London Loves.....The Veil

Photograph: Shannon Dermot Friel

Ten years ago I worked as an apprentice telecommunications engineer. It involved a fair amount of driving around London from site to site (usually telephone exchanges in office blocks around the city; Old Street, Southwark, Docklands etc.) One day, on Commercial Road I saw, possibly for the first time in my life, a group of girls all of whose faces were covered by niqabs (the full face veil).

They were clearly girls and not women as they had their school bags overflowing with books and were chattering to each other in that excitable way schoolgirls do when waiting for a bus in the morning. It was an astonishing sight and, for me, perhaps the first tangible signs that a stricter form of Islam had arrived in London than previously seen.

This was pre 9/11 a time in London where the term Islamophobia was virtually non-existent. In those 'innocent' days, the 1990s, when racial harmony largely prevailed in this hugely mixed city, before the world went war mad and racial and religious divides became evident even in multicultural London, it was commonplace to see muslim women and men from Somalia, Pakistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and other places wearing distinctly Muslim attire simply blending in with the other cultural garments of everyday London - the turban, the kippur, the rastafarian hat.

How different has it felt for practising Muslims in the decade that has passed since? A decade of overt global prejudice towards this particular religious group. An era of false media portrayals and an environment in which even the former Home and Foreign secretary Jack Straw felt it appropriate to recommend women in his constituency not to cover their faces when attending his political surgery.

How self-conscious and stared-at must young women in hijabs (head scarves) have felt? And the niqab (or burka as it's sometimes known) is on another scale of aesthetics all together - prompting, in some parts of England, outright discrimination. It has become a symbol of 'othering' and a fallacy has arisen around it that assumes it is automatically and by its very nature an oppression of women's rights. That idea is surely too simplistic and hypocritical. It is claimed strict Islam forces women to cover themselves. In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states this is largely the case. In London it is almost unanimously a woman's choice (taken of course, within the context of family background and community norms). The hypocrisy of labelling it oppressive is that women of all cultures (British, American, Jewish, Burmese, Maasai, Hindi) are all 'forced' by their societies to wear certain types of clothing - see the miniskirt, the 6 inch stilleto heel, the Hasidic Jewish women who shave off their hair and wear a wig in its place. It is in fact true to say that many men are also forced by their societies to conform to wearing 'appropriate' clothing. Yet people single out the veil as oppressive because they feel threatened by it.

I wrote last year for Ponderboxes on the French government banning the niqab in all public places and argued this was a clearly racist piece of legislation and a violation of human rights. It is worth imagining what such a move in London would instigate. It would be quite frankly unthinkable. It is something to be proud of that all Londoners, not just Muslims, would feel subjugated by a piece of politics like that. Because, despite claims by notable figures such as Trevor Phillips and George Alagiah about the failure of multiculturalism (depressing, inflammatory and unwelcome publicity-seeking comments) London continues to thrive on its diversity. Multiculturalism adds interest, excitement, brilliance and a wealth of experiences and opportunities that are absent in cities where everybody looks, sounds and thinks the same.

It is hugely positive that despite the continuing presence of Islamophobia in our society, Muslims themselves, and particularly Muslim women, have rediscovered a confidence, strength and pride in wearing what they like, where they like and celebrating their religion not hiding it.

This is wonderfully represented in this set of photos by Australian photographer Shannon Dermot Friel. Taken discreetly, almost secretly, but respectfully in locations across London from Regents Park to Bethnal Green.

There are stories and life histories behind each of these pictures that it would be tactless to imagine here in this blog. Instead I find these images provide a reminder of the beauty of the veil and Islamic dress. They serve to normalise a sartorial choice that has been negatively pigeonholed and the wistful, placedness of the women within ordinary, mundane urban ambiences shows how such dreary settings are enlivened by finely tailored nods toward times and places infinitely more intriguing.

All photographs © Shannon Dermot Friel 2010

London Loves.....Tea Parties

Jane and Joan Ash, a mother and daughter who lived on the Liverpool Road estate from 1955 to 1983, are peering at old photographs on the wall when suddenly a loud cry makes them both jump. "I remember you!" Swivelling round they are met by a familiar face beaming with excitement. Rose Copsey also lived on the estate for almost forty years and has come back to mark the milestone occasion.

