DAVID BECKHAM

Just what is David Beckham trying to say these days with his facial hair?

The Pub

There’s a good pub up the road, it’s my local. Well when I say ‘good’ I use the term advisedly. It’s not really a nice place to go because it’s a dump – it should have been condemned ages ago even years ago and they should have shut it down. It’s the worst pub you could ever hope to visit. The decor doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned for a hundred years and the carpets are all sticky and ripped up, worn and frayed. The toilets are not worth going into and if you did, you might not ever come out. You can smell the urinals throughout the whole pub – it’s really quite powerful – the smell. Still it’s a good place to go and drink some cheap Fosters or some other lager – a good place to escape to and if you like sports they have that on those wide screen flat screen TV thingys. There’s a pool table as well and that gets used, there’s a dartboard and a couple of those fruit machines that you put coins into hoping you might get them back or more of them back if you win. There’s a jukebox with all the usual shitty selections and the banter in the place is pretty depressing if you decide to eavesdrop on some of the conversations. It’s a hardcore working man’s South East London pub full of brickies, plasterers, sparks, louts, layabouts, unemployed, blokes (and a few girlies) running away from something or somebody (the wife maybe, the kids perhaps) and we go there. It’s one of those places that hasn’t changed or gone with the flow. It hasn’t been turned into a gastro pub and it’s still of the people, by the people and for the people. You know the sort, real salt of the earth stuff. If they don’t live round here they live in Eltham or in one of the council flats littered throughout Honor Oak. There’s always the flag of St George up if England play and just 2 weeks ago they had her maj stuck up over a window which was shattered, the cracks magically being held in place by Liz. So the regulars repair your toilet, fix your wall, paint your ceiling and build your fence and support Milwall FC. Slogan: “No one likes us, and we don’t care”. End of story.

We live in Forest Hill.

We live in Forest Hill...

...or to be more precise the Honor Oak Park end of Forest Hill.

 Let’s start at the station where you would get off the train if you were coming for a visit.

It doesn’t look like much does it? You can’t complain though. From here it’s just a few minutes to ours or 12 minutes to London Bridge or 20 minutes to funky Shoreditch.

HISTORY

Forest Hill is in South East London. Many years ago it was indeed a forest. Now it’s more of a hill with houses and council flats rather than trees. The forest of the 16^th century was used by Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I to build the fleets that sailed around the world. The woods were cleared and the lumber dragged down the hill to the dockyards at Deptford to build the ships that would give England the empire it ran for 300 years. It’s the same empire that Hitler admired so much. So this area was used to help to discover (or invade – depending on your viewpoint) the new world of North America and here I am back, having come full circle. An ex-colonialist come back to have a look at what they did with the place.

History is a funny thing. It’s a bit slippery and elusive if you just look at dates and the pictures. You need to get into the stories, the subplots and the contexts of the people caught up in the history that shaped who we are, where we are and how we got here. It’s not really ‘his’ story but your story as well. As a kid I guess I just saw the thick history books and all those paintings in the boring museums as not very inspiring. My daughter has been on a few school trips to northern France and Belgium. I doubt she really appreciated what she was looking at when they spent a few days visiting the trenches of the First World War or the Normandy countryside. Maybe however it was the Auschwitz trip to Poland and talking with a camp survivor when she was able to begin to join the dots. Just yesterday she was studying for her GCSE exams – the Great War and all that. She was telling me about what she had to revise, about the German bombers and Zeppelin’s that moaned and drifted over the skies of South East London trying to find their targets, or any targets for that matter. She told me how the people of South East London were terrified of these huge Gotha bombers and the massive dirigible balloons which would force them to shelter in their basements or under their stairs. It’s strange to think that the family who lived in our house might have cowered under the staircase as the Zeppelins rained death from above. The Navy had built a string of gun emplacements on the highest points in SE London. I told her there was one on our nearest hill. It’s called One Tree Hill, 5 minutes from our front door. “We’ll go up there if you’d like and have a look”.

Of course back in 1915 they must have cleared all the trees (except for one of course) from One Tree Hill so they could get a clear shot at the first form of mass terror from the air. According to the plaque next to the emplacement they weren’t sure if they ever hit one these German bombers but they did manage to hit a tram in Peckham by accident.

There’s also a replicated beacon up there. These beacons were used to warn the locals of impending invasion by the Spanish during those fearful and uncertain years of the Spanish Armada. It was used just a couple of months back to celebrate by fire the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Back in 1602 the first Queen Elizabeth decided to have a picnic lunch at the top of One Tree Hill very close to where the current Oak Of Honor is still. There were also huge riots about a hundred years ago close to this spot as the local citizens rejected plans to make the area a golf course.

As with everything and everywhere in this country there’s always some history outside your front door, around the corner and down the road. There’s always a good story to be told.

Even though we have stood on that forgotten brick platform on One Tree Hill before and looked at that ignored beacon Laura didn’t really twig what they meant until she read it and learned about it in school. Now she knows what it must have been like to stand next to that gun looking up for those bombers and out over the City Of London out there about 6 miles to the north.

Here’s a pic of the gun platform, the beacon and a bench for relaxing. You’ll need to relax after climbing up the hill because it’s pretty steep and a couple of hundred feet above sea level.

And here’s the view looking north: St Paul’s there on the left and The Shard about 6 miles away.

