Forever In Blue Genes:Thomas Gainsborough @ the National Gallery.

"We have been to say good-bye to a boy who is leaving in a day or two, forever. He received us dressed in a beautiful blue satin suit" - The Times

"Cheerio, blue boy" - Blue Boy, Orange Juice

Thomas Gainsborough - The Blue Boy (1770)

Georgian art, specifically portraits of lords and ladies and dukes and duchesses, is not a particular area of interest to me. Neither is it, unsurprisingly in the circumstances, a field in which I am an expert in. But I like, now and then, to take myself out of my comfort zone and attempt to learn something. So when I saw that the National Gallery were exhibiting Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy, alongside various other works that either inspired it or are in some way related to it, I thought I'd pop along.

It was free after all. Which was just as well. It was just one small room and though I can't say any of the art moved me, it was at least an interesting educational experience. To a degree. Gainsborough's Blue Boy was, at its time, one of the most famous works of art in the world and even as late as 1921, when it was sold to the California art dealer Henry E. Huntington for £182,000, it was setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a painting.

The record, now, is over £360,000,000 for Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (a Russian oligarch sold it to a Saudi businessman in case you were wondering where all the world's money has gone). The Blue Boy was painted while Gainsborough (1727-1788) was living in Bath, a city he called home for fifteen years, and had become interested in the work of the Flemish Baroque artist Anthony van Dyck. (1599-1641).

Van Dyck had, knowingly, adapted his style when he arrived in England to fit with the court of King Charles I and what that meant, to me, was that his work was fawning, obsequious, and served a royal agenda. To look at Gainsborough's paintings now, no matter how well made they are, they don't seem all that different.

Thomas Gainsborough - Elizabeth and Mary Linley (1772-1785)

At least the Linley sisters were professional singers rather than princesses, at least they did something, but it's instructive to learn that Gainsborough returned to the painting in 1785, thirteen years after he first made it, to alter the girls' dresses and hairstyles to fit with the latest fashion trends.

Mrs Siddons was the leading tragic actress of her era, she was performing as Lady Macbeth at the Drury Lane Theatre when Gainsborough painted this portrait, and she's been placed in front of a deep red curtain to give the portrait more a sense of her theatricality. It was a subtle move, and one the curators say Gainsborough borrowed from Van Dyck, and quite different to other portraits of Siddons. Joshua Reynolds and others chose to paint her in character. Gainsborough celebrated the fact she was an actress and a person in her own right, rather than the roles she played.

Thomas Gainsborough - Mrs Siddons (1785)

Which was nice of him. The Blue Boy is an actual person - but nobdoy ever seems to be quite sure who the cocksure little snob is. For many years it was presumed to be one Jonathan Buttall, the son of a London ironmonger who at one point owned the painting but, more recently, it's been suggested that it's Gainsborough's nephew and sole apprentice, Gainsborough Dupont (1754-1797), another man who made his life's work the painting of regal figures and assorted heads of state.

I hope the stormy clouds that make up the background to the Blue Boy signify something, impending doom or internal angst perhaps, because otherwise it's just a painting of some Little Lord Fauntleroy staring out at the world with a sense of unburdened entitlement. Even more so than van Dyck's painting, nearly a century and a half earlier, of the Villiers boys, one a duke, the other a lord.

They, at least, have the uncertain expressions of children. That gives them more humanity. Van Dyck's painting was commissioned by Charles I after the Villiers boys' father, the Duke of Buckingham, was murdered in 1628. Further tragedy befell Francis when he died fighting in the English Civil War although George was luckier and went on to become a member of Charles II's court after the Restoration of the monarchy.

Anthony van Dyck - George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Lord Francis Villiers (1635)

Anthony van Dyck - Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart (about 1638)

The Villiers were luckier than the Stuart brothers who both lost their lives, in their early twenties, fighting for the Royalists in the war. It's probably a huge leap to suggest that Van Dyck's gilded paintings helped to create an impression that the nobility, the aristocracy, and the British establishment were woefully out of touch with the people but it does seem to indicate that they were.

