London Lamp Posts

You notice stickers pasted on lamposts. Along Brick Lane, their edges peel off, their ink crying from the rain. Their slogans shriek- bold blocks of black that bolster as you slow down for a second, trying to decipher what these people are screaming about. These people, like the ‘genuine locals’ who mutter and murmur and flock to the markets on Sundays to barter for broccoli and walk along the canal in Bethnal Green. These people that pass through on their campaigns, slapping slogans on hard metal as they weave through the city with satchels stuffed with leaflets and keychains. They’re the ones that grab you at the station. ‘Have you got a minute?’ No. Those people that annoy the rest- yet are the ones we’ve all been- those that don’t belong here and yet are gripped by the place, intoxicated by the air, who come with iphones and polaroid cameras, some of them, and snap snippets of graffiti and take arty shots of bridges and that one poster on that one streetlamp that simply reads- HUG A LAMPOST. NOBODY WILL THINK YOU’RE WEIRD. They are the ones supercharged by oat milk lattes and seeded bagels. All of these people notice the colourful collages pasted on ordinary sentinels of streetlamps. They take stock of what it says of the place. They are sticks in the mud that ideas cling onto. A sieve for society.

WWF- the plump outline of a panda sits dutifully. Amnesty, a candle confined within barbed wire; its flame stronger than we know. Extinction Rebellion, no words needed. Often these stickers overlap; on the same metal pole people scream for unity and understanding, others chant dissent, convincing the world not of their bravery, but their ignorance. Around here, cries of POLITICAL POWER TO THE PEOPLE! BORIS OUT NOW! are slotted alongside adverts for vintage kilo sales, each location a variation of the same. They all claim to be THE BIGGEST AND BEST IN LONDON!

You can almost hear the toll of the workhouse bell and the clomps of steel-capped boots on cobbled streets. You think of that podcast you listened to one morning, American presenters refer to the Victorian East End as ‘hell on earth’ despite only touring Westminster.

Often random quotations from people everyone pretends to know have been written out by hand with a thick black pen in an odd slanting font and stuck up with sticky tape. The off-brand kind; bubbles of air fogged up with drops of condensation trapped. Each lamppost is a mess of colour around here. Imagine a shelf in a paint shop crashing to the floor. Roll a metal pole in it. Then stick on the opinions of strangers and slot it back in the streets near Shoreditch. That’s Brick Lane.

If you move out to the part of London that pretends to be central but knows that it’s lying, the end of the Victoria Line and the end of the day, the lamp posts are clothed in a true combination of the city and the rough-around-the-edges slew of suburbia. Calls for lost cats have been laminated; their edges jabbed with a holepunch and poked with string, tied up with loose double-knots. Below a black and white picture (because printing is expensive) an upset owner has tapped

ANSWERS TO ‘MUFFIN’ into a keyboard. LAST SEEN AROUND THE NEWSAGENTS NEAR THE SCHOOL. Their hands shake.

Half-hearted adverts for web design services sit above the buttons for traffic lights at odd angles. People ignore them as they plug in their podcasts and plod along. In Walthamstow, the odd liberal label will find a way to wrap itself around a streetlamp, as though the wind has carried it North from the screams of Parliament Square, though here they are more subtle. They don’t tend to shriek. A tiny cartoon heart made up of colliding colours and a simple strapline reads

LOVE IS LOVE.

The words sit inside the curve of the picture, and you can only see them if you know to squint. They’re less likely to be ripped off in the rage of a person who doesn’t see in all shades. Discount codes for local greengrocers and booze shops sit idly on the lamp posts of Blackhorse Road and around the bend towards Tottenham Hale. A sheet of A4 has been cut at the bottom so that little bits resemble the pleats of a skirt. Some guy named Darren is flogging his stuff because he’s moving in with his girlfriend. You’re happy for Darren.

CONVERTIBLE SOFA BED

is listed at the top.

