A stroll down the architectural ages of London — or a few of them

Architecture does not really tell us much about the quality of life it surrounds or encloses — A palace may be a gilded frame for a cold and loveless life. A peasant’s cottage might be a cosy nest of marital bliss. Wars and cruelty may rage as glorious gothic cathedrals reach up for heaven. But it’s hard not to believe that architecture does not say something about the human spirit.

A short stroll in London took us past some typical London shop fronted streets, probably built in the 1920's and 1930's. These are pleasant to the eye, well proportioned and spacious despite their humble roles. Yet Londoners walking past them in their time were walking as the General Strike split the country and later, the Fascist Mosley’s thugs fought running battles with the Jewish community of East London.

Later, we came across some fairly bland apartment buildings, probably built in the 1980's. Nothing but mediocrity and consumerist complacency reflected in these dull blocks. But it was a lively time in Britain. The miners were on strike and the bankers were starting to make their fortunes.

Now, we come up to date — a mean faced monstrosity of an office block near beautiful and posh Holland Park. It looks like a prison. It is dull. And the world is on fire.

Finally, we are back in Kensington Gardens outside Kensington Palace, home to William and Kate. It is a fairly dull brick building. It was built in 1899. Britain then was in the grip of labour unrest. The dockers were often on strike for good reasons. The ruling class was finally losing its hold over the country as the Labour movement fought for its rights. But this building was designed as a stolid and complacent affirmation of privilege. Some things don’t change.

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Text and photos by Mark and Elena Rapley, founders of Blabmate. OnBlabmate.com you can find an online English teacher who suits you.

New vistas around old Father Thames

Through a great city like London the River Thames has always been a source of renewal and of escape. Single drops of the clear rain that falls on the hills of the west of England meet others and run together to nose finally into the great city in a great scourging snaking run all the way down to Greenwich and out to sea. This whale like monster slides by us in Fulham, conscious that it will still be doing so when the babies we push in their prams will have lived and died.

It carries on its vast back the fresh air of the countryside that makes it possible to live in London. My Mum grew up in Fulham in the 1940’s and 50’s. That was a time when its streets were those of the English working class. Flat caps for men and scarves for the women. ( Now they belong, mostly, to the global bourgeoisie and its service class ) Factories and warehouses hid the river from view.

But it’s as if the river has brought urban renewal with it too. Some things do get better. Now you can see the river in a blue blaze of glory. What were mean streets and ugly patches of derelict industrial land are now green spaces and parks surrounding brand new apartment blocks for those riding high on the global markets - while they last, anyway.

My mum, who left Fulham in 1952, was amazed and delighted. My wife and her daughter in law, as they took the new arrival to the family out in his pram, were happy. Just to stay here would be to feel renewed. And the prospect of escape and change would gently beckon as well.

PS. Please visit Blabmate.com where you find online English teachers

We're back ... with Blabmate

We must begin by saying sorry to those of you, if there are any, who have been wondering where we have been and why we have not written anything for so long. So here we are - sorry!
One fairly good excuse we have for temporarily abandoning Make London Home is that we have been very busy with a new venture called Blabmate. Pop along to www.blabmate.com and you will be able to see what we have been up to. Getting this site built has been expensive and time consuming. We got the idea of a website that made it easy for learners of English to practise with a native English speaker whilst we were living in Moscow. There were not many native English speakers there and learners were keen to meet me and others. Skype is a marvellous thing and so are the other variations such as Google hangout. Since there are about one and a half billion people around the world learning English we thought that online video learning must get bigger and meet a demand. But we didn't want to be a school. We just thought we would make it easy for online teachers to find learners and learners to find teachers.
Things have evolved. Now we have native and non-native teachers advertising on the site. Many are qualified TESOL teachers and some, who are native English speakers, just provide conversation practice.
We have a lot more to do to improve the site and make it easier for learners to find their perfect teacher and teachers to find their ideal student. Things like an App and lots more revisions to the design.

