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Is it wrong that I (lol) have been secretly really excited about the grand opening of the new East London line? For months, I’ve been watching through the 7th floor of the Tea building, down at the toy trains below as they’ve been taking their dress rehearsals up and down the tracks. For months we’ve been thinking, brilliant, a new transport option! At last Hackney will be opened up to the rest of london, freed from the shackles of buses and unreliable transport! At last, we’ll be able to get to the rest of london without being an hour late!

And now finally, after however many years in the making now they’re actually real and in use. So yesterday we decided to go and explore.

Butterflies in our bellies, we beheld the imposing new Shoreditch High Street sign above us. We walked through the spangly new gates and drank in the shiny new ticket machines, imagining the possibilities that seamless modern commuting would bring us, and all that new spare time we were going to have. In my dorky excitement, I’d thought there might have been some kind of
TFL launch party – you know – train-themed (non-alcoholic, of course)
drinks and
canapes to toast the new trains. Live bands, people dressed as Thomas
the Tank Engine. DJs playing the theme from Trainspotting, even.

But
there was just a few people milling
around. Some of them Anoraks like me, taking pictures. And in front of us was a small map which told of the many place that were now in reach to us. The world, it seemed, was now really our Oyster. What time do the trains run until, we wondered excitedly? Ten past eight in the evening. And where can we get to on this new train? 

New Cross Gate, via Wapping.

 

Lol and I have been a little obsessed with illustrator/print-maker/poet/wizard Rob Ryan for ages. Last weekend I went to the Somerset House Graphic Art Fair, where London based printmakers each recreate their studios for the general public to see. 

Print Club London were also there, but the one I was most excited to see was Rob Ryan. I had never seen him in real life before and was eager to see what he’d be like, and whether he’d have a tribe of very small-handed minions to help with his paper cutting. When I got there he did have many helpers indeed – Very pretty, very patient girls.

Dotted around the studio were these patient elves each quietly getting on with a task. One was painstakingly paper cutting the leaves out from a tree with a scalpel, one was screen printing, another laying the prints into a drying rack.

In the centre of it all was the man himself. He was casually sketching out a new design on a layout pad. He seemed totally un-bothered by the hoards of people staring at him like he was in a printmaking zoo of some kind.

What I loved most about his studio, apart from seeing his process, was the collection of stuff adorning the walls. It looked like the sketchbook of his mind had exploded out onto the walls – Scribbles, little drawings, postcards, things that inspired him, examples of his work in advertising etc.

If you’ve not see them before, here is his blog. There is something about his poems that makes me and Lol well up everytime we see them. Anyway, if you get the chance to go to Somerset house before next monday, do. And, if you’re a fan, you can buy his stuff in the shop downstairs. He has
now branched out of just cards and into pillow covers, wooden key
rings, tiles and mugs! The joys of commercialism.

 

Thanks Gareth for pointing out this funny spoof of ‘integrated campaign’ videos. Like the sentiment, too.