Jane and Joan Ash lived on the estate for 28 years

Within seconds the Ash and Copsey families are embracing their former neighbours and reminiscing about old times. It is one of many touching moments that occur throughout the day at the Centenary celebration of this hundred year old London housing estate.

Former residents Wendy and Rose Copsey

Built in 1910 by Samuel Lewis founder of the Southern Housing group, Liverpool Road estate is an enduring success story in a city where many social housing experiments have tried and failed to provide a hub for communities. On this estate, unlike many owned by the local authority Islington council, the community are encouraged to be at the heart of things. Tyrone Willis, the estate’s facilities manager, remembers a time when the tenants association met every week and virtually ran the place. “They were fundamental to getting things done here, they had authority and when they spoke the housing association listened.” Nowadays its core members are getting older and the younger generation are less inclined to vocalise their needs, but the tradition of close community continues. A few years ago the former washhouse was re-built as a community centre where kids come to play and adult learning sessions take place.

Tyrone Willis and family

While many residents have come and gone over the last century, the estate looks like it will still be here in another hundred years, thanks largely to the maintenance that has gone into it by a housing association that seems, more than most, to care about the wellbeing of its residents.

To mark the centenary Tall Tales, a community art collective, have recreated an Edwardian era tea party and displayed art work around the estate including hundreds of yards of bunting the residents helped to make.


A band plays the Charlestown while battling with the wind blowing away their sheet music. Inside the community centre, Helmut Feder from Tall Tales is in charge of the fancy dress party in which residents dress up as characters from the period – soldiers from the Great War, doctors, even Samuel Lewis himself – then have their photograph taken against a backdrop of the estate in black and white. Feder tells me many of the costumes are borrowed from the National Theatre’s costume department and are authentic. “Some of them are actually very valuable,” he says with half an eye on the kids crashing around in bowler hats and army uniforms “it’s my job to make sure I get it all back in one piece.” I wish him luck and leave him to his fretting.

Dressing up as Edwardian characters

Tall Tales have also gotten hold of the original residency books; thick volumes detailing the families living in each apartment, the occupation of the father, how much rent they pay in shillings and a note keeping track of their movements. Rose Copsey moved to the estate as a child in 1948, her daughter Wendy was born here in the mid-1960s. Both of them have now moved on but Wendy’s brother still lives here. “Looking through these records is so interesting. We’ve seen so many people we knew from our time here. Log books seem like an archaic way of doing things now but much more romantic than just typing it into a computer.”

Tenancy book for Block B Tenement No.8 from 1910-1955

Everybody here – artists, housing officers and tenants – recognises the importance of the event, but where does the money for such things come from and will it still be possible with the looming government cuts on housing and other public services?

Tom Dacey, chief executive of Southern Housing group explains that while his organisation are not for profit, they are still required to make a surplus each year, most of which is brought about through property sales. “This surplus, funds our Economic and Social Regeneration work such as the celebration at Liverpool Road. We also get grant assistance from external agencies and occasionally the state. Every pound of surplus generated is ploughed back into our core business.”

Tom Dacey, CEO of Southern Housing, addresses the crowd

Southern Housing’s resident profile policy equates to around 80% of residents paying affordable rents 5% intermediate rent and 15% low cost home ownership, a model that allows maintenance and rebuilding work to be carried out without government subsidies. But Dacey is more worried about the impact of housing benefit cuts for some of his residents than the risk of the government spreading housing association subsidies more thinly by reducing the grant rate per unit. “This could be the most challenging environment we have ever experienced but I would like to see the fine print of the spending review before going overboard with criticism – nobody disagrees we need much more affordable housing so why would the Coalition damage the only volume providers?”

While Dacey is still pondering the meaning of ‘Big Society’ as most people are, he feels events like the Liverpool Road celebration are vital. “In urban locations, residents in high density estates may not know their neighbours or the broader community. Ways have to be found of breaking the ice and getting people to see the value of working together to achieve common aims.”

