Typecast?

Admittedly we’re getting a little typecast here, but Crossfields Estate will soon make another appearance on Link Up TV. 

We'll be in an as yet untitled short film about a rapper trying to escape gang culture.  The project, which is being filmed today in front of Farrer House, is being directed by Andrew, a former resident.  It's not Dire Straits but perhaps there'll be another blue plaque here soon! 

London Design Festival in Deptford

The London Design Festival is an annual event which both celebrates and promotes London as the "design capital of the world". It starts tomorrow 13th September and runs till the 21st. Check out events all over the city at the LDF website.

Three local events include:

The Living Installation in Giffin Square
Sat 13th September, 9am-4pm
Local designer Linda Florence will create a 60s living room in the square and fill it with stuff she's sourced in Deptford Market and the high street. More info at deptfordhighstreet.com and thelivinginstallationdeptford.tumblr.com

The Intertidal Cinema at Deptford Creek
Sat 13th 9.30-10.15pm, Sun 14th 9.40-10.40pm, Mon 15th 10.15-11pm
Hannah Fasching shows two films she has made about Deptford which overlay local peoples' narratives onto scenes of its architecture and landscape. Both can be viewed from the Ha'Penny Hatch footpath – one film is screened in an arch and another is cleverly projected onto the river bed.

Contemporary Craft & Art Weekend at Greenwich Market
Sat & Sun 13th & 14th September, 10am-5.30pm
Designers and makers will be demonstrating their crafts, including rag rug making, ironmongery, furniture making. For more info see Meet the Makers. Plus up to 80 designer makers in the market and exhibitions at the surrounding galleries.

Deptford Cinema Debut Screening

The newly formed Deptford Cinema invite you to join them tomorrow Friday 5th September at 7pm for a "lively evening of 16mm and video works celebrating local film artists and community projects from near and far". 39 Deptford Broadway SE8 4PQ

Go to www.deptfordcinema.org for more info on other events and regular meetings and check out their Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to buy a digital projection system. Local supporters have already donated over £4,500...!

New Deptford Cinema project

A public meeting was held (and very well attended) on Saturday to welcome people to the future site of Deptford Cinema, currently scheduled to open in the autumn. The not-for-profit project has taken on a shop at 39 Deptford Broadway and will be the only dedicated cinema in the borough of Lewisham! The space is big enough to have a 50-seat theatre, a cafe/lounge area, plus darkroom facilities for film processing and workshops.

Deptford Cinema needs volunteers to help get things off the ground and transform the space, so if you love film and want to get involved, get in touch with them. (The two geezers in the photo just happened to be outside while the meeting was going on inside, by the way!)

Email: info@deptfordcinema.org
Twitter: @deptfordcinema
Facebook: deptfordcinema
www.deptfordcinema.org

Possibly the worst Deptford date ever?

A short film by Jim Owen featuring Deptford station and two local actors – Crossfields resident Alistair Green and high street dweller Ingrid Oliver.

Steve McQueen to work on BBC drama and Yinka Shonibare at the National Maritime Museum

Although Oscar nominated film director Steve McQueen grew up in West London, it was when he was at Goldsmiths College doing his Fine Art degree that he realised his love of film. As he said on the Culture Show on BBC last night (and echoing many a Goldsmith Fine Art under-graduate who thinks they're on the wrong course), "When I was at Goldsmiths, I wanted to be at film school...and when I went to (Tisch film school in New York) I only stayed 3 months". He felt stifled by the limitations there – the Goldsmiths ethos had turned his head. For McQueen, "it was all about ideas". He went on to win the Turner Prize in 1999 after making several highly distinctive short films.

The 12 Years A Slave director is now working towards a new BBC drama about the lives of black Britons, claimed to be 'epic in scope' and covering 1968 to the present day, says the BBC. What better hands could such a high profile project be in that are in charge of a story about black people from all walks of life living in Britain in a period spanning fifty years?

Was there an open competition to which perhaps the UK's most talented black dramatists who've been working in theatre all these years might have pitched? Oh well never mind. Good luck, Steve, we're looking forward to it! Ask your writers to get in touch with your Deptford cousins, we don't want all the London scenes set in Notting Hill and Brixton, it was all gwan here y'know.

