The Big Smoke

The sixth part of our weekly serialised story by Stephen Emms.

Rose shivered on the saltmarsh. Stars filled the dark sky like a thousand silent starlings, and mastheads clinked in the harbour. She’d been on Mersea Island for four days but it felt like forever. There was something eerie here, like it was out of time.
 
As a child growing up in Westbourne Grove, before her Dad had walked out on them, he used to argue with her mum about living in the future. You’re never satisfied, he'd shout. Why make plans for next year? Why not enjoy your life, your job, your child right now? And he had fled back to Jamaica one rainy night, nearly twenty years ago, whilst she and Mum were sleeping.
 
But the way the world worked was not cause for mass despair. She strolled past yachts, dilapidated houseboats, and wo oden-slatted houses, the spectre of Bradwell Power Station across the estuary. The sea was part of her soul, Rose realized: what was that song Dad used...

For nine years, the poem Eurydice , by poet Sue Hubbard, has lightened the footsteps of weary commuters as they traverse the underpass between the IMAX cinema and Waterloo station. Sadly it is no more. Last weekend, a mystery vandal covered the poem – and the rest of the tunnel – in blue paint.

The poem, which the Arts Council and British Film Institute commissioned to be engraved on the underpass wall, was featured as one of the city's gems in Time Out's 'Best of London' issue at the end of September. We said, 'The poem makes the experience of taking the underpass a little less grim. It works brilliantly.' Weeks later, it has been painted over by yards of lavatory blue paint.

'It was a bit battered but, amazingly, despite the location, it had never been defaced. I took that as a compliment and a mark of respect. Over the years I have received numerous emails from complete strangers telling me how important it has been to them in a variety of...

The evangelicals are back in Walthamstow – and poor Hitch would be turning in his grave.

In 2003, Time Out reported on plans by the Brazilian evangelical Christian group, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God , to convert Walthamstow’s historic EMD cinema (one of London’s finest surviving art deco cinemas) into a venue for their show-biz style religious ceremonies.

The McGuffin Film Society (named in honour of Walthamstow’s most illustrious son, Alfred Hitchcock) had been screening arthouse films at the EMD for several years and they campaigned to save the site as a cinema. As a result, attempts by the church to gain planning permission for their scheme proved unsuccessful. And for a while, it looked as if the site might be redeveloped as a cinema.

But the venue’s future is under threat again, as church leaders recently launched a new bid to persuade local politicians to rubber stamp their plans.

A campaign has been mobilised with a host of...