London feels different on an early Saturday morning. There are few people around and the streets can be appreciated without the domination of motorism. To study Victoria and Pimlico in more depth I am walking up and down streets, exploring each road that leads off, looking behind the facades at the delivery areas, walking inContinue reading “A Latin Mass”
Category Archives: Cities
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”
Street Level Camaraderie
A day out in London, mainly to visit Tate Britain to study the art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. More of that later. I don’t why people say London’s not friendly. I didn’t get a a minute’s peace. It was early and the streets and the underground were quiet with that particularContinue reading “Street Level Camaraderie”
A Universe of Stone
We were in Norwich with plans. None of which involved the history of the city with it’s medieval churches and history of banking and insurance. Those must wait for other days. But we had to go into the town, and in the space of an hour managed to see a great deal. The city needsContinue reading “A Universe of Stone”
The Revolution could be televised
Does there need to be an explanation? I’m not sure myself how I came to be in St Pancras Way. There are of course factors. I had been to the office, had a ticket for a train, wanted a change of scene. On 99 out of 100 occasions when I arrive at St Pancras stationContinue reading “The Revolution could be televised”
Southwark Industrial
It is imagined that the destruction of London was in the past. That now a benign power rules the city and that only rational decisions are made. Decisions which only critical critics can make. But the city isn’t ruled at all. It is out of control. The power that shapes everything – regardless of aestheticContinue reading “Southwark Industrial”
Bremenhaven to New York City
The Sealand Illinois, container ship, Bremenhaven to New York City. Or rather, to Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal. The main port for containers arriving and leaving the New York metropolitan area. It handles around 20 percent of all goods imported from Germany into the United States. It will take the Sealand Illinois eight days to crossContinue reading “Bremenhaven to New York City”
Capital
The oil tanker Andronikos has the word ‘CAPITAL’ painted in white letters on its red hull. This is useful. One knows how things stand. It is on its way to Hound Point Terminal, Scotland from Yeosu, South Korea (YGPA – Yeosu Gwangyang Port Authority). Hound Point is in the Firth of Forth. It is ownedContinue reading “Capital”
Night walking
I went up to London to work in the office, see people, walk around, experience a change of scene, look at the Christmas lights, get lost in the city. It was good fun to go inland for the day. Regular commuting can be tiring, stressful and tedious. Made worse by extortionate ticket prices, the constantContinue reading “Night walking”
Neues Frankfurt
The chronological sequence of German history from 1870 can be described as the rule of Bismark, unification of Germany, development of mass production and consumerism, (first large wave of housing building), autocratic rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II, imperialism, the development of the Social Democratic Party as a mass socialist organisation. That sequence stops with theContinue reading “Neues Frankfurt”