Meanwhile, another great artist and Goldsmiths Fine Arts Degree graduate, Yinka Shonibare MBE, is showing at the National Maritime Museum until 23 February.

Shonibare, who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2004, turns all the reverential baloney about Nelson on its head – by introducing new photographs into the museum's collection of paintings of Nelson at the Queen's House.

In Shonibare's reconstructed likenesses of the paintings, Nelson is accompanied by the black people who might inevitably have been there at the time if they hadn't been wiped from history (the short-focused history recorded and collected by the privileged of the time and henceforth).

The exhibition includes Shonibare's trademark Dutch wax 'African' printed costumes for Nelson and his lover, plus a beautiful outdoor sculpture of a flag in the Queen's Park on the Trafalgar Road side. His better known "Nelson's Ship in A Bottle" sits on the Greenwich Park side, originally displayed on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square and subsequently acquired by the Museum. A further work is displayed at the Observatory but you'll have to pay to get in.

At a public talk at the NMM late last year, Shonibare said that when he was young he'd always felt "museums were not for him and his like", but now he was "on the inside to change things from the inside out". It's no coincidence that Royal Museums Greenwich are making a special effort to address their hitherto highly narrow, blinkered and colonial approach to British Naval History by inviting Shonibare to tinker (they say "infiltrate") with their collection. Don't miss – and it's free.

(God forbid the estate agents pick up on this slice of 'vibrancy' - Ed.)

New Cross & Deptford Free Film Festival

The 2013 New Cross & Deptford Free Film Festival runs from Friday 26 April to Sunday 5 May. The festival is planned and run by local volunteers, with free screenings at local venues. Check out the programme here.

Also find the festival on Facebook and Twitter

Open air cinema tonight and beyond

Utrophia is hosting a rooftop cinema screening of eco-themed sci-fi classic Silent Running (1972) tonight at 7.30pm, presented by pop-up cinema The Vanishing Point in association with Scala Beyond. Tickets are pricey at £13 (£14.50 if you book online), but the evening will include quite a few interactive extras such as sci-fi themed installations, food, bar, ecological garden, live music, and if you come dressed as a robot you can get in for a tenner.

Meanwhile, if you like open air cinema, you can see FREE films outdoors at The Scoop at Tower Bridge. Part of More London Free Festival, they're showing free films on Wednesdays – Fridays at 7.30pm till 28th September in their 800-seat outdoor sunken ampitheatre next to City Hall. Check out the films on offer here.

Deptford Film Club: course for 18-30 year olds

Deptford Film Club asked us to flag up their summer course which starts tomorrow (they'd be happy to squeeze in any latecomers) :

Become a film festival producer
This summer, Deptford Film Club is building a pop-up cinema at the Stephen Lawrence Centre – and we’re recruiting a team of 18-30 year olds to run a short festival of film screenings in it.
We’ll teach you how to programme, publicise and manage a film festival. You’ll learn all the technical and legal aspects of running film events – and work out how to engage audiences with popular world cinema.
Click for more information and details

www.deptfordfilmclub.org/

Coming up: DEPTFORD

Just watched the first film in the seventh series of Coming Up, Channel 4's "talent scheme where new writers and directors have the opportunity to make an original film with guaranteed network broadcast".

The film was called NEW CROSS. However, Deptford film location fans will have spotted that most of the scenes were shot in Deptford rather than New Cross – except the pub scenes (possibly The Amersham Arms?). So why not call it DEPTFORD?

Inside Faircharm looking out at Holden House

Albury Street

Just off Albury Street

Ah! New Cross underpass, the one scene set in SE14

Ha'Penny Hatch footpath again...

The cast includes that bloke from Being Human, Russell Tovey (who always looks so bloody sad), plus Alice Sanders, Georgia Brown, Alex Lanipekun and Jordan Long. The director is David Stoddart and the writer is Laura Neal. More about them here.

Maybe we're being a little pedantic about the locations, and it's perhaps just as well the title of the piece wasn't changed to more accurately describe where the film was mostly shot, since the central character gets randomly mugged beaten up in the New Cross underpass (not in Deptford, in other words).

