Now, Baroque in Hackney has so far been an Olympic-free zone. This isn’t because I don’t care, or don’t mind. No; it’s because I can’t cope. And I don’t particularly want it on my blog.
Last Thursday I went to a very small and very interesting exhibition. After the London 2012 Olympics had been announced and the site identified, the photojournalist Homer Sykes spent over a year going in and photographing the part of the Lea Valley which is now underneath it. A lost world. Not a very picturesque part of the city, maybe; but a very authentic one, where, as has been said, people had been living in much the same way for a long time.
The resulting series of images ends with a panoramic shot of the blue wall that was put up, cutting the area off from everywhere else, signalling the end of it as an area. Beyond it we see the sky, as always; the clouds, as ever, and one very beautiful and lonely tree, in its field, beyond its stone wall… With that image, Homer knew he had his series, his body of work. The time was already past.
The focus for the pictures, Homer said at his launch, was not so much the people of the area but the landscape – the buildings, the environment, the shape and scope of the place itself. He said it struck him as a place where people were just peacefully living much as they always had done, in a way completely left behind by the encroachments of the City just down the road. It was peaceful and unlovely and it wasn’t making anybody any money…
One of the images shows a derelict and very modest office building that looks as if it could be a disused pub – but the sign over the door says CAPITAL COURIERS. And at the top of the building’s frontage is a ripped old banner, with a familiar-looking set of five interlocking rings on it, bearing the legend: ‘Back the Bid’.
The London Column ran a series of these images last week. One has a poem for the occasion by Tim Wells. And one really beautiful one has a small but, I hope, trenchant commentary by me.
The picture above was given to me to use by Homer Sykes. I just think it’s intensely beautiful, and it says it all. Under that ivy it looks as if the house is alive; it might tremble into life at any moment, even as it’s being consumed. Except that it’s not there any more. It’s somewhere under the world’s biggest (1,500-seat) branch of McDonald’s. Or under the pitch, or under a swimming pool, or under a rank of portaloos, or maybe it’s under someplace where they make you go if they find you trying to pay with a card that isn’t Visa.
You think I’m exaggerating? Maybe; but according to the Independent, pubs across Britain are being told what they may and may not write on their specials blackboards – and even though this thing has been sold to everyone for months as Britain’s best chance to make a good impression, there will be no chance for visitors to the Games to buy fish and chips, or sausage and chips, at the Olympics site. Why not? Well…
Publicans [n.b., not on Olympics sites] have been advised that blackboards advertising live TV coverage must not refer to beer brands or brewers without an Olympics deal, while caterers and restaurateurs have been told not to advertise dishes that could be construed as having an association with the event.
At the 40 Olympics venues, 800 retailers have been banned from serving chips to avoid infringing fast-food rights secured by McDonald’s.
Srsly.
No only that, but all this hoohah about protecting the investment of the ‘sponsors’ (not really sponsors; more like purchasers of very specific contractual brand advantage) – so important that it’s taking over the whole event? So important that it apparently justifies coercing (not persuading) consumer behaviour via an artificial state-sponsored Disneyland? Well, these all-important sponsorships add up to about £1.4bn. The entire Olympics bill is something like £11.4bn.
What about OUR £10bn? What about us, the taxpaying sponsors? Eh?
And I’m willing to bet this budget figure doesn’t include the cost of using the military to supply the security that the company G4S has been paid so enormously to provide; but that’s another post. Maybe. (No, I’ll just indulge myself. Remember the awful, disgusting story of a couple of years ago, when Jimmy Mubenga, a deportee, was ‘restrained’ so hard he was killed on the plane deporting him? Those were G4S guards. And the court ruled this week that they won’t face any charges.)
Interestingly, there was a factoid in yesterday’s Daily Mail, that the annual benefits bill so decried by the government is ‘approaching £13bn’. And that’s for a whole year. Imagine what the Olympics would cost if they went on for even three months, let alone a year. And I know where I’d rather the money went.
No; so far are we from being considered, through our taxes and lottery tickets, as sponsors that we are even being told what words we may and may not use. Local businesses, trying to join in with the spirit with signs saying things like ‘Proud to support the London Olympics’, have been rapped firmly and told to desist. Guess they’re less proud and less supportive now, and that’s as it should be: oiks.
So if you’re thinking of putting up any text anywhere – like, say, you’re the poor shmuck from Athens who runs the Olympic Fish Bar and wants to have a gold option, or something – here is a guide that will help you avoid trouble. A list of some of the banned words, and how (not) to use them.
