East from Shooter's Hill: The Urals?

Shooter's Hill in Greenwich is among one of the highest points in London.

Someone once told me that if you go due east from Shooters Hill, the next highest land is the Urals in Russia.

This didn't seen right to me. Shooter's Hill is only 133m high.

So I went to the Royal Geographical Society's library to find out more. We dug out maps of Germany to trace the line of 51 degress, 28' latitude east. (I presumed the Netherlands wouldn't have any higher land).

And I was right - there are a whole host of places in Germany higher than 133m. Forst Gahrenberg and Arenborn, below, are just two.


View Larger Map


View Larger Map

Fodbold! Football with London's Danish fans.

I went last night to Zoo Bar, venue of the Scandinavian Party, to watch two matches: Denmark -v- Hungary & Sweden -v- Albania.

Sweden & Denmark - how would I tell them apart?! It turned out to be easy. The Danes stood, while the Swedes sat. I'm not sure this is any great socio-geographical finding, but that's what happened. So I decided to stand amongst the Danish fans.

Nobody had any flags, which is always a shame. Some Danish men wore the football strip, whilst others had red t-shirts. One man had a red suit jacket. Hurrah for him.

Denmark have already qualified for the World Cup, so when Denmark had lost the lead, the fans looked more bored than bothered.

I got the impression the bar was made for more exciting encounters. A Danish man sullenly leaned on a pole atop a podium.

As the game went on, things were getting more important. The Danes didn't want to be beaten, after all. There was cheering, there was some shouting. A big cheer went up when the Danish number 10 came off. I couldn't tell if they liked him or not.

In the end, Denmark lost and the Danish fans shuffled away. But I'll be back to watch more with then next year.

Sam Taylor

Last night, I went to see Sam Taylor sing at blog-club night EQ. Sam sings melodic, emotional pop songs, with a beautiful voice.

Although last night he did some poppy covers (Billie Jean, Mama Do), he also sang the gorgeous acoustic ballads Sometimes I Need You and Talk Me Down.

Sam has a expressive heartfelt truthful innocence when he sings, and it's rather charming. He's also very a good looking chap. I'm hoping he'll be one to watch in future.

Watch him perform the two ballads below (with apols for the sound quality on the video).

I'm hoping he'll be one to watch in future.






Check out > Sam Taylor on myspace - especially his cover of The Cardigans' Communication, which I think is amazing.

Jalkapallo! Football with London's Finnish fans

I went yesterday to watch football with Finnish fans. I returned to the Famous 3 Kings where the fans were gathering to watch their match against Wales.
The bar has several screens, all showing different matches, so it's always pot-luck to find fans.

Happily, when I arrived, I spied a Finnish flag draped across a fireplace. Hurrah! It turned out that 5 Finns were there.

They were surrounded by Welsh fans though. They sat quietly, one brandishing a scarf. During half-time, they took down the flag.

And then the Russians started arriving, as the kick-off to Russia -v- Germany approached. Lots of them. They were in high style, in the best-that-money-can-buy labels. Even the Russian football strip looked like D&G. My picture above just shows the Russians.

It was a veritable Russian invasion.

The Finns, in altogether more sombre and modest outfits, sat their ground, and watched their match.

When Finland scored a goal to take the lead, one man stood up and did a small dance. His friend took the flag and wore it as a bandana.

The Welsh fans started singing and chanting. The Finns stayed sitting, probably thinking "we're actually winning". I hoped they'd respond with a few bars of Hard Rock Hallelujah, but alas no.

In the end, the Finns' quiet resolution paid off. Finland beating Wales 2-1. And for all the Russian cheering, they lost out to Germany.

Flags, made of paper

My newest fun thing to do is to make collage flags from bits of scrap paper. I recently changed jobs, and made these flags for colleagues to say farewell.
UK flag

USA flag


Australia flag



Kent flag


Sicily flag



Wales flag


India flag



Nepal flag


Berlin flag


Cuba flag



Ukraine flag



Ethiopia flag



Madagascar flag


Philippines flag



Ireland flag


France flag


Ibiza flag

The Golden Filters, live in London

Last night, I went to Cargo to see a band called The Golden Filter.

Although, variously through the evening, I called them:

• The Golden Glitters
• The Golden Flippers
• The Golden Floaters
• The Golden Fluffers
• The Golden Frapp
• The Golden Lamé

 I don't know why.

