There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out.
Posted: June 4, 2017 Filed under: Catastrophes, Conspiracies, Funereal, London Places, Markets, The Thames | Tags: Borough Market, London Bridge Station 3 Comments
Tate Modern, Bankside, 2002. © David Secombe.
A Londoner writes, 4 June, 2017:
Obligatory Post-Terrorism Status
Last night I felt some level of fear for the first time with these attacks, simply because I knew a lot of people within the direct vicinity of where an attack was apparently occurring at the time. It was a weird feeling, and I resent that I was made to feel it, but I think while it’s normal for people to feel fear in these situations (well-founded or not), the important thing is the interpretation of, and reaction to, said fear.
There are a myriad of threats far greater than terrorism, including mundane things like the fact that around 40 people die every year from TVs falling on them. However, the nature of these events and the subsequent media frenzy sends people into a state of panic. I’ve already seen enough people online calling for all muslims to be deported, or sent to Guantanamo Bay, or to close our borders. These people are terrified – they fear for their lives, and they are letting that fear drive them to these statements about urgent action and retaliation. This is the manifestation of the “terror” caused by terrorism. It means it was a success, when by all measures it really shouldn’t be. These people are fragile little flowers, quivering in the hot winds of the tabloid.
Banksy stencil, Park St., SE1, 2003. © David Secombe.
The way to deal with this shit is to carry on with your life as normal. Disregard the absurd actions of a handful of fucking nutters as exactly that. Don’t be a fucking pussy. Go buy a grilled cheese sandwich in Borough Market. Take a walk along London Bridge, hold your head high and realise there’s nothing to be afraid of, since the simple act of walking down the street is literally more dangerous than terrorists. You’re a fucking daredevil.
London Bridge Station, 2003. © David Secombe.
Text © Emil Smith. Special thanks to Katy Evans Bush.
White Bicycles.
Posted: September 20, 2016 Filed under: Funereal, Pavements, Transport, Vanishings | Tags: Christopher Reid poet, London street shrines, White bicycles Comments Off on White Bicycles.
N16. © David Secombe.
Christopher Reid:
White Bicycles
In London these days, a not uncommon sight,
but something Mexican-macabre about it all the same:
lashed to a post, or to railings, a bicycle painted entirely white –
white handlebars and frame,
white gears, brakes, wheels, spokes, pedals and chain –
and decked with florists’ bunches, satin-bowed and in cellophane.
There may be cards and messages as well. Toys, too.
Often a doll or a teddy.
But it’s the white that’s so striking. What does it mean to you?
Ghostliness? A skeleton? A bicycle being skeletal already…
Oh, get over it, it’s the vernacular now; and what’s not to like
about ‘Out with the whited sepulchre! In with the whited bike!’?
Christopher Reid, © 2016
The Day They Left.
Posted: June 30, 2016 Filed under: Catastrophes, Class, Conspiracies, Corridors of Power, Funereal, Health and welfare, London Labour, Pavements, Tall Tales, Vanishings | Tags: Brexit, Katie Hopkins, Nigel Farage, Tim Wells, United Voices of the World Comments Off on The Day They Left.
Surrey Steps, off Strand Lane, north of the Embankment, November 2014.
The first thing I noticed was that the beigels had gone
and there was a run on fried egg sandwiches.
Katie Hopkins became a nice person.
The free newspaper on the bus had actual news in it.
It turned out there actually was £350 million for the NHS.
Farage said he’d buy those of us left a pint,
which was fortuitous ‘cos Wetherspoons had cut their prices.
No more forelock tugging for us, Squire,
‘cos what with all the empty houses
each and every one of us got a luxury flat,
each of which came with a rent cap.
The radio could have been better. They’d decided no Kate Bush,
no P.J Harvey but there was a hell of a lot of Coldplay.
Employment was a doddle. I’d always wanted to be a doctor,
or a plumber, or have me very own fish and chip shop,
and these days all the education was free so it was
certificates all round. Gilt edged ones with a crinkle cut at that!
At the job my working day had been halved, pay doubled,
holidays extended. The light began to dawn.
© Tim Wells. Written after the United Voices of the World picket of 100 Wood Street, 29 June 2016.
A thought for the Undead.
Posted: October 31, 2013 Filed under: Catastrophes, Funereal, Parks, Tall Tales | Tags: adventure playground, buried alive, cholera, Halloween, Rotherhithe, The Not Really Dead, The Undead Comments Off on A thought for the Undead.
Playground, Rotherhithe. © David Secombe 1988.
From The Lancet, August 23, 1884:
Burying Cholera Patients Alive
It is not so much undue haste as inexcusable carelessness that must be blamed for the premature burying of persons who are not really dead. Such heedlessness as alone can lead to the commission of this crime is not a shade less black than manslaughter. We speak strongly, because this is a matter in regard to which measures ought to be at once taken to render the horrible act impossible, and to dismiss all fear from the public mind. If it be a fact, as would seem to be indisputable, that during the last few weeks there have been cases we will not attempt to say how many or how few of burying alive, a scandal and a horror, wholly unpardonable in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, have to be faced; and the sooner the full truth is known and rules of safety established the better.
Let it be once for all decided that measures shall be taken to ascertain the fact of death before burial. Why not revert to the old practice, and always open a vein in the arm after death, or pass a current of electricity through the body before the coffin is finally screwed down? It may be held that these unpleasant resorts are unnecessary. We do not think they are. In any case enough is known of the possibilities of ‘ suspended animation’ to render it unsafe to bury until the evidences of an actual extinction of life are unmistakable ; and, as it is impossible to wait until decomposition sets in in all cases of death from infectious diseases, it would be prudent to adopt what must certainly be the least of evils.
… our obligatory Halloween post. See also: London Gothic, Halloween, The Haunted House.
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