St Edmunds Catholic Church
A slightly dark vision, snapped from Nell Keenan’s “rose garden”. The rose garden is/was a squalid mess of empty cans, litter, shit, and the usual paraphernalia (I think the church may be demolished now). Poor Nell Keenan, she has a plaque but what a memorial.
Architecture… now where do we start?
What is it about modern eclesiastical architecture that is so shit? In the past, churches and cathedrals were built to shock and awe.
I love Coventry Cathedral and The Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Fransisco, two modern examples that buck the trend. Sir Basil Spence commissioned artists such as Elizabeth Frink, John Piper and Graham Sutherland for Coventry Cathedral and it shows. In San Fransisco, from the right direction, on a good day, St Mary’s Cathedral looks like a giant breast. Which is no bad thing for a cathedral dedicated to The Blessed Virgin Mary. I’m sure there are others that I am not familiar with, but for me, the overall impression of recent church architecture (in the UK at least) is an homage to a cheap, tacky, soulless 1960s ‘dare to be different’ ethos.
Double murder scene
Nobody seemed to know very much about this. It had happened a few days earlier. There were some flowers by the door so somebody must have cared.
And while we are on the subject, the estate on which this happened was designed/architected along the lines of a Cornish fishing village, Polperro or something similar. Huh? Don’t you want to just curl up and die? I’m sure Prince Charles would approve but is it really the way to create *instant* community for a Liverpool overspill new town? It has been done cheaply and it shows. Polperro it is not. Have the people that commission these things never heard of William Morris or Le Corbusier? Rhetorical question I know, it all comes down to how cheaply they can do it. The ribbon looks good when it is cut and the place is shiny new. Fuck the people who actually live there and have to endure its shoddy physical and social demise.
They get left with the ribbon in the picture above. Cut that Mr Mayor.
I was a one time inhabitant of a relatively successful new town:
“a town designed for healthy living and industry of a size that makes possible a full measure of social life but not larger, surrounded by a rural belt; the whole of the land being in public ownership, or held in trust for the community“
The italics are mine. Margaret Thatcher fucked up that particular vision with “Right to buy” turning the whole thing into very desirable real estate with typical nightmare Little England Tory values. I had no love for the place but had some pride in the principles on which it was built.
Somehow, I don’t think it will happen in Skelmersdale.
And here we go again with our current unelected ‘coalition’ government delivering a right-wing ideological onslaught that looks set to eclipse that of the Thatcher government of 1979, only this time with the complete destruction of public services. To pay back the banks? To save the economy? Fuck ‘em.
Thatcher was elected, a major difference from David Cameron and his lightweights. Weirdly though, Cameron, like Thatcher, is once again helped along by lap-dog Lib-Dems (then known as the SDP) when (back then in 1981) they split the Labour vote and thus helped the Tories keep power in the 1980s and 1990s in a strangely parallel universe.
Nick Clegg, St Vince Cable et al, may you rot in hell. Nothing personal, I felt the same about Roy Jenkins, David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams in 1981. At least most of those had some gravitas, even statespersonship. Unlike your craven, power-seeking, sell-out selves. Do I make myself clear?
I feel like I’m very much stuck in a loop at both ends of my life.
Unbelievable.
Cat
The moggie ignored everything… Well done moggie, you have the right idea
Some heavy post-processing for dramatic effect, aka laying it on with a trowel.
by skinnyvoice
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Great pics from @skinnyvoice & reflections on building 4 the masses. He's right re: the grim estates in Skem http://bit.ly/dsJ8oF