The Golden Filter are an electro-duo made up of Australian Penelope and Ohio-born Stephen.

Stephen looks like an archetypal Noo Yawk gay (think Anthony in Sex & the City in a offbeat quirky phase) and Penelope has an amazing name.

She spent most of her time on stage stridently marching on the spot, while swoop-turning her head from side to side. At one point, she was splashing in small puddles on the stage.

Their songs are wailing & whisper vocals over electro with heavy percussion. On stage, this meant tambourines, castanets and many many drum banging sequences. It was all quite Eurovisiony, although they probably wouldn't like that.

Their final, mammoth drum-a-thon needed a golden glitter machine to explode over the crowd.

And so, an equation:

 ((Human League x Goldfrapp) + (Kate Bush wailing - eccentricity)) x (electro-nihilism + eurovision drumming) = The Golden Filter

> Check out: The Golden Filter on myspace

108 | 241 | 309 - London buses

I've been reading the Route1to499 bus blog for some months now. Ben - who writes it - is trying to travel on all London's bus routes. He'll be doing this until 2012.


The idea tickled me, so I asked Ben to accompany him on some trips. So today, me and he went on three routes (108, 241, 309) from the grimy / glittering heights of Lewisham to buzzy-with-anticipation Stratford, from there to down at heel Canning Town, and finally from there through the residential heart of Tower Hamlets to Bethnal Green.

Some highlight sights were:

• the Las Vegas-esque sign outside Lewisham library
• a street called The Squirrels
• the church of St Margaret's, Lee (I like the punctuation)
• the Blackheath Conservatoire of Music (built in 1896)
• the zigzagging Blackwall Tunnel
  
• planes landing at London City Airport

Overall, it was an interesting trip, and really made me realise how amazing London's buses are. There was nothing outstanding about these three routes: they were ordinary, work-a-day trips. But the very fact that they exist is brilliant.

Futebol! Football with London's Portuguese fans.

Last night, I went to South Lambeth Road to watch Portugal play Hungary and cheer along with the Portuguese fans.

London's Portuguese football watching venues have been written about before, but I've been wanting to go since I went to Portugal earlier this year. I wanted to see if the food would be any better than the not-so-tasty Portuguese fare.

All the bars along the road were showing either the Portugal match or the that and the England match (and any other match they could fit in).

The first bar - Estrella - was all very animated. People were happily chatting and drinking, but not really paying too much attention to the match. A middle-aged woman sat in the corner reading a book.

A man with a crutch came in, making a lot of bluster and noise while ordering his beer. When Portugal scored soon after, he dropped the crutch, jumped about, did a little dance with his arms aloft. So much for the crutch!

He later started talking to me (in Portuguese). When he realised that I wasn't from Portugal, he started to tell me a very rambling story about Coimbra University. It was fascinating!


At half-time, I took myself off to a second bar - Grelha D'Ouro - with more fans watching, chatting and not really paying great attention. One complained (in English) that the Portuguese players were just wasting time. Another kept trying to engage me in conversation, in Portuguese. It was all very social.

The match continued on, but it was rather dull (or is it that I don't actually like football that much?).

And, for the record, although I didn't actually eat, the food all looked pretty similar.

Piłka nożna! Football with London's Polish fans.

I went to watch Saturday's Poland -v- Northern Ireland soccer match with Polish fans, at the White Eagle Social Club in Balham.

Many, many fans - mainly male - had gathered there to watch the game. I entered into a big ballroom - which was almost dark - with a screen at one end, and about 100 fans watching the match. Moments later, green disco lights came on, and I saw that the room had chandeliers, records hanging from the ceiling and tinselly curtains. How fabulous.

Moments later, a burly man wearing glowsticks around his neck walked past. How curious.

The match itself was quite boring, only made interesting by watching the Polish manager who had the arch facial expressions of a grand Shakespearean actor.

Half-time brought adverts for Nivea, Nike, Orange & Volkswagen (every country is the same), and one for a flavour powder that is sprinkled on food called Smack (every country is not the same).

I wandered to the lounge (with charming blue chenile draped in front of lamps) to watch the second half. In fact, my eyes wandered to the fit bouncer outside rather than the less-than-exciting match. As Poland equalised, the fans cheered loudly, and continued to do so, even as the match limped home to a boring draw.

Australia, sketched

I went to Regents Park on Saturday in the hope of asking those there watching the Ashes cricket match between England & Australia to draw maps of Australia.

