diamond geezer

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Thank you for your comments yesterday. I hoped for 100 comments and you actually left 144! Perhaps more impressively the comments were left by 93 different people, which is quite frankly astonishing given a) it was the weekend b) I was writing about local stuff c) blogging is well past its peak. What's more most of the comments were interesting and perceptive rather than simply written for the sake of it. The 100th comment was left by gruntbuggly, just before noon, in the first comments box.

This post is another unfocused pot pourri of local stuff, but don't feel you need to respond this time.

These are new hoardings in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park not far from the stadium. 'Follow us on Social' they say, then show four logos of socials you might follow them on. What's interesting is that Twitter no longer appears, or X as we should now call it, only Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. A couple of years ago Twitter would have been a shoo-in, but since toxic Muskification it seems QEOP no longer feel the need to mention it. They do still tweet so they've not left the platform, and they do still link to X from their website, but these hoardings are up for the long term and clearly someone wasn't having it. The following data suggests that maybe Facebook was the one they should have missed out (and also that they're probably overdoing it on LinkedIn).

Number of times @queenelizabetholympicpark has posted so far this month
Instagram 10, LinkedIn 8, Twitter 6, TikTok 6, Facebook 3

A new art trail in Leyton celebrates the area's connections to Leyton Orient Football Club. It's called Home Team and it's been curated by local visual artist (and former club steward) Jake Green. Several shops along the High Road are displaying his photographs, while Flying Carpets includes bespoke textile tapestries by Tamasyn Gambell and The Key Shop has a hand-painted mural of Omar Beckles. I stumbled upon the centrepiece photographs adorning the bandstand in the centre of Coronation Gardens, including two frisky mascots, a bescarfed supporter and a rather gorgeous sunlit image of the East Stand. An accompanying reminiscent 17 minute soundscape can be heard on the trail's website. Obviously it'll all mean more if the O's are engraved on your heart but the passion will resonate with any lower league supporter. Home Team runs from 1st March to 4th April, and remember not all of London's best art is in the middle.

Here's more art, rather nearer to the middle, at Gilbert and George's new-ish gallery in Spitalfields. The subject is the LONDON PICTURES, the largest group of pictures the artists ever created, as previously seen on a foreign tour in 2012. Each picture is based on a London newspaper headline, I suspect from the Evening Standard, then grouped by keyword to create a wall of Sex, a wall of Death, ditto Knife, Suicide, Shooting, Money etc. Apparently these panels offer "a directory of urban human behaviour and a moral portrait of our times", and were "created from the sorting and classification by subject of 3712 newspaper posters stolen by Gilbert & George over a number of years". It's a bit of a one-trick idea to be honest, but then G&G's work often is, and if nothing else it's fascinating to see how news has and hasn't changed. Until 29th March, and like the new Standard all for free.

March is usually the best month to see the flowers at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, one of London's 'Magnificent Seven', now evocatively preserved as a local nature reserve. It's particularly renowned for its spring bulbs, hence a map near the Mile End entrance shows what you might see and suggests the best route to spot them. You can't miss the daffodils, crocuses and snowdrops at present, not quite wherever you walk but widespread enough to gladden the soul throughout. I looked in vain for the Red Admiral butterfly the Gentle Author first spotted in 2011, then again in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, then again last month, but its descendants must still be flying around somewhere. If you've never visited come soon, or try again in spring 2026.

posted 07:00 :