Breaking the ice with inner city communities is what Tall Tales and its creative director Gadi Sprukt are all about. Having already curated the magnificent Market Estate project, this centenary event constitutes another notable success. As Sprukt finally takes a seat to relax over a cup of tea and scones he surveys the scene and feels satisfied. “This was meant to be more intimate than the Market Estate. This project wasn’t for tourists or hipsters or art directors, it was for the residents – a way of saying ‘thank you’.”

The full extent of housing cuts remains to be seen but housing minister Grant Shapps would do well to heed the warning of Tom Dacey that sacrificing community events like this one would be a counter productive step in the coalition’s duel aims of creating a big society and revolutionising the future of social housing.



Click here to see Tall Tales' photos of the whole project.

London Loves.....Police Car Sirens

For seven years I've visited Vendee twice a year to stay at my mother's farmhouse in the middle of the French countryside. In all of those visits I have never once seen or even heard a police car, policeman or policewoman.

Driving back into London straight from our Calais-Folkestone channel crossing on Saturday evening (the route taking us through Eltham, Lewisham, Deptford, New Cross, Peckham, Walworth, Aldgate, Shoreditch, Islington, Hornsey, Crouch End and Wood Green) we counted five police car sirens within one hour.

Us Londoners see a huge number of police cars every day, and the cars we hear but don't see are even more vast in number.

My old bedroom was a converted loft at the top of my house and my window would be permanently open all summer long. The soundtrack to those summer nights was "WEEAA-OOOO-WEEAA-OOOO".

In case you're wondering, that is the sound police cars make. It's not NEE-NOR-NEE-NOR anymore like it used to be in the 80s. Which makes me wonder; what noise do kids make when playing police car chases these days? In my day it was undoubtedly the NEE-NOR of the Rover SD1: possibly the most unprofessional police car ever manufactured...


Nowadays we have proper, Americanised, professional police cars; not black and white anymore but silver, sleek and ominous...


The noise of the police car siren has become almost omnipresent in London. Hang around any major junction for about 5-10 minutes and you are guaranteed to hear one (and if not a police car than certainly an ambulance or fire engine).

But where are these police cars going and do they really need to make so much noise getting there?

The cynical part of me thinks they put their sirens on just to get to the McDonald's drive-thru more quickly. Let's face it, McDonalds is the place we most frequently see the police. Either there or by the side of the road stopping and searching black motorists.

But my less cynical side knows there are many serious for the sirens we hear - particularly when three or four go past at once - and we all hope to god that the old bill would respond promptly if we were in some kind of trouble. It is deeply troubling then to hear that Metropolitan Police targets for responding to emergencies (set at under 20 minutes by the previous Labour Government) are to be scrapped by new Home Secretary Theresa May. I don't know about you but I would have thought reaching an emergency within 20 minutes would be an absolute minimum requirement for the victim if for example they were being attacked, bleeding to death or under some other kind of personal threat.

Clearly some emergencies are prioritised over others. Anything to do with "terrorists" these days will prompt an immediate response - an armed response unit. Whereas a mugging or break-in, you'd probably be put on hold. To be honest, most emergency calls are put on hold. Kind of making a mockery of the word 'emergency'. In the case of this ridiculous 999 call recently made by the Guardian's London blogger I would not only have put Dave Hill on hold. I'd have hung up on him or further, investigated him for wasting police time. Throwing stones at buses? Stones at buses??? Whatever next, Dave, a water balloon dumped on someone's head?? A stink bomb chucked into an off licence?? Kids talking too loudly at the back of the cinema????

It is often easy to overlook the serious things (not stone throwing) that happen in our city and in our neighbourhoods. Many of us generally walk around London as if we are indestructable superheroes completely oblivious to any dangers. And, that's one of the things that is great about this city. We should be able to walk streets carefree. But, while nine times out of ten the police sirens are simply breaking up the monotonous daily routines of the constabulary (paperwork, McDonalds, petty shoplifting call out, chatting up drunken Essex girls), here is an interesting (slightly morbid) website called Spotcrime detailing geographically some of the crimes (mostly stabbings to be fair) that happen in different parts of London. Next time you hear a siren, it may well be on its way to an incident like these.

Personally I find them strangely soothing. They lull me to sleep in a way that the total tranquility of the serene French countryside never could.

