Charity

Strand Lines

 A few doors down from the Adelphi is the pretty building which houses the Vaudeville Theatre.Built in 1870, Henry Irving acted on this stage for a while, as Ronald Bergan's book The Great Theatres of London tells us.

Vaudeville Theatre today.

Interior of the newly-opened Vaudeville Theatre in 1870. Westminster Archives Centre.

 

Just like research itself is an ongoing process, work-in-progress, one might say, so is reflecting upon it. Along with key findings about the significance of walks for research to be fulfilling, one would also be prone to think that it’s also people who appear to be great sources of information and inspiration. What follows is a sketch of one such source, not a stranger to the Strand and its communities. Coupled with it is a description of the character of the encounters with the conversationalist. …is 99 and grey. Naturally grey. Does not dye one’s hair.

9/8-9, VøAA There was a corpse in the dream I had some time ago. For some reason, I recall it time and again. It was lying on the railroad. It felt the cold of the metal underneath. How do I know? These days, one doesn’t ask such questions? One may instead interrogate this way: Is the fact that the cold was felt relevant for the description of the woods surrounding the railroad? Or: Does the sensation of the cold entail an alteration of the original conceptualization of the progression of events? Consequently: Does that amount to sequencing of events that constitute a plot?

The street of the definite article

The strand.

The one two the iambic chaos

The rush through it, on it and under it

The busy busy

The buses the bridges the protests

The lawyers the law courts the justice,

The cafes, the authors

The Dickens, the Thackery the Makepeace

The temple inn

The no children

The Strand school for civil service gone,

The whirling doors on the King’s building

The Students, the must just read hard enough

The elect alumni, on the plate glass

The bus Read more »

This was my second session leading the creative writing group at the Connection at St Martins.

The previous week I met Judith Chernaik, who, with poets, has selected poems for display on London's Underground. Over 300 poems have been displayed on the Tube since the 'Poems on the Underground' programme was launched in 1986. Judith kindly donated some 'Poems on the Underground' leaflets to the Strandlines project; hoping the poems enclosed might provide our communities with some inspiration for writing. Read more »

The aim of today's digital walking tours session at The Connection was to explore online digital resources relating to past Strand lives and to add contemporary life stories to a historical poverty map. Observations of the poor in the Strand area from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries were added to the map below. These were drawn from the Charles Booth on-line archive (http://booth.lse.ac.uk/) and The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/).

Key: Read more »

Last November Mark and I started making a diary. I visited him everyday for a week and asked what had happened since last I saw him. Mark has spent time sleeping rough in the Strand area; he sells the Big Issue. At first he remained anonymous, but then he wanted to let readers know his name. 

The recordings in this posting, made just before Christmas 2010, are rather different. Mark decided to make his own diary, borrowing one of the Strandlines audio recorders.  Read more »

On Friday 14^th January I introduced the Strandlines project to the Creative Writing Group at The Connection at St Martins, a support centre for homeless people in the area. Warmest thanks to all who attended, and to Chris Lampard who regularly leads the group, for being so welcoming; also for allowing me to publish your writing on the Strandlines site. Read more »

David Green and I are making a digital walking tour with a group at The Connection at St Martins. In the first session (www.strandlines.org/blog/walking-tours-connection-session-1) we asked participants to make notes of where they wanted the tour to go on post-it notes. Read more »