Author Archives: Red Szell
The Arch
I am delighted to announce that the owners of The Arch Climbing Walls have kindly offered to let me do all my training at their excellent facilities. With winter approaching and the outdoor rock climbing season coming to an end what better way to maintain your hard-won climbing fitness and work on technique than with regular bouldering sessions? Read how my eyes were opened to the benefits of bouldering as I prepared to climb The Old Man of Hoy back in 2013.
http://www.archclimbingwall.com/journal/2016/11/2/training-for-trad
Unpleasant Developments (Hampstead Village Voice Issue 27)
It would seem that all-out war has been declared on New End. The levels of noise and destruction, of heavy machinery and boots on the ground certainly indicate that an army of occupation has moved in.
The old nurse’s home has been reduced to rubble, the road closed for at least six weeks, The White Bear (a registered community asset) remains boarded up and all for what? The construction of more yuppy homes hiding behind iron gates.
Oh and then there’s the closure of East Heath road so that some oligarch can have the wall to his big house rebuilt (will he use the opportunity to put razor wire and glass on top of it?). One man’s whim causing chaos for everyone else and pumping traffic and pollution through Hampstead’s narrow backstreets. Oh and then there are all the basements being constructed not to mention the Chinese lions that have taken up residence in Gayton Road! What is going on?!
When I moved here back in the 1990s it was to enjoy the village life I’d grown up with in rural West Sussex amid the amenities and vibrancy of London. Hampstead was a happy mix of those who’d been born and brought up here, those who worked in the area, those just passing through and those who like me fell in love with it’s laid-back vibe the moment we stepped off the 46 bus. What I remember from then is the diversity of ages and backgrounds I found among my neighbours and people’s willingness to stop and chat as they meandered down its quiet, leafy streets. There was a genuinely vibrant sense of community.
Nowadays you’re lucky if you can hear yourself speak above the screech of drills and pounding of pile drivers, let alone breathe for all the brick dust and diesel fumes. A trip to the mini-market in New End is like a game of Frogger with skip lorries, and any health benefits I might have got by given up smoking are choked off by the unacceptable levels of man-made pollution.
And I repeat, what’s it all for? A handful of luxury flats that only fat cats can preen themselves in, with a subterranean carpark for their oversized ego carriers and a gym so that they don’t have to mix with the hoi-polloi at any of the local amenities.
And who benefits. Neither the casual visitor hoping to enjoy the tranquillity of this historic area, nor the shop-keepers who depend upon their passing trade. And certainly not us. Not the resident population who ho love the tree-lined, sleepy old Hampstead and appreciated the fact that the nurses in our local hospital had a place to live in our community, that our firemen didn’t have to drive down from Milton Keynes every morning because they can’t afford to live in the area, that our shop workers didn’t lose their first two hours wages each day to the cost of commuting in to work. They alas have all been driven out like so many red squirrels by the rapacious greed of property developers who are turning Hampstead into a habitat for an acquisitive, non-native species of grey squirrels who view property not as a home but an investment to be capitalised on.
Hampstead feels less and less like home with every square foot that gets tossed into the skip of memory. I realise that we live in a conservation and not a preservation area, but no place should ever become the preserve of a narrow section of society. Sometimes it feels like the rapine development of Hampstead into an area of gated communities and subterranean bunkers has been designed by its architects to be as noisy and unpleasant as possible (the US Army employs much the same tactics to achieve its ends).
So next time a skip lorry laden with New End spoil threatens to crush you into the pavement, or your throat and eyes burn with brick dust and you head throbs to the percussion of jack-hammers, ask yourself just what is being demolished here, a few old buildings or is a community being deliberately besieged?
BBC Radio 4 ‘In Touch’ – Guide Dogs (11th Oct 2016)
Edinburgh International Book Festival – 17th August 2016
The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Tavern (Hampstead Village Voice Issue 27)
People have started ignoring me, giving me a wide berth when I approach and those who do stop to talk show little interest in me.
Take the day-before-yesterday. Harness in hand I let the guide-dog lead me to The Wells for an ale and a burger.
Anna, the lovely manager, threw open the door in welcome.
“You’re back! I have missed you so much. Oh yes, you are beautiful!”
I beamed. I’d only been away a few days but returned to desiccated houseplants, a bevy of bills and the cat’s dirty protests at my absence. Now, at last, I was being welcomed home properly.
“Oh Ella, you are adorable! Shall I get your usual bowl of water and maybe a little something else?” Then, turning to me, Anna said, “And it is nice to see you too.”
Crestfallen I recognised my destiny is to play second fiddle to my recently-acquired guide-hound, even down the pub! I needed a drink but Anna had nipped off to fetch Ella’s water so I sulked instead.