Watch again on 4OD.

Secret History of Our Streets and Nicholas Taylor

Martin Taylor wrote to local bloggers today to ask them to publicise the website he has set up to redress the misleading impression given of his father, Nick Taylor – and Deptford itself – in the documentary Secret History of Our Streets, broadcast on June 6th – or, how, as Martin puts it, "my dad was unfairly stitched up like a kipper by the Beeb".

With the help of his friends, he has also published a booklet and intends to deliver it around Deptford, door to door, in a concerted effort to clear his father's name. Martin says they have tried to get an apology out of the BBC, but "have given up as we were advised it would take a minimum of 12 months and we can't wait that long".

Both the website and leaflet aim to correct the false impressions the programme gave about Deptford's history – and how it is today – as well as set the record straight regarding Nick Taylor's 'involvement' in the demolition of much of Deptford's housing. Backed up with facts and figures about Deptford then and now, it makes for fascinating reading.

Regarding his father, Martin says, "Via the selective use of out-of-context quotes taken from several long conversations, the programme appears to have succeeded in given viewers a completely false impression...He stopped the bulldozers rather than starting them up...

"The programme showed a sequence of film shot in Deptford High Street when Mr Taylor, who had just come out of hospital having had a stroke and a triple heart bypass, was being questioned very aggressively about the demolitions in Reginald Road, even though the programme makers knew full well that what had happened to Reginald Road had nothing to do with him."

Martin concludes, "Nicholas Taylor's career as a councillor was dedicated to trying to preserve terraced houses and prevent the building of high rise estates...We think he deserves to receive an apology."

Go to deptfordptrs.com to read the real story – and, if you were as disappointed by the programme as we were, you can help to "restore the good name of Deptford and its community" by leaving your comments.

Not so secret history: Turning The Tide

It seems as though there was no one in Deptford who didn't watch The Secret History of Our Streets last night and wasn't moved by its content in one way or another.

Some were moved to tears, others were furious at the council and some were angry with the programme makers. A great many people who had been interviewed, even handed over family photos and talked at length about their love of the place, were naturally disappointed to have ended up on the cutting room floor. The rector of St Paul's was one such – there wasn't even a shot of his beautiful church. Old Archie – who obviously had a great life story to tell – stayed in the cut but Harry Hayward of DAGE got dropped, and where was Johnny's Hardware store and Fred's auntie and (fill in your own missing people)?

Others wondered why there was no mention of the positive things that are happening right now – why paint such a negative picture? (Answer: The clue is in the word "history"). Anyway, we hear John Price didn't really want to take part but was pleaded with when the programme makers 'uncovered' the evidence of the unneccessary 'slum clearance' which provided the hitherto missing glue for their narrative. Of course, a fairly prosperous family background of market trading promised useful cine footage as well (you had to be moderately well off to have a cine camera in those days).

By missing a lot out or skimming over broader issues (pre-war poverty, war damage, industrial decline, immigration etc), the programme delivered a powerful message about a singularly devasting episode in Deptford's history.

But much of the story which unfolded can already be found towards the end of Jess Steele's excellent book on Deptford, "Turning The Tide, The History of Everyday Deptford", first published in 1993 and essential reading for any Deptfordian. (ISBN 1-898536-00-7)

On page 195, Steele says "Perhaps most upsetting is the admission that by no means all of the streets cleared for the estates were slums...". Steele did not print a picture of the same report that was shown in the film nor lend it the same weight, but it was obviously not a secret in 1993, so could not have been that difficult to track down in 2012.

Of course the vintage and home cine film footage included in the Secret History film engaged our senses in a way a history book cannot. But going back to the book reveals a different picture and most strikingly shows how film can manipulate your senses beyond your reason. A particular casualty of truth in the film would appear to be Nicholas Taylor, the architect and councillor involved in the demolition of so many of Deptford's homes. Taylor is portrayed, through some clever editing, as a man with no heart, in league with the dystopian London planners, made to hang (as a commenter on the BBC's blog suggested) for the crimes of the past. Turning The Tide, on the other hand, reports a man who was extremely unhappy with the process. (See below).