London Loves.....Chicken

by Joshua Surtees and Shannon Dermot Friel

“Gimme, gimme, gimme fried chicken” sang Freddie Mercury a long time ago. And, to be fair, he had a point.

What that point was exactly has been lost in the fullness of time. And, while Freddie is sadly no longer with us, fried chicken, lives on.

From the humble beginnings of the colonel’s secret recipe all those years ago in Kentucky – a time of innocence in the Deep South where rednecks lynched black people and then ate fried chicken – we now live in a world where KFC, Chicken Cottage and Nando’s are an integral part of our furniture. Especially in London. You can’t move for chicken.

A friend of mine recently moved into a house where the housemates were keeping chickens in the garden. Each of them had their own chicken. The chickens are dead now. A fox ate them. They didn’t even have a chance to coat them in bread crumps and chuck ‘em in the deep fat fryer. But this blog is not about hand reared organic chickens, it’s about battery farmed, antibiotic fed, diseased broiler chickens. You know, the kind most of us eat.

It’s been clinically proven that fried chicken, consumed over a period of many years, will kill you in the most painful way possible. Try telling that to the party animals spilling out of Hoxton Square in the early hours of the morning. The chicken burger (with cheese, obviously) has surpassed the doner kebab as the food stuff of choice for the incapably pissed Londoner about to board the night bus home. And not only is it great when massively pissed…..it’s also great the day after a massive piss up. KFC is now officially the essential hangover meal. In fact, it’s the only time you should really eat fried chicken and feel ok about yourself*. There’s something about the greasy, salty, fatty thigh of a plump, cooked chicken that screams “eat me now” to the dehydrated, starving, just-woken-up-at-2pm-on-a-Sunday youth of today.

*the only other permissible time to eat fried chicken is when you only have £3.27 in cash in your pockets and can’t be bothered to go to a cash machine. Don’t get me wrong, you can try to get to a cash machine, but the fact is you’re likely to find a fried chicken outlet way before you get to the ATM. Shit, there’s one within 3 minutes of my front door. It’s name? Cozy Chicken. That’s right, Cozy Chicken. What, you gotta problem with the name? What’s wrong with you? I would have thought the derivation obvious. No? Ok, no.

And so we get to the crux of this blog. The essence here is not the lemon scented wet wipes, it’s not about the choice between beans or coleslaw (it’s a tricky one, but coleslaw is the correct answer), it’s not even about popcorn chicken (whatever the fuck that is), it’s about the incredible phenomenon that has emerged on our high streets over the past 15 years or so – the fake KFC shops.

These have always fascinated me whether on Kilburn High Road, Newington Causeway or Tottenham High Road. And yet we Londoners turn a blind eye to this rich comic tapestry, they have become so everyday and mundane we don’t think twice. Even the major chains get away with ridiculousness. Chicken Cottage for example. Cottage?!?! As in, a cottage for chickens? A seaside cottage perhaps, sleeping six? What about Chicken Bungalow. Chicken Villa. Chicken Winnebago. Chicken Yurt. Chicken Youth Hostel. Chicken B&B. Chicken Semi-Detached. Chicken Maisonette…….. I could go on.

When I pointed out the ridiculousness of this brand name to a friend a few years ago, he fired back two words by text: 'Guantanamo Chicken'. I still, to this day, have no idea what the hell he was on about.

So when I discovered a brilliant young Australian photographer had devoted an entire album to these brilliant social snapshots of our modern age London I was overjoyed.

Without further ado, I give you in glorious Technicolor, a brilliant photographic homage – Kentucky Fake Chicken by Shannon Dermot Friel.

London Loves.....Politics

Well, well, well. A Conservative/Lib Dem coalition.

Who’d have thought it possible, eh?

Well....me, for one.

It was clear Clegg was not to be trusted. But millions out there – probably a substantial number of you reading this now – were seduced. It will be interesting to see whether you ever vote Lib Dem again. My hunch is no. So, while throwing that historic party into the limelight for once, this election may also have destroyed the Liberal Democrats and all they have ever stood for.

