My Perfect Kent Day
Would you like to live and work in the Garden of England – surrounded by the beautiful nature, but at the same time be able to easily reach London and the continent? Would you like to have a better work/life balance, but still have a variety of career opportunities to choose from and a support of the best teaching professionals? Would you like to have the access to both: contemporary life style and famous British heritage? If so, working and living in Kent can be a perfect solution for you.
Being one of the largest local authorities in the country Kent County Council Schools are committed to innovatively attracting new, experienced and talented teachers to their 600+ schools through offering teachers the scope of challenge and rewards they are looking for. Kent Country Council Schools provide a supportive environment and a wide range of career opportunities (from energetic urban secondary schools to a more serene coastal village primary) for the employees.
This year to attract experienced teachers as new recruiters Kent County Council has decided to organise a Facebook competition to show potential employees what their life could be like (how it could be better) if they were living and working in Kent. This competition aims to encourage teachers to take a look at Kent as at a life changing opportunity, not only as an employment one. As a part of the competition entrants are invited to submit a story on what they think their life could be like if they lived in Kent, for a chance to win a weekend with all expenses paid in Kent.
The stories will be shortlisted and introduced to a public to vote for the favourite one. The story that receives the most votes will win.
This competition gives the audience a chance to visualise not just working but living in Kent and challenging people to consider and summarise what their ‘ideal’ lifestyle would be like and then leading them to consideration that this could be reality – by relocating to Kent and working in one of the most diverse counties in the UK, educationally and personally.
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20 Nov 2012
Snipe Likes: French Films/Big Wave Riders
This Thursday (Nov 22) Notting Hill Arts Club plays host to two up and coming Finnish bands as part of the Echo Chamber presents P***A night. French Films (pictured) and Big Wave Riders play their guitars like they mean it, wringing every drop of indie angst out of their instruments and onto the stage, forming huge puddles of anthemic discharge to slip ‘n’ slide around in. If that sounds like fun, Music Finland are also giving away a split 7” featuring said bands to the first 50 people through the door. Listen below.
19 Nov 2012
In-depth interview: Helen Babbs on creating a new generation of urban nature writers
“I looked everywhere for the head – it could have fallen anywhere – and perhaps some distance from this resting place where meat was ripped…From the way it was lying and eaten, I could imagine an instant of perfect predation – a peregrine – intersecting paths with this migrating woodcock.”
Woodcock, Waterloo by David Perkins
“…the slide rule, Roman-built A10 out of Liverpool Street can be as important a navigational aid to a long distance migrant as the relative positions of Taurus and Cassiopeia in the night sky.”
Fly Away Home by Mark James Pearson
I asked Helen to explain why London’s nature matters to her, what it means to her writers, and whether it’s really possible for Londoners to escape their city without ever leaving it.
Snipe: Can you explain why you set up The New Nature, how it works, and what you’d like it to become?
Helen: I set up ‘the new nature’ because there aren’t many outlets for urban nature writing, especially the more unusual kind. The UK nature writing scene is also dominated by men of a certain age, writing about the countryside, and it feels good to challenge that a little. For the reader, the website offers a different perspective on London and invites a new way of seeing the city.
The aim is to fill a simple website with both journalistic and creative content from a range of different writers that’s inspired by London’s wildlife and wild places. The project is labour of love with a quietly political heart. It feels important, at a time when economics is greatly valued over environment, to highlight how valuable wildlife is – even in a city setting – and how important it be protected.
I’d like ‘the new nature’ to become a place people go to for a really good read and where writers want their work to be published. Contributions of 1,000 words or less are invited, so please get in touch if you’d like to write for us.
Snipe: Can you talk about your personal response to nature in London…how you experience it and why it’s important to you?
Helen: My growing awareness of urban wildlife has changed the way I experience cities. Once you know where the wild things are, it’s hard to ignore them. London’s wildlife is one of the many quirks that make it such a great place to live. Learning about it means discovering a million tiny and brilliant secrets about the city. I think roof gardening and becoming a cyclist have been two things that have greatly increased my sense of connection to nature here.
Snipe: Is this a site for writers as much as for readers?
Helen: Yes, absolutely. We can learn a lot from each other and sharing our work. It’s for both – readers need writers and writers need readers!
Snipe: Are you trying to foster a particular approach to nature writing? What do you think makes a good post?
Helen: I’m not trying to foster a particular approach, although I suppose there are certain things that I think work and others that I definitely don’t. I don’t like the sentimental or the twee, which can be a temptation when writing about nature. Or anything that suggests there is an irretrievable gulf between humans and wildlife. I’m a fan of rich description and of challenging people to see things in a different way. I like work that is brief but startling, that’s simple, adventurous, atmospheric and revealing.
