Featured local business - Clubtek

Forest

SE23

Hill

I was already a regular visitor to Clubtek’s DJ shop when it was in Penge, but now they're even handier in Stanstead Road, just a few doors down from Shannon’s Garden Centre - another old favourite. It’s by no means just for DJs and bands...
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Music Monday: Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and the Critics Group in Beckenham

Jan

22

2024

In musical terms the folk singer Ewan MacColl (1915-1989) is associated in most people's minds with the Salford where he was raised (the subject of his song Dirty Old Town) and the Scotland of his parents with which he so strongly identified. But many of his most creative years were actually spent in the outer ...
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Beckenham · clapham · Croydon · Ewan MacColl · folk music · Peggy Seeger · Transpontine

Goldsmiths Occupations: a chronology

Jan

6

2024

Found at the awesome 56a Info Shop archive a copy of SHIP Network News (Southwark Homeless Information Project) reports an occupation at Goldsmiths College in Summer 1991, specifically of the  Outreach Unit at 32 Lewisham Way which had just been closed down. 'the occupiers have opened it up to anyone and everyone' and proclaimed a ...
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cuts · Goldsmiths · occupations · protest · Transpontine

Music Monday: Jacqui McShee and Pentangle

Dec

25

2023

Happy 80th birthday Jacqui McShee, born in Catford on Christmas Day 1943. Like many of their generation, Jacqui and her sister Pam got involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the early 1960s, and through this got involved in the folk music scene. With friends she started a folk club at the the Red ...
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folk music · Music Monday · Pentangle · Transpontine

2024 London Calendars

Dec

24

2023

Couple of fine 2024 calendars on sale at the Word bookshop in New Cross (and other local independent bookshops). South East London pubs by Lydia Wood is the latest outcome of her project of aiming to draw every pub in London. London Rebel History 2024 from Past Tense does what it says on the tin. 
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Transpontine

2024 London Calendars

Dec

24

2023

Couple of fine 2024 calendars on sale at the Word bookshop in New Cross (and other local independent bookshops). South East London pubs by Lydia Wood is the latest outcome of her project of aiming to draw every pub in London. London Rebel History 2024 from Past Tense does what it says on the tin. 
read more →

Transpontine

A young Irish woman in Lewisham, 1959

Dec

8

2023

Leaving aside the dubious framing of this story ('workaday beauties' ffs), some nice local detail of a young Irish women's life in Lewisham 1959 - Mary O'Donoghue from Cork working in the Robertson Jam Factory in Catford and socialising at the Harp Club in New Cross
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Catford · Harp Club · Irish · Lewisham · Transpontine

Flaneuse/’London as a man’s city’

Dec

6

2023

I recently read Laura Elkin's 'Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London' which explores the act of women's public presence on the streets as a subversive practice:'It would be nice, ideal even, if we didn't have to subdivide by gender - male walkers, female walkers, flâneurs and flâneuses - ...
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feminism · Transpontine · walking

Music Monday: Chainska songs of Brockley and New Cross

Nov

27

2023

Popular South London ska band Chainska include plenty of local references on their album 'Tales of a Londoner' which came out last year (and I'm only now catching up with).'Down the Barge' tells of nights out in the Brockley Barge, which features in the video: Another pub, currently closed, is mentioned in New Cross Stomp: ...
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Brockley Barge · Music Monday · Transpontine · White Hart (New Cross)

Life is one big road with a lot of sign

Nov

17

2023

A traffic sign in New Cross Road, near to the bus garage, has been hosting a running commentary on the state of the world for over a year.The latest iteration photographed today  includes the very timely 'ceasefire now', along with 'Just Stop Oil',  'A wealth tax could easily fund the NHS' and 'support workers  when ...
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graffiti/street art/murals · New Cross Road · Transpontine

Small Worlds – Caleb Azumah Nelson

Nov

7

2023

Like his previous novel 'Open Water', 'Small Worlds' by Caleb Azumah Nelson is a beautifully written slice of young London African life, set in South London. In this instance the story of the unfolding family and intimate relationships of a young jazz musician living in Peckham - and visiting Ghana - is set between 2010 and ...
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Beckenham Place Park · Bussey Building · novels · Peckham · Transpontine