Cromwell, of course, was able to exploit that. If only briefly. We can only assume, with Gainsborough returning to Van Dyck's style, that, once again, the upper classes that have almost always ruled Britain once again considered themselves both untouchable and unimpeachable. If not, surely Gainsborough would not have painted such arse licking portraits of them for fear of bringing on the same level of opprobrium.

The National Gallery want us to look at these paintings and marvel at the undoubted technical ability of both Gainsborough and Van Dyck but I came away slightly disgusted. Not just because Britain was so clearly under the cosh of these dukes, lords, and kings for so long - while other people struggled for basics like food and shelter - but because the country still is. 

Though I enjoyed learning a little history lesson, one that even took in such seminal figures in the art world as Titian, Claude, Rubens, and Van Ruisdael, I came away thinking there's a more important social, and political, history to be learned from looking at these paintings. We should not celebrate false idols - and all idols are false. 

After I left the small Gainsborough room I went to look at some Impressiont paintings of nature to cleanse my palate. The grovelling, oleaginous, art of Thomas Gainsborough and Anthony Van Dyck seems perfectly apt for a country of cringing toadies that elect the likes of Boris Johnson to power and allow themselves to be ruled over by a royal family that unapologetically protects its paedophile members.

The blue satin suit of the Gainsborough's blue boy seems to me to signify the supposed blue blood that runs through the veins of our self-appointed superiors. Nobody ever painted any of my ancestor's portraits.

By Order Of:Peaky Blinders S1.

"You have to be as bad as them in order to survive" - Polly Shelby.

I'm late to the game - again. Very late. The first series of Peaky Blinders (BBC2/iPlayer) aired in September and October 2013 - nearly nine years ago - and I didn't watch it at the time because I didn't have a working television. By the time I got one I was left behind and didn't think it'd be worth catching up on but, as I found with Line of Duty, sometimes delving back into the history of these programmes and binge watching them can be rewarding.

As all six series of Peaky Blinders are now available on iPlayer, I thought I'd do just that but, to be honest - and unlike Line of Duty, Peaky Blinders didn't hook me from the off. It took me a couple of episodes to get into it and it took me maybe two more before I started to feel emotionally involved (sometimes it's hard to take the side of, or idolise, violent psychopaths - and Peaky Blinders is full of them). By the end, though not as emotionally caught up in it as I have been with many other things, I was all set to go in again for the next five series.

I had the feeling that the first series had involved a lot of scene setting and character building that will be paid off down the line. That's not to say it lacked narrative or action. In a very rainy and very grey (there's no actual daylight, let alone sunshine, at all for the first hour long episode) in Small Heath, Birmingham 1919 where almost everybody smokes, drinks, and fights, Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) runs a criminal gang called the Peaky Blinders who are looking to move into book-keeping.

Looking into going straight, well - straighter, but, of course, it's not that easy. When crime and violence has been the family business for so long, when you rule by fear rather than respect, it's hard to suddenly change that. Not everybody lets you. We're not even sure how serious Tommy is when he talks about it. Or if it's just convenient for him to say that to keep power in his family.

Because it's the Shelby family where most of the power struggles are, and a great deal of the drama is, played out. Tommy's a war hero, with medals for gallantry in the Somme, and he's doing well looking after the family. Aunt Polly (Helen McCrory) is both impressed with the way Tommy has taken over the family 'firm' and scared that Tommy may either over reach or, worse still, commit acts of such horrific violence that even a family of hardened criminals consider them too much.

Tommy's older brother, Arthur Jr (Paul Anderson), dressed like a Billy Childish style hipster, feels emasculated by Tommy's rise and has turned to the drink and younger brother Johnny (Joe Cole) has four kids to look after and has fallen for the local whore Lizzie Stark (Natasha O'Keeffe) which gives the series one of it's funniest lines, after Johnny describes his intentions to marry Lizzie as brave.

Polly retorts with "brave is going where no man's gone before and with Lizzie Stark, John, that is really not what you'll be doing". The Shelbys, at least, come together when faced with enemies or problems. Or most of them do. When long estranged father, Arthur Sr (Tommy Flanagan), returns he fights with his sons, steals from them, and then disappears as quickly as he reappeared.

