Down in Albion

October 8th, 2025

It's a monochrome day. A memorable day, in monochrome. London is quiet. London is grey.  I walk from Islington to Trafalgar. From Trafalgar to Norfolk. All things connect. But nothing connects..... The Albion is closed. Apparently it is a wonderful building. But it is run by idiots - or so I am told.  Is that a metaphor?

There are solid, beautiful houses here. And there are houses that were once shops:

And streets where Dick van Dyke would practise his terrible cockney accent:

I pass a 45 seater theatre where a recent hit was Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Arse For England. A blistering solo show, written and performed by Alex Hill and directed by Sean Turner. ‘Flare’ asks what it means to be a "die-hard" football fan and explores themes of belonging, tribalism, and toxic masculinity.

Meanwhile at nearby Sadler's Wells Carlos Acosta is responsible for Black Sabbath - The Ballet.....

You could get married in the art deco 225 seater upstairs venue at Finsbury Town Hall (though it is currently unavailable....)

So instead I take myself to the National Gallery to try and make sense of Neo-impressionism (popularly known as Pointillism):

Just to be contrary, I try and see these works in black and white, to focus on the design, to let light and dark play with my retinas....

One picture in particular arrests me. Maximilien Luce's The Iron Foundry (1899) takes me back to Sheffield in 1973, where I worked for Brown Bayley Steels forging axles in what I always think of as being as near Dante's Inferno as you could get without being dead....

Another picture that fascinates me is Georges Seurat's Chahut (1889-90), completed just before his death at the age of 31.  It is an extraordinarily ambivalent painting.  Where are the legs of the man behind the first dancer?  Are they in tights and high heels, despite his elegantly masculine jacket and moustache?

I am also interested in his Poseuses, where he portrays the same model in three different poses, against a backdrop of his A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.  The multiple portrayal of the same girl flew in the face of the convention that a painting should convey a single moment in time.

But B & W doesn't do these pics justice and I have to wander into the pastel-shaded orchard (where the separate dots of opposing colours cause the canvas to shimmer) to enjoy this one, Théo van Rysselberghe's In July, Before Noon (1890) where the figures (including the one behind the tree) express silence and introspection, a lack of interaction, which nowadays is emphasised by the obsessive use of the mobile phone:

Théo van Rysselberghe also painted this Coastal Scene (about 1892) which was obviously inspired by my picture of the Lago di Massaciuccoli, where Puccini used to live, in Tuscany this September (see below)..... 

As the National Gallery will have it the elements of this view are reduced to their barest minimum.... with posts within a glowing patch of water the only signs of a human presence in an otherwise deserted landscape.....

Of course, nothing is straightforward, and here we find Vincent (van the man) muscling in on the pointillists with a blaze of glory. The Sower (1888) shows how the artist had sympathy with the Neo-impressionists but also how Helene Kröller-Müller (from whose collection many of these pictures come) identified the contrast between van Gogh's dramatic and heavy effects with the light and delicate, spiritual qualities of Seurat, Signac et al.....

So....  Back into monochrome, and the outside world, to practise what I may have picked up.....

First off, a series of individuals who may or may not be lost in their own world, or in introspection, or in some dream-like contact with another....

And then, to relate back to Théo van Rysselberghe's In July, Before Noon, here are some images of pairs of people who still demonstrate some detachment:

Though in some cases there are outside forces at work:

And in others it is hard to know exactly what is going on.....

And so, dear reader, as the kissing couple in the phone booth ignore the ringtone of reversed charges, I notice it is the end of the show, and I must make my way back to find myself in the arms of Norfolk, another aspect of my love for Albion, if ever there was one....

Good day!  Good night!  I shall see you when the turkey's done.....

If you're looking for a cheap sort

Set in false anticipation

I'll be waiting in the Photo Booth

At the underground station

So come away, won't you come away?

We could go to

Deptford, Catford, Watford, Digberth, Mansfield, [Snettisham?]

Anywhere in Albion

Anywhere in Albion

Anywhere in Albion

Pete Doherty

Albion

[For transAtlantic relations]

To everything there is a.....

Season of Misses....

Walking by the Wash, I can almost feel the tug of that harsh mistress (Artemis, or Selene, sometimes known by other names) the moon, as she slips toward the west in the early light.  Even though she was at her fullest last Tuesday, in combination with the sun she still has the power to flood the world until it is out of its depth:

The moon's a harsh mistress

She's hard to call your own

Jimmy Webb

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

(As sung by Joe Cocker)

This exceptionally high tide has driven flocks of waders to feed on the few remaining slips of beach, and feisty sanderling skip and splash as the waves splutter and suck.

Dunlin skim the wave tops in tight formation,

 

while turnstones, 

 

curlew and oystercatchers strut up and down at the water’s edge, less keen to get their feet wet.

A kestrel skims low across the waterless marsh, a dark shrew clamped in its talons.

Then a family of swans beat past, their necks stretched toward the shore,

and I remember Yeats at Coole:

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

Attend upon them still.

W B Yeats

Wild Swans at Coole

On the lagoon thousands of knot are resting until the tide ebbs again, having performed their synchronised whirling for the morning crowd.  

I walk past a field where over a hundred curlew seem also to be taking a breather. I wonder what they are thinking? Which turns my thoughts around..... It seems only the other day that we swam off, and walked along, these beaches; where did the summer go?

And now there is no one - just empty shells; not even a footprint to show the tracks of time....

 

Then, across the grassy marsh the last camomile and ragwort still attract bumblebees and add some welcome colour,

but the cracked earth yearns for some consistent rain. Young greylag geese burst from the reeds alongside a still-wet drain as I approach, upset at my intrusion.

In the woods the Ken Hill Tamworths are rooting and snuffling, and the path is prickly here and crunchy there according to the mix of trees – now shedding their fruits:

sweet chestnuts, beech mast and acorns in vast quantities this year as the drought has triggered survival procedures.

 

The bracken is fading, although, having dropped redundant leaves earlier, most trees are still green, despite being torn by the wind.

It is a strangely slow autumn, though the poplars and the birch are beginning to turn, catching the low streaming light:

 

I stuff my pockets with crab apples from the hedgerow, to make delicate jelly:

and taste the few remaining blackberries,

though I leave the sloes,

and the rose hips for others with more patience. On the way home, avoiding fungi I don't recognise:

I pick a couple of parasol mushrooms: 

for an omelette lunch, and collect some of the larger chestnuts to boil with fennel seeds for afters. The season has its plenty and we are lucky that nature provides; it certainly is, as Keats would have it, a

Season of misses, and fellow moodfulness

However you see it:

Only lovers

see the fall

a signal end to endings

a gruffish gesture alerting

those who will not be alarmed

that we begin to stop

in order to begin

again.

Maya Angelou

Late October

And so I walk on upon this glorious autumn day, stealing images that hold the time, though time inevitably trickles on. As soon as the shutter clicks, the moment is gone, and the world turns, the moon falls, the dew evaporates and the day draws to night. It is what it is, and that is all there is to be said just now.....

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Questo è dedicato.....