Unposted Photographs of October 2022 in Chronological Order

 On the first, I left Trafalgar Sqaure in bloom, happy with the city I lived in, and crossed the river to get a better view of it:

 

 In the basement of the Royal Festival Hall, three dancers had found a space outside the toilets:

 

 I've lived in Notting Hill a year now. I finally found the quickest route to the park, but it still feels like I'm finding routes, rather than walks:

 

 Trellick Tower, its green heart still commemorating Grenfell. It always appears in view suddenly, and to the right of where I expect:

 This was the first time I'd revisited the Victoria and Albert Museum since moving up the road:

 

 I suddenly remembered seeing Jennifer Tilly here, and hearing her, and tried to recall the plot of Slipstream:

 Neil and I went to see Big Ben break his News Revue cherry. Their six week run outlasted two Prime Minsters, and Fred Strangebone in a blonde wig turned out to be a very serviceable Keir Starmer. He was the only one to do a silly bio:

 In Tate Britain, I stayed in the box with the racist language for the whole video (I can't find who's this was or what. It was wonderful. Does anyone know?) Others entered the box, and left very possibly because I was in there, but I don't know how better to screen it:

 

 Over the escalators in the tube, adverts are now screened an angle, tampering with my balance over the duration:

 Here, outside the vault of the Ned, it occured to me that on Saturday we should all wear robes:

 

 Then we moved on to Greenwich peninsula, to rehearse the counting of rice:

 Our rice in situ:

 Suddenly, October was beginning to end. I mean, to finish. I caught Ilona's exhibition just as it was being taken down:

 This Flying Tiger model could have got more into the spirit of the season, I felt. I bought nothing:

 On this stage, I saw David dance and speak lines from King Lear. A good block:

 Outside on Regents Street, they were beginning to put up angels:

By this point, my phone had crashed. Everything was harder to record on Badphone, particularly Maxfield Parrish light. Why was it still Summer?

 On this stage, I saw Natasha dance and speak lines from King Lear. I was not expecting that in a production of Henry the Eighth:

 My balance tampered with, I was still happy to have to caught the last matinee, and celebrated with a walk on the beach:

 

 On this stage, I saw my former rice wife Julia cast her own legs as her parents, and her hand as her dog. I'd missed her rumbling, threatening giggle. It got messy:

 

 Rehearsals started for the Love Goddess in Marylebone. Working in daylight suddenly:

 Opposite Alfies Antiques. Everything a walk away:

 And last Saturday, like the first, saw Trafalgar Square in bloom again.

Zan Zendegi Azadi continued...

 Yesterday I met Faren (not pictured) and her friends and colleagues in Trafalgar Square to join a human chain across Wesminster Bridge in support of the protests in Iran. October the 29th was also Cyrus the Great day, so I thought about researching him before writing this, then realised it probably wasn't that necessary, but I'll still research him after I've written this. I've got Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe open next to me right now.

 

 

  

 Whitehall had been busy. The March of the Mums had made front pages earlier that day, and there was also a Ukrainian protest outside Downing Street, with which we ocassionally intermingled. "Down with tyrants." A lot of the chants were in English, but we were also taught "Azadi! Azadi! A-zad-i!" the Farsi word for freedom. And I finally learnt how to say Zan, Zendegi, Azadi, meaning Women, Life, Freedom – as taught to the people of Hastings by Omid Djalili here, and written across the Jason hockey masks of some protestors. Others hid their face behind David Lloyd's Guy Fawkes mask, now associated with Anonymous, possibly unaware of the seasonal appropriateness. Others still were dressed as zombie nuns, but I'm pretty sure they were just cutting through.

 Our numbers grew as we walked down Whitehall, sometimes side by side and filling the road, sometimes holding hands in single file to form the human chain, (which I couldn't photograph without breaking of course). There hadn't seemed to be as many in Trafalgar Square as a month ago, but now we were on the move we were closing roads. This was my first march. Faren said she hadn't felt as safe as she'd have liked at the last one, because people had started shouting "Down with the BBC", believing the corporation hadn't been doing enough to support the protestors, or that reporting the deaths of students was bad for morale – meanwhile the very fact of Faren's employment by BBC Persian has seen her upgraded by the Iranian Government from spy to terrorist – but on this demonstration however, I only saw the one sign with the letters "BBC" dripping in blood, and Faren had her friends around her now. She seemed happy. She was loud. "I'm letting out a lot of anger." I realised I'd only been throwing my voice. Pretend shouting. Shy.

