Bermondsey, land of contrasts

Bermondsey ain`t Woolwich, although people still get shot here. People in Bermondsey ask if you need directions and if you reply politely they tell you what you need to know. People also ask you for directions.
There are abandoned pubs and railway arches with disturbing murals, and soot highlighted with tufts of quivering pigeon down. The black hole darkness under these arches is a kind of original thick slow murder gloom that still can`t make its escape from Victorian crime scenes.
St James church of 1829 has a peal of 10 bells (that chime the hour 2 minutes early) cast from Napoleon`s cannon at Waterloo, and a spire bootlegged from Wren`s St Stephen`s Walbrook. It has the best golden dragon weathervane you will see anywhere. When this was craned onto the spire the famous clown Joey Grimaldi rode it to the top. This story, however, might be an Ackroydism. Tell me if I`m wrong.
On Jamaica road you can spend loads at the charity shop or get a haircut next door. There are real pubs, like the St James` tavern, and not so real pubs like The Gregorian. Bermondsey is not Woolwich, and that`s fine by me.

Frog worship

Life forms seem to worship large inanimate versions of themselves. Here a small live frog worships a large non-live frog in the fountain pot by my back door.

All`s Blair in fun n` war

As one of the therapists to a survivor of the Tavistock square bus bomb, I had the opportunity to press the flesh of Tone n` wife at the Regent`s Park 7/7 memorial. In keeping with the solemnity of the occasion no-one mentioned the war, or opened inappropriate discussions about the ecological causality of war-making. No-one said that oil creates fanatics nor that their victims become the subject for services of commemoration. In the circumstances I avoided the handshake of doom like the plague.

Cup Capped

A rare sight in Woolwich, a baseball cap abandoned at the height of its IQ reducing glory. Somewhere a weeping fan absorbs too much heatwave sunlight, but cares nothing as a terrible beauty has been snuffed before it can be born. Another four years of pain dawns over a grieving motherland.