30 November 2008
i want to get on with my life but the market won't let me
[Owen's comments are in brown]
The title of this photo-essay was spoken by a woman on the tube on our way to a trip round the outer reaches of the Piccadilly line.
The font on this sign, Owen would explain, is specific to the station.
Sudbury Town station. Charles Holden designed a lot of stations of the Piccadilly line. They tend to be fantastic, with brick towers and concrete and glass and flats sort of integrated into the structure.
In 1930, Frank Pick, Managing Director of London Transport, took Charles Holden round Germany, Holland and Sweden to find inspiration for new tube buildings. They liked Sweden the most. Sudbury Town was the first thing they designed on their return.
A hauntological underground sign! This tells ghosts where to go.
I can't find out anything about Haskins of E17, but they clearly made this shutter at some point.
So it was.
The lettering of all signs should be slightly raised.
It is hard to imagine how London could be any more surveilled. There was even one aimed at a dead or dying pigeon in the station, which was lit up in a crown of barbed wire thorns. The picture I took of it was not adequate. Later, when Joel talked about how he liked to eat white sausages, I imagined them to be made with the blood of doves.
Wizz..per me a secret on the Piccadilly line. We were very impressed when Joel jumped on the same train unexpectedly. Does he have GPS devices implanted in our cerebral cortex? An international spy must have his gadgets.
'Travel in style' this old poster instructed us, stuffed as it was in the damp and rain-drenched back of some sort of brown box device at Alperton.
This is the station at Park Royal, influenced by Holden. Yet again the Dome infuriated me as its poster interrupted the fine view of the step detail.
CCTV cameras with spikes to stop the pigeons landing on them. Does any object better sum up the contemporary British city? We used to have clocks and wooden benches and magazine stands...now we have frequent requests that 'if we see anything suspicious, please tell a member of staff', spikes, barbed wire and a weariness that infects even the tired birds in search of a perch. But nostalgia is perhaps not the answer...
The washing machines had been patiently waiting for service since around 1993.
Owen made me take this. It's not very good, particularly as I tried to pre-emptively excise the car. That's always a problem with taking pictures of buildings - damn automobiles make even the most luscious modern block look crap and banal. A tram whizzing past on the other hand would have been just perfect. Owen declared in no uncertain terms that he wanted to live on this street, or perhaps in one of the flats above the station.
Park Royal station was designed by the firm of Welch, Lander and Cachemaille-Day, former assistants of Holden's. Their other major work is the finest German Expressionist church in Eltham. It seems they also did some of the houses nearby. Many of these have the curved-glass fenstration known as 'suntrap' windows, made by the Critall company, whose employees all lived happily in flat-roofed houses in Braintree. As can be seen here, any sun had been successfully trapped.
Other reasons why I want to live in Park Royal: it was once the largest industrial zone in Western Europe, hence the big empty ruined box. Several generations of Hatherleys toiled in the factories here, making sheet metal, vacuum cleaners and munitions and other such things, after which at least one of them got unexpectedly rich, moved to the Isle of Wight and voted Tory. Another person to have toiled in the area is Reginald Perrin, who was oppressed by C.J at Sunshine Desserts until faking his own death and attending his own funeral. Perhaps by living here I can assuage residual guilt at never having worked sheet metal.
Clamping. We hoped it was of the suburban nipple exoticist kind, but feared once more that it properly had something to do with cars. Again.
A big empty ruined box opposite Park Royal station. We compared this to some of the 'Blair Boxes' that Douglas identified, which are characterised by their flimsiness, faux-perkiness and general Fosterosity.
Then, like the good little Ballardians we are, we went to Westfield, now the biggest mall in Europe. On the bus on the way we saw a personalised numberplate that read 'GIPLS', which we presumed to be several hundred pounds cheaper than one with an 'R' in it. Joel recounted a merry tale of someone being stalked by a cop with magic keys, and Owen remembered that they had seen a car with the number plate 'KIIING' when last we were protesting at the banks. Would Mervyn be so cheap, we wondered, driving around his manor with such an auto-description?