My brother’s mantra throughout the election campaigns “once a Tory always a Tory”, referred to Clegg’s time as Chairman of the Conservative Association at Cambridge and his days lobbying for the Tories in the European Parliament. Leopards do not change their spots.

What words, one wonders, did Cameron and Clegg (two blue blooded aristocrats who called for change in British politics and ousted a hard working, Minister’s son from Kirkcaldy) exchange whilst shaking hands outside Downing Street as the photographers clicked and flashed? Probably something about crushing the proletariat…

It’s enough to make you turn to anarchy. Or at least communism. It’s enough to make you want to emigrate. In fact, I write this week’s London Loves in Monaco; the heartland and veritable symbol of non-dom tax avoidance. The kind of place Lord Ashcroft spends most of his time, whilst pouring his fortune into a Tory campaign to govern a country he never sets foot in.

But how did London fare in the election, and where does it sit in the wider scheme of British politics?

Vote-wise, London is always an oddity. Unlike the metropolitan centres of the North West, Yorkshire and Scotland which are staunchly 100% Labour, London constituencies tend to swing from red to blue regularly; with a bit of yellow cropping up here and there to spoil the pretty pattern. Even overtly partisan boroughs, like Islington – where locals for years punished Labour and Margaret Hodge for the child sex abuse scandal that rocked the local authority’s social services department from the 1970s-90s – can suddenly swing from Lib Dem back to Labour. Or Haringey council, a perpetual Labour heartland, turning yellow. Why? Who really knows? Except to say these occurrences are highly localised and often linked to changing demographics (influxes of affluent professionals and exoduses of traditional constituents).

It so often goes beyond tribalism and comes down to the character or celebrity of the local MPs. A Kate Hoey in Vauxhall or a David Lammy in Tottenham, for example, tends to guarantee a vote for their powerful, visible presence and representation within a community. Previously, heavyweight figures like Margaret Thatcher in Finchley or Michael Portillo in Enfield Southgate commanded similar awe.

There are also some generic political rules in London’s geography. Outer London suburbs like Bromley or Twickenham tend to be Conservative, populated as they are by a higher proportion of bigots and city bankers. While inner city wards like Hackney or Camberwell, with poorer, ethnically diverse communities feel more protected by Labour’s enduring commitment to social equality.

It was these inner London communities who fostered and cherished the GLC in the 80s. Livingstone’s Greater London Council was important for many reasons, but above all for giving a voice to the disenfranchised who suffered under Thatcher’s selling off of council houses and poll taxes that punished those on the lowest incomes in the poorest boroughs. As a child I was taken through London’s streets on GLC marches and Ban the Bomb protests. I wasn’t really aware of the societal context of those movements at the time but in retrospect I am deeply proud that my mother introduced us, so young, to these fundamentally important socialist ethics.

I remember a time when the Socialist Worker newspaper was vociferously and militantly sold in many public places. Nowadays, it seems confined to Crouch End Broadway or Mare Street for risk of causing offence elsewhere.

The times changed in 1997 after the Canonbury alliance of Blair and Brown contrived their masterplan in that restaurant on Upper St. No longer, it seemed, was there a need to protest or to be overtly Marxist. The good guys were finally in power, bringing with them Kinnock’s old school socialism heavily disguised as centre-left capitalism. I, more than most, felt the enormity of the celebratory mood of that day in May; even though, at 17, I was frustratingly too young to vote. Born in 1979 – the year Thatcher came to power – I lived under a Tory regime for my entire youth witnessing a London scarred by poll tax riots and a GLC smashed, taking for granted the cardboard city under Waterloo Bridge. It’s easy to forget how bad things were under Thatcher and ignore all the good the Labour party has done to improve this country. But, believe me, under Cameron and his sham coalition, you will soon feel that polluted tide rolling back in and lapping at your feet.

Yes the Labour party made mistakes. I worked at Parliament in 2003 when virtually every MP in the Commons – excepting some Lib Dems – voted to support Bush’s invasion of Iraq. And Labour is still now being punished by the electorate for that gruesome mistake, even though the vast majority of the same electorate, regrettably myself included, did not object to the war at the time. By punishing Labour, the electorate has welcomed in something much worse that we must all now live with for five years or longer.

