bluntie

this is a local topical blog by the youngest tasmanian hamilton in london, ricky. the daily entries are a study on the transrotational nature of the streets of east london; eternally shifting but never really changing.
chicken bones and their packaging are the product of a tide of inhabitation which sweeps twice daily and three times a night through east london’s streets, houses, pubs and buses. london fried chicken is the base unit of waste in the area, the lowest cost protein in the world and a great social leveller because everyone loves fried chicken, not least the communities of local cats.
also, in a head-spinning interconnectedness if you click on his links he gets cash from google.

visually related: bones, of the prolific and notorious 70k crew. which reminded me of the awestruck discovery early one morning in deserted melbourne (chicken bones yet to be swept from the gutter) of an empty office block whose windows had been filled with tags. beautiful and noble as the sun rose, and, as either public art or filigree sunshading (nouvel…) unrivalled in scale or value engineering.

it is embarrassing for me that i write and suddenly realise that i have created in my mind a vivid and direct connection between jean nouvel and chicken bones.

firstly, it’s just another northern town. highway severing, high street emptying. senselessness of place, a sense of placelessness. but the abandoned spode pottery works are full of treasure.

but not to forget the raw materials which created Stoke; a north-south ribbon of coal, clay and heavy woodland – the necessary components of the pottery industry. the six towns, six ‘potteries’, born were distinguished in skyline and texture by the functions of the industry; chimneys, kilns, hard labour, heat, and everywhere bricks. functions are volumes, vases, kilns, reduced to their essential machinery, and then becoming suddenly useless in the face of time.
but for all the heat and pain of the process, and the rawness of their forms, the end product is a delicate object, a refined product and branding, and a sophisticated organisation of trade, advertising and retail. moulds fix the design for a time, firing changes the tones and textures of glaze, and their use is about food and tables.
the Spode Works are now empty volumes, fused together over 200 years and then left suddenly without reason, like the town itself. on the same day as we walked into the huge dusty spaces and knotted courtyards of the site, Louise Bourgeois died. she had said of spiders and their webs that they do not leave when there is a hole, but repair it with patience.

a little bit of spring in almond blossoming. softness to the wintery spanish hills of Porrera, home to some famed wine. here the grapes are planted in taut stretches wrapping up the mountainous slopes. apparently the wine made here is so good (and rare) because the plants have to try so hard to squeeze out the mineralised moisture from the slate-y soil. vines that work harder make better wine.
this is not my photo; didnt have a camera but it was winter and not a speck of green. so much like parched australia in summer that the icy wind outside was shocking.

Seaside spain in winter: empty bars, quiet streets, tiny rain, empty insitu, graf without youths, no cats or salty after-swin rinses.

oh xaloquel.
romesco sauce:
bittersweet spanish paprika, garlic, almonds (blanched and peeled), bread, olive oil, salt, vinegar
eaten with potato crisps to dip

today i thought the streets would be deserted and the shops shut, but it was mostly public transport that was closed. plenty of ambulance, police and minicab.
spar and costcutter open, dixy chicken and best kebab open, cat&mutton shut, the dolphin probably was open.
loads of people in the park, on the streets, becoming less cheery as day passed; higher number of ‘merry christmas’s in the morning. or maybe that was because i was wearing a bright hat and people talk to me when i wear a bright hat.
calm and beautiful london christmas for manx cat, very old and large, with no tail and a huge face eating a plastic bag and wishing for some eternal sunshine.
dalston square deserted, and lit more by fairylights than by the moon.

roughly 20 languages die each year

spent a day in the countryside, villages, early christmases, suburbs, abandoned High Streets and the best building to be scheduled for demolition in Gateshead, and stepped over the bridge to beautiful sweet Newcastle at 3:00 just as it was starting to get dark and realised the strangeness of it. Probably a lot of world examples of the existence of the bad side of the river. wonder which, on average,  is the right side of the river and whether this follows geographical conditions, aka the sun.
i wish one could preserve some of the rubbish in the regeneration without being accused of romanticising the british struggle.

just up the road in stoke newington, with the backs of terrace houses bordering it, tucked away, i never knew it was so beautiful and so close: a sudden world of old-ness, green-ness and overgrown disrepair just off the high street.
un-crowded for a green space on a sunny saturday in london. everyone there today was either taking photos for their blogs, emerging suspiciously from the blackberry ivy and stinging nettles, or passed out in the sunshine, a quarter of a bottle of white with the cork floating in it and a mobile phone at his feet. nice that the phone was still there.

(also the setting for amy winehouse’s back to black video)

One day (dead of night?) in the last month a work yard on Hackney Road was bricked over.
At least they waited till the worst of the winter had passed, not that these cats ever complained about the cold.
It’s been a while since I last saw them; strangely-well-fed cat prowling for food, and the twins training for the forklift license which would have given them a foothold in the distribution industry. Up to fifteen at a time survived (mostly) harmoniously on the combined hand-outs from local charities, many working in the kind of hard labour that the british-born reject.
There’s no clue from where the wall-order came, though the 2012 Olympics are on the horizon, AND one cannot ignore White Cat’s strategic political gain resulting from the removal, or at least hiding, of the homeless before their treatment becomes an issue in the approaching  elections.

^ hackney road cats last year, the new brick wall

Sippy : too intoxicated to comment.

Spent weeks of unpaid overtime arranging palm trees to line the boulevards and inhabit the rooftops, so i’m allowed to fantasise about Dubai staying like this forever.

similar to:

The fantasy of the abandoned city and specifically The fantasy of the abandoned fair ground.
These photos are 2 of a beautifully unreal series taken by Gen in Japan.