Park Life. Photo: David Secombe, text: Katy Evans-Bush. (5/5)
Posted: August 10, 2012 Filed under: Anniversaries, Parks | Tags: greenwich park, solar eclipse, welding mask Comments Off on Park Life. Photo: David Secombe, text: Katy Evans-Bush. (5/5)
Solar eclipse watchers, Greenwich Park, 11 August 1999. © David Secombe.
Katy Evans-Bush:
In Hackney, Mare Street was as busy as on any normal weekday. People were shuffling about with plastic carrier bags or talking on their phones, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the sun was about to be eclipsed. We were rushing to get our errands done in time to get to the park for the main event, the kids equipped with arcane little things they could look through that they’d been given at school two weeks before.
The first glimmer of what was coming was a strange, translucent-but-heavy quality to the air, as if it were turning into some kind of gel. It felt suddenly harder to move through it. Then the light began to go a bit greenish. Everything slowed down. When we got into London Fields, the park was thronged with people on the grass, some with picnics, and the weird green heaviness in the air intensified; it was like being in a fishbowl.
At the height of the eclipse, the park and the pub and all the people were as if viewed through a thick glass coffee table. It was very strange. But the utter incongruity of the street scene – lorries and buses seeming to wend their way painfully through unfamiliar, viscous air – was never matched once we were in the park.
© Katy Evans-Bush.
Park Life. Photo: David Secombe. (3/5)
Posted: August 8, 2012 Filed under: Conspiracies, Parks | Tags: close encounter, disc-shaped object, inflatable, UFO over London Comments Off on Park Life. Photo: David Secombe. (3/5)
Hillyfields, Lewisham. © David Secombe 2002.
From examiner.com, 29 July 2012:
Was the UFO that appeared over the London Olympics opening ceremony on Friday night a blimp or a helicopter? In an enhanced video released by Alien Disclosure Group UK, the UFO does not appear to be either of those things. In fact, the enhanced video shows an anomalous object flying above the opening night fireworks that resembles a flying saucer.
Watch: UFO over London Olympics: Enhanced video shows flying saucer, enhanced version
The object appears to be flat and disc-shaped with a protrusion in the center. It is clearly not a blimp or a helicopter, so what is it? We may never know for sure, but some people may stand to make money off the UFO‘s appearance. Prior to the London Olympics opening night ceremony, some London betting houses were taking bets on whether a UFO would be seen that night.
Alien Disclosure Group UK is always an excellent source of amazing UFO videos and information. This may be the most fascinating video that they have disseminated online. ADGUK credits MrScipher for the discovery and notes that this is a confirmed UFO sighting unless proven otherwise to be a blimp, a drone or other known object.
Park Life. Photo: David Secombe. (2/5)
Posted: August 7, 2012 Filed under: Parks, Public Art | Tags: Brockwell Park, tattoo, Vanishing Tattoo Museum Comments Off on Park Life. Photo: David Secombe. (2/5)
Brockwell Park. © David Secombe 2000.
From Pictures in the Human Skin by Gambier Bolton, Strand Magazine, 1897:
… in London at the present moment is produced the very finest tattooing the world has ever seen; for Mr. Sutherland Macdonald, whilst in the Royal Engineers, used often to watch the men working with their roughly made needles in the barrack-room, and having always had a taste for figure and landscape painting, he was at last induced to give his attention to tattooing, with the result that in a few years’ time he has not only equalled the work done by the Japanese, but has even excelled them. In Macdonald’s albums we find drawings and paintings gathered from all quarters of the globe, and of all and every kind, quaint, humorous, and pathetic, but each one specially selected for the purpose of being reproduced by the tattooing needles, and in more than one instance the copyright of some particularly striking picture has actually been purchased outright, so that no one but the wealthier patrons of [MacDonald’s] Jermyn Street studio shall have the use of them.
Turning over the leaves, we notice, amongst other quaint designs at this moment adorning the bodies of some of our best known society men, three five-pound notes, full size, on which, perhaps, the owner can “raise the wind,” if at any time short of a cab-fare, by placing himself in temporary pawn; a fox hunt in full cry, horses and their scarlet-coated riders, with a very level pack of hounds careering down the owners back in wild pursuit of a “little red rascal,” racing for his life; whilst on more than plucky individual, who rumour says has an extremely tender epidermis, not content with a handsome pair of dark blue socks with scarlet “clocks” on his feet, has lately been adorned with all manner of strange designs, from his neck down to the top of the socks, and this at quite a fabulous price, when we bear in mind the length of time it must have taken to carry out such a large order.
[Complete article here, courtesy of the Vanishing Tattoo Museum.]
Park Life. Photo & text: David Secombe. (1/5)
Posted: August 6, 2012 Filed under: Parks, Wildlife | Tags: Mystic London, quiet city, sheep walker Comments Off on Park Life. Photo & text: David Secombe. (1/5)
Greenwich Park. Photo © David Secombe, 1998.
From Mystic London, Rev. Charles Maurice Davies, 1875:
When a man’s whole existence has resolved itself into hunting up strange people and poking his nose into queer nooks and corners, he has a sorry time of it in London during August; for, as a rule, all the funny folks have gone out of town, and the queer nooks and corners are howling wildernesses. There is always, of course, a sort of borderland, if he can only find it out, some peculiar people who never go out of town, some strange localities which are still haunted by them; only he has to find them out – people and places – for it is so universally allowed nowadays that all genteel people must be out of London in August . . .
David Secombe:
The Rev. Davies’s observation has acquired a new significance during the 2012 Olympic Games, as the Olympiad has driven a significant number of full-time Londoners into temporary exile. So this week on The London Column we offer a brisk tour of some of the quieter corners of London parks in the company of those Londoners who didn’t make it out of town and who haven’t made it on to a corporate hospitality list.
The London Column 