 

  Posting some photographs of the protest on Instagram that evening, I wondered for the first time what my phone is actually up to when it says it's "finishing up" after the loading bar's filled, and I had flashbacks to Arthur Pewtey at the Marriage Guidance Counsellor. I don't really know how well I've fulfilled protestors' requests to "Be the Voice of Iran". But I know what I can do if it's okay with you, and that is to sign, and ask you to sign, THIS PETITION to whoever's Home Secretary when you read this: to drop an already twice rejected Public Order Bill that would make criminal offences of everything that happened yesterday – "interfering with key national infrastructure" for example – in other words, closing roads – and "locking on" – in other words, holding hands. If not for me, do it for Cyrus the Great.

 

. برای زن، زندگی، آزادی

  My friend Faren is almost finished packing. Moving tomorrow. As I mentioned before she's had a testing  fortnight, and I offered to help with her boxes, but she asked me to go to Trafalgar Square instead. So I went and I took these videos and photographs and far more.

 

 A demonstration was being held to honour Mahsa Amini, the woman murdered by Iranian police for her inappropriate headwear. People were calling for revolution, and saying her name, and angry and smiling. It was glorious. It had the quality of glory. The Square was in full bloom.

 

 I saw a new statue on the fourth plinth, which I thought had been reserved for the Queen. But this was of Malawian preacher and freedom fighter John Chilembwe. It had gone up three days ago.

 

 The work of sculptor Samson Kambalu, it recreates a photograph taken in 1914 of Chilembwe refusing to take his hat off in front of the white colonialist over whom he now towers. Now he was looking on. Chilembwe would later stage his own uprising in Malawi.

  I remember when Boris Johnson was mayor, he tried to turn this plinth into a war memorial. Without meaning a shred of disrespect to the late Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park, I'm happy that didn't happen. Particularly today. As I say, full bloom.

FLASHBACK - 20181020_153931.jpg

 Last night, I looked through oldish photos that Google had saved without me noticing and, coming across this image taken or uploaded on the twentieth of the tenth Twenty-Eighteen, I felt like I'd found a photograph of Atlantis. Or of Lord Krishna revealing his true, planet-munching self to Prince Arjuna. How had I managed it? Photoshop? Or had I photocopied thousands of people, then cut them out and stuck them on cardboard and pins like the Cottingley Fairies? Was I even aware, in twenty eighteen, that I wasn't taking a photograph of Trafalgar Square at all here, but of a crowd? 

 I couldn't have been. 

 Somehow, this was normal.

 I've been a little worried recently about how many people I've seen out and about. I'm less worried now. 

 Click to enlarge.

THE YEAR IN REHASH: JUNE - #blacklivesmatter and #blackhistorymatters and #StatuesOfRealPeopleAreMainlyDumbAndScary

however you spell a sigh

 

 Continuing the review of my favourite or at least more conspicuous posts from the last twelve months, here's the last one for today: In June the streets began to fill again. I also took to the streets but normally after midnight. When I posted this I'd no idea how big a part public art was going to play, I'd just really had it with statues. It would be another five days before Colston fell in Bristol, and Black Lives Matter was never about a "culture war" anyway, it was about deaths in police custody. As more and more attention was paid, I began to feel genuine hope, unlike anything I'd really felt before. Then the BBC gave Naga Munchetty a bollocking, and a prize to J.K. Rowling. This is from June the 2nd...

 
 Here's nothing. I'm keeping vampire hours again. Lacking both heat-reisistant gloves and goggles as recommended by the excellent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and unkeen on combing through fourteen years of my social media to wipe it of "personal details and anything that could be perceived as inciting violence" as recommended by the excellent Varaidzo, oh and also, you know, just being a hoverer, I didn't get to Trafalgar Square on Sunday to mourn George Floyd until two in the morning. 