He's a wrong 'un, for sure, and his brief appearance explains some of the behaviour of the Shelby brothers. Although, of course, there are plentiful suggestions that the things they've seen, and the things they've done, in the war have brutalised them too. There is a lot of PTSD in Peaky Blinders.

It's not just the war that have made violent men of the Shelbys. It's England too. Descended from Irish Romani stock, the Shelbys are from a marginal, and demonised, part of society (one of the most emotional scenes in the whole first series is when Polly opens up about the family history and what happened to her own two children). 

They've been treated like shit all their life so it's understandable they should want to be respected. Less so they should resort to such hideous violence to get it. Closest to home, Tommy's former school friend, and now foe, Freddie Thorne (Iddo Goldberg) has become a problem to the Shelbys. A Communist agitator who attracts unwanted police attention to Small Heath and, worse, has become romantically involved with, and has impregnated, Tommy's sister Ada (Sophie Rundle).

Giving Peaky Blinders something of a Romeo and Juliet dimension to go with the oft mentioned biblical parallels - Hades and Styx (not the Chicago soft rock band) both get a mention. Outside the family, the Shelbys are up against local Chinese and Italian gangsters, the violent Lee family, and, most dangerously of all, a team of Irish police who have been sent from Belfast to Birmingham (by Winston Churchill - played by Andy Nyman) to clean up the city.

They're headed by the supposedly puritan Chief Inspector Chester Campbell (Sam Neill). Campbell is anti-gangster, anti-Fenian, and deeply anti-Communist and rants passionately about his beliefs, you could at times mistake him for the firebrand former DUP leader Ian Paisley, but we soon learn that his motivations are clouded by his desires, his work hobbled by his biases, and his puritan ethic sullied by his own transgressions as well as his willingness to cut a deal with pretty much anyone if it serves his purpose.

He gains even less respect than the Shelbys who, when not clashing heads with Campbell, are busy trying to either get in on Billy Kimber's (Charlie Creed-Miles) book keeping racket or take it over completely. The fact that the Peaky Blinders have (a) got most of the police in their pocket and (b) have come into a large consignment of guns - a priority interest for Campbell - suggests the future, though loaded with potential violence and death, looks brighter than the ever grey present for the Shelby clan.

That's not a spoiler. Six full series of programmes is. We know Tommy's not going to die because his face is used to advertise all future series. But we know to fill those series him, and his family, are going to have to undergo all manner of scrapes and, probably, losses. 

In this world of horses, flat caps, pub brawls, heavy industry, lawlessness, and prostitution - where state sanctioned hanging is still legal - we can only sit back and wonder who will cross who next, who will collaborate with who next, and who will be violently dismissed next.

It's quite a ride and the writer Steven Knight (with assistance from Toby Finlay and Stephen Russell) and directors Otto Bathurst and Tom Harper don't shy away from showing us the uglier side of life on the wrong side of the tracks/law. 

People are beaten to death, horses are shot, grenades are left in cars, claw hammers and other potential instruments of torture are regularly wielded, ,and razor blades are employed in services unrelated to shaving. It is, of course, something of a man's world.

Little surprise, then, that Ada, unlike Polly, should wish to remove herself from it. But what of Irish barmaid Grace (Annabelle Wallis)? We know she likes to sing but as she cosies up to Tommy, we also see her holding secret meetings with Campbell. What's her agenda? And are personal feelings starting to change that agenda?

The soundtrack of Nick Cave (Red Right Hand, of course, is the show's theme), The White Stripes, Tom Waits, and Dan Auerbach is hardly the sort of stuff that pubs like The Garrison, the pub Tommy has taken over - with threats of violence naturally, would have blared out in that era but the country death blues feel seems to sit weirdly well with the grimy industrial hellscape of the West Midlands one hundred years ago.

