#16: Leaving London

My images of London are illusions. In this episode, hear about why we left, how we left, our last two London adventures, and the toll London took on Craig’s mental health.

Bonus Episode: More From the Migration Museum

Hear about Shona’s da’s story; learn about the highland clearances, the 10-pound poms, and how people fashion intimate connections and meaning in countries far from their place of birth; and travel through 400 years of UK Departures and Arrivals. (Two years ago today, the UK locked down.)
 
 
Dear Migration Museum,
Hope you’re well.
Just a note to let you know that I loved volunteering with you and it was really important to me. I know it might sound a little strange, saying that, given I wasn’t there too long, but you’re just such a brilliant place. (I know I don’t have to tell you that.)
When I first visited you as a punter, it hadn’t struck me before that I was a migrant. I’d grown up with so much UK media (mostly BBC productions on the ABC), and even now, the UK is presented as ‘the same’ as Australia; that we both understand each other’s cultures perfectly. Again, I don’t have to tell you this, but that’s not true. The difficulty in navigating London is that it’s all so similar, but there’s a tilt that makes everything awkward, more confusing and difficult, and it’s just askew enough to discombobulate me without my being able to put my finger on anything specific. Shona and I both knew going in we were travelling to the belly of the Colonial Beast, but I didn’t realise how ingrained that thinking is; how colonialism is celebrated in so many contexts without any reflection; and how the idea of ‘born-to-rule’ permeates. (But of course, you give us the other perspectives and stories.)
When I first approached you about volunteering I was suffering anxiety. I’d never had this before, and was having anxiety attacks — I didn’t know what was going on. I ended up working with a counsellor. Covid in London broke me. At the time the MM was perfect. So open and generous and caring.
Could you please let everyone I worked with know I really valued meeting them and enjoyed my time there. One regret is that I didn’t get to be part of the MM for longer and get to know each of you better.
Take care and stay safe.
 
Links
London’s Migration Museum, LewishamRachelle RomeoWe Are Lewisham (Borough of Culture, 2022)
Music & SFX
Opening & Closing Credits by Unregistered Master BuilderSFX and extra music from Epidemic SoundTouching Moments by Ketsa (Free Music Archive)
Mental Health Resources
How to Access Mental Health Services (NHS site)Mental Health AustraliaOnly Human Radio Show

#15: NOT the British Museum

A fete in a cemetery, a tiny underground mail train, and a museum in a shopping centre. Come and celebrate everything that’s NOT the British Museum.
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Nunhead Cemetery Open Day
Bug hunts, whittling workshops, crypt tours, a petting zoo, ice cream — a ‘typical’ open day. It’s spring and there’s still a chill to the air, but after months of lockdown we’re enjoying being outside. Before arriving if you’d asked me who’d be at the open day I’d have said three history buffs and a dog — but the place is bustling with hundreds of people: market stalls, a community choir, a ‘murder of goths’ (about 30, I’d say). The cemetery is being re-wilded, and as the forest reclaims the place, the wildlife has returned — mostly birds and squirrels, but on one walk we took here in the depths of the winter lockdown, on an overcast day with snow all around, we saw foxes darting between the gravestones and trees. Today, though, there are too many people for foxes. We finish at a pop-up cafe near the Scottish Martyrs monument, with tea and scones and jam. My nan used to make scones like that. The five Martyrs campaigned for parliamentary reform, and for their troubles were transported to Australia in 1794.
Mail Rail (Postal Museum)
Tunnels running east–west under London carrying narrow gauge driverless trains and delivering millions of letters a day. What more could you want? Royal Mail began as the personal mail service of one of the English kings. Some time later, if you could afford it, you could send letters where the recipient paid for them on arrival. When the Penny Black stamp was invented, the first adhesive stamp, postage was democratised and became accessible to anyone. By the 1920s millions of letters were being delivered to Londoners every day. The mail rail opened in 1927 to counter London’s congested streets and the ensuing delays. In the 1930s the GPO established a film unit. ‘Night Mail’ is its most famous production (Written by W.H. Auden). On our visit to the Museum we watched the surrealist jaunt ‘Love on the Wing’ (1939) by Norman McLaren. In theory it was an ad for the postal service, but the images plugged straight into my brain and I have no idea what it was about.
London’s Migration Museum (MM)
Popping into Sainsbury’s to grab some toilet paper? Why not stop at the Migration Museum? It’s Saturday morning and we bus it to Lewisham shopping centre. We sit up front of the top level of the double decker bus (for only two pounds you get a comprehensive view of the city, and every trip is like a mini tour). Founded about 20 years ago, and without a permanent home at the time, the MM was initially a series of collaborative exhibitions and events travelling all over the UK, including London, Oxford, Leicester and Edinburgh. From 2017 to 2019, it was based in Lambeth, then it moved to Lewisham. The bus delivers us to Hight Street’s bustle: market stalls selling fresh fish, fruit and vegetables, clothes, fabrics, and street food from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Nearby are Polish and Italian delis, Turkish and South Indian restaurants, and my favourite fish and chip shop in London: ‘Something Fishy’. The décor is straight out of the 1970s, and alongside an array of different fish (and chips) they serve pie and mash, and jellied eel. Before we head into the centre, Lewisham’s hustle calms me, makes me feel at ease with London on those days I feel anxious. It’s a human scale that feels about right; the perfect place for the Migration Museum.

