Another market scene...

Yep, another market scene, Northcote Road at the end of the day, for this one I used the Artrage app, I like using the pallet knife and the messiness you can easily generate. it's hard to make a real mess in most drawing apps. I never seem to get bored with markets, they are also quite messy places!  

Below, Dawson Heights in Forest Hill/East Dulwich, designed by the then 26 year old architect Kate Macintosh, built between 1964-1972. I was shocked to read recently they were turned down for listing by the Secretary of State, whoever that is, even though English Heritage recommended they were listed. I think they are intricate and endlessly interesting, you get so many variations on the view and a new way of seeing them just by approaching from a slightly different angle. Coming down York Hill in West Norwood you see them from the side, like space stations, at other times, up close they look like Italian Mountain villages or ziggurats.  When we were kids we called them the 'battleships', at night they do look like enormous liners cruising through South East London.

Beautiful travelling star

On Sunday morning the coffee shops closer to home are all shut. Walking across the part of the Dip that used to be a plague pit (the movers and shakers of Streatham want to rebrand it as the 'village green') I pass two men, high cheeked and distinctly Somali-looking, chatting by the strange henge of angular marble chairs the council just beamed down there one day. The older of the two men has a walking stick, he looks ill and is too thin. The other man is fitter and younger looking. As I walk past them I hear the younger man say to the older "when I first saw you I thought 'what an attractive man'. I thought you looked like an American railroad hobo. I called you 'my beautiful travelling star' ". He's holding a metallic blue iPod shuffle and gesticulating with it delicately as he speaks. I shouldn't be listening-in but the conversation is uplifting, however there's a limit to how slowly I can walk past without drawing attention to myself, so I move on. Once round the corner, opposite the old fire station that's now a mosque, I see there's a cafe open. Entering it is like walking into a Swiss mountain hut, it's wood-lined, dark and cosy. The music the owners are playing is from the 1960s and 70s - Marvin Gaye, Ottis Redding, Hot Chocolate.  Soon an ABBA track comes on. I remember how we loved ABBA as children. I remember there were things to love and live for even then. 

I order my coffee, sit down by the cafe window and start reading a new book. Soon I'm looking round for something to use as a bookmark. Beside my head there's a regiment of HP sauce bottles. I'm struck by their martial formation. On the shelf next to them I spot a pile of leaflets for a solicitor called Mr Lukobi, the leaflets advertise his expert legal services for matters relating to immigration, employment and crime - 'Not guilty or guilty'. He must have well-read customers as the leaflets are shaped like bookmarks. On the other side of Tooting Bec Gardens the huge black tower in the grounds of the mosque is silhouetted against a pale grey sky. Once it must have been used for firemen to practice running up and down, now it looks redundant and desolate. At the top of the rickety tower several huge pulleys wobble in the breeze like hangmen's nooses. I don't know why or how but I write this all down and send it to myself via email because it all seems significant, like there's a cryptic lesson embedded in each and every aspect of the morning.

A woman leans out of her window every morning to smoke

The same woman leans out of an apartment window every morning, smoking in long, languid drags. The number beneath her window sill is peculiarly antiquated. The wide arch beneath the building is also from another era, one of coaching Inns and long trips down to the South coast. I wonder if there are children in the room with her, whether it is one of the numerous bedsits situated above Streatham High road?  Why does she never go anywhere, is she trapped? If so, by economics or more sinister forces? She looks calmly down at the traffic. I wonder if she knows I am drawing her? At Goldsmiths I used to draw someone in an office opposite my own window over and over again, until one day I looked up and an entire room full of people were staring back at me through yellow binoculars. Turns out she was doing a project about spying on lonely people in office buildings and I was one of the subjects.

Shaggy-Scalycap: Pholiota squarrosa

While running round the back of Tooting Bec common this afternoon I saw a magnificent, large, dense, crop of Shaggy-Scalycap: Pholiota squarrosa , growing as it does, beneath the trunk of an old but living (beech) tree. I didn't have a camera or phone on me so the image below is pilfered and digitally doctored. The yellowness is exaggerated here, but it was still very striking :

This is a very flat and muddy run compared to Streatham Common and Norwood Grove, but makes a change every now and then. The Shaggy-Scalycaps were on the Clapham side by a very muddy little stream parallel to the railway line, as shown above.  Map my Ride says "This is a 6.81 km route in . The route has a total ascent of 33.84 m and has a maximum elevation of 48.05 m".
It's a useful tool if you remember to click off the bit that automatically sticks to roads. My quickest Streatham Common run has a total ascent of 52.23 m and a maximum elevation of  73.9 m, it's about 5k but can easily be extended. The run to Sydenham Hill Woods is a lot steeper, with a number of significant hill climbs, I'll map- that next time I run it.

Torrential rain this morning

Torrential rain this morning, drumming on the roof of Tescos while the commuters huddled under umbrellas on their way to the train station and bus stops. The two men below stopped eating their breakfast to stare at the rain.

Rain soaked smoker outside Morrisons this morning

A rain soaked smoker outside Morrisons this morning, there was a cloud of smoke above the man in blue. I didn't get round to adding any other detail, the women were just chatting before going up the stairs to the supermarket. Below, the strange view and reflection in Tesco's cafe window at night, in which you can see the shiny Morleys chicken shop across the road as well as the reflected mezzanine in Tescos.

Below, Peckham Rye on Tuesday morning, that's meant to be The Shard in the background.

More fungi and drawings from today

There were lots of smaller fungi in Sydenham Hill woods today, above, Clustered Bonnets, Mycena inclinata I think. I even saw a bunch of fungi with grey fungi growing on them! Double fungi. The tree below was festooned with fungi, below that are possibly young Sulfur Tuft, same trunk the ones I saw a few weeks ago were growing on.

Below, I nipped into the Horniman Museum this afternoon and drew the fantastic Nigerian Igbo Omabe mask they have, it represents the spirits of dead ancestors. Seems appropriate for this remembrance week.