The film also gives the impression Deptford was prosperous from Booth's day all the way to the full employment of the 50s then suddenly took a turn for the worse when idealistic planners wrecked the place. In truth, Deptford's fortunes have ebbed and flowed. Somewhere along the way in this tale-telling, the truth was lost.

People debated on the BBC blog, and on local blog Brockley Central, Shipwright's Palace pointed out further inaccuracies:  

"Wholesale clearance of individual dwellings for London County Council blocks began in Deptford as early as the 1890s around Watergate Street, Hughes Field, Deptford Green "For the Erection of Dwellings for the Working Classes". A second wave occurred in the 1930s such as Crossfields Estate and again immediately post-war in Tanner's Hill. The 1950's-70's clearance was a third wave.
The High Street (Butt Lane) was originally a residential street, largely developed during the eighteenth century, not Victorian as described."

However, the main point to be made here is that the programme makers presented us with "a secret" that came across to many viewers as a shocking 'big scoop'. But if we'd only read our history books, we'd know this stuff already. In the process, they have also tarnished the reputation of a man still living, Nicholas Taylor, whose heart may have been truer than the filmmakers'.

Nevertheless, if anyone has been woken up into realising how plans are made for us whilst we're asleep, then the film team must be congratulated for raising the profile of an issue that is central to Deptford at this time.

As Jess Steele points out "Lewisham does not even have a museum...If our history had not been treated with such indifference and ignorance we would have less need of full-scale regeneration...We have to turn this tide of neglect." p222

Turning The Tide
 
Steele admits at the beginning of her penultimate chapter that in trying to cover the history of Deptford from Roman times onwards, a topic as huge as the slum clearances and the building of council estates could only be roughly sketched and really demanded another book.

An historian born and bred locally, she was also an activist involved in ensuring the regeneration funds pouring into the area in the 90s went in the right direction. She found Nick Taylor to be a useful guide.

Nicholas Taylor, a young architectural journalist and Lewisham councillor in the early 1970s, had been writing polemical articles against tower blocks for a decade. Now he looks back at his fellow-councillors and remembers a kind of old Labour machismo which was excited by the scale of the buildings, by their 'phallic penetration of the skyline'....Taylor points out that "these little gardens and yards, full of washing and children and animals and all the stuff of daily life, were ruthlessly eliminated".  (p.193)

Taylor also defended the residents who had moved into Milton Court in 1971: "this estate is horrendous; there is a madness in the design". Old Deptford councillors "never understood why people weren't grateful for these estates. How dare they form a TA and start attacking the council when they'd hardly moved in?". (p.194)

Taylor had, however, been in favour of demolishing some of the old houses in the area Milton Court was built on, since they were so badly built – cracking apart and subsiding on poor foundations – and were in danger of falling down anyway. Not because they were 'slums'. Steele goes on:

Nevertheless "the replacement of companionably unhygienic slums by soulless tower blocks with broken lifts" (Macgregor 1987) has haunted the memories of Deptford people and planners. Perhaps most upsetting is the admission that by no means all of the streets cleared for the estates were slums...How many other houses were lost in Deptford through the ignorance and indifference of Lewisham planners? Cllr Taylor tells of taking other Lewisham councillors on a Saturday morning coach tour round Deptford, a part of their borough some of them had never ventured into...(p195)

Steele quotes a piece in the The Sunday Times (Peter Way): "Having destroyed a community, devastated trade, and broken up a good deal of workable low level housing the planners have just completed one of the alternatives: an awesome complex in which people are refusing to live..."

Steele also goes into the politics of how Deptford became part of Lewisham (rather than Greenwich), quoting the Deptford MP Sir Leslie Plummer, who said, "When Deptford was a civilised borough and community, the people of Lewisham were practically running around in woad...(whereas) we launched ships, and brought an empire to Elizabeth 1. We were not common scullions and cooks (like those in Lewisham who claimed King Alfred had burnt his cakes there); we were navigators who girdled the globe and brought riches and treasure to this country." p.197

Another chapter is devoted to the two World Wars where she describes how the area was affected through its proximity to the docks – from which one can gather that a process of rebuilding and rehousing had been going on for some time. She also details the economic ups and downs that occurred between Booth's time and the late 20th century which caused Deptford's fortunes to rise and fall accordingly – with focus on the charitable work and voluntary efforts that helped to shape the positive places and things we see today (The Albany for instance).

