Interlude
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ------------------------------------------------------Interlude is an Arts magazine that includes writings, poetry and visual work. ------------------------------------------------------VARIETY ------------------------------------------------------The magazine has no particular theme or subject and is open to all contributions. ------------------------------------------------------AUTHOR DESIGNED ------------------------------------------------------All pages are formatted and illustrated by the author. Editorial input is minimal. ------------------------------------------------------WORK IN PROGRESS ------------------------------------------------------As well as being a platform to show unseen work, consider Interlude as an opportunity and an incentive to try out and develop roaming ideas.
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Contents
Sketch: Series 112358
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32
Becky Philp
Plants, Patents and Bioteching in the Streets TreeGen
Little Compton Street
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34
Robin Priestley
Alive and Growing in the Back Rivers of Bow
Machine Peter Brownell
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35
Vow…el Naim Naamaan
Text Mark Gallant, Illustrations Helen Nodding
Chatroom
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41
Tracey Wakeman
And in My Turn I Saw
James Lander 14
42
Ned Cox
Ghaos World News
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44
Thou Thine Ned Cox
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45
Francesca Ricci
Homage to John Peel
Moss Graffiti Helen Nodding
Reactor
Threatening Ice
Leatherman
Blue Bear Velvet Babak Ganjei
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Kiril Bozhinov
Living With The Architect (Daniel Libeskind) Holly De Las Casas
Anatomical City
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John Wild
How to do an Ollie
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Robin Priestley
Kaleidoscope
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55
Ivana Rados
March 21 2004 Annie Nichols
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Kiril Bozhinov
The Lost Letter Triptych
Postman’s Park Robin Priestley
Suzanne Day
Ephemera
Film Pills Francesca Ricci
The Tower of Babel Francesca Ricci
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60
Staircase Becky Philp
My favourite places in
LONDON No.1 – Little Compton Street Little Compton Street will not be found in your A-Z, in fact, I doubt it is on any maps at all, certainly not any modern ones. Little Compton Street doesn’t really exist, or at least it’s no longer a street, although you can still see it. Stand at the corner of Old Compton Street and Charing Cross road, and look East towards Blackwell’s bookshop. Cross Charing Cross road, but stop halfway across on the little traffic island. Now look down between your feet, through the grille and at the underground wall between the pipes. About halfway down you will notice an old road sign for “Little Compton Street”. I have tried to find out about this curious little street, but there are hardly any mentions of it at all. Was it built over after the blitz? Was it the victim of a Westminster council traffic scheme? Has it simply been buried with the constant regeneration of our city? Who knows? Have a look and see what you think.
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Alive and growing in the Back Rivers of Bow Text by Mark Gallant. Illustrations by Helen Nodding
In the sprawling urban badlands that is our capital city there is a secret place known as the Bow Back Rivers. Hidden in the east end of this city there is a place where some of nature’s darkest disciples find a refuge amongst the decaying monuments to Britain’s industrial past. In this labyrinth of rivers, canals and hidden channels are some of London’s last remaining fragments of wetland habitat. Growing in and on the land besides these urban wetlands are plants that have been intricately linked with man for centuries and have become part of our folklore. Some of these plants have a very colourful history and their common names and reputations, if not theplant itself, are recognised by most people, even in the 21st century. So by way of keeping some of this intriguing and inspiring folklore alive, we will discover the history of some of the Bow Back Rivers darkest vegetation. The first of these plants can only be found growing in a couple of locations on the rivers and has a very scattered distribution in London as a whole. The highly poisonous Deadly Nightshade ( Atropa belladonna ) is probably one of the best-known members of the Solanaceae or Nightshade family. The plants generic name Atropa is derived from one of the Greek Fates Atropos, the inflexible one who held the shears that cuts the thread of life. The species name belladonna is said to relate to an old story that, at certain times, the plant takes the form of an enchantress of exceeding loveliness, whom it is dangerous to look upon, though it seems a more universal view that the name was given to the plant because of a preparation made from the sap or tincture used by Italian women as a cosmetic for dilating the pupil of the eye. In his book Flora Britannic, Richard Mabey describes deadly nightshade as being a handsome plant whose appearance belies its toxicity. Often mistaken for its smaller and far more common cousin black nightshade (Solanum nigrum), deadly nightshade is a bushy perennial, growing 2 to 3 feet up from ground level each year, the plants multiple purple stems carry dull darkish green ribbed leaves. The large, bell-shaped flowers, which are quite eerily attractive, are of a dark and dingy purple colour, it is inside these bell-shaped flowers that the green and then shiny black fruits are formed.
Atropa belladona
AND IN MY TURN I SAW – And in my turn I saw – In the dying orange embers of those streetlamps With mist laying out, gauze under the crisp arctic starfrost – I saw what – Well – To the naked eye Seemed like fire could never again be. And more: in the caustic silence, while distant rivers so fearfully Overiced seek to crack past midnight, my midwinter Delight slowly diffused into the brittle corners of this room. I turned and sat by the dawn and bit at my fingers until Gushes of sorrow played faustian flings and the Yellow of our souls, collected like dust under unused beds, Edged into mine own alone. I cried out but no cry Could begin to pierce me awake. I laughed aloud, but the dead air -Corrupted not so much by an echo of whistling wind – Fast taught me to see that there could be no more song, There could be no more sigh, There could be faces and masks and other markers along the oblivion road. There could be chocolates and narcotics and charity balls And thousands of un-ruminated niceties All yellow like our souls and colder than galaxies and so much Farther than galaxies, with nothing nearby any longer to comfort Even in these unhappy extremes into which we've wedged ourselves Even between these numb glimpses of tomorrow and these gray portraits of Yesterday. There is nothing there for us to see. For from there outward, And from beyond back, All we can see are Nothing, nowhere, no-one, and never Never Never Never.
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By Ned Cox
Homage To
John Peel
This interview was made in November 1993. One third of it, for some reason or other, has gone missing. Vechen pomen. Kiril Bozhinov
- you’ve been working for radio stations for more than 30 years, do you yourself play any instrument? Me no. My children do: Thomas, 13, plays guitar, Florence, 11, has a bass, but she doesn’t play it very often, in fact I’ve never heard her play… - no drummer in the house? No, we have no drummer thank God, I think I’d find that very difficult to live with, we have William who used to play sax and keyboards and Alexandra used to play trombone, but she wants to play guitar. The trouble is that you buy all these instruments and then they never use them. Right, where do we start from? - the beginning? Right from the beginning? I was born four days before the war started for us and grew up in the English countryside, in the north of England, and went off to a boarding school when I was seven. I remember listening to the radio very early indeed, we had an air-raid shelter in our garden, sitting in that and listening to news bulletins. When I became older I used to listen to radio Luxembourg and to the American Forces’ Network in Europe which was based in Stuttgart. I enjoyed listening to the radio and the more I listened to it by myself in the country… my brother was never much interested in music and everybody used to give me records for my birthday, for Christmas… I was given a wide range of records, whatever people saw in the shops. It is what I liked really, because it was entirely random you got to hear some really wonderful stuff as a result of that and because in those days taste was not really tribilised, you just liked what you liked, and nobody said oh, you can’t like that because it is not the right sort of music. So I used to buy records by all kinds of extraordinary people, like Doris Day, Mario Lanza… - what is the first record you ever bought? The first record I ever bought is one called The Blue Tango by Ray Martin and his Concert Orchestra, it’s about the most unhip record as it is possible to have bought I think, but that is the first one. Then, when
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