In more elegaic mode, though – back to real London, please – a selection of pictures from Before the Blue Wall, Homer Sykes’s project documenting the Lea Valley before the Olympic redevelopment, is showing at the Green Lens Gallery (4a Atterbury Road, London N4 1SF) until 25 July. If you get out at Manor House station it’s a lovely walk through the park to get there. Get out and enjoy London… and do click on those links above.
Homer’s website is here.
{ 16 comments }
yes!
great piece. i would write more but i’m half asleep. i really want to go to this exhibition.
Well said. The juggernaut 2012 Olympics offend on so many grounds it’s hard to know where to begin. All the money spent, and for what, exactly? Do you know how much Lakshmi Mittal spent in order to prefix Kapoor’s =Orbit= sculpture with the phrase ‘ArcelorMittal’? ￡19.6 million. Think how much that money could have done. Vanity of vanities.
I agree it has cost a lot and it is not clear who the true beneficiaries are. It is particularly important to find an effective way of monitoring the ongoing benefits to the East of London. But I also feel the money has been spent and it would be a waste not to enjoy the fruits. i am increasingly impatient with ongoing curmudgeonry (is that a word?). i admit i am a fan of the olympics.
Very strong and thoughtful, sometimes elegiac, Katy.
I once saw a programme on the Lea River. That whole route has huge significance in the economic and social history of the City. Products and goods to London from the North came along there or were manufactured along there, the river itself, and important water. My son and his family used to live near the Lea Valley – it was the only bit of ‘country’ space near them, tatty but open.
The other week, on the way to Ledbury near Evesham, we passed some crowds and massive Coca-Cola and MacDonald’s vans they were cheering and waving at – looked puzzlingly surreal like some strange new religious rite. We learned after that somewhere buried amongst this parading ‘ad blitz’ there was the ‘blessed torch flame’ in a tiny car. Says it all really!
It all reminds me of the 18th century Enclosures – attempts at linguistic-grabbing now, too. I love the sign reclaiming our language from these greedy shysters and thieves!
Yes, I keep thinking of the enclosures…
Well said, Katy. It is all BS — and it has shown up the nation (or its leaders) to be in thrall to the big corporations. There is something we can do. Go here:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/
and sign the petition: tell the big sponsors to pay their Olympic tax.
x
Good point, Ian! Yes to the leaders not the nation. The nation isn’t behind all this.
And yes to the petition though to be honest, as Mcdonalds were saying, it’s such a drop in the bucket to them – yes they should pay the tax but I’m almost MORE worried about the part where 800 retailers are told they can’t sell chips, because the big boys are in town – consumers are being coerced. Publicans are forbidden to advertise their TV screenings of the Games alongside mention of any beer besides the official ‘sponsor’. Children in the opening ceremony may not wear any other brand of trainers. Businesses in the Olympic Park can’t take MasterCard.
It’s extremely pernicious.
And that’s beyond the disruption, and far beyond the destruction so movingly recorded by Homer Sykes of the local environment. It’s a disaster.
I just really can’t see what people are on about when they say let’s just enjoy the spectacle. It’s all kind of horrible.
I don’t agree. There are crowds spectating the olympic torch progress. Larger, I believe, than expected. maybe not people like us. But ordinary people seem to like it.
Superb post, Katy.
In an interview with the Independent, during which he aired his views on the death of America, Gore Vidal remarked, “…the population is too cretinous and drugged by television and fast food to figure it out…”
I fear we have been too easily blinded by the Olympic flame, here in the UK. In fact, as a nation, we are dangerously close to being badly burnt. And I have yet to see a politician, acting out his or her crudely scripted enthusiasm for the event, convincingly.
Thanks for your eloquent overview. As I’ve been avoiding any news with the word Olympic in it, this had passed me by and I didn’t grasp the full madness of what was going on. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Seb Coe was on Today this morning chatting the same nonsense. Living proof that sport does not ‘build character’.
Genius remark, John!
Try living next door to the bloody thing. I’m hoping that the (counter)cultural reaction to the whole shebang lasts a lot longer than the basketball arena and the hockey pitches … we need to get some positive crumbs tumble from the collective madness.
Rik, are you down in Hackney Wick? I’m SO glad I moved back up here – in fact, a couple of months before the announcement – but it still doesn’t feel sufficiently far away.
Bottom of Homerton, next to the marshes and the canals. There used to be a really good Sunday market at the Hackney dog track, but that’s all gone now … maybe they could open up the stadium as a new Sunday market venue once all this nonsense is over?
Dear Katy
The London Olympics are rapidly turning into an omni-shambles. Given that the authorities believe that a terrorist attack on the games is likely, I personally wouldn’t want to be anywhere near them. Also the fact that hundreds of thousands of tickets remain unsold means that you could probably pick one up for the square root of sod all if you really wanted to.
Best wishes from Simon