Anyway, we are based here in lovely London and life here goes on despite the drumbeats of terror. Those of you who have followed our postings here know that we love London because it is home to every nation and religion under the sun. We hate the idea of grouping and discriminating people on any basis at all and we know that most people here get along well and don't want to mock other peoples religion or lack of religion. Our view is this - if you would feel uncomfortable saying it to someone's face, don't hide behind a cartoon or newspaper. Attack the high and mighty where they abuse their power - fine. And if someone abuses you, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Remember Ghandi. And Nelson Mandela and  Martin Luther King who said we must have non violence or non existence. Yes, can we please spread this message along. Non violence or non existence. Peaceful protest. We must love one another, or die.

Handel and Mozart in London at St Martin in the Fields and George Osborne tells us to stop thinking about China as a sweatshop...

The Meteorological Office are predicting a terrible storm on Monday, and this makes us think that the gusting wind and scurrying litter are harbingers of worse to come. Dark and lumpy islands on an inky sea scud across the great canopy above London. We expect the weird sisters to jump out in front of us, gibbering and screeching about the ingredients of chaos to come.

We thank the sun, sea and skies for St Martin in the Fields, whose glorious baroque stone shines bright against all this gloom as we approach it for the concert to be given by the London Concertante: Handel, Mozart and Vivaldi, plus some contemporary composers.

As we enter the elegant, spacious and gracious commode of the church, I find the speech that George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and number two to the Prime Minister made about China niggling away at me. He said we must stop thinking of China as a sweatshop and think of it as a high tech trading partner.

The trouble is China is much worse than a sweatshop - it's a forced labour camp. In fact, China runs the biggest concentration camp system the world has ever seen, even bigger than Stalin's Gulag. Chinese companies have front companies that they show to foreign activists and investors, but behind these are political and criminal prisoners working for nothing in brutal and murderous conditions. A leopard doesn't change its spots that quickly, and China's tradition of running the country as a vast prison camp has not changed much. If you don't believe me, check out the work of Harry Wu, who after 19 years in the camps has dedicated his life to exposing the truth. It's hard work for him because it's easier for all of us to dismiss him as bitter, twisted and wrong. But the evidence is irrefutable.
Should we care?
I think so, but now the sinuous and seductive violins are stroking my troubled soul, and I hold Elena's hand and think how lucky I am..........around us is a packed church of listeners all entranced by the music. Some of them look Chinese. Would they welcome my thoughts.......would they share them?

Sometimes we just get the blues, because there are no easy answers but we know something must be done. When that happens, listening to the blues works pretty well. Try this, from Gary Clark Jr....

Strange goings on in London : Romeo and Juliet, Blue Jasmine and Woody Allen and Estate Agents in disgrace.

There is something wrong in London. The trees are still wearing their green summer frocks. Our winter jackets are out and on but only because we mistakenly think that winter is here at last. Late autumnal gloom should have settled on every soul but there are baffled smiles playing on our lips. More perplexing still is that an English film of Romeo and Juliet is playing, no, grinding, in cinemas in London and it is stultifying, tedious, ridiculous, turgid, risible, depressing, boring and painful to watch and hear.

The English are supposed to be good at Shakespeare. They are supposed to be proud of him. So we wonder why Shakespeare's prose and verse has been hacked away and replaced by bland modernisms. Of course artists are free to experiment with Shakespeare, but surely the idea is to bring something new or different when you do. If the result is that the audience begins to suffer from rigour mortise while watching it then something has gone badly wrong. The centre cannot hold......a vacuous male model of a Romeo kept pouting at the audience. He was pale, anaemic and bloodlessly vain. She was podgy and frumpy. On the big night, he kept his underpants on and she her bra and nightie. Their love lacked any heat or passion. It was literary and fey, foppish and tired. Even the soundtrack sounded insincere. We didn't care when Tybalt was stabbed. He was a pantomime baddy. Benvolio had never been in a fight in his life. A bag of flour could have been cast for all the main roles and it would at least have made us laugh.
This production didn't squeeze a single tear out of us or even the glimmer of a smile. Nurse is supposed to make us laugh, She made us wince when she said to Juliet that she '...certainly had good taste in men'

This review is written more in sorrow than in anger, but also by way of public warning : life is short, and none of us knows what may befall us on the morrow. So don't waste your time on this lifeless corpse of a variation on a theme by Shakespeare.

You could, however, spend an enjoyable hour and a half with Woody Allen and his new film ' Blue Jasmine' - deceit, lies and betrayal are all involved, and they wreak their havoc on the lives of all of us, and Woody knows how to remind us of this with characters and a story that make us feel, phew, there but for the grace of God go I.....