It’s bad enough surrendering independent locomotion to an (admittedly not-so-dumb) animal, but discovering that my Labrador has more allure than me, well that takes the biscuit! No wonder Churchill called his bouts of depression his ‘black dog’!
Once Ella has been settled with her bowl of water and a dog biscuit (that I suspect Anna paid for out of her own pocket) I order my pint and burger.
This dog really has wasted no time in getting her paws firmly under my table. In the space of a month since her arrival she has charmed my wife and daughters and proved herself adept at guiding me to and from all my local haunts. My journeys with her are safer than they were with a white cane. She steers me round obstacles. And people make way for us. But it’s her that they notice. Her puppy-dog eyes and skew-whiff ears seduce all who clap their mincers on her. Truly she is a seeing-eye dog!
Is this why I alone seem immune to her charms; because I can’t see that she’s adorable? Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate my waggy-tailed familiar. She dotes on me, is always eager to get into harness and lead me wherever I want to go (especially if there’s the prospect of food there) and she is beautifully behaved. But love her? Nah!
Maybe I am being a little dog-in-a-manger about this. My pint arrives and Ella lifts her head to check I’m okay, licks my sleeve and lets her ears flop back down onto my feet. A passer-by asks if he can stroke her. I should say no he can’t, not while she’s on-duty but she’s already standing up, tail wagging and I find myself feeling guilty for denying her the attention. Oh god, am I susceptible too? Is the dog I only accepted as a working animal destined to become a pet?
“Hello gorgeous.” My friend Hannah slides in to sit opposite me, and Ella’s up again having her ears tickled, dominating Hannah’s attention for the next five minutes.
“You know dogs are the perfect communist citizens” she tells me. “They respect rigid rules and hierarchy. And, so long as they get a modicum of food, shelter and the hope of reward they will work tirelessly and without complaint for their masters.”
The Guide Dog Association said pretty much the same. “Ella’s trained to work for you, don’t spoil her.” “I’ve got no problem with that” I tell Hannah who’s fondling Ella’s neck, “but with the liberal amount of affection everyone gives that particular worker, I fear for her efficiency.”
“And,” I might have added, “I resent the assumption that I too should welcome this addition to my life. I’ve never wanted a dog or the sight-loss that necessitated me getting one. It’s like opening your heart to a pacemaker.
Later, after half the pub, including an amorous Irish wolfhound has said goodbye to Ella, I head home; Ella walking stalwartly ahead, alert and confident, me straining to put complete trust in her.
We stop at the corner outside Burgh House and, after cocking a cursory ear for traffic, I urge her to cross the road to Flask Walk.
The bloody dog refuses to budge and, as I growl at her to wake up, silent death in the form of an electric car hurtles past our noses, ignores the one-way signs and plunges down Willow Road.
With a newfound respect for my good and faithful servant and a glow of affection I let her lead me home.
BBC Radio 4 ‘In Touch’ – blind people on stage, film, and TV (5th July 2016)
My Telly Vision
I don’t see myself represented on TV.
Despite the much-vaunted policies announced by the BBC and Channel 4 to quadruple on-screen representation of disabled people by 2017, there is still scarcely a white cane or guide dog on telly.
With 2 million Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) people in the UK 1-in-35 characters in TV drama should have sight problems. I struggle to name 35 in total!
And even they are rarely representative. Blind women are stricken victims, blind men either easily conned, or sonically superpowered. And invariably all are totally sightless, unlike 97% of the BVI population. No wonder the viewing public struggles to see the nuances of sight loss.
One notable exception is Rudi in CBeebies’ Me Too, played by actor Chris McCausland, who like me has Retinitis Pigmentosa. When my kids were little the presence in this popular show of another man who uses a white cane but is otherwise perfectly ordinary went a long way to making them and their friends more comfortable with my disability.
Alas this was not what the writers of Emmerdale had in mind when in 2009 it became the first British soap to include a blind actor in a major role, with Kitty McGeever playing Lizzie Lakely. From the outset the focus was on the negative aspects of Lizzie’s character for which her (total) blindness acted both as cause and excuse.
Has so little changed since the days of Blind Pugh? Isn’t it about time our television screen reflected the world it claims to represent? I want to see characters with varying degrees of sight loss in every drama and reality show. They and their blindness don’t have to be central to the plot – we do have other facets to our character.
It’s not rocket science. The writers of The Archers have been dropping farming tips and news into their soap for decades, and recently even managed to include a storyline about cataracts.
An example of what can and should be happening appeared in Series 2 of Broadchurch last year. The prosecuting barrister had AMD, which made her reluctant to take the case and meant she needed someone to read for her.
So, if the writers of EastEnders are listening here’s what I want to see:
Phil Mitchell notices Dot struggling to find her way across the bar of The Queen Vic (actress June Brown is actually losing her sight). In his gruff way he grabs her arm to steer her. She retorts, “Get orf me! If I want help I’ll ask for it. And when I do I don’t want to be dragged along like a trolley bag. The proper way to guide a person is by the elbow, like this.”