But, if you ever feel disillusioned about politics, my advice is this: take a stroll down Whitehall, past the stern grey stone of the ministries, the cabinet office and Downing Street, past the Treasury and Foreign Office to Parliament Square, to the seat of government and breathe in the air of democratic British politics. Yes, London may be resented by many parts of the country for ruling from afar, detached from the reality of life in Plymouth or Redcar. Indeed Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland recognised this and took political action. But the fact remains; this is where your votes count. Everything that is constitutionally, legislatively, legally and politically decided is done so in these historic buildings. Our position in the world is overseen here, the laws of the land battled over in those two small chambers with green or red seats. It is inspiring.

And if you seek political inspiration on a more humble scale, then take the example of Barking & Dagenham; for too long plagued with the tag of being a racist borough. In the 2010 general and local elections here the BNP led by Nick Griffin held 12 council seats. Not only was Griffin roundly trounced and told to take his fascist politics elsewhere, but every single BNP councillor lost their seat in the council. Local activists, including the tireless John Cruddas and Billy Bragg, joined the local community – the people of this area stood up, rallied and smashed the BNP.

Well done Barking & Dagenham. London is proud of you.

London Loves.....the Tube

In 1978 Paul Weller told us he didn't want to go Down In The Tube Station at Midnight. Two years later he claimed he was Going Underground. "Make up your mind Paul!", people screamed at their wireless radios. But those people had become confused.

The tube Weller sang of was the kind of place where innocent men were attacked and robbed by right wing thugs while simply attempting to bring takeaway curries home to their anxious wives. As well as being a microcosm of a dysfunctional, depressed Britain, it also summed up exactly what the tube used to be about.

As much as we like to complain about the twenty first century London Underground (the ticket prices, the delays, the strikes) there is so much less to complain about in the modern, sanitised version than there was when I was growing up in the 80s. Back then the tube was a hazardous stinking hell hole occupied by rampant mice, pompous businessmen and alcoholics passed out in their seats with cans of Super Tennents.

It was a place where the trains looked like this…


And the seats looked like this…


A place where football hooligans would wreck carriages, where people died in horrendous fires and horrific train crashes. Aged seven, the Kings Cross fire in 1987, seemed like the epitome of my worst nightmares. Trapped underground while a raging fire prevents your escape. It’s quite staggering that it took this disaster to happen before smoking on the tube was banned. I remember the smoking carriages on the old tubes. They quite literally stank like ashtrays.

While the tube is still a dangerous place where you can be blown up, shot dead by police, faint from heat exhaustion or fall on the 630 volt electrical tracks, the refurbished underground is a thing of beauty compared to its dark past.

The Jubilee line is a beautiful piece of engineering and architecture. The station at Westminster – the essence of futurism.

A kind of bat cave of chrome metal from which one emerges blinking into daylight, greeted by the looming edifice of Big Ben casting its benevolent eye authoritatively over the civil servants.

Canary Wharf station is another example of classic modernism and a delightful way to end a journey, even if the featureless plazas of capitalism outside are grey, cold and alienating.

But we don’t need to look exclusively at modern developments to find artistic beauty on the tube. The 1930s art deco stations at the end of the Piccadilly line are grade II listed buildings whose original features are largely intact.

Arnos Grove station, designed by Charles Holden in 1932, is a thing of beauty (in marked contrast to the bland suburb itself). Astonishingly, the Guardian’s architecture critic Jonathan Glancey named this place alongside Sydney Opera House, the Guggenheim and the Empire State building as one of the 12 great modern buildings of the 20th century, describing it as “a Roman civic temple” and “a work of art that lifts the mundane into a noble architectural spirit”. I recently left my hat on the tube. It was handed in at this station. I didn’t hang around to admire the modern classicism, I was just grateful to have my hat back.

The neighbouring stations of Bounds Green, Southgate and Oakwood are also Holden works and have been designated places “of special architectural interest”.

The warm red tiling of the Northern line stations at Tuffnell Park, Belsize Park, Chalk Farm and Mornington Crescent (below) are similarly comforting and inspiring.

But when it comes to things of beauty (and I don’t mean the long legged girls at Notting Hill Gate or the dashing gents at Bank), it is commonly acknowledged that Harry Beck’s original design of the tube map is one of the greatest works of simplification ever invented.