 But General Napier was still there, and Major General Sir Henry Havelock, and the fat prince. The fourth plinth was empty though, I noticed, fleeced of its Ninevite Lamassu... "Statue lovers" someone said knowingly of the torch-wielding protestors at Charlottesville, and I've thought about that quite a bit since, and decided yeah, I don't like statues of real people I realise, not really, not any more. Any of them. Even the lovely ones just look creepy and wrong, even Eric Morecambe. Unmistakably unalive. Borne of a tradition intended to literally deify tyrants. And I suppose I'm just retreading my moan from the last post, aren't I, but, like Mark Gatiss, statues fetishise the past without a shred of interest in history. Don't get me wrong, I like creepy things as much as the next fantasist. And I warm to the decor of a haunted house. But I wouldn't say I'm a statue lover. I also saw a fox. He looked shiny and unafraid. I think foxes are having a good lockdown.

"Love All The Sheeple" (Icke's Hicks Schtick)

 

 That was July 2015. I'd just been enjoying Icke's terrible 2009 lecture to the Oxford Union on Netflix and wanted to share the highlights, but wasn't sure how much of an introduction he needed, so gave up. I didn't bother watching his speech yesterday to the anti-mask crowd in Trafalgar Square, but from what I've read it was pretty similar to the Oxford one a decade earlier – except it didn't have slides, which is a shame because they were hilarious – so I'm finally posting it now. 

 

 

 If any reader still doesn't know who David Icke is, in my 2015 draft I recommended "this excellent wikipedia entry charting Icke's progress from footballer turned sports-presenter, turned Green-Party-figurehead, via an encounter with Brighton psychic Betty Shine, to the turquoise-favouring Way turned Truth turned Light immortalised in this tender interrogation on Wogan", then went on to explain that Icke was "big with people who get bored by the news. Far better-constructed alternate histories are becoming more and more mainstream, but fortunately for Icke the news has also become more and more boring, so his stock remains high..." which is not an observation that dated well. I've no idea why I didn't think his stock would be at least as high in Interesting Times. 

 

 I've no idea how much his consistent but blurry narrative of world conspiracy owes to Betty Shine, but for over three decades it's remained large enough to accomodate both genuine government cover-ups and the belief that former Prime Minster Ted Heath was a giant lizard. To quote Icke's Oxford lecture: "Pyramids within pyramids, like a series of Russian Dolls." Imagine that... No, I can't either. Here's another quote of his to lillustrate the kind of level we're working at: "Jimmy Carter manipulated the Soviet Union into attacking Afghanistan which blew up leading to Al-Quiada and all that lot." The lecture's now on youtube, not Netflix, and honestly I can't remember if I'd still recommend it but here's what you missed...

 

  "Then he started talking about depleted uranium," I wrote in 2015, "and if I'm honest it gets less funny, because – yes – what's important is not automatically common knowledge... Like David Brent playing Simply The Best, he closes with another Bill Hicks routine, the closing speech from Hicks' swansong Revelations, a beautifully judged meditation that reality is just a ride delivered by a man who knew he was dying. But Icke's done nothing to earn this observation and robs its punchline of any comic worth." That's what I wrote in 2015. My biggest revelation of the evening though was this: "Icke is as good a proof as any of the theory he champions, believing is seeing. Or, less clumsily, it's the ideas we never question that keep us stupid. He's not insane. He's just dumb." That's maybe not such a novel insight in 2020.

"Fucking magnets, how do they work?" Simpler times. Please wear a mask.

#blacklivesmatter and #blackhistorymatters and #statuesofrealpeoplearemainlydumbandscary

 Here's nothing. I'm keeping vampire hours again. Lacking both heat-reisistant gloves and goggles as recommended by the excellent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and unkeen on combing through fourteen years of my social media to wipe it of "personal details and anything that could be perceived as inciting violence" as recommended by the excellent Varaidzo, oh and also, you know, just being a hoverer, I didn't get to Trafalgar Square on Sunday to mourn George Floyd until two in the morning. 

 But General Napier was still there, and Major General Sir Henry Havelock, and the fat prince. The fourth plinth was empty though, I noticed, fleeced of its Ninevite Lamassu... "Statue lovers" someone said knowingly of the torch-wielding protestors at Charlottesville, and I've thought about that quite a bit since, and decided yeah, I don't like statues of real people I realise, not really, not any more. Any of them. Even the lovely ones just look creepy and wrong, even Eric Morecambe. Unmistakably unalive. Borne of a tradition intended to literally deify tyrants. And I suppose I'm just retreading my moan from the last post, aren't I, but, like Mark Gatiss, statues fetishise the past without a shred of interest in history. Don't get me wrong, I like creepy things as much as the next fantasist. And I warm to the decor of a haunted house. But I wouldn't say I'm a statue lover. I also saw a fox. He looked shiny and unafraid. I think foxes are having a good lockdown.

