London

 Underneath the arches.....

Flanagan and Allen.... The great couplings.  Wilson, Keppel and Betty (no that's three....). Wilbur and Orville Wright, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Homer and Marge Simpson.....  Oh, and Gilbert and George....,

Whose new gallery just off Brick Lane is a joy to visit, whether the

Pavement is our pillow

or

Without a sheet we'll lay

Underneath the arches

We (will) dream our dreams away

And dreaming is what it comes down to.....

I'm in London for a day or two, paying respect to the great and the good, and offering disrespect where it is due:

I laze a little, with Italy in mind:

Then wander a while in Hyde Park:

Reminiscing a little of the days when I visited this Police Station for reasons I won't go into here:

Then relaxing a moment in the shade of FDR in Grosvenor Square:

While young things prepare themselves for the upcoming celebrations of the unctions of Konig Karl von Battenberg:

Ah, but I'm not here for the fun nor the unctions.... 

The Ritz we never signed for

Savoys they can keep

No. I'm trolling (Shome mishtake?  Ed) along the South Bank with Simon Ellingworth (Multi Award Winning Photographer & Educator), in an attempt to steal some images of life as it really is.....

Starting with the Tate Modern, where concrete brutalism decapitates the passer-by:

A screen in the old oil tanks continuously plays with the shadows:

The structure of the Turbine Hall puts all in their place, section by section:

While windows obscure stories that could be interesting - or which may be just so:

I like to think that Love exists: but as with all art, maybe it's just a passing fancy - a flash between two mobiles?

Upstairs the clouds are gathering.  A shy guardian marshals the strays, while the ceiling lowers:

Sleeping when it's raining

And sleeping when it's fine

It's nice to see people quietly reflecting:

Or letting time coil by:

In colour, or in black and white:

And it is good to know that, despite the brickwork, there is a world outside:

Then we are outside, again, and 

Underneath the arches

We dream our dreams away (bon-bon-bo-da-be-do)

Sleeping when it's raining

And sleeping when it's fine

Trains rattling by above (bon-bo-bo-da-bi-da-bo)

There are truths in lies. Perhaps:

Earth has not anything to show more fair

And

these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.

London and I have been friends, of sorts, for over sixty years. There have been, as in most friendships, moments of friction, but I am not (yet) tired of life, and our relationship continues to grow. I accept that everything changes, from black and white:

To colour:

From noughts, to crosses:

Some people walk down concrete stairways, as if they're under orders:

While others indulge their tastes with clear expressions of delight:

The young record their progress:

And life goes on, whatever we may prefer.....

Underneath the arches

Where:

We dream our dreams away (bon-bon-bo-da-be-do)

There's only one place that we know

And that is where we sleep......

Pavement is our pillow

Without a sheet we'll lay

Underneath the arches

We dream our dreams away

Bud Flanagan, Joseph Mccarthy Jr. and Reg Connelly

With many thanks to Simon Ellingworth, Gilbert and George and Flanagan and Allen

https://gilbertandgeorgecentre.org

https://simonellingworth.com

https://youtu.be/q7HoMWuXCY4

I Luv Thanet!

Traces of Eminence.....

Staying at the Walpole Bay Hotel and Museum, Margate (or rather Cliftonville) I are reminded of His Little Princeness, Oscar Wilde: This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do......

However, to be fair, I should perhaps be reminded of Tracey Emin (Who he?  Ed.) whose astonishing rise to pre-eminence amongst Royle Academicals (sic) is one of the wonders of Thanet.....

I mean,  Are Trace (sic again), was brought up here, and has since graced the Walpole Bay Hotel with a number of her increasingly numerous birthdays in their sprung floored ballsroom (next to the poolroom and the wunnerfool gents Uri Null....)

And, it goes without saying, T Race has shared her cake with mum and dad, et alios, in the discreet and salubrious dinning room (sic again).....

So much so, indeed, that this extraordinarily preserved (delicately scaffolded) hotel is constantly in demand from fitful daughters and hen partlets to this very day.....

But, let me think...  How did I get here?

There was a train.  There was Hernia Bay....

There was some beer, and then the long walk, all blood blisters, concrete and marshes, cheery youngsters pedalling against the tide, the Dickensian flatulence beyond their ken....

At Reculver we found Roman remains converted into Christian ruins.....  Art and architecture transmuted into navigational aids.....

Then the long concrete run towards Margate, past no end of jolly beach huts.....

Their locks gradually oxidising in the ozone....  

Continuously entertained by the graffiti, facilitated by the chalk from the crumbling cliffs and the lack of anything else for youngsters to do come dusk....

This one a triumph of understatement:

Chloe and the rest arnt  important

Who needs education?  As the writing on the crumbling wall of the Margate Lido says.....

We encounter a MerMan, one whose trajectory from King's Canterbury to destroying his hotel at Westgate and encouraging governmental investment in a block of flats has led to his immunity to Phytoplankton and Dinoflagellata....  His charm and clipped tones indicative of a limited integration with his estuarine neighbours....

Margate itself, visited earlier this year in respect of its strong and meaningful alliance with a Waste Land, is alive and well, in a sense.  Governmental short-term penny pinching meant that needy people were accommodated here to save on London rents, which, if you give that one moment of thought, begs the question of what next?  No jobs.....?

There are only so many crosswords you can do on a gallon of cider...

Margate is on the up, I am assured by one local resident.  But there is evidence to the contrary:

As if to prove something, Anthony Gormley has planted one of his cast iron forms on the rocks in front of the Turner Contemporary.  For an instant I muse on how well it might have survived the bombings in WWII, or the storms that shattered the pier and inundated the Lido....?

Margate, at least according to Timothy Spall, used to be a good place.  The light over Thanet was the best.....  And you could get here by boat in about eight hours from London.  

Quite what Mr Gormley has to do with this I don't know.  He has another one of these unapproachable individuals at Limehouse, and I am none the wiser....

Though I can connect with Mr Eliot, who, as I referred to in an earlier piece, found that he could connect nothing with nothing here on the sands....

I wonder if a metal detector might have helped?

As it is.  Life goes on.  Margate and arsenic survive....

And, at great expense, Dreamland has been resurrected....

Though, over at the Turner Contemporary, the exhibited Giraffe is not well.  And people seem not to care, preoccupied with some communal erudition.....

The primates are pensive......

Puzzled by the chaos of the world about them:

Though some find time, despite the ignorant humans behind them, to discuss the meaning of life, or, should I say, the emin of liff?

Much as might be considered over a pint at Fez, an eclectically stylish micro pub in the High Street.....

I dunno.  A dip in the tidal pool is needed:

I mean, what is Art?  What is this life, if full of care?  I sail up towards the sun above genteel, Dickensian Broadstairs, Icarus-like, and wonder, Ms Eminem, can you enlighten me at all?

As I wander the streets of Ramsgate, trying to find a signal, I somehow doubt it......

I kinda think, Ms Enema, that, what with your Tory politics, and belief in Brexit, your unmade bed, your embroidered tent (pity the Saatchis burned it, Ed.) and your house in France, that perhaps your view of life is not as simple as mine.....

But, hey. We can be friends. I know you snubbed me when our eyes met at The Golden Heart, Spitalfields. But you were too busy drinking black velvet with Gilbert and George, and our brief encounter never flourished....

Think again?  We could start a new tent, velcro on a new name or two, and sit watching the sun go down, as the Life Boat symbolically returns to Margate.....

As the empty Life Boat returns to Margate, as anxious watchers wait and pray, as the sun goes down.....