Its modern equivalent stays true to Beck's immaculate design; discarding the notion of actual geographic location and distance in favour of logic - plotting the randomly scattered lines and stations in diagonal, vertical and horizontal straight lines. Allowing travellers (not tourists mind you) to easily navigate the rabbit warren.

And yet, while I mock the tourists and their lack of London knowledge, I admit that I too once got lost on the tube. The mitigating circumstances were that I was so drunk I could hardly see but still, the embarrassment of having to ask a fellow passenger which branch of the Northern line I should take from Euston was painful. Especially as the passenger was an American tourist. Asking an American how I get home in my own city...Priceless.

I’m aware that I’ve missed out many elements of the tube in this blog – it’s just such a huge, unwieldy entity it’s impossible to cover even a fraction of it. There are many, many stations I’ve never visited and probably never will. The furthest I’ve ever been is Theydon Bois, on the Essex border; a stifling example of cosseted middle England. But, the extent of the tube is phenomenal – the Metropolitan line goes as far as Watford in Hertfordshire or Amersham in Buckinghamshire. Quite ridiculous if you ask me but nonetheless the inspiration for John Betjeman’s wonderful 1972/73 BBC documentary Metro-land.

So, where I’ve neglected the fantastic Docklands Light Railway, the quaintly extendable East London Line and the absolutely pointless Waterloo & City Line, this is where I’m relying on you readers to fill in the blanks. Give me your favourite stations, most detested lines (the Hammersmith and City, surely?) and your tube tales.

And the latter - tube tales - is sadly where our transport system is lacking. You’ll have noted the lack of anecdotes in this article. There’s a reason for that. Nothing ever really happens on the tube. It’s the place that concisely sums up the notion of reserved London. Millions of people on a daily basis heads buried in books, ears plugged with headphones, eyes not daring to make contact with anybody else’s. The closest we get to incidents of note are when a station gets evacuated or Romanian gypsies start playing their accordions – sadly a rarity these days. You get the occasional drunken rows or Italian tourists squealing with laughter but largely the tube is a place for silent reflection, much like a monastery. But without God.

So instead of anecdotes I’ll leave you with a few bits of etiquette...

1. Never speak to anybody on the tube. Ever. If they speak to you, just smile, nod and carrying on reading your book.

2. Read a book that literally everybody is reading. That way you feel part of a community. A few years ago it was Memoirs Of A Geisha, more recently The Da Vinci Code, right now it’s the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Buy a copy. Don’t worry that it’s complete shit. You’ll fit in. You don’t even have to read it, just pretend.

3. No eye contact. N.B this is a rule I frequently try to break, but to no avail. Nobody ever looks back.

4. Offer your seat if an old person or pregnant woman gets on. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed. Don’t think ‘oh my legs are so tired’. Just stand up and say “here have my seat”.

5. When the driver announces that we’ll be delayed for a few moments to “regulate the gaps in the service” tut loudly and shake your head at the inconvenience of it all.

6. If the platform announcement informs you of delays caused by “someone under a train”, have a little giggle. It’s a funny expression, enjoy it.

7. (And this is fundamental) if you must kill yourself by jumping under a train, do it somewhere remote and overground. Somewhere where they can get to you easily and clear up the mess you’ve made. My personal recommendation is Turnham Green. It’s perfect for a suicide. Here the trains only stop during peak hours. If you go at any other time of the day the tubes pass through at a minimum of 30 mph. You’re guaranteed to die at that speed and, what’s more, you can do so in pleasant green surroundings. Don’t under any circurmstances kill yourself at Marble Arch at 6pm on a weekday. That’s just selfish.

8. If somebody does jump under your train at Marble Arch at 6pm on a weekday tut very loudly and shake your head at the inconvenience of it all.

London Loves.....Skinny Jeans

Mercedes Bunz thinks skinny jeans are finished.

So does Blockhead.

Mercedes Bunz and Blockhead are so wrong on so many levels.

First off, Mercedes, putting Kate Moss and “not fashionable” in the same paragraph? Oxymoron of catastrophic proportions.

