Lionel sent us this picture of a new outbreak of signs in Hilly Fields, which he says appear next to lamp posts every few metres.
The THF team writes:
Now in its 20th year, The Telegraph Hill Festival has been an integral part of the diverse arts, music and performing scene in New Cross.
From 21st March to 6th April 2014 Telegraph Hill Festival will present stunning and varied work encompassing fine art, installation, performance, food related activities, pop-up diners and more.
Artists exhibiting their work through Open Studios include Durgesh Srivastava, the noted abstract expressionist and installation artist (still working in her 80s), Mira Jurcova's web based Gallery of Broken Promises, Andrew Clarke's collages inspired by urban life, Gill Roth’s figurative drawings plus a huge range of affordable ceramics, photography and craft items.
Performance has always played its part in Telegraph Hill Festival. This year Annie Get Your Gun will play at St Catherine's Church and feature a cast of more than 150 people ranging in age from 5 to 80. Telegraph Hill Festival's legendary Comedy Nights have hosted Jenny Eclair, Arthur Smith, Lucy Porter and Stephen Frost, compered by the ever lovely Phil Nice. This year’s Comedy Night promises much.
There will also be a 'beaming and bouncing' laser light show at the top of Telegraph Hill, using the roof spaces of Telegraph Hill Centre. Come and see and all will be revealed…
With around 60 other events including a Tea Dance, a reggae sound system, community cooking workshops, retro gaming, a dog show and numerous free family friendly events there will be something for everyone.
Full details are available from the Telegraph Hill Festival programme.
This weekend, Nigel Farage told his party conference in Torquay that parts of Britain have become "unrecognisable".
Curiously, he chose a train journey from Charing X to Kent to illustrate his point, claiming that he rode through London Bridge, New Cross and Hither Green to Grove Park before his nerves were calmed by the sound of English being spoken, saying:
"Do I think parts of Britain are a foreign land? I got the train the other night, it was rush hour, from Charing Cross. "It was a stopper going out and we stopped at London Bridge, New Cross, Hither Green, it was not til we got past Grove Park that I could hear English being audibly spoken in the carriage. "Does that make me feel slightly awkward? Yes it does. I wonder what is really going on. I am saying that and I am sure that is a view that will be reflected by three quarters of the population, perhaps even more."
The idea that London is a great black and brown "other" is a popular one with UKIPers (and much of the rest of the country) but his example is as incredible as David Cameron's 'black man in Plymouth' story, since any journey out in to the Kent countryside is dominated by white English people, who get on at Charing X and thus ought to have been a reassuring presence for him during his trip - they didn't all embark at Grove Park.
Tourists increasingly hang out at London Bridge and foreign students sometimes swamp New Cross, but Farage describes a train carriage we've never seen. As for Hither Green, it's a happy hunting ground for native-Londoners priced out of other parts of London.
There are disturbing scenes every Friday night at London Bridge, featuring people who speak in unknown tongues, but they're pissed-up Brits on their way home, after a night at the Barrowboy & Banker. Some great British traditions don't change.
#bbcfoodawards judges @CorrigansFood & Peter Gott are visiting FAFA finalists @BrockleyMarket today. #coffee to start pic.twitter.com/VcRocGJ2GO
— The Food Programme (@BBCFoodProg) March 1, 2014The FT has more research from estate agents Savills, who claim that London's 'mid-tier boroughs', including Lewisham, Ealing, Barnet and Tower Hamlets - where housing stock and transport links are good - will see the biggest house price rises in the capital over the next five years.
The paper's profile of Lewisham, says we can look forward to welcoming Hackney's sloppy seconds, as the borough becomes the "on-trend place to buy south of the river". It claims:
Lewisham is the natural heir to Hackney. Both boroughs were once home to tatty, forgotten housing stock, reputations for crime and substandard transport systems. But prices in Hackney have soared in the past five years, jumping 12 per cent in the past year alone, according to the Land Registry, as artists, trendy twenty-somethings and families looking for something a bit livelier than humdrum suburbia have flocked here.
Lewisham, now benefiting from the East London Line, which passes through Shoreditch in Hackney down to Forest Hill and Sydenham, is drawing those same punters farther south, where three- and four-bedroom homes are just about still available for under £500,000, although prices are rising rapidly. “The media and arts crowd are often the pioneers of gentrification,” says Lucian Cook of Savills. “Hackney is a very complete borough in that it has great period properties, beautiful parks and great shops and restaurants. Lewisham is similar in that it has great housing stock and has the parks and shops of Dulwich nearby. Now that it has the transport links too, it has taken over from Peckham as the new on-trend place to buy south of the river.”