Despite being initally unusure I'd do it (people sitting very close to one another makes it difficult to approach), I met 16 great people all of whom drew a map, which superimposed, becomes:



The maps were drawn by: Michelle, Sam, Dan, Chris, Andrew, Taryn & Dane from Australia, Charles from South Africa, and Rob, Daniel, Phil, Ailsa, Laura, Craig, Luke & Rebecca from the UK.

Sketch maps of Latin America

I went to Carnaval del Pueblo a few weeks ago with my map sketch pad in hand. It's the largest Latin American carnival in Europe. After watching the parade, I spent time in Burgess Park looking for people to ask to draw a map of Latin America.

Lots of lovely people obliged me. I collected 26 maps - I've superimposed 17 of those on top of each other to create this map:



The maps were drawn by: Paula from Argentina, David from Israel, Renato from Brazil, Anthony from Australia, Robin from Colombia, Itala from Brazil, Ivan from Ecuador, German from Colombia, Marcia from Brazil, Angel from Brazil, Jean Bryan from Bolivia, Claudia from Brazil, Simone from Brazil, Adolfo from Brazil, Matt from UK, Natasha from UK, Arianna from Italy, Lisbet from Cuba, Justin from USA, Germaine from UK, Roberto from Puerto Rica, Marcos from Cyprus, Dhannshka from Sri Lanka, Adriana from Colombia, Freddy from Ecuador & Leyre from Spain.

Thanks to all of them! When I started to superimpose these, I found that between 10 and 15 maps work best (26 is way too many!). I had to leave a few out of these, simply as they were too cluttered.

Next: Maps of Australia by Ashes cricket watchers, and I'm going to attempt to superimpose some very differnt maps of South-East Asia

You've got the look

The blog has a new look - multiple columns and plug-in modular-ness. I've mainly redesigned it as I'm intending to give out the address to more people, so it needed to show a few more aspects all in one place.

I've started to talk to people at events, asking them to draw certain parts of the world. The idea is that, when I have enough maps, I'll overlay them all.

So far, I've been to Carnaval del Pueblo, a south London Latin American festival, and a Thai festival in Greenwich, asking people to draw Latin America and South East Asia respectively.

I've got about 50 maps from this, but no images uploaded as yet.

However, some Austrian people drew Austria for me and I have done a few of my own as a test - so below are multiple Austrias, Indias, Italys and Irelands.

Roma twitter

When I was in Rome, I made a special trip to see a small, almost ignored statue in the corner of a small square. It's called Pasquino, and is in Piazza di Pasquino.

The ancient statue, which probably dates to the 3rd century BC, was dug up when paving part of Rome. In 1501, on April 25, Saint Mark's Day, a cardinal draped the statue in a toga, and attached epigrams in Latin to it.

A custom soon arose for those who wanted to criticize the Pope or individuals in his government to write satirical poems in broad Roman dialect and attach them to this statue.

Pasquino was, thus, Rome's first talking statue (and many more appeared), and a neat Roman-style Twitter. Even today, satirical notes are attached to the statue.

Ace poster

Ace poster by Rupert Meats on sale as part of Print Club's London summer show, Secret Blisters.


Buy the poster here

Jonas Bendiksen - Satellites - photography of unrecognised states

I recently saw Satellites, an exhibition of photography by Jonas Bendiksen at the PM House & Gallery in Ealing.

Satellites is about states that do not actually exist, particularly those in the former Soviet region. When the USSR broke up in the 1990s, 15 'new' countries emerged. However, political and ethnic tensions also led to a number of less well-known and unrecognised states, such as Abkhazia and Transdniester.

Bendiksen spent seven years journeying in these places, culminating in an amazing set of photographs.

I especially liked the photos which showed solitary individual figures set in huge, vast landscapes, like these below. The first shows a little girl (you can barely see her) amongst large Soviet-style buildings. The second shows Tanya, a babooshka, outside large Soviet blocks of flats.

The impression was of these small, unrecognised nations trying to find their way amongst big super-powers and massive international and global structures.




Equally fascinating, and on the same theme, were his images of local people in the area where rockets and spacecraft are crashed in the Kazakh steppe. Locals here pillage the craft for scrap. Again, they seem like solitary people getting by in vast structures.



The exhibition continues until 9 August. Satellites is also available as a book.

