19 October - Clapham Common
Day 2 in the old Mother Country, and I must say old thing, I feel dreadful. Stomach's churning, head's spinning, and its not the nauseating affect of the american presidential election. Jet lag. It should be a notifiable disease.
Actually the news here in London (the BBC) is headining the request by Bush to send 640 odd troops from the relative safety of Basra in Iraq to the troubled Baghdad area - nothing to do with the USA elections at all. After Iraq is the Turner Art Prize exhibition at the Tate Britain Gallery.
Featured contenders for the prize are all video images including one work which is a 3D walkthrough of Saddam Husseins bunker in IRAQ. Gallery visitors can interact with the installation using a joystick, reported the Beeb.
"I must go to that", I thought "seeing its just up the road".
But first to try and shake off some of the awful jet lag I decided to head down the street to check out Clapham Common. Victoria Rise, where the Terraces from yesterdays Journal entry stand opposite Ted's top floor flat, leads past a co-op housing estate, past a school first built in 1648, to Clapham Common.
As you'd guess, with a fairly ordinary primary school that's older than white Australia in it, Clapham's an old area. I was taken by this lovely old brick wall, with a plastered capstone, just up from the Common, with over hanging oaks and holly.
The brickwork is incredible around here, and even this fairly humble wall has amazing rhythm with the short and long bricks and contrasting red course shown in the conte sketch. (The "short" bricks go "into" the wall to tie it together).
Overlooking the Common are these large and imposing terraced apartments, with their grand wrought iron roof structures. As I watched the workman in the photo repairing the guttering, another man, perhaps the owner, appeared at the railing above and began directing the workman (who was having trouble with the stiff breeze). He must've had a grand view from up there.
In the Common itself, the breeze was stronger. A wind-bourne leaf wet from the recent (and yet impending) rain stuck itself to my hand as I walked quickly toward some sheltering trees I could see in the middle of the common. Right in the middle of them I discovered the rundown but still remarkable Clapham Common Bandstand.
A nearby sign placed by Friends of the Common talks of restoration plans, but it seems some well intentioned types had already lent a hand by "colouring in" the interesting wooden Art Nouveau style braces in the roof structure.
But it was still pretty. Two or three mothers shepherded gleeful children playing around the dilapidated glory, while I sketched a couple of details, of the cast-iron support poles and the wooden braces.