#14: The Scoop

A series of hard-hitting tidbits about London life, including an insight into the cultural icon that is Henry Hoover.

Bonus Episode: Canberra By Covid

What’s it like to be twelve and in lockdown
In this short bonus episode our niece Kayla has recorded her reflections on the ways Covid-19 has impacted on her and her friends.
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We love everything about our nieces and nephew: their creativity, their questions, the songs they sing, the art they make… Every time we video call Tom and Sadie, Tom needs proof that if it’s day there, then it’s night here, and visa versa. Sadie has impeccable comedic timing for someone so young (she really does). And Kayla, who’s almost a teenager, loves, among other things, reading, writing and drawing. The artwork for this episode is hers. She’s a winter baby, and I met her a few hours after she was born — wrapped in a blanket and beanie. It’s hard to reconcile today’s independent 12-year-old with the tiny human who could hardly open her eyes back in 2008. I was on my way to live in Timor-Leste with Shona (she’d already left Australia to take up her new job) and didn’t know when I’d be back, so it was important to be there for those first hours, days and weeks of Kayla’s life. I’m not sure if humans do the same thing as some birds, but there’s an imprinting thing that happens where the babies imprint on a ‘suitable moving stimulus’ (ideally a parent bird). On the off chance humans do that as well, I wanted to be there. So, whether she likes it or not, Kayla’s stuck with me. Tom’s a runner and a climber, and Sadie’s into anything and everything her older brother is — she does not like to be left out, and fair call, too. The youngest is always pushing to be included. In saying that, they look after each other. We miss them all. Even in Australia, where we lived, Meanjin (Brisbane), is a long way from Tom and Sadie in Naarm (Melbourne), and from Kayla in Canberra, so we don’t always see them as much as we’d like. Being so far from home at the moment with so few options to return in the near future, it’s the video calls and photos bringing us regular updates on loose teeth, artworks, science experiments, cricket, ‘Bluey’, skiing, books, cubby houses, backgammon, trampoline-ing, lego, grazed knees, star wars, afl, and butterfly wings that keeps us going.
ThanksOpening & Closing Credits by Unregistered Master Builder Background music, ‘Touching Moments’ by Ketsa (Free Music Archive) Background music, Markus J Buehler Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV)
If Lockdown’s Getting You DownHow to Access Mental Health Services (NHS site)Mental Health AustraliaOnly Human Radio ShowPink Therapy
ContactFacebook: @CraigsAudioWorks  Twitter & Instagram: @LDNbylockdown Available linktr.ee/LondonbyLockdown

#1: Welcome to Lockdown

In this series we discover what it takes to fall in love with a new city during a pandemic.