Alongside the fact that everyone gives a great performance (shout outs, too, to Benjamin Zephaniah as street preacher/gang member Jeremiah 'Jimmy' Jesus, Samuel Edward-Cook as troubled ex-soldier Danny Whizz-Bang, and David Dawson as Billy Kimber's sober voice of reason Roberts), you can learn a few history lessons about the IRA, the Romani language, Russian influence over the Communists of Britain at the time, and BSA.

A company I knew made motorbikes but not one I was aware had originally begun life as the Birmingham Small Arms company in 1861. Of course you don't have to sign up for the history lesson. You can just sit back and vicariously enjoy the rollercoaster ride that so often comes with (depicting) the criminal lifestyle. 

I did both - and enjoyed it all the more so for that. But I rather suspect, and hope, that as I get into the next few series' of Peaky Blinders the emotional impact will be as powerful as the drama. Tommy Shelby says, towards the end of this series, that the past is not his concern and nor is the future. For me, the future of this series is now my concern - even if it was shown in the past.

Kakistocracy XXXI:Hostile Environments

A hostile environment! That's what the Tory party promised/threatened for migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, or, my description of choice, people. Creating hostility, in our weird upside down world, turned out to be something of a vote winner but the people who voted for hostility, including many in my own family, only wanted hostility to others, not for themselves.

It's as if they understood, only too well, the meaning of the word 'hostile' but that they had no concept of what 'environment' meant. Because a hostile environment, by its very nature, is hostile to all that are in it. That was a problem then and it's a problem now. It's a problem that underpins Britain's woeful response to the tragic events unfolding in Ukraine in Putin's War.

Our leaders have spoke many fine words about how Britain will stand behind Ukraine, and Ukrainians, (in a way they resolutely did not for Syrians and Yemenis - even though we were selling Saudi Arabia the weapons to attack Yemen and kills its people) but, so far, the actions have not sufficiently backed up those words. Not the actions of the British people who have offered, in their thousands, their spare rooms to Ukrainian refugees. But the actions of the British government.

It's trickier than normal to write a piece critiquing Boris Johnson and his government when there is, so clearly, a much more dangerous world leader than him right now. Putin, as my friend Darren described him is a "psychopathic megalomaniac with access to nuclear weapons". He is, as Joe Biden said, a "butcher". He's a murderer, he's a war criminal, and he's a threat to the entire planet.

Undoubtedly the world would be better off if he was dead. Which isn't what I'm wishing on Boris Johnson. I said it's tricky to critique Johnson and his gang at the moment but I didn't say it was impossible. He's taken advantage of the world's focus on events in Ukraine to escape the law over the partygate scandal and he's used it as a cover for other foul acts but, none of them - of course, are as horrendous as the scenes we see in Mariupol, in Kharkivm, and in Kyiv.

Mariupol has been almost completely destroyed. I'd never heard of Mariupol so I thought I'd look it up and see what British cities it compares to in size and was shocked to find it has a similar population to Cardiff, Edinburgh, or Leeds. Maternity hospitals and theatres full of innocent people sheltering have been bombed by Putin's merciless, woefully misguided, and often incompetent yet more often lethal, army in a dire, and disastrous, war that will, in the end, hurt the people of Russia more than any other group of people.

Though, of course, it is the Ukrainians that are suffering the most, by far, right now. The British people, in a way that feels sadly unparalleled in recent history, can see this and are doing what they can. Offering rooms for refugees, running convoys of supplies out to the Ukrainian border, giving to charity, and, though it seems simple it does at least keep the message out there, waving yellow and blue Ukrainian flags from their windows as once they did NHS rainbows.

Where it all ends nobody knows but the one way in which all nations can help is by offering safe haven for Ukrainian refugees. Unlike Poland and Denmark, the UK were slow off the mark on this. It certainly seemed to be more difficult for them to put some kind of process in place than it did for them to move Russian oligarchs into the House of Lords.

At one point a mere fifty visas were handed to Ukrainians to come to the UK. To put that in perspective, at the same time Ireland, a country with less than 10% of the UK's population, had offered one thousand. That's, per head, two hundred times as charitable. Yet still Johnson and his ministers carp on about being 'world leading'.

