Author: Ariadne

Some personal reflections on the new-ish City Hall’s surroundings.

Truth be told, I was sad to leave the old City Hall behind. I liked its circular wisdom, its windows forever in need of a clean. Above all, I loved the location, on the river next to surely the most iconic bridge in the world. Where was this Royal Docks we were moving to? What was it?

I felt like a tourist going to work on my first trip to the Crystal. The DLR stop of West Silvertown sounded like an outpost from a Hollywood western. And, on first glimpse, looked like a desert. A semi-industrial desert. But then, a stranger vista, on arriving at the docks. Gigantic cranes, no longer in use. Low-flying planes. Cable cars moving hypnotically back and forth. A solitary wakeboarder. And, catching the light, all low-slung glamour, the rakishly angled Crystal. It made me want to find out more.

And so, with the zeal of a convert, I delved into the Googleverse and assembled a few eclectic facts about the area.

When first opened, in 1855, the Royal Docks were the biggest and deepest in the world. An engineering marvel, they were built out of marshland to accommodate the huge steamships that serviced the empire. Outside London’s planning laws of the time, the area was known as ‘a place of refuge for offensive trade establishments’. These included ‘oil-boilers, gut-spinners, varnish-makers, printers’ ink-makers and the like’ according to the magazine ‘Household Words’ edited by Charles Dickens.

One such establishment would have belonged to businessman Samuel Silver, who made his fortune in waterproof clothing. His name lives on in the eponymous Silvertown. Silver’s factories, situated on the edge of the docks, used imports of India rubber from South America and a substance called ‘gutta percha’ from Malaysia. Gutta percha, a natural plastic from the percha tree, became a household name in Victorian England and was used in the manufacture of everything from golf balls to ear trumpets to underwater telegraph cables.

The factories were bombed during WWII.

Meanwhile, the docks were used to build portable harbours to assist with the Normandy landings. The concrete pontoons were built in secret before being transported to France to enable ships to dock at the invasion beachheads.

Eighty years on from D-Day, the NHS Nightingale Hospital, housed in the ExCel Exhibition Centre overlooking the docks, stepped up in another moment of national crisis.

Also installed during the pandemic, Laura Ford’s sculpture of a bird boy, alone in an expanse of water, is a poignant reminder of those times, and a photogenic magnet for ducks and pigeons.

From marshy outlier to industrial hub to symbol of national resilience to the seat of London’s government. There’s grit in them docks.

GLA internal comms – blogpost

When it comes to branding, recognition is all.

McDonald’s golden arches are either a sight for sore eyes or an eyesore (depending on your point of view), from Albuquerque to Zurich. Apple’s current brand value of 947 million dollars proves Steve Jobs’ faith in thinking different. And Nike have cornered the power of positive thinking in three syllables. All these brands have instantly recognisable visual identities, be it a swoosh, a pair of golden arches or an apple with a small chunk bitten out of it.

The Mayor of London and Greater London Assembly brands don’t occupy the same stratospheric brandwidth as McDonald’s, Apple or Nike. But that doesn’t mean to say the same brand principles shouldn’t apply.

Based within External Relations, the Creative Team generates ideas for campaigns to promote the work of the Mayor. We are the organisation’s brand guardians.

Coming up with engaging ways of communicating the Mayor’s wide-ranging agenda to Londoners is the essence of what we do. London is the greatest city in the world, after all.

But it’s more than that. It’s also about communicating a set of brand values that are recognisably those of the organisation. Openness, inclusivity, fairness, for example. A broadcaster like Channel 4 is successful because their branding makes it clear what they stand for. Their purpose is to create change through entertainment. They are a trailblazer in diversity.

A similar sense of purpose underscores the work of the Mayor of London – notably present in the recent ‘have a word’ campaign to help end violence towards women and girls. The campaign urges men to call out unacceptable behaviour and attitudes towards women and girls. It is purposeful and powerful.

And, while we don’t have the same budgets as multinational companies like Nike or Apple, we can still harness our brand values to create work that is strong and meaningful. But to do so we need to be single-minded in our comms. We need to make our campaign spend work hard for us to get the best value for our brand.

That’s why we don’t have sub brands or separate visual identities for different strands of the Mayor’s agenda.