Stratford's big bash

It cost £4 million to train each medal winning athlete and the whole thing cost £10 billion plus £4.30 for a beer if you actually got tickets.
There hasn't been this sense of national pride and celebration since 1966 and before that 1945. No wonder the Brits are reeling in amazement and wonder! It's been a great opportunity for the script writers and the spectacle directors to flex their imaginations on the worlds biggest stage.
National stereotypes get a decent airing in a bland environment and everybody can forget that they are British for 2 weeks.
Job done.
The pigeons will have the last word.

Busted bikes, mascots and lightning bolts

My bike's busted so this post will have to be photo free I’m afraid (well I could pinch a few from the web). Ok? Ok.

My 20 year old ‘Black Russian’ (I liked the name) bike which I bought from somebody down Brick Lane has seen me through 20 years of London traffic and saved me thousands of pounds. I shall give it a proper burial at our local Lewisham recycling dump...ha! ‘Recycling’ – get it? Oh never mind...

It’s been an interesting 2 weeks. Luckily I’ve managed to avoid the mayhem inflicted upon your average London commuter but haven’t avoided the wall to wall, stem to stern, east to west and north to south blanket coverage of the 30^th Olympiad. It’s like being bullied by one of those mascots. Have you seen them? Not exactly cuddly, not exactly cute and not exactly anything really. Sexless and with no sense of humour, which I'm sure isn't allowed as withering satire probably rubs one of the corporate sponsors up the wrong way.

See what I mean?

I’ve never seen anything like this Olympic razzle dazzle (and neither have the Brits it seems). The most pressing and urgent news story for most of this week (according to The Times) is just how do those beach volleyball people manage to not have the sand stick to their pert bottoms?

It’s the sort of attention given to the tense final stages of an England world cup football match (you know the ones where they get knocked out by those fluke penalty shootouts). Still it could be worse; it could be wall to wall coverage of a bunch of overweight pub people playing darts, drinking pints of lager and pretending that they are South East London’s greatest darts legends. They would be forever immortalised in The South London Press and praised in pubs across Eltham muttering into their pints of Stella. The thing about living in the UK is that it’s a constant bombardment of bad news 24 hours a day. Recession this, David Cameron that, Prince Philip making some rum comments, gloom and doom for our almighty financial services and it’s going to be a mix of warm (ish) sunshine and chilly showers all summer long.

I suppose the Olympics and all the wide eyed young athletes who have a completely innocent and untarnished view of life are bringing a sense of peace, hope and serenity to this sceptered (sceptical?) isle, this green and pleasant land, these Isles of wonder.

How can one people go from violent shopping trips in their local high street a year ago to cheering for the Brazilian beach volleyball team the next?

I’ve always said it’s something to do with the mystical leylines that have etched out the prehistoric boundaries of this country but maybe it is really more to do with the peculiar sense of social interaction the Brits have. Or perhaps it really is down to the fact that 'The Sun' does come out 7 days a week now. Hooray for Rupert Murdoch!

As the radio talk shows spout patriotic drivel about ‘Great’ Britain muddying the sporting achievements, there is an addictive human interest story which is at the core of the Olympics. These are kids for the most part and their personal tales of sacrifice, determination and commitment to something like synchronized swimming is splashed across the internet, TV, Radio and on huge screens set up in Hyde Park, Victoria Park and Greenwich. Better them than me I think.

Even a cynical old curmudgeon can get caught up with that Bolt blokes tom foolery and jolly japes after winning the 400 metre race the other night. Did you see it? Grabbing a camera and taking photos of the crowd...what a star...what a showman! Inspiring a generation indeed.

Speaking of inspiration...

With all this unfettered and energetic running and cycling and swimming and riding and sailing and leaping about and all this gold being won there is a downside.

I’ve actually quite enjoyed not having to put up with the usual parade of politicians and media personalities jockeying for position in the media as each frivolous news story gets an unfair amount of coverage. All the foul politicians and phoney attention seekers basking in the glow of an overactive digital media seemed to have taken a back seat almost for a whole week! Now of course with the cascade of medals being trumpeted by a biased media all the preening creeps have come out of the closet and are having their pictures taken with the golden Olympians. There’s David Cameron lounging in Number 10 with a ‘Team GB’ top on cheering for some sport I’m sure he used to play at Eton which I guess was croquet with liquid refreshment provided by Pimms – don’t cha know. Then there was Paul Weller posing with his old mate Bradley Wiggins, arms around each other all paly like. Maybe it was Weller’s naff haircut extending some friendly advice to Brad’s naff side-whiskers. Bradley has many fond childhood memories training on his tricycle at The Herne Hill Velodrome near where we live. I guess they will have to re-name it now. Somebody even managed to find Jimmy Page (with low alcohol beer in his hand) and Mick Jones (nothing stronger than a cup of tea these days, I hope) from somewhere and got them to pose with Jessica Ennis and Victoria Pedalton (oh do keep up!).

Even Morrissey got involved with the fantastic opportunity of some free publicity but he did push it a bit comparing the atmosphere with Nazi Germany in 1939. I mean maybe all those troops doing security will march off to annex Iceland or something having failed miserably in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is that what he means?

The gold medal winner for best publicity stunt though goes to our heroic mayor Boris Johnson all trussed up on a zip wire stranded 50 feet off the ground meekly asking for a ladder. He’s more buffoon than politician. A future Prime Minister!