The only way in which they lead the world is, sadly, in lying and boasting. As well as protecting the holy grail of Brexit. An idea, of course, that was all about creating an ever more hostile environment. Not least for people who have suffered more than enough hostility anyway.

Which makes it extra galling, and hugely embarrassing for anyone who lives in this country, when Johnson has the audacity to compare those fighting for their freedom, their country, and their lives in Ukraine to those who voted for, and no doubt those who ultimately delivered, Brexit.

He leaves aside the fact that Volodymyr Zelenskyy and many in Ukraine would love to be part of the EU and he ignores the fact that Putin, along with Donald Trump and ISIS, was one of the few world leaders who supported Brexit.

But then Johnson needs to be very careful when untangling the complicated, intertwined, relationship between Russia, Russian money particularly, and the British establishment at which the Tory party is very much at the heart of.

Russian money has corrupted the Tory party and the British political system for so long now it's an almost impossible task to undo all its damage. Perhaps that's why the Tory MP Edward Leigh 'reminded' the house that in his constituency of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, people have had enough of hearing about Ukraine. While adding, for extra affect, they had quite enough migrants already, thankyou very much.

Leigh's message fell on flat ears because it was delivered in the early stages of Putin's War in Ukraine but he won't be the only one either thinking like that or considering that such views will play well with British people who have been raised on a diet of vile lies from the Murdoch press for decades. Others will speak in similar ways soon enough, I have no doubt.

In a hope of weening ourselves off Russian gas completely (and, thankfully, we're not as reliant on it as many of our European neighbours), Johnson visited Saudi Arabia cap in hand pleading for oil and ignoring the fact that a day or two before they had executed eighty-one people. I'm all for breaking all ties with militaristic autocracies like Russia but that should be extended to Saudi Arabia too.

Beneath the cover of the war and its accompanying humanitarian crisis, the worst in my lifetime, the government have dropped plans to cap MP's earnings from second jobs, passed a cruel and austerity heavy mini-budget that Chancellor Rishi Sunak tried to dress up as the complete opposite, have made plans to axe laws barring the important of hunting 'trophies', and given Gavin Williamson, Gavin fucking Williamson - a man who was considered both the worst Education Secretary and the worst Defence Secretary in living memory, a knighthood.

Well, he did once tell Russia to "go away and shut up". That went well. Mind you, are we surprised we are the sort of the country that makes him a knight when we're the sort of country that actively changes employment law so that the, once highly respected, P&O can sack eight hundred workers via a heartless and possibly illegal pre-recorded video message

Then to replace those workers with cheap foreign labour. Which Brexit enabled even if that wasn't what they wrote on the side of the bus. The authors of Britannia Unchained (Liz Truss, Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, and Kwasi Kwarteng) knew that workers were mere components and not people, while adding that "the British are among the worst idlers in the world" so they'll be more than happy with the move taken by P&O.

Or, strictly speaking, taken by DP World, the Dubai based owners of P&O who are trade advisors to our government. Appointed by none other than Liz Truss in a move that shows just how long the Tories have been carving up the businesses and institutions of this company to enrich themselves.

Sadlu, instead of offering any better alternatives many of my friends are using social media to cultishly relitigate the arguments about Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. He lost. He's no longer the leader of the opposition. He's not even in the fucking party. The public didn't like him. Get over it. Move on. Keir Starmer's the leader of the opposition now so either get behind him or find someone else with new ideas to get behind. Someone who can win. Corbyn's gone. He had two chances. He didn't take them and now he's gone. Please focus on getting rid of the Tories and not arguing the toss over events long since decided.

Which, I know is a bit rich with my Brexit references - though Brexit is still - unlike Corbyn - relevant to say. I've not, since last writing, just been getting dismayed with world leaders and the messes they keep creating. I've been doing nice things too. I attended a Skeptics in the Pub online event about Internet hate speech and how it bleeds into real life, one about F1/motor sport technology that was far better than I expected it to be, and another about Flat Earth belief. Though I missed a return to a live, in the pub, London Fortean Society event due to a rather painful bout of gout (in hands/arm/wrist - ouch) I made up for it with a visit to a London Skeptics event, in their new home The Miller, with Professor Chris French and about his career in anomalistic study.