If we were to create individual sub-brands for all the many projects and campaigns that fall under the umbrella of the organisation, the result would be a mish mash. Mish mashes don’t cut through. They confuse and dilute the main brand, and, in doing so, they diminish the role of the Mayor in Londoners’ eyes.

We want Londoners to know that the Mayor of London is behind the brilliant projects and campaigns that our organisation works on or supports. Improving air quality, building more council homes, greening the streets, showcasing the arts, celebrating the many faiths and cultures that make up our great city. And so much more. And for that, we say, long live the Mayor of London brand!

Did you just spill iced tea over you? The girl to my right laughs, a hard cackle. She’s just filmed her friend on her mobile spilling iced tea over her ripped jeans. Her pink bare knee shows through. They laugh together at the absurdity of it. To be so daft as to spill your iced tea! I shift in my seat. The man opposite me rolls his eyes. Teenagers, he’s thinking. Or I’m thinking. Next to the girl with the loud laugh, a man speaks into his phone. Ela glykia mou, he says. I know, because it’s my mother tongue, that he’s speaking Greek. Low, soothing tones. He’s calling someone sweetheart, but because it’s in Greek and my mother is Greek, it speaks to me. My soul travels a little towards him. Stratford, he’s saying. That’s where he’s headed. Two girls walk past in coats that cinch their small waists. The man opposite me looks up and at them. Then down again. Back to fingering his mobile. I tilt my phone to landscape and take a picture. Three middle aged men. Not as photogenic as the teenagers or the young women, but needs must on a train. I don’t want to draw attention to my voyeurism. It would be easy, I think, to spend time purely travelling backwards and forwards observing other people. Catching conversation, glances, glinting human fragments. It’s a bright cold day. A brilliant wintry day. I’m on the top deck of the bus now, travelling back from the Geffrye Museum. It’s a lovely morning, Sarah says. I know she’s called Sarah because she’s just reserved two tables ‘behind the DJ’ at a bar of her choice for her birthday on February 3rd. It might be spelt Sara, I think. I suspect she’s a Sara rather than a Sarah. Her companion, Stu, sitting next to her, nods in approval once the deal’s been done. Her voice on the phone sings out over the top of people’s heads. She’s undaunted, young, happy to conduct her birthday business by phone on the bus. Oblivious to me sitting behind her, lapping up her every word. A woman in a red riding hood coat runs across the road to catch the bus. She’s carrying a sapling of a dragon tree, tall and slender, and it jiggles as she runs. She takes her seat on the top deck. Her lips are the same colour as her coat. I’m headed to a flea market on Stoke Newington High Street. But I get off the bus early to avail myself of a sugary snack. People watching is hungry work.

Despite my better instincts, my youngest son press-ganged me into splurging on a large electronic skeleton puppet in a black cape. Press a button and it cackles impressively while clawing the air with its bony fingers, red eyes flashing maniacally. It’s really rather good but bound to malfunction before long and render my son heartbroken. I just hope it lasts until Halloween. 8 more days.

It’s the time of year to think about fear. Nights drawing in, fallen leaves, a clutch of festivals celebrating the dead and the undead. My children suffer from the usual First World fears. Fear of darkness, fear of being left alone. Those top the charts. But on the sofa, devices comfortably propped on their laps, my two little boys can wallow to their hearts content in supernatural incidents, strange sightings and animatronic horror.

Halloween, likewise, gives children licence to explore the dark side. To let loose their inner monsters. All in the knowledge that sugary treats and the bright lights of home await the ritual roaming. It is mayhem, hemmed in. An acceptable level of exposure to scariness.

Our instinct as parents is to instruct and protect. To turn off the news when the news is too grisly. To insist on wholesome video consumption. David Attenborough, chiefly. But it’s too late for that, at least in our household. My eldest son has a persistent nightmare. It features killer clowns. A year ago there was a spate of violence involving individuals dressed up as killer clowns. It is as if the boundary between dressing up and dressing to kill, fantasy and real-world horror has become blurred. Curiously, my son still wants to dress up as a killer clown for Halloween. Perhaps at some level he’s facing down his fears.

It was resting on the wall, close, as it turns out, to a carob tree. A carob pod. Dry and gnarled but oddly appealing.  I took it to my Greek aunt’s husband, Manolis, and asked him to confirm whether it was, as I suspected, a carob pod. He confirmed it was. My question prompted him to reminisce, nostalgically, about a drink made from carob that he recalled from his youth. They would bring snow from the mountains, he said, and mix it with a syrup, made from boiling the fruit. And it was heavenly. Crete’s answer to Coca Cola.

