Update on the old Whittington Park mural

A couple of years ago I took my friend Jen, to Whittington Park to show her an old mural that had become obscured by plants. Read about that here.

This was all we could discern in July 2015

Well, twixt Christmas and New Year's Day I went to check on it again. As you'd expect, the spray can graffiti-ers have been busy. I couldn't make out the images above but I found some others.

Lucky Kelsey!

Two schoolchildren with backpacks and a figure [possibly] climbing over a wall

Toffee tin lid

Whittington Park, just south of Upper Holloway Station, is named after Richard/Dick of the turnaround-Lord-Mayor story. Jen's an expert on Dick Whittington and leads a fascinating guided tour about the great man within the City of London. I gave her this old toffee tin a few years back as a present and she uses it as a prop on the walk. Check here for updates or contact her for more details.
See also Dick Whittington's Cat – a previous blog post

Take One Picture – creatve inspiration for schoolchildren at The National Gallery

My last post was about the Degas exhibition at the National Gallery. If you do go to see that, or even if you don't, walk through the adjacent gift shop where some excellent and competitively-priced Degas-themed merchandise is available, to a room full of art made my schoolchildren.
When visiting the National gallery I often see groups of small uniformed people sat in front of a painting listening to a teacher, or engaged in making their own drawings, and I wonder what they are up to. Well, now I understand what's going on; it appears children are shown a painting (this year it's A Roman Triumph by Peter Paul Rubens) and are then encouraged to write about and/or create some kind of art based on their observations. 

Marvellous artwork across the ages. I especially love the elephants and the white ceramics. Bottom right is from a video where children are performing a play inspired by the sacrifice and slaughter depicted in Rubens' painting.

The cross-section of results shown in this room is delightful and shows we have some great future artists running around our playgrounds.
Take One Picture was launched in 1995, yet stumbling on this room last week was the first I knew about it. Probably because I don't have children. I wish similar things were available when I was a child. I'd have been proverbial pig in the dirty stuff.
Lots more educational stuff in the Learning section of the National Gallery's website.

Love and peace – not just for Valentine's day

In a back street within the Peabody Estate to the side of Whitecross Street market there is a mosaic on a wall. In a circle it says I (heart) EC1. But look closer and see the messages and drawings within because there are lots of lovely quotes and sentiments there.

The caption on it reads: "This mosaic has been created by Western* Primary School working with Carrie Reichardt, Karen Wydler and Sian Smith, supported by Islington Council, Whitecross Street Party, Whitecross Street Community Centre and Peabody". 

Mad In England – Carrie Reichardt – Craftivist and Renegade Potter

Love isn't seasonal 
I have produced some cards using my photographs of this artwork. 
Also see 'Love Love Love' using my adaptations of the sign that currently wraps around the old Angel tube station on Pentonville Road.  

Cards available all year round – contact me directly or purchase online

Or how about a Vinegar Valentine?

*Spelling error here: The school is actually called Prior Weston Primary School. Sir William Weston was the last english prior of the Order of St John. 

In and out the dusty bluebells

Sitting on my back step admiring the lovely bluebells in my garden I was reminded of a game I used to play in the Infants' school playground back in the 1960s.

First of all we had to find a few friends who wanted to play so this necessitated skipping around the playground holding hands calling out "who wants to play... [insert game name here].... join in" (with the word 'join' really extended/emphasised).

Once we had a group of say eight, then seven stood in a circle holding hands with arms raised like gothic arches and one person (let's call her the leader) wove in and out of the ring whilst those of us in the ring sang:

     In and out the dusty bluebells

     In and out the dusty bluebells

     In and out the dusty bluebells

     Who will be my partner?

Then the leader would stop behind that child and rhythmically pat on her shoulders (mostly a girls' game though I do recall boys sometimes joined in) whilst we sang:

     Pitter patter pitter patter on my shoulder 

     Pitter patter pitter patter on my shoulder 

     Pitter patter pitter patter on my shoulder 

     You will be my master!