In her final chapter Steele tackles the subject of racism which also has a resonance that this film could not tackle, and which she describes as "an elastic and manipulable ideology, surviving by adaptation to specific circumstances. Its logic is filled with useful blindnesses and justifying amnesia". (p211)

Epilogue ('History dying and demolished all the time')

In her epilogue (written in 1993), Steele quotes another local activist of that time, Richard Walker:

The main question...is "whether inherent design faults and the continuing ghettoisation of the inner city underclass can be addressed by capital investment, administered through Lewisham Housing Department, major architectural consultants and big construction firms. Are these not merely the 1990s version of the agents who built these estates in the first place?" (p228)

The problem of housing the underclass was handed over a few years later to Lewisham Homes aka Lewisham Council (Crossfields chose this option in consultation) and to various Housing Associations, but the present call to 'build new housing' has the same ring of the old triumvirate: a local authority (whose planning committee has no training in planning), and architects working with giant construction firms.

Clearly an update from Jess Steele, or her equivalent, would be welcome.

In some ways the neglect of Deptford has been a blessing. We have many beautiful buildings in the High St...Other buildings all over the borough have scraped past the redevelopers precisely because the area was deemed so worthless...(p225)

If anyone has other books or useful resources on this topic they can recommend please leave a comment.

UPDATE 12-06-2012
See Deptford Misc 

UPDATE 14-06-2012
Thanks to Deprford Misc for link to Martin Taylor speaking about his father in Guardian letters. 
Also, copies of Turning The Tide are available at Creekside Centre at normal retail price.

UPDATE 19-06-2012
Thanks to Deptford Misc for this link: www.dfpbooks.co.uk/index.html

UPDATE 19-06-2012
South London Press carries a story from Nick Taylor himself in their Tuesday paper. Unfortunately it's not available to view online without subscription. Taylor says:

"I had nothing to do with these decisions. I was one of the first campaigners in England against the 1960s policy of bulldozing houses and replacing them with tower blocks....the first thing I did when I was elected to the council in May 1971 was to stop the demolition of the houses in Gosterwood Street, Etta Street, and the remaining half of Rolf Street. When I was elected in 1971, the High Street was in a terrible state and I played a major part in saving the street, bringing it back to a flourishing life, bring the market back into it in 1975, so that it is now renowned as one of the best places in London for its vibrant and varied shops and stalls." (Er, steady on, Nick).

Nick's son, Martin, is quoted as saying, "My father and I are furious and extremely upset. He has spent his life working for the good of Deptford and is devastated at the way in which the film makers have portrayed him."

A BBC spokesman says: "The film includes a line which clearly stated the contributor in question wasn't on the council when the decision to demolish Reginald Road was taken."

Secret History of Our Streets airs tonight on BBC2

'Creek Street' residents were labourers, poorer artisans and street sellers. What has changed since 1889?

Back in January 2011, Crosswhatfields posted that it had been contacted by Century/Halcyon Heart Films, with a request for us to help them find people they could interview for their documentary series on six London streets – one of which was Deptford High Street.

We had already posted quite a bit about Charles Booth's 1889 Poverty Maps of London (see links below), which the producers were using as a starting point to base their enquiry on. They wanted to know: how have these streets changed in the past 120 years?

Whether we were any help or not (we were slightly concerned that people's stories might end up on the cutting room floor), they have now finished making their series, and the first episode of The Secret History of our Streets airs tonight on BBC2 at 9pm – and it's all about Deptford High Street.

To give you a flavour, Time Out previewed the Deptford episode last week – the programme looks set to reveal an interesting story about slum clearance and social engineering. Also see the short clip on the BBC 2 website.