Your site collects work by several contributors, and that makes it a good place to look for trends, to gauge how a group of contributors are collectively responding to the tension between human life and the natural world. Do you think any themes, or shared concerns, emerge from the different pieces you have posted?
So far, a sense of surprise and of the secret are common threads through the different writers’ work. Contrasting wildlife with urban grit and gristle is another theme, but also showing how interwoven the wild and the human can be. I think there’s a shared desire to find a little bit of London to call one’s own, a personal space within the urban sprawl. All the writing celebrates London in its own way.
Snipe: In several pieces on the site, for example Mischa van den Brandhof’s quest for the Gray’s Inn Fox (which is my favourite piece I think), an encounter with London’s nature seems to make the rest of London, and Londoners themselves, fall away. Mishca writes: “Never before have I seen what the city looks like when there are no humans around.” Do you think we all harbour this feeling? Deep down, do all citizens of London secretly want to destroy it?
Helen: Peter Ackroyd says in his biography of London that “The crowd is not a single entity…but the condition of London itself.” There’s something both brilliant and awful about the crowd, about London. It offers us a place where we can disappear and be whoever we want to be, but it is also cloying, lonely and frustrating. In the same way a vast rural landscape of mountain and river can both inspire us and highlight our insignificance, London can empower and disable.
Rather than a desire to destroy it, perhaps we all want our own relationship with London that is intimate and unique. We want to experience the city in a way that feels meaningful. The wealth of writing – be it books, blogs or magazines – that has London at its heart is vast. Writers want to see and say something new, to come up with an interpretation that is fresh.
Snipe: Our relationship with nature is now very complex, especially in the city. Much of the best habitat (I’m thinking for example of Barnes Wetland Centre, the city’s reservoirs, its cemeteries) is artificial. It’s made and maintained by man. Can you talk a bit about your feelings about this, about whether a pure wild nature can exist in a space that is so overwhelmingly human?
Helen: It’s not just the city that is shaped and maintained by humans. Much of the countryside has taken and continues to take its shape from human intervention, be that agriculture, industry or a decision to protect something as a nature reserve.
I think the romantic notion of a ‘pure wild nature’ is a flawed one. What makes the rubble filled but biodiverse brownfield site, which teems with a certain kind of insect and plant life, any less valid than the cliff top by the sea? Both are important, in different ways. And why should the city’s reservoirs and cemeteries be devalued as wild spaces by the fact we built them?
I think the places where the manmade and the wild coexist are the most interesting and exciting, where nature thrives despite what it has to contend with. Peregrine falcons on Parliament, owls minutes from Marble Arch, bats zipping down the canal in King’s Cross – all these things are brilliant if ‘impure’. They are also phenomena that would likely not happen without the intervention of certain people who fight for city creatures’ rights.
At the same time, it’s dangerous to see wildlife purely as entertainment, laid on by and for humans. Nature is vital in urban areas, especially as the climate changes to bring hotter spells and fierce downpours. Vegetation absorbs heat and water, and can offer cool shade. It is also well known that access to nature improves people’s mental and physical health. Put simply, we need nature. And maybe in the city, nature needs us.
More in-depth London interviews:
Photographer Mike Tsang on the blessing and the curse of growing up a Chinese Londoner
Iain Sinclair and Andrew Kötting on their Olympic pedalo film Swandown
Kate Flowers of CoOperaCo on her mutualised operatic finishing school
Stratford filmmaker Winstan Whitter on what got lost in the gentrification of Dalston
And more from Snipe on London’s nature:
Interview with @FaBPeregrines, the Twitter account following the peregrine falcons of Charing Cross Hospital.
19 Nov 2012
Tory campaign chief told Boris to ignore "fucking Muslims"
The Conservative Party’s new campaign chief told Boris Johnson to concentrate on traditional Tory voters instead of “fucking Muslims” it was claimed today.
According to the Mail on Sunday: “Lynton’s view was that chasing the Muslim vote and other ethnic groups was a waste of time and he frequently expressed himself in very strong terms. Some people found it very offensive.”
Crosby, who managed both of Boris’s mayoral campaigns, and has been hired by David Cameron, is known for his anti-immigration views.
During the 2001 elections in Australia, Crosby’s campaign falsely claimed that asylum seekers had tried to blackmail their way into the country by throwing their children into the sea.
He also masterminded Michael Howard’s “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” campaign.
Johnson abandoned his long-held support for free immigration during his mayoral campaign this year, apparently at the intervention of Crosby.
Neither Crosby nor Johnson made outright denials about the story today. In identical statements, both would only say that they had “no recollection” of the conversation.
According to the Mail on Sunday, Lynton also objected to Boris ordering TfL to remove “gay cure” adverts from London buses.
Boris defended Crosby last night, telling the paper that he is “the soul of sweetness and kindness.”