We finish by hanging our heads in shame. Estate Agents in London are covertly but blatantly discriminating against Afro-Carribean applicants for rental accommodation. The BBC caught them red handed. Can you imagine how angry you would feel if someone decided to lie to your face just because of the colour of your skin and a stereotype created in the 1950's. Civilisation rests on flimsy foundations, even here, in one of the finest and most civilised cities on earth.

Even in the rain

Something good going down in Deptford, London SE, something to make you free

A wet and drizzly day in London town. The sun is tired and anaemic, its rays failing to push through the damp lid of pale plastic cloud that rests over our heads. We take so much for granted. We assume certain things are true but they turn out not to be. Life began in the depths of the earth, not in a warm chemical pond on its surface. Oil and gas are not the residue of rotting plants after all, but are mixed up in the geological furnace close to the centre of the earth. Not many people know these new things, and it will be hard for us to throw out the old ideas, but we must. If we don't know where we came from we can't get to where we are going.....ask old Oedipus about that one....

...so, we decide to go down to Deptford, where the great jazz man, rapper, hip-hopper and freedom fighter has his jazz - rap - opera The Legend of Mike Smith running in The Albany Theatre.

Soweto Kinch 

Soweto Kinch is a brilliant rapper and a great saxophonist too, and his theme is that when we are free we are most truly human, and when most truly human we are creative and good - but to be free we need to be strong, because the seven deadly sins are snatching at our souls every day, ripping away our humanity and aiming to leave only the bestiality beneath, quivering ugly and twitching naked and salacious....all this insidious intent tucked away behind the logos, brands and advertising of the so called free market.

Tyrone Isaac-Stewart

But we can be free. We can let others be free. Let them sell their wares. We just have to know what's going on and where we came from and where we want to go........let's talk about it, sing about it, play jazz about it....this should be on the school curriculum.

Ricardo da Silva, Soweto Kinch, Tyrone Isaac-Stewart at the fabulous finish of the show

A long time ago, in Deptford,  Peter the Great lived, learning how to build ships for his Russian Navy. He was there because Henry the 8th built his Navy here. These men were great bastards, tyrants of the worse sort. And Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's younger rival and admirer, was stabbed to death in 1593 in a pub here too. But now something good is going on down in Deptford. Get yourself down there to see it at The Albany Theatre.

And have a look at Deep Hot Biosphere (The myth of fossil fuels) by Thomas Gold. It will open your mind about where we came from.

Read more about East London here 

A sausage roll on another sunny London day, then a few pints and something strong to smoke......

For us, the day got off to a good start.

The sun blazed down from on high and we rolled and rattled along on the Hammersmith and City line to Hammersmith, on our way to Brentford, where way back in 1642, during the civil war, the parliamentary forces fought like devils against the royalist cavalry of Prince Rupert. Our boys - parliament - were eventually beaten back, but no matter, as the royalist fops were thrashed the next day at Turnham Green and democracy won in the end.

How different it all is now.

Back then, muskets, pikes, cannon and swords were weapons that mangled us at close quarter.

Now, the mighty US of A sends its Drones across the skies to search and destroy, firing their missiles down on houses far below in hapless Pakistan, without knowing who is within.

Yesterday it was reported that a Drone had killed seven ' suspected' militants in a house in Waziristan.

'Suspected' but not certain. Why is there no outcry from us, from Cameron or Clegg or Miliband?

Nobody cares that's why. There are no votes in it. These men are not statesmen. They are pastry chefs, serving up delicacies to their overweight people - it was Aristotle who characterised democratic politicians thus. We're beginning to think he had a point.

Meanwhile, and before the Drones from Iran or somewhere arrive over our usually cloudy skies, life must go on, and life is better with a good sausage roll, and there is none better than Patrice Lardon's.

Patrice is as French as French can be - straight out of central casting : jolly, happy and helpful, he makes the best sausage rolls in London, and a range of other pastry type delicacies. Check him out on Facebook under Lardon's Catering.

Later, we take refuge from Obama's foreign policy at The Star and Garter, the best pub in Soho, a fine and proper London boozer, no grub, no cocktails, no waitresses, just good beer and spirits.