Secondly, the skinny jean transcends fashion. For people like me with calves the size of freshly planted elm saplings, the invention of the skinny jean was more important than the wheel or combustion engine – who needs motorised transport when you can strut around in jeans you look good in? Seriously. You should see me wearing baggy jeans, or even normal jeans. I look like a famine victim who’s been donated random outsized clothes from an Oxfam campaign.

Normal. Jeans. Are. Too. Big. I had to live through the grunge and Britpop movements of the 90s, when jeans were ripped, corduroy, tie-dyed, turned up, anything but snugly fitting. They were normally Levi 501’s. I bet there are kids out there today who don’t even know what that means.

I would look at pictures of Paul Weller, or other Mods from a bygone era in envious longing for their super-tight jeans. Then, finally, they arrived. Suddenly, Kingsland Road was awash with scenesters who were actually proud of their twig-like legs. What a revelation.


At first they were meant for women not men. But when has that ever stopped me? Half of the clothes I wear are meant for women. My first pair, in 2005, were black Lee’s. I vividly remember the Swedish shop assistant allaying my fears that they made my thighs too prominent “people will just think you have shapely thighs”. Now, that’s what I call customer service. I still have the pair in question. Though they are now washed out to a virtual grey, and are ripped in the crotch to the point of indecency, I can’t part with them – they’re part of my cultural heritage.

Thirdly, Bunz makes the crucial error of aligning skinny jeans solely with hipsters – which is a term that doesn’t really exist in London anyway. It’s as if she hasn’t been to Topshop recently or taken even the briefest stroll down Oxford Street. Everybody’s wearing them. Maybe that is the true meaning behind Bunz’s anxieties; she doesn’t want to be part of mass fashion? She wants something more minority, more elitist, cooler. Hmmmm…bring something in Mercedes. I’m dying to see it. Some fisherman’s waders perhaps?

No, seriously.


No. Seriously.


The fact is skinny jeans are perfect. Anybody can wear them – and I’m not just saying that.

You don’t have to look like this to get away with them.


I’ve seen loads of girls with fuller legs wearing them on the tube, they look great. That’s what Lycra was invented for.


In some ways it’s just about having the confidence to put ‘em on, go out and flaunt them. Sadly, many people’s answer to lack of confidence is to cover up. But, look how great Beth Ditto looks here. Don’t be afraid! People have shapes and bumps. I have a bit of a belly. Not ideal on an otherwise skinny man. It’s fine. Get over it.

But, if you really feel they aren’t for you, then where do we go from here? Well, Mercedes touts an idea at the end of her blog piece - “something a little bit wider and maybe made of wool”. Interesting idea. I used to wear a pair of red wooly trousers. They weren’t knitted for the purpose I appropriated them for and whether they worked or not is massively open to question. But this was 1994, wooly trousers must have moved on a bit by now? Surely?


And when the day comes when the laws of fashion dictate we really must move on from skinnies, surely it’ll be to something even smaller? Every modern technological evolution involves reduction in size right? So maybe the next step from skinny jeans is micro jeans?? Jeans so slim you have to be airlifted and shoved into them by a squadron of paratroopers? I’m up for that.

Or, as one commenter on Bunz’s blog suggests “what about wearing no trousers at all?” Again, I’m up for that.

But looking for a genuine solution, and with the slurs and abuse of my work colleagues ringing fresh in my ears (“now you’re 30 Josh, are you going to stop embarrassing yourself?”, “they’re painted on”, “they’re so tight you’ll do yourself a hernia”, “get an elasticated waist band man”, “they’re so tight you look like you’re pregnant”, “they’re so tight I can see the outline of your cock and balls” etc.), I went into H&M on Wood Green high street and did the unforgivable, I caved in to peer pressure and bought two pairs of non-skinny jeans. One white, one black. I felt mature. Normal. Boring, even. After all, I’d actually bought some clothing from the Men’s section. I was proud of myself.

I still haven’t decided whether they work for me or not. I’ve decided the only way to wear them is with big old fashioned 90s style Reebok trainers. They just don’t work with skinny shoes.

The following Monday morning I went in to work anticipating the imagined praise I would receive. Has anyone even noticed? Have they fuck.