The Face of New Cross
The Island welcomes everybody. Every day many visit and thousands pass close by, though few notice it. It is a place of brief encounters, of buried secrets, of moments glimpsed in rear-view mirrors. A brief pause on a journey. The Island has no border controls, no prisons, no buying and selling. Is it a utopia? Perhaps it could be, a sanctuary of non-interference amidst the surveillance cameras. The Island, London SE14 - much more than just a traffic island on the A2, New Cross Road.
Trams gather at the Island in around 1910, note there is actually a statue of a deer above the White Hart pub. From the Ideal Homes website.
Labels: history
A poignant moment on The Island this morning, this leaflet washed up on our shores featuring Ken Livingstone the outgoing Mayor of London. Although The Island is an autonomous republic, we have always enjoyed amicable relations with our neighbour, London. News reaches us that the new Mayor is an invader from an old tribe, the Etonians, who have plundered the city on many occasions. The Island doesn't have an army, but its partisans are on full alert.
On the island there are three cages which cover the entrances to the long-closed toilets. For some reason, the urban debris that accumulates inside them always seems to include drinking vessels.