Crosby will now lead the Conservatives’ next general election campaign.
18 Nov 2012
Snipe Likes: Suuns
They’re back! After what seems like an age, Montreal four-piece Suuns have announced the release of their second album, Images Du Futur, due in March via Secretly Canadian. First single Edie’s Dream, streaming above, brings to mind late 70s Bowie dosed-up on addiction-strength Temazepam (which he may well have been at the time) – Sound and Vision played at half speed. On this evidence, Images Du Futur promises to be a mighty fine record, perhaps surpassing the point plotted by their much-lauded debut Zeroes QC on the critical pant-wetting scale (I believe it’s called the Tena axis). Catch Suuns live at Village Underground, Dec 5.
16 Nov 2012
Iceland Airwaves 2012: Highlights
Snipe’s music editor John Rogers packed his bags and headed to Iceland earlier this month to help cover the annual Airwaves Festival for local freesheet newspaper The Reykjavík Grapevine. Below are some festival photos, highlights and memories from members of the assembled Grapevine team (including the international journos drafted in to help the paper with the task of covering every act on the festival lineup, and some other friendly notables at the festival).
Rebecca Louder (Reykjavík Grapevine)
What was your favourite performance of the festival?
Nova Heart blew my mind. Singer Helen Feng’s performance was totally off the tits, and she is my new role model.
Who were the best new band you saw?
Sindri Eldon & the Ways. Hands down the breakout local act of the festival. He packed the room with A-listers and rocked the fuck out.
Tell us a memorable festival moment (music-related or not).
Having a trúno (drunkeness-induced super-honest conversation – ed) with Sigga-Sirkus in the bathrooms at Amsterdam, during the aforementioned set. She also mentioned that she changed Sindri’s diapers when he was a baby (not now, I believe he is fully potty trained). Also, the Sigur Rós love-in, where a whole bunch of the audience were reclining and just fully laying down, cuddling with their friends and lovers and looking really sweet.
Would you share the best/funniest Airwaves pic from your phone/camera?
Here are three – Catharine Fulton & AMFJ’s Airwaves logo made entirely of desserts (above); the Unicorn gambling machine at Amsterdam; Halli of Æla at his drunken apex (below).
More: after “the jump”.
16 Nov 2012
MPFree: What Is Wild (ft Foil) by The Deuces Wild
We love a one-liner here at Snipe. Technically the one-line song is more of a chant: the way to do it, as demonstrated superbly by today’s MPFree, is to surround the pivotal phrase with fast moving, quickly evolving musical textures so the listener never gets board. Here, all round Swedish creative type The Deuces Wild craftily sandwiches a mid-section of pure, farting-synth power between two smoky, jazzy bookends, so when that mid-section comes in, the effect is breathtaking and the vocals take on a whole new dimension.
What Is Wild is taken from The Feel EP, available through Expansions Collective.
15 Nov 2012
Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
Boris Johnson’s £60 million cable car is running at a tiny fraction of its capacity, new figures released to The Scoop reveal.
Between 18th September and 18th October, trips on the “Emirates Air Line” dropped to an average of just 5581 a day.
With a maximum capacity of 5000 an hour, this means that it operates at just 8.8% of its capacity.
The service is particularly poorly used on weekdays.
On one day in October, the total number of users plunged to just 1280, with an average of just 98 people using the crossing an hour.
This is less than 2% of the cable car’s capacity.
The service continues to perform better at weekends. Around 15,000 trips were made on each of the first two Saturdays in October.
However, even this is a steep decline from the Olympics when up to 30,000 used the service each day.
Sold as a new commuter link across the Thames, today’s figures suggest that the cable car is mostly seen as a tourist attraction.
As we reported last month, only tiny numbers of people are using the crossing with any regularity.
A spokesperson for Transport for London said today: “As with all new transport links, the number of regular users builds over a period of time as people become familiar with new journey possibilities.”
UPDATE Thanks to Tom @BorisWatch for putting our cable car passenger figures into a graph:
14 Nov 2012
Bjork - Mutual Core
A Manga-style Björk hangs out in a quicksand pit with some psychedelic flying rocks, to the strains of Mutual Core, one of the more oblique cuts from Biophilia. Cool!
13 Nov 2012
MPFree: Don't Go Alone by Cruiser
It’s difficult to dislike music this upbeat and positive. Philadelphia’s Cruiser present as a spikier Wild Nothing or Real Estate; they’re seemingly in possession of a similarly innate ear for melody. Currently the band, fronted by Andy States, have a limited edition pink 7” available through Company Ink Records, or you can download the Cruiser EP – produced by Jeremy Park (Youth Lagoon) – here.
13 Nov 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- Nice map of London's fruit trees shows you where to pick free food
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
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