"Nevertheless I will defend to the death his right to say someone should stab me to death."

 Finally! I'd been trying to make the massacre at the Paris offices of "Charlie Hebdo" somehow about me for days, and then I remembered John Finnemore's Voltaire sketch:

 Of course it's a disaster when this question becomes anything but hypothetical, even if it's not the only disaster. My own take on all this? Hang on, let me check twitter... 

 That's right: "Extremists are gangsters. There's money in it. Take that away and you'll see how small a part ideology actually plays." And, regarding the #jesuischarlie hashtag: "It's possible to support free speech as a principle without supporting everything ever said. So I'm not Charlie. And surely that's fine... #jesuischarlie confuses something that should be very simple. I'm defending your right to be not me."
Having said that... it was a remarkably nuanced campaign of solidarity as these things on twitter go, and even if the later #jesuisahmed seemed a slight dig at #jesuischarlie ("Charlie ridiculed my faith and I died defending his right to do so") without it I doubt I would have known about Ahmed at all, and I'm glad I know about Ahmed. So "You're not Ahmed. You're not Groot. Free speech allows us to do far more than taking sides will." But also, well done the internet. #iamgroot was Keeps' idea, by the way. 

 I also enjoyed the clarity of Jon Taylor's summary: "Shot dead. Drawings." and Frankie Boyle's "Glad e

everyone's celebrating free speech in Trafalgar Square, and not in Parliament Square where they'd be arrested." Yeah, imagine if we'd done that. 

 And by "we" of course I mean "not me".

October 2013 - Spaces

Or "It just goes to show you can't be too careful!" 

Let's get back to clearing out 2013... 

Another one of Jonathan Dryden Taylor's

Trolling. Trolling. Trolling... Well, by the look of what went unposted in October, it was a pretty hairy month. There was Stella Creasy and Brand on Newsnight, promotional fences round Trafalgar Square and a dormant snow dome full of gull shit and car adverts around Eros. I started to think about moving to America, where there's actual news (my sister was having all kinds of adventures in LA) and despite the fact that Congress had imploded and there was that business with the stenographer, at least the Oo Ess Eh has a Bill of Rights and a first amendment. Britain, it has been pointed out to me, has also had a Bill of Rights ever since we signed up to the European Convention of Human Rights, but we don't seem to have - and do correct me if I'm wrong - quite the same allegiance to that over here the Americans have over there. October also saw a Royal Charter for regulation of the press, and as David Mitchell wrote, "if that's how regulation of the press is to be conducted from now on, we all need to start shitting ourselves."

Here and Now, 2013

So there's a much larger post to be composed about public space and online abuse and Newsnight, and something like that has actually been brewing at the back of this blog for nearly three years now. However, every time I come back to it, the blog grinds to a halt - sometimes for a month, as in October, sometimes for over a year, as in 2010. I'll give that one a miss for now then, and repost instead something I wrote on twitter, when Stella Creasy MP contended here (possibly buoyed by the Royal Charter) that online abuse should not be treated any less seriously than someone abusing you face to face. I wrote:

"The internet is not a public space. There is no word for what it is yet. But it's clearly not a space."

And that still seems about right. Actually, perhaps it's better to think of the internet as a Shared Private Space. It's not the solitude of this privacy that's the issue. It's the territory.  Contributions are for the most part composed in private - as is this post I'm writing now - on the contributor's territory. But they are read, again in private, on the reader's territory, and there are no real rules for that yet, hence the who-asked-youness of so much correspondence. You could see this as an even heavier count against the trolls, but I see it as a mitigating circumstance. What I read isn't happening in my room, it's happening in the composer's. I think this has to be taken into account if trolls are to be prosecuted. Is there any physical equivalent to this idea of a Shared Private Space? The public toilet, I suppose.
Now we are all the toilet wall, and we can read what's written on us. And a lot of it is horrible, but I'm not sure how personally we should take it.

 An actual public space