It was great. As were trips to the theatre to see A Number at the Old Vic and Ava at Hammersmith Riverside Studios and one to the cinema (Camden Curzon - first ever trip) to see Rebel Dread. A further theatrical trip (The Forest at Hampstead Theatre) was cancelled at the last minute, due to 'indisposition' among the cast, at least gave way to a quick, and pleasant drink with Kathy at the Haverstock Tavern.

I went to exhibitions too. Bridget Riley at the Lightbox in Woking with Darren (followed by a delicious halloumi burger in the Marciano Lounge which he generously paid for), Gainsborough's Blue Boy @ the National, Jock McFadyen @ RA, Hogarth and Europe at Tate Britain, Sebastiao Salgado @ Science Museum, America in Crisis @ Saatchi Gallery w/Vicki (followed by Pizza Express and another chance to try their tasty jalapeno dough balls), and a double header of Allison Katz and Julien Creuzet at the Camden Arts Centre.

Even better than all that we finally did our first TADS walk of 2022, in Tadley, with a cast of too many people to mention (some of us even met in Poppins in Basingstoke for brunch) the next day. We also did our second stage of theThames Path walk from Tower Bridge to Hammersmith and a London by Foot walk from Fulwell to Hammersmith and a third visit to Sagar in eight days! Two days ago, I took a solo walk around the perimeter of SE21 and even the sun came out for me.

I've had lovely phone calls with many people, although Michelle is the only one I've not been able to meet in person - but we've made up for that by booking a short holiday with Evie in June, and had a nice time at my boss Dougie's leaving meal at Barton's Mill in Old Basing (pumpkin and sage tortellini/Wadsworth 6X) which even involved staying in the Hampshire Court hotel in Chineham.

So, gout aside, my personal life has been pretty good and, as ever, the political situation has continued to get worse. One of the reasons I enjoy my personal life is that I try to create a friendly, rather than a hostile, environment. Vladimir Putin and his troops are showing us what a genuinely hostile environment looks like right now and it's not pleasant. It makes me think that those elected on the promise, or threat, of creating hostile environments may not have our best interests at heart. Remember that when you next vote.

 

Perambulations on the Perimeter of .... SE21:Hymn From A Village.

The last walk in my Perambulations on the Perimeter series didn't end as happily as I'd hoped so, perhaps, that's the reason it's taken me so long to get round to doing another. Or, even more likely, it's just been a case of finding time. With the age of lockdowns fading into the distance, and the TADS, LbF, and Thames Path walks all up and running again, free Saturdays to do this kind of thing are becoming rarer and rarer.

 

But yesterday was one of those free Saturdays. I did consider just having a lazy day but with the March sun shining as bright as a summer's day it would have felt almost criminal not to get out and enjoy it. So that's what I did. Once I'd bought a copy of the Guardian, a bottle of water, and some Nurofen for my gout - which has now lasted nearly an entire month - I headed down to Firemans Alley on the edge of Dulwich Park.

About 95% of Dulwich Park is in SE21 so it seemed a good place to start. I stopped to take a photo of the Firemans Alley sign and a lady walking by thought I was pondering the use of a free bike that was propped up against the wall. I explained to her I was quite happy on foot and was just getting a photo of the sign and, on that, she suggested I might like to take another photo of a nearby cherry blossom tree.

Or magnolia - I struggle to tell the difference. Juxtaposed between two fairly brutal looking tower blocks and with a clear blue sky (that would remain ever present throughout the day) behind, how could I resist? I was already beginning to suspect that my perambulation around the perimeter of SE21 was going to be very photo heavy.

I entered into Dulwich Park (a place I've visited countless times over the last two and a half decades) and gently made my way past the play area, some art commissioned by the nearby Dulwich Picture Gallery by STIK (riffing on Murillo) and another piece by Thierry Noir (inspired by Tiepolo), and an ice cream van (I was sorely tempted but I wanted to have breakfast/brunch/lunch first - I'd only had a couple of slices of toast) and came to the cafe in the middle of the park.