Out friends let us smoke their unusual home made cigarettes.

We experience pleasant feelings of a vaguely out of body type and float home like a pair of drunken drones.

Summer's here at last and London lives outdoors again..tattooed and talented

Elena's Mum enjoying her day out in the sun on the way to the Russian Orthodox Church nr Hyde Park

The sunlight streaked across the streets, instantly transforming every building, plant, tree, flower and face. Once there were frowns, now there were smiles. The leaves on the trees waved back at heaven saying thanks be to thee, to thee, and we felt ourselves just carried along on the running tide heading down to Hyde Park.

There, people were peopling, canoodling, cuddling and playing. Families were happy families, lonely people felt as if they belonged after all and children saw how young their parents were and how even younger were their grandparents.

It was impossible not to feel like the luckiest people in the luckiest place on earth, this demi-paradise, this sceptered city, this London of all the peoples.

And it was sad to think that in that other great city, Cairo, they are shaping up for a fight, unable to find a peaceful way of solving the endless argument : the ways of God or the ways of men. God seems to have left economics alone, but his spokesmen on earth have a plan anyway. It doesn't seem to be working, though, for the men that have to make it work, and they want to be listened to. We hope that skulls won't be cracked and that peace prevails. Come on God, intervene, don't just sit there!

The Russian Orthodox Church in Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge.

And then came Kamila.

Kamila Pavlova has a head turning tattoo on her back which tempted us to ask her about it, but we ended up discussing her business plan for her new career.

Kamila is a surgeon, from the Czech Republic, and she has been working in the great hospitals of London : Guys, St Thomas's and Bart's, putting ordinary mortals back together again with plastic surgery.

We bowed down with deep respect.

But alas, the labyrinthine structure of the NHS, its tortoise promotion scheme, it's Ariadne's thread that must be pulled through to get a promotion, has left Kamila frustrated and she will leave to go into private practise soon.

Check her out (no pun intended) as she is as charming as she is skilled and clever, and she will make you whole again, using all the arts of the plastic surgeon.

Latvians in London in Russian restaurants, a big night out as Snowden hides out in Moscow airport

Our good friends Jim Archer and Janet Tweedie know how to have a good time, so we knew they would enjoy an evening at Sobranie, a Russian restaurant in Victoria.

We pre-loaded at The Jugged Hare on Vauxhaul Bridge Road nearby, in which an eccentric elderly Englishmen danced in front of the bar clad in over-tight lycra sports wear, revealing the morphology of his manhood, and most unfortunate morphology it was too.

On the TV screen, the news came through that the whistleblower Edward Snowden is in Moscow, holed up somewhere in the airport, protected by that well known friend of freedom Vladimir Putin.

Why anybody is surprised that the US and UK governments read our e-mails I don't know - how else can they catch the people that want to blow us up, or hack us to death in the streets. We'll soon moan if they don't nip a big one in the bud. Poor old Obama just can't win, but Julian Assange is a naive fool and Edward Snowden has made a strategic blunder of lifetime proportions. We only get one run at this life, as far as we know, and Edward has blown it. Don't take on Uncle Sam - you don't stand a chance, and Uncle Vlad probably won't be much help for long. The Guardian, who got and ran the exclusive story of Edward's 'revelations',  won't be much help for Edward either, despite him helping them out with something to fill the front page.

But what can any of us do about these things?

You know our line: we must love one another, while we can, and non - violence is the only acceptable strategy of change and protest. Enjoy life and you will learn how to enjoy people. It's much nicer than killing them, honestly!

Look at Jim and Janet here - they are your role models: people who know how to make you laugh, good kind people who look after each other and their families.

In Sobranie, our waiter Denis was another role model of courtesy and helpfulness.

All the way from Latvia, he loves life in London and has decided to settle here.

He is certainly conscientious beyond reproach - he tried to stop us ordering an entire bottle of vodka, suggesting a half bottle instead. Who is he working for? The NHS?

We were having none of it and insisted on self destruction with a full bottle of Russian Standard, on top of the several shots we had warmed up with and the pre-loaded pints. Wise move it was too, as the food and conversation both were excellent and needed the heart warming thirst quenching vodka to keep them properly paced.

Home and to bed in a blur!

