DannyB

Buying Baklava

The woman in the shop turned to me while I was looking at the counter where the cakes are on display in a glass case. She was organising things on the shelves, I didn’t notice what. ‘Do you want something darling’, she asked demurely. She turned her head and looked at me with her blackContinue reading “Buying Baklava”

The Return of The Workers

I noticed in the supermarket a young woman cashier with long black straggly hair. She was wearing a black sweatshirt and it had writing along the lines of ‘Key Worker – feeding the nation’. She was working hard. A check out till is a conveyor belt and there is constant pressure to speed up. ButContinue reading “The Return of The Workers”

Raw Elemental Sea Power

Suddenly everything changed. It was the hiss and fizz of the water, the swish of stones in the white surf, the grey waves rolling up and laying themselves across the sea shore. The running up of water along the beach. I love the greyness, the noise, the wind that rips the flecks off the waves,Continue reading “Raw Elemental Sea Power”

Sea Port Dreaming

The day was like a dream. The air, the atmosphere, the ambiance had the quality of a dream. As if one was within the world and simultaneously outside it. Words were needed to describe this dream but dreams and words and words and dreams are different things. They operate in different ways and exist inContinue reading “Sea Port Dreaming”

Level 10

Homogenised light, homogenised life. Under communism everything will look the same. Everything looks the same. Do we now have communism? The light washes out the day, this light washes out my soul. I forget where I was, that I live part-time, what seems like a whole life inside this corporate environment. These are the hardContinue reading “Level 10”

Corporate Culture

On the train late at night. The colour is washed out of everyone, the colour of their lives; the sparkling life of their souls is flat. Everyone is grey, lifeless, dead skin deadliness. The man in the seat on the opposite side of the aisle is slumped forward with this head squashed up against theContinue reading “Corporate Culture”

Sunday Morning, E15

The vote count for the 1892 General Election for the West Ham South constituency was held here (now the Old Town Hall, Stratford). When it was announced that Keir Hardie was the winner he went on to the balcony and addressed a crowd of between 15 – 20,000 people. “On taking his seat on 3Continue reading “Sunday Morning, E15”

Let’s Change the Way We Shop

Immersed. Immersed in projects about radical histories, radical walks, radical talks. The term Radical has an interesting history, a keyword in the Raymond Williams sense. The projects all link together with the State of the World and How that Might be Changed. But I need a break, an interruption, an interregnum. Something connected but notContinue reading “Let’s Change the Way We Shop”

The Rights, and Wrongs, of History

‘Each generation writes history anew’. Circumstances change, ideas change, the world changes. Events of the past still have resonance and life, they have power; they may illustrate class struggle or express class interest. Therefore there are at least two views, that of the ruling class, and of the working class, of the rich and ofContinue reading “The Rights, and Wrongs, of History”

A Day in Boulogne Sur Mer

I like Boulogne-sur-Mer and its shabby-chic and tatty edges. It’s a port and port-towns are usually without airs and graces, pomp and circumstances and many other cliches. There is something about the proximity to the sea and all that has meant historically and still means today. The fear of the people as storms prevent theContinue reading “A Day in Boulogne Sur Mer”