This sign reminded me of the prehistoric rubble of my youth, where trips to Avebury were frequent. Perhaps in 2500 years time, we will wonder what this henge meant.
A sublimely disgusting 'pie hoarding' greeted us at the entrance to Westfield. if you look carefully enough, you can see a small infinite pig reflected in the gleam.
The font of the Westfield name reminds me of Dubai, even though I have never been there. Douglas confims that it is indeed 'kitsch serif'.
These satanic ghouls adorn the panels between bougy restaurants in one of the sectors of Westfield.
I-pod, Myspace....You'th!
Ripply. Douglas claims that this roof would take five minutes to design but much longer to check the maths.
I suspect former students of the Architectural Association had a hand in Westfield mall somewhere along the way...
These crystal trees genuinely appeared to be structural. Quite impressed by their madness, we were.
Baubles. Mmm. All-year-round baubles.
Come and sit on our Nu-Laboury kidney-bean sofas 'n' carpet!
Westfield has a Foyles. It is full of cookery books and kids' toys. Bizarrely enough, we spotted the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Michael Gove, in the bookshop, um, telling his children off. I swear I'm not making this up.
Whilst in the bookshop, Joel read to us from a successful chick-lit confessional novel in which he features, under a different name, as a caddish rogue who lacks sufficient interest in the heroine. We all agree that one of the things this brand of narcissistic-auto-fictioning can't countenance is the fact that a male love interest just might not be that into you. I briefly contemplated writing a scandal-ridden philosophy 'n' sex pig-lit novel, but concluded I'd probably rather write the Feuerbach book instead.
The ceiling of the super-posh 'The Village' section looks like a giant alien sex organ. At this point Joel got told off for taking photographs. I, however, did not. Apparently it is not a rule but it is also not permitted to take pictures of shops themselves. People are fine, however. You are only allowed to take pictures of people.
Phew...escape from the mall, where we spent no money apart from on some pizzas for lunch that were themed by cities (how jolly). I suspect our choices revealed more about us than we would care to admit. I was New York, Owen London, Douglas Cairo and Joel Casablanca. The waiter flirted with us all equally.
This map is - can you guess? - at Piccadilly Circus. It is a very outdated, but extremely attractive, map of the world.
It might also be noted that the interior of Piccadilly Circus is by Holden, completed in 1929. Its apparent luminosity and efficiency were compared at the time to the film Metropolis, then appearing at the cinemas nearby.
What it says.
We exited via the Trocadero, which looked more Blade Runner-y than ever. A dearth of massages, however.
And this drinking establishment had clearly become a bakery (sadly closed). Perhaps it is where the Drunken Bakers work.
As we walk through the empty passageway to the Trocadero, we note a display of signs declaring that it is soon to undergo a total redesign to make it more 'family friendly'. The trocadero's postmodernist aesthetic is denounced on the signs in exactly the same terms that brutalist architecture was 20 years previously. In reality, of course, the Trocadero is being destroyed because it is a lawless interzone dedicated to the systematic derangement of the senses.
Walter Benjamin meets a Tehrani bazzar! Er, or something...
Bra Candy: Bling for Your Shoulders was on sale here. None of us had ever seen any before. I suspect Owen was tempted, but kept quiet at this time.
Funland! Though where does this tube go?
We didn't try our hand at winning one of these, although we did shoot some zombies.
Signs at the exhibition of sculptures made from old computer parts promise 'an archaeology of the history of our future'. A sign also claims that they were created by an '8 years young Tellurian'.
The picture above and the ones below are from somewhere I am not allowed to tell you, according to my photo-essay companions (hint: not a million miles from the Trocadero!). It is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen - a kind of cyber-recycling art gallery complete with ancient old computers for surfing the web (1.0, I assume) and stickers promoting Islam on the door. It is as if the CCRU and rave-hacker types from the early 90s had won. It was quite the best way to conclude our day, even though we also then went to see Terence Davies Of Time and the City and ate at the Stockpot. The whole of this post should be read as if infused with a deep post-Catholic nostalgic guilt for the arses of young men. Apart from the pictures below.