We hope Obama decides to forgive Edward - he's only a young boy, led astray by Julian Assange - he's the one you want! Or Sweden wants.

Constables camping it up at Victoria station
probably staying at the YMCA

Rolling down to Richmond, big hearts, beer bellies, smiles and tears......

The wind and rain are back again, which is a shame, as we are rolling down to Richmond, heading for the river and a garden party, and to see some of the life on London's Riviera - a Riviera of rain and cowering under canvas in the riverside bars and cafes.

Richmond is posh, pale and under permanent occupation by the British propertied class and their retainers: their servants, shopkeepers, accountants and nannies. There are occasional forays by small platoons of  the sporting class, mostly big beer bellied rugby men and their biggish suicide blond (they dyed by their own hands) girls. They love a rugger bugger on a wet afternoon.

But life everywhere has the same currents carrying it along, some sad, some happy and many in between. We were to be caught up and propelled along on these when we finally trundled into Richmond on the train from Waterloo, which had bounced and clanked past the bizarre and weird architecture of south London.

Architects must have been given south London as a playground and told to have fun. They put up their living machines and workplace spaces and retired to their traditional georgian townhouses and country cottages, rolling in cash from a clientele too timid to say No! We will not live or work in this monstrosity!

In The White Cross, a beautiful pub on the river down Water Lane, untouched by a modern architect, we are served by Abbi, bright and cheerful, all the way from Redcar in the north-east of England. She has a smile as wide as London and a heart that seems as big and open as the open cast mines of her native town (but much prettier, of course).

Some people radiate warmth and uncomplicated happiness, no matter what turbulence churns away in the depths, and Abbi seems to be lovely in this important way.

Standing by the bar, struggling to be seen because she looks a little like a lost child, is Nadja.

She is from Brazil, via Huddersfield and Halifax. Her accent is Portuguese and Yorkshire, which is arresting until you get used to it, then it is always prompting a happy surprise from an unexpected northern vowel in the otherwise sonorous latin melody.

Nadjia was unhappy that night.

She was alone, stood up unavoidably by friends, and had been unlucky in love.

Strange, because she is very attractive, has the sensuality of the  warm south, and a deep Christian loyalty that yearns to be married and have children.

We hope and believe she will find her man, and that the young cad who dumped her will get his desert.

Chivalrous London men, where are you?

The wind blew harder and the rain spat down, but we had to head off for the ill fated, by the weather,  garden party across the river.

On our way, we encountered a craftsman at work in one of the boathouses.

He was carefully lacquering a traditional clinker built rowing boat and we could breathe the loving care and attention he was devoting to the work.

Mark Baragwanath is his name, and the boathouse is owned by Mark Edwards, MBE, the man who built the Queen's barge Gloriana for the Thames Diamond Jubilee last year. How it rained and blew that day too!

Britain is safe when men like these are hard at work in our boathouses.

We got to our garden party in the end, and when we did, man, that joint was jumpin' and jivin' and so were we!

The propertied classes have one thing in common with the underclasses - they know how to throw a bloody good party!

Rain and Sun in Regent's Park

The sky hung white in the sky like a damp dishcloth.
As we walked into Regent's Park it started drizzling, but the air was mild and the greenery so intense it was almost intoxicating and everything seemed as it should be : specially designed for us by the great designer in the sky.
The wind gusted occasionally though, making it suddenly cold, and all the paddle boats were parked up empty, looking forlorn and unemployed.

Tony Blair, the armchair warrior, is back in the news, urging Britain to intervene in Syria. He says there is evidence that the Assad regime has used sarin gas against its opponents in the civil war raging there.
Tony's got form in this department and it's not good.
If only one of his many properties were located in Damascus - he might be less keen on 'intervention' if it was one of his places that got smashed up. Or if one of his sons was a soldier.
It started raining very hard.

It's not just the weather that's showing the symptoms of madness - the human race is racing towards insanity : machete madness in London, Kalashnikov killers, shoulder fired rocket launcher lunatics, rocket propelled grenade gangsters, drone drivers in bunkers in suburbia, everyone wants to kill someone,or themselves, it's the only idea we've got, the only strategy left on the shelf.
Whatever happened to non - violence, the strategy that threw the British out of India?
But then the sun burst through and the white sky turned blue and the scene was transformed.
Looking up, there wasn't a drone in the sky and all around Shia mingled with Sunni and Muslim sat down with Hindu. Girls in Burkhas talked excitedly about Korean pop stars and the geese and ducks waddled around looking for someone to smile at and found an old lady who smiled back at them and fed them with breadcrumbs. People stopped shopping at Primark, insisting that they wouldn't buy from sweated labour.......no, now I've gone too far!