SOME POTS AND PANS

are available, too. You wish Darren had been slightly more specific.

DESK LIGHT.

You tear off one of the little paper tabs with Darren’s number on it and slot it into your wallet. Your desk light broke last week. A local artist promotes an exhibition that will, most likely, take place in a retro design studio converted from a storage facility. You idly wonder when exposed wood came into Vogue. There is a website address running along the bottom of the poster that nobody will visit.

Our footsteps are fleeting. Welcome to the world of student accommodation, rented flats, council estates and half-way houses. The crowd in the Co-Op changes on the daily- the bread picked up by bankers; the milk reached for by self-employed creators and the sweets grabbed by the hands of frantic school children that hum on the way home. East 17 from E17- even today they croon through radios all December. Won’t you stay another day?

Welcome to Walthamstow. No one will remember you.

Along the streets of Knightsbridge and Kensington, the lamp posts have shedded the chipped paint that chokes them in the East End. Here, elegant glass orbs protrude from sleek black covers; the poles they sit on are smooth and professional, their edges uncovered and glossy. They watch streets filled with perfumed air and leisurely arm-in-arm strolls to Green Park. Shoes slap pavements and fingers tap Iphone screens. Around here, people don’t put posters up on street lamps. The occasional advert for gigs at Wembley by artists you’ve never heard of are neatly pasted onto electrical boxes, their edges glued down evenly. The lines are crisp. So are the divides.

This place is changing and charged. No longer are haughty eyes of the highly-educated the only glances that slice through the air. Turkish cafes with elaborate smoking equipment and obscenely fluffy blankets jostle for position next to extortionate estate agents and shop fronts with nothing more than a few expensive bags on clear plastic pedestals. Though the Waitroses of the world have an electoral stronghold here, the Lidl is round the corner and the Primark outdoes the Selfridges.

Along Brompton Road the Oratory rises up, its dome scratching the sky and chatting with the roof of the V and A. The Catholic heart of the city, people come every week in their long skirts or suits- the women with delicate lace veils wrapped up in their handbags. A solemn black sign attached to the wire railings reads Sunday Services: English and Latin Mass. Good luck entering the building unless your knees are covered and a Rosary is wrapped around your wrist.

But around the back, you’ll find a very different type of Church- their signs asking passers-by Is there more to life than this? The huge red question mark wonders with you. Hastily-erected sandwich boards with Parking this way! and This way to church! It’s so good to see you! line the path to Holy Trinity Brompton; a Church that has given up on hymns in favour of ‘modern’ Christian songs by Bethel, Cory Asebury and Hillsong. They have free donuts and coffee before the service and encourage anyone to join a small Tuesday night discussion group.

Up Exhibition Road, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has people with black badges handing out glossy leaflets and books; the notices adorning their door frame encouraging people to Come in and see our Church! Ask us questions!

This melting-pot of faith and fundamentals will boil you alive if you stay on the stove. Turn down the flames.

On the lamps that line the stuccoed squares set around small gardens are parking signs reminding visitors that these spots are for residents only, and good luck finding anywhere else. You belong on the other side of the M25, it seems. It starts to rain as you round the corner of the Natural History Museum and head towards Hyde Park, the water not running in rivulets down the front of your raincoat but sticking to your smile and making your hair go frizzy. Your lungs are wet with it and the shoes that slap the pale pavements slip and slide. The trees are smothered by the light mist that has settled over the buildings. The moisture begins to pool and run off the gig stickers pasted onto electrical boxes.

The walk along Whitechapel Road will forever be a culture shock. The market stalls laden with fish, vegetables, jewellery, cloth, fruit, noodles, coffee, tea, sit behind vendors that lean against metal poles or shout that their mangoes are fresh. Stickers that silently protest evictions taking place across Tower Hamlets cling idly to chipped bricks that make up side streets, their arms like veins reaching out beyond fingertips. The Anarchist Bookshop boasts ‘a collection of left-wing and Marxist texts. Best prices in East London.’ A wobbly arrow directs visitors down one of the alleys barely wider than your shoulders.

