July 2013 – STUFF HAPPENS

It’s a boy

Photography from the front line …

The grey stuff inexpertly photographed by me from the platform at Royal Oak Tube Station is a big pile of London clay, excavated from somewhere under central London to create Crossrail, a new commuter train service operating east-west across London. By the time the new trains begin operating in 2018, 26 miles of new tunnel […]

by Alex Hickman

Notes on walking home

Today was the hottest day of the year. I left the sweltering metropolis on the 6.33 out of Paddington. In Reading the parks were yellow and scuffed. The Kennet’s water meadows ran a startling green colour. After Hungerford the railway line follows the canal, which was cobalt-coloured and undisturbed by a breeze of any kind. All […]

by Alex Hickman

Notes on Mayfair

The day began in Cairo with the army shooting at a Muslim Brotherhood demonstration outside a barracks. The army claimed that soldiers had come under sniper fire – and that a soldier had been shot in the head. The Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, accused soldiers of shooting at […]

by Alex Hickman

July evening ii

It being so dry, the stale water in our paddling pool cannot be wasted, so I chuck in the watering can and keep my bare foot on its neck until it is drowned. The spout expels last air, thus – and the can is heavy again, corpsed water which spills over on my walk to […]

by Alex Hickman

July evening

Green watering can As light as it is hard-engineered, Green plastic and moulded Wide-bottomed and spouted to taper two gallons in constant discipline, Precisely to the earth where it is most needed. How many have been made to this particular design – One thousand? One hundred million? Their pattern is Greek or Egyptian, but this […]