This child then joined behind the leader and held onto her hips, the circle got smaller and the whole thing repeated until there was just one child left who got banged on the head by everyone. I haven't a clue what the point of it was, or what it all meant, but I liked it.

Over the years I have been asking people if they remember this game and, apart from one friend who grew up in Kennington but can't recall the words to the song, I have drawn a blank.

Recently I found the game mentioned in My East End by Gilda O'Neill (I urge you to read this book; it's wonderful). As seen below, the words are slightly different: 

The reference to a dog is logical as regards use of words like master, follow and even the inclusion of patting*, but how this links in with bluebells is beyond me.

Does anyone else remember or know anything about this game?

* I am now singing words from another song;

"We all pat the dog, we all pat the dog.. e, i, adio, we all pat the dog"

What was that from?!!

Reading, writing and phonetics

Apparently the UK's school kids are having trouble writing the English Language, especially words with silent letters. If you click that link you'll see they also seem to be having trouble with 'Millennuim' too(!). Another recent report announced that they are will now expected to know their times tables all the way up to 12, be able to read a novel and write a short story of their own, all before they go to big school, or whatever it's called these days, at age 11.
Whaaaat?! When did the standards drop?! All of this was normal practice when I was at school. When did all of this cease to be important?
It has been suggested without much real thought* that words with silent letters within them such as column, lamb, subtle, echo and knight ought to be be re-spelled with the offending letters removed.

Unlike many other languages around the world, the English language is not phonetic** – you have only to look at our six different sounds for 'ough'; as in tuff, coff, thru, plow, tho and awt. 

Your Beautiful (Mistake), London N16

Languages evolve and adapt. In a 1934 novel by Evelyn Waugh he uses 'yoghourt' and 'Pekingese' both of which have since been shortened. 

These days, "your" (as in an item that belongs to you) is being mis-used to replace "you're" (you are)". I am also seeing "to" instead of "too", and "no" rather than "know". Hence we end up seeing things such as "you no your to lazy to spell". But it can't just be sheer laziness – it's easy to omit the apostrophe or the 'e', but not both. It's a lack of grammatical understanding.

And what about the disease that's making people replace "would have" with "would of"?! I believe it comes from people hearing "would've" and then writing what they think hear. I am saddened when I see people over 50 making this written error.

Let's return to the five words I chose above – if we remove the silent letters, the first two words, colum and lam, adapt quite well but the other three words create some problems; sutle rhymes with tootle, eco is short for ecological and night would need to be further shortened or completely re-spelled as nite.
Are you keeping up here?

It's a three-stage process. UK school children, having wasted years of their pre-school life being told that a train is a choo-choo and a cow is moo-moo, will then learn phonetic spellings and subsequently learn how to spell them correctly. Judging by the mistakes already being made with 'no', your' and 'of', as illustrated above, I fail to see how this will achieve anything other than a further dumbing-down.

Taking the phoenetic element a step further, it occurred to me that the people in charge of all this are going to be extremely busy covering all the various UK dialects. 

Here's how it might affect some areas if London:  

Lester, Grovener, Grenidge, Burra, Lincun, Willsdun, Bloomsbree and Gloster
See the etymology of London Borough names here

Afterthoughts
*as in the case of the SNP not having a decent plan for the currency should Scotland have become independent last year

**I thought Phonetix might have been an Asterix character. But he's not – here are all the characters.

Something fishy

Last night I spent another great evening at The Underground Cookery School.
Last time I was there we made pasta and casserole; this time we were butchering chicken and filleting sea bass. Some of the other girls were a bit squeamish about dealing with dead, gutted beasts; others managed to pulverise the poor creatures. But I was in my element, sharp knife in hand learning how to slice the flesh cleanly off the fish's spine and remove the little bones. And it tasted lovely too.
Here are some fishy things in and around the streets of London:

And here's a link to an old post about fishing practices.