The title of this photo-essay was spoken by a woman on the tube on our way to a trip round the outer reaches of the Piccadilly line.
The font on this sign, Owen would explain, is specific to the station.
Sudbury Town station. Charles Holden designed a lot of stations of the Piccadilly line. They tend to be fantastic, with brick towers and concrete and glass and flats sort of integrated into the structure.
In 1930, Frank Pick, Managing Director of London Transport, took Charles Holden round Germany, Holland and Sweden to find inspiration for new tube buildings. They liked Sweden the most. Sudbury Town was the first thing they designed on their return.
A hauntological underground sign! This tells ghosts where to go.
I can't find out anything about Haskins of E17, but they clearly made this shutter at some point.
So it was.
The lettering of all signs should be slightly raised.
It is hard to imagine how London could be any more surveilled. There was even one aimed at a dead or dying pigeon in the station, which was lit up in a crown of barbed wire thorns. The picture I took of it was not adequate. Later, when Joel talked about how he liked to eat white sausages, I imagined them to be made with the blood of doves.
Wizz..per me a secret on the Piccadilly line. We were very impressed when Joel jumped on the same train unexpectedly. Does he have GPS devices implanted in our cerebral cortex? An international spy must have his gadgets.
'Travel in style' this old poster instructed us, stuffed as it was in the damp and rain-drenched back of some sort of brown box device at Alperton.
This is the station at Park Royal, influenced by Holden. Yet again the Dome infuriated me as its poster interrupted the fine view of the step detail.
CCTV cameras with spikes to stop the pigeons landing on them. Does any object better sum up the contemporary British city? We used to have clocks and wooden benches and magazine stands...now we have frequent requests that 'if we see anything suspicious, please tell a member of staff', spikes, barbed wire and a weariness that infects even the tired birds in search of a perch. But nostalgia is perhaps not the answer...
The washing machines had been patiently waiting for service since around 1993.
Owen made me take this. It's not very good, particularly as I tried to pre-emptively excise the car. That's always a problem with taking pictures of buildings - damn automobiles make even the most luscious modern block look crap and banal. A tram whizzing past on the other hand would have been just perfect. Owen declared in no uncertain terms that he wanted to live on this street, or perhaps in one of the flats above the station.
Park Royal station was designed by the firm of Welch, Lander and Cachemaille-Day, former assistants of Holden's. Their other major work is the finest German Expressionist church in Eltham. It seems they also did some of the houses nearby. Many of these have the curved-glass fenstration known as 'suntrap' windows, made by the Critall company, whose employees all lived happily in flat-roofed houses in Braintree. As can be seen here, any sun had been successfully trapped.
Other reasons why I want to live in Park Royal: it was once the largest industrial zone in Western Europe, hence the big empty ruined box. Several generations of Hatherleys toiled in the factories here, making sheet metal, vacuum cleaners and munitions and other such things, after which at least one of them got unexpectedly rich, moved to the Isle of Wight and voted Tory. Another person to have toiled in the area is Reginald Perrin, who was oppressed by C.J at Sunshine Desserts until faking his own death and attending his own funeral. Perhaps by living here I can assuage residual guilt at never having worked sheet metal.
Clamping. We hoped it was of the suburban nipple exoticist kind, but feared once more that it properly had something to do with cars. Again.
A big empty ruined box opposite Park Royal station. We compared this to some of the 'Blair Boxes' that Douglas identified, which are characterised by their flimsiness, faux-perkiness and general Fosterosity.
Then, like the good little Ballardians we are, we went to Westfield, now the biggest mall in Europe. On the bus on the way we saw a personalised numberplate that read 'GIPLS', which we presumed to be several hundred pounds cheaper than one with an 'R' in it. Joel recounted a merry tale of someone being stalked by a cop with magic keys, and Owen remembered that they had seen a car with the number plate 'KIIING' when last we were protesting at the banks. Would Mervyn be so cheap, we wondered, driving around his manor with such an auto-description?
