Incidentally, Walter Sickert chose rooms in Camden as a setting for his criminal fantasies, specifically because of its shabby, boring and drab anonymity. London's ability to be utterly grey and depressing is nothing new. Look at Withnail.

Sorry, that won't help cheer you up on a bad day, but try and think of yourself as part of a glorious British tradition!

IRC and penis conversations are always guaranteed to work! :o)

I love this blog, for the commentators almost as much as for the blogger himself. :-)
Rachel
[sorry not doing the logging in thing, 'cos if I have to think up and remember another web password, my brain will explode]

Hey. This is an uplifting poem by Benjamin Zephaniah- you know, local poet, Rasta guy, hangs around the Parents' Centre a lot. Wrote that small rhyme that flashes on the electric billboard thing on Green Street (where, can I say, the regeneration seems to have achieved NOTHING...)

I hope you don't get in trouble for copyright over me posting this, but I don't think Zephaniah's the type to sue an EMT somehow.

-PP


The Traveller

I trod over the mountain
I trod over the sea,
One thing I would like to see is
East Ham’s people free,
I do get stopped by cops a lot
But that don’t bring me down,
And I am not afraid to say that I love Canning Town.
The bright colours of Green Street
And those kids that make me laugh
As they make up real rude poems
As I jog round Plashet Park,
I know every fox on High Street South
And every fox knows me,
I’ve spent hours upon Beckton Alps
And I still can’t bloody ski.
I trod over the mountain
Rhyming as I go,
There are many great poets
In sweet Stratford-le-Bow,
And I don’t need the TV
To see well-paid pretenders,
Everyday I see the truth,
I live with real Eastenders.

-Benjamin Zephaniah