People write onto the world here. Whitechapel lives in suspended animation, and its very air seems to know it.

The KFCs and Tescos of the world may sit alongside the modern Tube stations of Aldgate and Aldgate East, but its inhabitants are trapped as commuters on the District Line. Some aspire to leave the boxy government housing, where others are happy to remain here- their heads filled with the perverse joy of ‘Whitechapelers’ taking on the authorities.

Huge billboards brag the latest series on Hulu. Posters grasping the metal waves of corrugated iron have colour splashed across them- art gallery openings, clothing sales and a new perfume that will apparently make you feel like you’re in the desert. These are only ever left unobstructed for a day- before you can blink, stickers in the shape of clenched fists or the subtle crest of a Pride flag start to grow over the edges; their text encroaching like lichen across wet stones by the river.

Here, we use our history. Dead since the 1890s, Jack the Ripper walks free. Maybe a dusty greatcoat, crisp coat or even dress, he still lurks behind each streetlight. His shadow licks the coarse bricks as he laughs at Metropolitan Police cars. One hundred and thirty years on, he still grips us. His violence like a huge Monopoly hotel that has claimed these streets. Podcaststers still talk about him- historians still wonder about him- criminologists still rage against him. On Whitechapel Road, there is even a fish place called ‘Jack the Chipper.’ Get it?

On every lamppost here are crummy adverts for ‘Jack the Ripper Walking Tours’ that let you tread on the same worn cobblestones and shiver in spite of your warm jacket. ‘We set off every day at nightfall behind The Blind Beggar pub.’

The same pub where Ronnie Kray killed in the ‘60s. The residents reclaim it. Nothing to fear here.

No need for lamp posts in the city. No lost cats or art exhibits or calls to save the planet.

The light pours from office windows and spills from foyers, waves of LED bulbs splash against the shores, their scummy spray illuminating the cold, harsh streets. No need for community when there’s a Pret every couple of steps, their cash registers choked with briefcase-carrying clones all paying with their watches. If someone did lose a pet around here, it would be wearing a new collar by sundown. Nobody would have time to look at street lamp stickers anyway. Who could spare a minute to wonder if that anti-vaxx slogan will be ripped off in a couple of days? It’s true what they say. The City never sleeps, but it also never slows. The face of the City doesn’t have to be lit. Nobody comes here at night anyway, if they can help it. Most desks are cleared by six thirty, pens crammed into pockets, the lifts like human dumb-waiters that carry workers down and deposit them along the roads. The wrinkles of the place fall into shadow because they’ll be back on Monday morning, not a moment before eight AM.

Laura has a blind date with a guy called Darren- apparently he’s just broken up with his girlfriend and is moving to the City.

The dark eyes watch from narrow alleyways that were once home to pickpockets plucked straight from the pages of Oliver Twist. They left their one-room rents in Whitechapel and lurked like a bad smell among the old public houses selling ale by the pint. It’s hard to imagine. In front of the office blocks that make you feel dizzy if you look at the top, there is the odd metal pole on the curb with nothing but a parking warning attached. Sometimes, the City of London Council will scream: No. Fly. Tipping. and these desperate begs are always sat above piles of discarded plastic bags, most of them split open like a gaping wound; coffee cups and wooden stirrers bleeding onto the tarmac. Torn sugar packets and empty sandwich containers seem to float. There is no flickering light attached. The black metal simply cuts off. You step away from Bank and turn your back on Tower Hill.

Around the light but faded majesty of St Paul’s Cathedral, the sky is brighter and the financial offices fall away like a plane emerging from clumps of clouds. The street lights have returned, and whilst their poles remain sparse, they stand proudly in the fading light that caresses the steeples. Odd and unspeaking sentinels that have remained since the bombing.