Meanwhile, here's what Marmoset wrote on Crosswhatfields about Booth's Poverty Map of Deptford:

A brief history of Deptford-Greenwich borders October 2010
Putting the clock back in Deptford (1) October 2010
Putting the clock back in Deptford (2) November 2010
Putting the clock back in Deptford (3) November 2010

You can view Booth's Poverty Map at the Charles Booth Online Archive, courtesy of the London School of Economics.

Filming tonight on Deptford High Street

As the market cleared up this evening, a film crew was preparing for a shoot in the high street. The old Halifax shutters were covered with a new hoarding, and the high street drinkers were joshing with the security guys guarding the equipment in a van parked up by Paddy Power, where a cherry picker carrying floodlights promises to light up the street later on.

High street traders and residents have been told filming will take place from 9pm tonight till 9am tomorrow and that it's an advert for H&M. The process involves a huge number of vans and people (most of whom are camped out in the old Tidemill carpark with an equal number of security guards) and this is likely to result in less than 5 seconds of film!

News catch up

Thames Tunnel
Deptford Misc reported earlier in the week the encouraging news that the present Mayor Boris Johnson has called for the re-examination of five sites in the Tunnel project – including Deptford Church Street. "This site is adjacent to a school and on one of the few open spaces in this deprived area of London. The site will also impact on a busy section of the road network which is also an important bus route. I think there is more scope for alternative sites in this area, including the options examined in the first phase of consultation and again I urge you to search for a site that has lower impact."

A border row has now broken out, with Nick Raynsford (Labour MP for Greenwich & Woolwich) wading in to defend the "thousands" of residents at the alternative (and initially preferred) site at Borthwick Wharf. Perhaps it is time for Joan Ruddock to step in to defend Deptford and for Labour's Livingstone and Len Duvall to match Boris Johnson, with a promise to challenge Thames Water who have chosen to favour a privileged gated community over a poorer one and use HGVs on a busy road rather than use the river.

Or did Boris frame this one to set the cat among the pigeons, with the Tory revision of parliamentary boundaries set to have the Greenwich (Labour) consituency swallow most of (Labour) Deptford and Raynsford possibly taking the Deptford crown from Dame Joan (whilst its citizens remain in the very unroyal borough of Lewisham)? Unfortunately this Tunnel row news came too late to put the question to Joan personally when she was humbly knocking on doors last night and today reminding us to vote for Ken and Len.

New development starts work
The Deptford Dame reports on "The Movement" – Cathedral's new development on Norman Road which we wrote about in March 2011 when the planning application was submitted. We noted then that we were not consulted despite being in the consultation catchment area. Too late now. Your view east is about to be ruined.

Defeating the developers
Deptford Misc also reported that the Lord Clyde pub in Wotton Road was celebrating the defeat of developers who wanted to turn it into flats. The story goes some way to explain why developers have such a bad reputation: their planning application stated "The current use does not provide any positive contribution to the local area and therefore it’s replacement with a residential building is the most appropriate form of development." This prompted the landlord, who hosts a successful boxing club at the pub, to gather local support to object to the proposals. Read more at Deptford Misc. We also wrote about the Lord Clyde in March 2010 in the context of CAMRA's campaign to stop pubs being turned into flats.

New Cross & Deptford Free Film Festival
Both the Deptford Dame and Transpontine have flagged up the upcoming Free Film Festival (27 April–6 May). More details at www.freefilmfestivals.org. We note that among the offerings, there will be a screening of The Tunnel, a film about the late comedian Malcom Hardee and his infamous club, in the new 40-seater 'cinema in a lorry' at the Big Red Pizzeria.

Virgin London Marathon
On your doorstep Sunday 22 April. Check the website for more details of times and route plus new sponsors Virgin Money have plenty of merchandise to sell you! And The Duke will be serving breakfast from 9am.

Silent Cinema in the Deptford Project yard

UPDATE: FREE 'COMMUNITY' SCREENING for GREASE on Saturday 30th July. RSVP to get your free tickets here.


Don wireless headphones and watch these classic movies on the Deptford Project's full-size outdoor cinema screen. Seating is on recycled pallets with cushions under a large parachute canopy. We understand there will be popcorn and refreshments.

Doors open at 7pm, film starts 9pm. Tickets are £10. Bookings and more details here.