An everyday occurrence reflected in 20 seconds of public service broadcasting that raises awareness and is representative – job done! Who knows, with a bit of variation and enough repetition in other programmes, the message might get through!
BBC Radio 4 ‘In Touch’ – a discussion about the pros and cons of getting help from others who can see (17th May 2016)
Ich Bin Ein Brrliner! (Hampstead Village Voice, Issue 26)
Though The DDR officially ceased to exist in 1990 The East German flag is still proudly on display in and around Highgate Men’s Pond. Warum?
It’s a symbol of resurrection, of a return from the dead.
On 18th December 2009 Hampstead resident Tom Kearney was standing on the pavement at the edge of a pedestrian crossing on Oxford Street when he was hit by a Bendy Bus. The impact cracked his skull, burst both his lungs and threw him 20 feet down Europe’s busiest shopping street. When paramedics arrived, they could find no pulse.
Doctors at the Royal London Hospital fought to save Tom’s life; prevented his lungs from dying and drilled a hole in his skull to stop his brain from exploding under the pressure of bleeding. But that was only half the battle. When Tom woke from a coma in mid-January 2010 he had to re-learn how to speak, walk, eat and drink again. He remained in hospital for months.
Then, while slowly recovering at his home in Hampstead, his neighbor, writer Al Alvarez, gave him a piece of life-changing advice.
A lifelong Hampstonian, Alvarez has been swimming in the Heath Ponds daily since he was a teenager before The War. He told Tom to
“Get in the Ponds. If a Bendy Bus can’t kill you, the Ponds certainly won’t. Besides, I think It will make you better.”
Taking Al’s advice, Tom began swimming regularly at Highgate Men’s Pond in September 2011. Al was right, the cool fresh water aided his recovery. Tom’s enthusiasm meant that soon friends, acquaintances, and friends-of-friends started joining his weekend swims, the number rising week-by-week even as the water temperature dropped.
And so the East German Ladies Swimming Team was born: a bunch of middle-aged dads for the most part, who brave the ponds in whatever the weather, the colder the better.
Why the name? An early photograph of the group received a scathing response from a spouse. Instead of praising the fortitude of her man and his friends, she compared them to the 1976 East German Ladies Swimming Team, large in physique, full of testosterone and the vanquisher of all opponents at the Montreal Olympics
Now numbering some 40 members, EGLST meet every Saturday and Sunday (and when possible during the week) at the top of Parliament Hill, before a short run (or stroll) round The Heath, finishing at the Highgate Men’s Pond for a swim – rain or shine, ice or snow.
To swim in the ponds is to immerse yourself in London’s social and cultural fabric. The Highgate Ponds were dug in the 17th and 18th centuries. The clay taken from them was used in the bricks of houses for miles around. Thereafter the quarries were flooded to become reservoirs for the area’s growing population. Now of course they are a construction site again – though hopefully this is only a temporary state of affairs…
They have been immortalized in paintings by Constable and a poem by William Blake. The Men’s Pond is on a spot where the poet John Keats is supposed to have listened to nightingales and chatted to Samuel Coleridge. It opened in 1893, and remains a place where it doesn’t matter what your job, your title or your religion, as long as you share the love of an open-water swim.
The EGLST includes young and old from all walks of life. Though we all live in the area, members hail from five different continents. But we are united under one flag we wear with pride on our own-branded swimming caps, trunks and beanies.
So if you are passing by The Men’s Pond and happen to see a flotilla of white-capped heads emblazoned with the East German flag (and the motto ‘moob rule since 2011) remember, it’s not some kind a political statement, a yearning for the bad old days of Erich Honecker and the Berlin Wall. No, it’s worn with a big ironic grin in full acknowledgement that it took Tom being hit by a bus and returning from the dead for him and all of us to discover this way of feeling fully alive. Nobody leaves the pond in the same mood they entered it – everyone emerges revivified and smiling.
That’s why each year on December 18th we celebrate ‘Bus Day’ and toast another year lived to the full thanks to the Ponds, and Al Alvarez.
Al Alvarez’s excellent book Pondlife – A Swimmer’s Journalis available at Daunt Books, Waterstones and any other bookshop worth it’s salt and not just selling pulp-porn masquerading as something worth reading.
Tom Kearney has campaigned tirelessly since 2012 for TfL to improve its Bus Safety Reporting and Monitoring and for Oxford Street to be pedestrianized.
As a result of his work, TfL has, since 2014, published statistics of casualties involving TfL buses (29 pedestrians a month were hit by by buses in 2015).
Earlier this year TfL launched ‘a world-leading bus safety programme’ based on many of Tom’s recommendations. All of the major candidates for Mayor of London have pledged to pedestrianize Oxford Street.