Wow, I said. How do you make the syrup?

At which, Manolis whipped out his mobile and called his botanist friend Kosta for instructions. They had a conversation. Kostas, I gathered, was not well, holed up with a nasty bug in the mountains. But he passed on the recipe. The magical recipe. So, you pour water onto the carobs, Manolis informed me, and leave them overnight. And in the morning – you have it! It seemed incredible. A wondrous nectar, so simply made.

I resolved to make it. Mairi, my aunt, equipped me with a bucket for collecting the carobs. Within minutes it was full. Easy enough to snap off the wrinkly fruits hanging in sociable clusters from the tree. The next day, I brought round my home made liqueur and challenged Manolis to try it. He looked at it dubiously.

It’s darker than I remember, he said.

I confessed I’d boiled them, after a quick bout of internet research. Manolis looked disappointed.

You should have gone with the local botanist’s advice, not Google, he reprimanded me, with a degree of feeling. Still, he drunk it.

Hmm, he said. It tastes like Caroupia (the name of the drink of his memories).

But he didn’t look like someone who’d just tasted the divine.

It happens, briefly, a firefly flash, and disappears almost immediately. Inspiration. So fleeting, it’s hard to trust.

Often, I find myself prone to attacks late at night. Sometimes, they are so intense that the accompanying adrenaline rush keeps me awake for the rest of the night. It happened last night and already, not 24 hours later, I’m having second thoughts. Like waking up after a one night stand. Was it truly all it was cracked up to be?

I was propped up in bed with indigestion, browsing Google images of MDF art. I’d had an idea in mind, a cityscape collage, made from cut out shapes of MDF. I scrolled down idly, missing the boys on a sleepover and sniffing their pillows for comfort. And I saw it. A crow printed on a piece of plywood. I clicked on the image. It was by someone called Daniel Heyman. I googled Mr Heyman, and I was off, roaming unfettered across Heyman’s cyber territory, visiting his work, listening to him talk, checking out his photographs, reading his thoughts. Within half an hour I was a little in love with the rugged looking, gentle voiced Daniel Heyman, an American artist eight years older than me. And then, absurdly deflated, on discovering that his sexual orientation did not match mine. Such is the dangerous cocktail of indigestion, inspiration and late night internet browsing.

Nonetheless, the work was the thing. The main thing. It made me think. It made me think about my own situation. It made me want to do something about it. I won’t say what. But I found Daniel Heyman’s art inspirational in a way that doesn’t happen often. It got me going. It really did. At least it did, nearly 24 hours ago. As I say, already, I’m having my doubts. Though this time, I won’t let my thoughts slip through my fingers like quicksilver, or sand or whatever slips through fingers. I won’t let that future get away.

Yesterday, I achieved my own mission impossible. I shimmied my way to the garden shed and back again without disturbing a single spider’s web, or any resident arachnid. I didn’t feel the need to hack my way through with a machete, or simply abandon the idea altogether. My objective was to retrieve my gardening gloves with no unnecessary loss of animal life. I got my gardening gloves. The spiders lived.

I attribute this, in large part, to having spider loving boys. As a result of my arachnophile sons, my own moderate arachnophobia has eased. It has shifted from moderate to mild. I can almost imagine, without wetting myself, the feel of a spider, a small one, in the palm of my hand as I delicately remove it from the kitchen into the garden. And this, I attribute to my sons’ unhysterical curiosity about our eight legged friends.

Gabriella spent the best part of half an hour sitting in her handler’s hand. We were listening to him (I never found out his name) talk about spiders and their ways, at the zoo. She didn’t move. She was obviously comfortable. He talked about how long she and other tarantulas were likely to live. What they liked to eat. Where they liked to live. Their mating habits. She didn’t stir. His calmness inspired her calmness, or the other way round. In any case, by the end of the talk, I’d come to find Gabriella, the Mexican tarantula, endearing.

The zoo runs a course for arachnophobes. Some participants can’t even eat a vine ripened tomato, so unnerved are they by its spiderlike stalk. But by the end of the course they can hold a tarantula in their hand. And relocate a common house spider from A to B, using a cup and saucer.

