Look Up, Not Down

Look up
Not down.

Beyond the curls and crown of the treetop canopy
And the flat-roofed buses shuffling busily.

Look up,
Not ahead I say.

At the old clock of rusted iron
Its hands undone at a twenty-to-one.

To balustrades lovingly made
And statuettes, imploring to be saved.

At mid-riff cut-aways
At windows dancing.

To the chair on its back, compliant
And a terrace of the young defiant.

At heads and shoulders nodding
Through open windows.

To glove puppet birds, perched beside
A torn plastic bag, cut to size.

At gap-toothed chminey pots
And shivering aerials

To slingshot cranes
And a suspended window-cleaner.

Where once tower blocks climbed high
Now we can see, light and sky.

Where once we saw, light and sky
Now rise new shadows and mixed blessings.

So now that the sun is dusking
And the high contrails reddening.

Look up, not down,
For me if for no one else.

Before it is gone.
Before your very eyes.

SD November 2010

The Shard at night

I took this picture of the Shard last night on my way home from work.  It looks like something out of a sci-fi film.  My wife says it looks like a huge dalek under construction.

Overground to Spitalfields

The concrete coral of the city seems to spawn new growth by the day.  This evening found me walking towards Southwark over the Millennium Bridge.  Looking east you get the most spectacular views of the Shard as it rises, now well beyond thirty-fifth floor.  Cranes stand atop its central concrete pillar like birds pecking at insects.

Other changes in the city are less visually breathtaking but just as significant in terms of what they mean for those who live in it.

In recent months a whole new part of London has opened up to 'Southsiders' with the advent of the new Overground train service from Croydon in the south, to Dalston north of the river.  East London is no longer the incovenient trek it once was; with it will perhaps disappear some of the assumptions that us molly-coddled dwellers have made about this richly textured and strongly accented part of the city.

A couple of weekends ago saw us make a quick trip on a Sunday morning to Sptalfields market on the new service (nearest stop Shoreditch High Street).  If you can stand the crowds and the slightly precious nature of the young and trendy who flock there, the market is well worth a visit.  It is dominated by clothes and craft stalls.  Good restaurants and food boxes surround the central, covered marketplace.  Expensive furniture shops dominate the outer circle of the market structure. 

Above all the atmosphere is relaxed and friendly - it is as if this whole part of the city is mooching through the Sunday papers and sipping hot coffee and late brunches.  And most shop-owners don't seem to mind dogs.

But take time to wander the streets around, the close-knit alleys of Georgian houses with their slightly buckled walls and dented rooks (like trampled cartons), beautiful stone-carved porches and windows that have rippled with and through time.  Old pubs have been converted into shops and then there are the occasional oddities such as these old tube trains atop an old Victorian warehouse roof (my photo above).  I believe this is called Village Underground and is home to artists' studios and offices.

As facinating though, are the outer shells of old warehouses and other structures - I was particularly struck by a tall wall near the railway line, isolated in the middle of waste ground but with its windows intact and almost offering a glimpse into the past. 

The old never totally gives up all its ground to the new and we should be thankful for that too.