#14: The Scoop
A series of hard-hitting tidbits about London life, including an insight into the cultural icon that is Henry Hoover.
Tag: new episode
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
#4: Exploring New Cross (+ bonus song)
In this episode we learn about the place we now call home.
“In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.”
So eloquent is the opening to Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (one of my all-time favourite novels), that those three sentences, drifting as they do between histories and worlds, truths and fictions, contain all the confusion, lyricism and complexity of a full-blown biblia sacra. The simple enormity of it: how one thing is in fact many. My sister gave me a copy for my 21st and it’s travelled with me across the globe, a beautiful old dog-eared and fox-blotched thing. In it Okri asks whose stories should we believe: those told by people with self-proclaimed authority, or those we tell each other? Our local histories birth and sustain our homes, the places we live: material, self evident and layered; our daily battles prove we’re not as fragile as maybe we imagine — despite logical misgivings and insecurities about the world outside; and our shared stories branch out to the whole world, continuing further than one individual, beyond each of us, not limited to one time or place.
Join us as we walk the streets of our Borough, learning about its fearless history (the ‘Battle of Lewisham’, the tragic New Cross Road Fire and how the New Cross Library was saved) and discover the day-to-day actions of the people keeping us safe, connected and sane during lockdown (mutual aid groups, Telegraph Hill Radio, the Doorstep Disco). We acknowledge everyone who keeps the stories of SE14 alive.
Thanks to Jay, Vedina & Unregistered Master Builder for letting us use their audio Jay Bernard: www.jaybernard.co.uk Jay’s work can also be found at Speaking Volumes. Vedina Rose: www.vedinarosemusic.com Opening & 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)
Not in the mood for anything too heavy? Here are some cool London links we’ve come across Bookcase Credibility: Twitter @BCredibility and Instagram #bookcaseTelegraph Hill Radio (enjoy the ‘doorstep disco’)Waltham Stories PodcastBlack History MonthLondon Community Video ArchiveGreat women you should know about
Contact Facebook: @CraigsAudioWorks Twitter & Instagram: @LDNbylockdownAvailable linktr.ee/LondonbyLockdown