The obvious point to conclude is that exposure to one’s phobia, can’t be a bad thing.

It may be a leap too far to talk about xenophobia in the same light. But it is interesting that those who live in areas least populated by immigrants or asylum seekers, are often those most keen to shut them out or see the back of them.

It may be too much of a leap to compare fear of spiders with fear of foreigners, or indeed fear of anything that seems to lurk in dark crannies, and threatens to scuttle or spill into one’s living room on many many legs. But I think there is a commonality.

Xenophobia is not a word that has found its way into common currency. Perhaps because it is too exotic. Or perhaps because it smacks of something unacceptable. Instead, Brexit-leaning types like to talk about sovereignty. It’s not that they don’t like foreign types. It’s just that they prefer their own. Wrapping this Little Englander mentality up in a package of constitutional soundness, makes it sound edifying. Unarguable, even. But to my mind, ‘sovereignty’, has little to do with wresting powers back from Brussels. Hearts and minds are not won by debating the relative merits of legislative chambers. For all his much touted opposition to so-called ‘Project Fear’, it is Farage who has done most to stir the dark, unnameable fears that lurk in peoples’ hearts.

Sitting in the Bug House with my sons listening to the spider handler talking gently and knowledgeably about Gabriella, the hairy tarantula, I felt strangely moved. Gabriella, at least, has found a safe home.

I’m half Greek. I spent many a childhood summer in the back of my parents’ lime green Renault 12, crossing the borders of mainland Europe on the way to Greece. We once spent a fortnight just driving across what was then Yugoslavia. I feel connected to the continent in a way that goes beyond geographical coincidence or political expediency.  And when it comes to the question of staying or leaving the EU, it’s personal, not political. I admit it might be better to weigh the arguments in a more detached fashion, for and against. But I won’t. I’m European. Pro the big fat dysfunctional family.

So we’re sitting outside the deli in Painswick, waiting for our scones to arrive, and an elderly but spruce couple sit down at an adjacent table. Like a plant leaning towards the sun, the female half of the couple, soon to celebrate her seventieth, in style, in a Wiltshire village, turns towards us for her essential nutrients. Conversation, solicited or not. Wasn’t it a lovely spot. (It was). Were we staying here? (We were). And so on. The drinks arrived. Then, out of the blue, her otherwise taciturn but fidgety husband piped up. We haven’t touched on Brexit yet, he said. Indeed we hadn’t. Politics, in a quintessential Cotswolds village? Whatever next. My husband squirmed. He’s an economist. Deeply averse to leaving on economic grounds. Mildly intolerant of any non economist, lay person type, piling in on the subject. I spoke in place of him. I’m Greek, I said, as if that explained everything. To which the husband retorted that he was half Czech and half Irish but he wanted the hell out.

His aggression took me aback. I nodded, sympathetically, in the hope that our obvious non meeting of minds would render the topic null and void. But the conversation wasn’t about to die.

Cameron says he’s won concessions from the EU, he said, with a fervour that caused his spindly body to shake. But where are these concessions? Have we felt their effect? The scones arrived in the resounding silence that followed. His wife took up the baton.

It’s a sovereignty thing, for me, she said. We’re better off making our own mistakes, the way I see it. At least we wouldn’t be wasting any one else’s money. I nodded again. My husband was busying himself with a scone. Cream, jam, etc. But our neighbour wasn’t about to to bow out.  On she went, spuming against the bureaucracy, waste of talent, bloated salaries and fundamental unnecessariness of the EU. And as she talked, another story began to emerge. A sub text that was more personal than political. The voice of sibling rivalry. Now I’m no psychoanalyst, but I’ve two children, and I know just how vicious and deep-seated a thing sibling rivalry can be. It turns out our neighbour’s sister had worked for the EU, and as a lavishly rewarded EU bureaucrat, had reaped all the benefits of being on its indisputable gravy train. As had her children. Oddly, it occurred to me to ask whether her sister was still alive, possibly picking up on some dark, unexpressed wish. She was. Living in London. The husband drummed his fingers on the table irritably. I’ll get the bill, he said, suddenly.

There’s a rococo garden in Painswick, I said, taking advantage of the conversational lull. But our Brexiteer neighbours had run out of time. The birthday celebrations lay ahead.  It was going to be a family gathering. Their daughters and son in laws would be there. The grand children, too. But not, I deduced, the sister.