Grace Jones, Somerset House

Last night I went to see Grace Jones in concert at Somerset House - it was amazing. There was a costume change for every song, or rather I should say a hat change. She was wearing a fabulous set of hats. They included:

• a fascinator feather with alien bug-eye lights
• full-moon centurion style circle
• Hat in the shape of Angor Wat
• Space age Virgin Mary get-up in a washing machine extraction tube
• Giant copper bowl with matching cymbals
• Bug-eyed alien mask
• Gold alopecia feathered Cleopatra
• Cabaret circus ring master
• A diamond-encrusted cocoon
• Big leaf, with Zaha Hadid style swoop
• Bug tentacles & antelope horns
• Flashing blue sunglasses
• Disco ball bowler hat with lasers
• And finally she emerged wearing a Christmas decoration on her head.

Highlights of the night were when Grace exclaimed "Jesus! What's with the yellow light?" and "No fan's gonna fuck up my hula hoop" before hula-hooping while singing Slave to the Rhythm.

Here's a rubbish video of a little bit:

Shakira - Loba / She Wolf - amazing!

Shakira has a new song. It is amazing.



My review:

• Squelch disco.
• HORN!
• Disco
  
• Honking horn!
• Beeps!
• Shakira sounds like she's drunk on a vocoder.
• HORN!
• HORN!
• Spanish singing!
• Synth-laser!
• Head-flick.
• Ooh, quick fire rap-singing.
• Ugh grunt.
• Synth-laser! (head-flick.)
  
• High-as-the-sky chorus.
• "Ah-woooooooo!" wolf sound.
  
• Heavy breathing.
• HORN!
• More Spanish singing.
• Synth-laser
• Head-flick.
• Quick-fire & ugh.
  
• Chorus.
• HORN!
• "Ah-wooooooooooo!"
• Bridge = Ghetto-blaster humping moment.
• Breathing, breathing, breathing.
• Massive, OTT crescendo.
• More drunk vocoder.
• HORN!
• Synth-strings!
• Handclaps!
• HORN!
• Heavy breathing
  
  
• And it's called SheWolf. Brilliant. Even if it is crying out for a big gay hands-in-the-air remixing.
  

Tel Aviv Bauhaus building flash mob

Yesterday, I took part in a flash mob. I never thought I'd say that. What with summer downpours, it almost threatened to be a "flush mob". Boom boom.

The purpose of the flash mob - organised by the Jewish Community Centre in London - was to build a replica of a Tel Aviv Bauhaus-style building.

This is part of their celebrations of Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary. I had no idea that Tel Aviv was only 100 years old, originally founded on the outskirs of another town, Jaffa.

And as the city grew in the 1920s and 1930s, German Jewish architects introduced Bauhaus architecture to Tel Aviv. Now, Tel Aviv's White City, contains more than 5,000 Modernist-style buildings inspired by the Bauhaus school and Le Corbusier. Apparently, Tel Aviv has the world's largest concentration of Modernist-style buildings.

So, yesterday, in Hoxton Square, clad in pink hard-hats, around 20 people made blocks from cardboard boxes, some cardboard balconies and flowers from crepe paper, and our very own Bauhaus building, 17 Emile Zola Street

And then we demolished it.

There's another Tel Aviv bauhaus building flash mob event on July 12. Go, it's great fun.

Food & Meat-related tube stations

It's a quiet day in our office, and a conversation about Swimbeldon turns turns meatily to Gambledon and a whole afternoon of foody pun fun.

Puns are good.

• Turnpike Loin
• Aldgate Yeast
• Banger Lane
• Parsnip Green
• Elephant & Custard
• Euston Squash
• Bacon Street
• Brent Cress
• Charring Cress
• Mill Hill Feast
• Arnos Grape
• Ladbrook Gravy
• Marrow-on-the-hill
• Bean Park
• Green Pork
• New Crisp Gate
• Turnip Green
• Kings Cross St Parsnip
• Snout Kensington
  
• Hamden Town
• Whitechipolata
  
• Mansion Grouse
• Offal
• Turnip Green
• Maida Veal
  
• Shepherds Pie Market
• Piccalilli Circus
• Marrowlebone.
• Brussel square
• Mint-Imperial Wharf
• Old meat
• Lan-pasta Gate
• Sprout Kensington
• High-berry & Ice-cream-ton
• Oxford Circus-cous
• West-Mince-ter
• Pimmslico
• Chutney bridge
• Seven shish-ters
  

Any more?