This sign reminded me of the prehistoric rubble of my youth, where trips to Avebury were frequent. Perhaps in 2500 years time, we will wonder what this henge meant.
A sublimely disgusting 'pie hoarding' greeted us at the entrance to Westfield. if you look carefully enough, you can see a small infinite pig reflected in the gleam.
The font of the Westfield name reminds me of Dubai, even though I have never been there. Douglas confims that it is indeed 'kitsch serif'.
These satanic ghouls adorn the panels between bougy restaurants in one of the sectors of Westfield.
I-pod, Myspace....You'th!
Ripply. Douglas claims that this roof would take five minutes to design but much longer to check the maths.
I suspect former students of the Architectural Association had a hand in Westfield mall somewhere along the way...
These crystal trees genuinely appeared to be structural. Quite impressed by their madness, we were.
Baubles. Mmm. All-year-round baubles.
Come and sit on our Nu-Laboury kidney-bean sofas 'n' carpet!
Westfield has a Foyles. It is full of cookery books and kids' toys. Bizarrely enough, we spotted the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Michael Gove, in the bookshop, um, telling his children off. I swear I'm not making this up.
Whilst in the bookshop, Joel read to us from a successful chick-lit confessional novel in which he features, under a different name, as a caddish rogue who lacks sufficient interest in the heroine. We all agree that one of the things this brand of narcissistic-auto-fictioning can't countenance is the fact that a male love interest just might not be that into you. I briefly contemplated writing a scandal-ridden philosophy 'n' sex pig-lit novel, but concluded I'd probably rather write the Feuerbach book instead.
The ceiling of the super-posh 'The Village' section looks like a giant alien sex organ. At this point Joel got told off for taking photographs. I, however, did not. Apparently it is not a rule but it is also not permitted to take pictures of shops themselves. People are fine, however. You are only allowed to take pictures of people.
Phew...escape from the mall, where we spent no money apart from on some pizzas for lunch that were themed by cities (how jolly). I suspect our choices revealed more about us than we would care to admit. I was New York, Owen London, Douglas Cairo and Joel Casablanca. The waiter flirted with us all equally.
This map is - can you guess? - at Piccadilly Circus. It is a very outdated, but extremely attractive, map of the world.
It might also be noted that the interior of Piccadilly Circus is by Holden, completed in 1929. Its apparent luminosity and efficiency were compared at the time to the film Metropolis, then appearing at the cinemas nearby.
What it says.
We exited via the Trocadero, which looked more Blade Runner-y than ever. A dearth of massages, however.
And this drinking establishment had clearly become a bakery (sadly closed). Perhaps it is where the Drunken Bakers work.
As we walk through the empty passageway to the Trocadero, we note a display of signs declaring that it is soon to undergo a total redesign to make it more 'family friendly'. The trocadero's postmodernist aesthetic is denounced on the signs in exactly the same terms that brutalist architecture was 20 years previously. In reality, of course, the Trocadero is being destroyed because it is a lawless interzone dedicated to the systematic derangement of the senses.
Walter Benjamin meets a Tehrani bazzar! Er, or something...
Bra Candy: Bling for Your Shoulders was on sale here. None of us had ever seen any before. I suspect Owen was tempted, but kept quiet at this time.
Funland! Though where does this tube go?
We didn't try our hand at winning one of these, although we did shoot some zombies.
Signs at the exhibition of sculptures made from old computer parts promise 'an archaeology of the history of our future'. A sign also claims that they were created by an '8 years young Tellurian'.
The picture above and the ones below are from somewhere I am not allowed to tell you, according to my photo-essay companions (hint: not a million miles from the Trocadero!). It is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen - a kind of cyber-recycling art gallery complete with ancient old computers for surfing the web (1.0, I assume) and stickers promoting Islam on the door. It is as if the CCRU and rave-hacker types from the early 90s had won. It was quite the best way to conclude our day, even though we also then went to see Terence Davies Of Time and the City and ate at the Stockpot. The whole of this post should be read as if infused with a deep post-Catholic nostalgic guilt for the arses of young men. Apart from the pictures below.