This week we are in the Cotswolds. We have come, not just to gorge on honeyed hamlets in a pastoral idyll. But to jog along our thoughts on a very middle aged, middle class dilemma.  To move, or not to move to the countryside. Arguments for and against are legion. Mostly I listen to my gut. My gut tells me I’m a Londoner. That said, my gut warned me against my husband, at least until date number 3. It wasn’t until some unsuspected hip manoeuvring during one life changing salsa session, that my gut woke up to my guy. It still works a treat, I’m glad to say, the hip manoeuvre.

So, the Cotswolds. Painswick, to be precise, colloquially known as the Queen of the Cotswolds. She’s undeniably well kept. One street boasts the first Post Office in the country and a row of Tudor houses with Georgian facades, as immaculate as the virgin birth. The streets are spic and span. There is no litter and no dog poo. Obviously, no graffiti. Entering our holiday home’s long gravel drive after a morning run, I spy a solitary empty crisp bag. Salt and vinegar, Waitrose own-brand. It’s rubbish collection day and the bin men of Stroud District Council have missed a crisp packet. It was conspicuous for being the only piece of litter in evidence, anywhere. And, being so, I found myself all the more inclined to pick it up and dispose of it in a civic and ecologically minded fashion. Ordinarily, I might not pick up a stray piece of litter. Would moving here change my habits? Make me less tolerant of litter? Could that be anything but a good thing?

Another thing that impresses straightaway is that there is a lot of lawnmowing going on in Painswick. Our host, John, a charming septuagenarian with an uncommon knack of engaging my boys, was mowing as we arrived. He had a good half acre to get through. By the end, the lawn was a premium grade carpet. Soft, springy, even, green. The next day, John was back on his ride-on mower, at it again. It was a glorious day. My sense is he was just enjoying himself. But he wasn’t alone. One man – is lawn mowing something only men do? – seemed bent on eviscerating every last daisy from a patch of otherwise blameless grass.  And, where there’s lawn mowing, there’s topiary.  Most impressive perhaps, the manicured yew trees surrounding the village church. 99 in total, so the guide books say. The devil wouldn’t allow any more, apparently.

Yesterday we drove to Gloucester, the county capital, not renowned as a place of intrinsic beauty. But I saw a mural, a giant mural, of Salvador Dali and a rugby player, on the side of a house next to the car park, and I felt a surge of pleasure. A gut reaction. Not that I’d like to live on a dilapidated brownfield site next to a parking lot. But just then, it felt like home.

We arrived at the Kentish Town Community Festival as our MP, in a tight fitting suit, was being mobbed by a posse of friendly men demanding a group selfie. A furtive man slipped a Socialist Worker flyer in my hand. The EU referendum was a sideshow, apparently. It was gusty but the community was out, being a community. There were cupcake stands (popular), a display of crafted goods (less popular), people I knew, people I didn’t know, and people I recognised despite not knowing them. The ones that stood out on the high street because of their funny hair or OCD mannerisms. This was my community. My heart swelled.

We bumped into Alex, a boy in my youngest son’s class, clutching a pound coin. He was queueing up for an ice-cream all by himself. It was his first time ever, ordering by himself, he told us proudly. His father stood a few paces away, like a security detail. Further on, more familiar faces, mostly parents, could be seen bopping to the live set by the football pitch, impersonating their younger festival-going selves. Young girls swayed their hips seductively, impersonating their future selves. There was hula hooping.

It began to rain, more steadily. Umbrellas went up. The community stood firm. My sons’ school gospel choir was up next. They opened with Like A Bridge Over Troubled Water, a song that showcased the soulful talents of one Year 6 girl. Her voice cracked on the high notes and she cringed with embarrassment but rallied. The audience was behind her. I spotted her mother, in clogs, looking nervous. The choir sang a few more songs in scratchy unison. My eldest scooted off to the skatepark, bored. An official looking gent wearing some kind of medal – a mayor? – was chatting enthusiastically to a couple of Labour councillors. As I accompanied my youngest to the toilet, the choir struck up a Bob Marley classic, giving voice to the belief that every little thing’s gonna be alright. Still, remarkably, not a cliche. Tears welled in my eyes as I mouthed the words. If this was community spirit, it was indeed alright.