity, derision and contempt was to turn travelling without hope into a way of life. For many newcomers arriving in the capital today the journey will be, for all the misery that it may entail, the adventure of a lifetime. Go back a hundred and fifty or so years and even setting off for the city from the surrounding Home Counties was not the simple undertaking that it is today. For members of the upper and middle classes traveling from what are now the London suburbs into the City or West End would entail a journey by coach or on horseback; or perhaps a Thames waterman would scull the party on the tide. For the labouring classes who made up the bulk of the population such luxuries would be out of the question and the only option would be to walk. I got to thinking about this a couple of years ago and imagined someone walking to London from Teddington where I now live. Perhaps the individual had the opportunity of employment in town or was just taking pot luck and throwing off the restraints of life in a riverside village to seek a new life in the capital. Perhaps my imaginary pedestrian was a young girl going into service in one of the big houses, or they might have been a boy setting off to start an apprenticeship with a master craftsman.
I decided to trace the route my traveller might have taken and walk it myself. Looking at the map I was delighted to see that I could walk to central London in more or less a straight line. Crossing the Thames at Teddington meant a stroll over the footbridge but a hundred and fifty years ago we would have had to take the ferry to the other bank. The land now occupied by the housing estates of Ham would have been market gardens in those days but the grand houses of the gentry would have bordered the sides of Ham Green just as they do today. On the eastern edge of the green stands Ormley Lodge, now family home of the notoriously non-dom Goldsmith Clan. From here you can walk straight across Richmond Park to exit at Roehampton Gate. Our 1860 traveler would have been able to do the same because although Charles I had enclosed the park for his own use such was the outcry that the right of way and the right to gather firewood had been retained. From Roehampton Gate we start the walk downhill to Putney. Housing now covers what would have been open heathland in the mid nineteenth century. After crossing Putney Bridge to the north bank of the river, it's a straight walk up the New Kings Road and the Kings Road, past the grounds of Buckingham Palace and along Birdcage Walk into the heart of Westminster.
For me It was just a matter of making my way to Waterloo and catching the train home. We can only wonder about what happened to my imagined new arrival in the capital. Much as I do for today's incomers, I can but wish them well.

Orwell Prize Shortlist.

Well, it was fun while it lasted and everyone likes to have their ego massaged a little but my adventures in The Orwell Prize have come to an end. Good luck to the six bloggers who made it to the shortlist. I especially like Penny Red, although I don't imagine that the feeling is mutual. I had hoped that with an "Orwell" and possibly the prize for best allotment that I might be able to finally pull the birds. Best laid plans etc. Not a word to her indoors about that last bit mind.