Parks though, especially London Parks, bring the world together in peace. It has been proven scientifically that people are happier and more creative if they have spent time in the countryside resting their eyes on the greenery it provides. Prime Minister Erdogan in Turkey wants to build on the parks of Istanbul. If he wants his people to live together in peace, he should desist.

Mr Blair, pop down to Regent's Park, stroll around and do nothing for an afternoon. You work too hard. You need rest. The graveyards are full of indispensable people.
It started to get hotter as the afternoon wore on - was this the promised heatwave?
Over to Martha and the Vandellas.
In the sixties, they had heatwaves.

London in 1123 and 2013 at prayer, Smithfield, St Bartholomew's and Syria burning........

Back in 1123, Bartholomew Fair opened up alongside the horse market and St Bartholomew's Augustinian monastery.
It must have been quite a fair, because it was suppressed for rowdiness and debauchery in 1855, and generally speaking, things seem to have been bawdier and more debauched the further back you go.
Have a quick look at Chaucer or Rabelais if you want to check this out, or 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' by Hieronymous Bosch, from 1490.

While most folk then were making the most of the short span they knew they'd been allotted, some, a very small minority, were so removed from the cares of everyday life that they were debating ethereal questions as to the exact nature of The Holy Ghost and how the Spirit relates to the other two ..er....anyway, as we found today when we attended the sublime service put on by St Bartholomew's clergy, these questions are still being debated today. In fact, we were informed that just to discuss them in the terms they are being framed is to risk heresy, and that they are still causing a rift between the Latin and Eastern churches.

Oh dear, we'd have hoped our men of the cloth might have lowered their sights a little since St Augustine's days, but no such luck.
The service showed that the church still has the artistic, architectural and musical ability to move the human soul.

It moved ours, almost to tears, especially the choir, which rose and fell like swooping angels through the spacious canopy of the church and reduced its congregation to awestruck amazement that such heavenly utterances could be heard here on earth.
Yet all this power is turned towards the Holy Ghost and how to let it enter thy heart.
We know that each of us can only do what we can, and that charity begins at home, but surely the fine and subtle minds of our clergy can put aside their theology for a while as the world races towards armageddon?
If the Holy Ghost is the only character to get a mention in the play of life, then surely we are nearing the end of the play?

As our Prime Minister urges upon us a several billion pound outlay for another round of nuclear missiles to be fired in the event that someone fires something at us, thereby guaranteeing us the grim satisfaction of knowing that we have slammed the door on life once and for all, we wanted to know how The Holy Ghost wanted us to react, not argue about whether he is one and three at the same time.

And as Al Qaeda and other fanatics in Syria kill each other to get their hands on its oil fields, we wondered if the Archbishop of Canterbury might have a view on whether we should support the USA in its arming of the chaotic cadres of a different God who are roaming Mad Max style across the deserts of Syria?
Ah well, the Peace of God passeth all understanding, that we now know for sure, and we repaired to Smiths, a fine establishment adjacent to Smithfield market, for a cup of tea and fish and chips, and very good they were too.

Someone wants to knock down parts of Smithfield Market and replace it with new shops and offices.
Let's hope they love what's there now, because it's beautiful and human, and glass and steel, the materials of our time, just aren't, most of the time. If they love what's there now, they might create something as lovely.
Dream on, brother.

Next week, at St Bartholomew's, The Mayor and his wife will attend the service, and a piece by Olivier Messiaen will be performed.

Let's hope it's not his 'Quartet for the end of Time'

Outside the church, the life of London goes on, unaware of the Holy Ghost drifting around. He's gender neutral we learnt today, but we reckon he's on the prowl for debauchery and rowdiness.
He or she will find it sooner or later around here, in fact, anywhere he looks.
After all, as Shakespeare wrote, 'It's a bawdy planet'.

He washed away the sin of the world.

Really?