Coming up:
Americana Weekend
Thursday 28 July: Easy Rider
Friday 29 July: Pretty in Pink
Saturday 30 July: Grease
Weepy Weekend
Thursday 11 August: Terms of Endearment
Friday 12 August: Brokeback Mountain
Saturday 13 August: Beaches
Black & White Classics (start at 8.45pm)
Thursday 18 August: The General with Tom Baker & Laurence Elliot Potter on accordian and piano
Friday 19 August: Nosferatu with live piano performance
Saturday 20 August: Metropolis with 30 minutes extra remastered footage and a brand new score written by Paul Hines and performed by Serum Electronique

Official: Chris Moyles is lame.

You get to see some odd sights on the Ha'penny Hatch.  This afternoon's sight from my balcony looked like this.

On the left, a handful of token urban youth, on the right, a muddle of Morris dancers and mediatricians.  They appeared to be dancing intermittently without music. 

Approaching closer, it appeared to be a hammed-up dance off between the two groups of ''dancers''.  This little bit of ha'penny opera appeared to finish with Chris Moyles accepting defeat while explaining to the victors that he only had one leg.  Which, given that he'd just been pretending to Morris dance on two legs, had to be a pretty lame excuse.

A woman cycling over the bridge saw me on my bike and asked whether I had a pump for her very flat front tyre.  As I fiddled vainly with my pump valve adaptor, I mentioned something about Chris Moyles.  ''Oh yes'' she said and, leaning forward she confided, ''He's a twat.  He talks rubbish.''

So there you have it: bicycle maintenance, astute criticisms of popular culture and work for the BBC costumes department, all on our bridge.

Johnny Deppford

See BBC News (last link here)

"Hollywood star Johnny Depp has made an unannounced visit to a London primary school after receiving a letter from one of its pupils. The actor turned up at the school in Greenwich, South London, dressed as his Pirates of the Caribbean alter-ego Captain Jack Sparrow. He said nine-year-old Beatrice had written to Captain Jack, asking him to lead a mutiny against her teachers. Mobile phone footage captured his surprise visit to the classroom."

And here is Jimmy Depp, spotted out and about with his dog, Ghost, in Deptford High Street last Tuesday nonchalantly passing the Coral Re-up (see post here) and magically captured on the Harry and Paul show on the Beeb on Wednesday night.

See the Pirates' set building in Greenwich that Marmoset posted here and here...

Act like a Greenwich pirate day

I was asked a couple of days ago whether I knew what the animal stables were doing in the Royal Naval College.  No idea but I wandered over there this afternoon to have a look.  There's an enormous amount of activity going on over there.  There are around 60 horses being stabled in there at the moment.  Walking further on, I came across some rather impressive props - this clearly was no low budget production.  For example, that wall in the photo below wasn't there last time I visited. 

Neither was this wall...

Nor this one...

And the bunting didn't ring any bells either.





The security man I spoke to didn't want to say what film they were filming.  ''Not allowed to say.''  ''Well, Blackbeard Productions is a bit of a giveaway, isn't it?''  I replied.

It turns out that tomorrow (Mon 27 September) there will be around 600 extras and 60 horses with carriages milling around the place.  And just 8 days after Talk Like a Pirate Day, there will also be a lot of people celebrating Act Like a Pirate Day.  And it looks like you might be in for an unpleasant ride if you fail to get into the spirit of the occasion.

 EDIT: Deptford Dame has just pointed out that the Greenwich Phantom has done a couple of posts about this.  There's background and photos of the set construction at earlier stages here and here

Free Night at Silent Cinema - Saturday 19th September

It's Zombie Night at the Deptford Project on Saturday night. Shaun of the Dead is showing at Silent Cinema and it's FREE to anyone who books now...Fancy dress is encouraged, but if that's not your thing, there'll be a face painter on hand to give you the requisite ghoulish look and everyone attending may be photographed in a group zombie portrait...Join in the fun by emailing: rebecca@studioraw.co.uk.

Did you know that the pub featured in the film was actually The Duke of Albany in New Cross, which was turned into flats soon after the film was made?