It was doing a roaring trade and I was tempted by one of their tasty thinly sliced pizzas but it felt a bit early in the day for that. Which wasn't stopping others. The lake was looking resplendent in the sunshine and being enjoyed solely by the local waterfowl as there seemed to be some maintenance work going on with the pedalos. 

I resisted yet another ice cream van (I think I counted four in the park), admired the mock Tudor gatehouse - now converted into some kind of kindergarten, and left the park on to College Road where I would be able to enjoy, as I have so many times before, the architectural pleasures of Dulwich Village.

A village that really does feel like one - despite the P4 bus regularly shuttling through on its way to either Lewisham or Brixton. My first stop was Bell Cottage. That's the building on the cover of this blog and it's one of my favourites in London. Or, in fact, anywhere. It'd be a dream home and I think it's safe to say I'm hardly alone in thinking that. 

The slightly twee fingerposts outside the bustling Dulwich Picture Gallery (I think there's usually more people in the cafe than the actual galleries which are pleasant if a little overpriced) point the way but this is familiar terrain for me so I needed no help.

Dulwich Picture Gallery, the oldest public art gallery in England, was built by Sir John Soane (famous for the Bank of England) and opened in 1817 as part of Christ's Chapel of God's Gift. Itself part of the College of God's Gift, a historic charity founded by the Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn (played by Ben Affleck in Shakespeare in Love) whose name is everywhere in and around Dulwich Village (as you'll see if you read on).

The college, the war memorial, and the statue of Alleyn in full thespian mode all looked delightful on the sunny day and when you leave this ensemble, on to Gallery Road with Belair Park a little further down, you're not quite finished.

Next to the Village Orchard stands a picture perfect white chapel and further along branches of both The Real Greek and Pizza Express are painted in sympathetic colours. Across the road the huge Crown & Greyhound pub (a stop on my first Magnificent Seven graveyard walk back in 2019) looks both imposing and inviting.

Tempting though a beer was, as well as either a pizza or some Greek delights, I decided to soldier on. There would be other food and beer stops soon. The Crown and Greyhound, or The Dog as some locals know it, is both a Grade II listed building and classified by CAMRA as having a 'regionally important historic interior'.

It's got plenty of seating out the front and an even bigger garden to the rear and it's hosted such notable guests as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Marie Stopes, Stephen Spender, Ted Hughes, Alan Sillitoe, Harold Pinter, and Ivor Cutler. In recent years it's housed The Goose Is Out folk club but I always remember a very early visit, back in the nineties, with my parents not long after I'd moved to the area when there was a goat providing entertainment for the locals.

Past the Dulwich College Burial Ground, whose notables didn't include a single name familiar to me, and a parade of shops, I turned into Calton Avenue where I saw, certainly not for the last time of the day, a selection of Ukrainian flags. Reminding me how lucky I am to be able to walk my city in peace and comfort. For those living in Mariupol, Kyiv, Kharkiv, and many other Ukrainian cities that is, thanks to Putin's War - and Putin's war crimes, now impossible - and probably will be for a long time yet.

Calton Avenue climbs gently towards St Barnabas Church (built between 1892 and 1895 but looks newer) and views across the London skyline. There's a brief section along Townley Road before I turned left into East Dulwich Grove and had a quick appreciation of the almost Art Deco, or maybe Arts & Crafts, James Allen's Girl School (or JAGS) building.

East Dulwich Grove leads along a graceful, and well manicured - they've won awards, curve into Half Moon Lane. Strictly speaking, for a while, I was in SE24 but that is the nature of walking postcode perimeters. You can't follow them exactly unless you're prepared to walk through people's gardens and even solid walls.

Half Moon Lane is home to Gusto Italiano, a regular lockdown stop for me to buy cheese rolls and ciabattas for picnics in Brockwell Park, and I'd earmarked it for a takeaway but when I got there, and saw toasties on the menu, I decided to sit in. I had a Coke and a tasty, if too small, cheese toastie and had a go at the Guardian crossword as well as reading a Q&A with Carl Barat. Who was born in Basingstoke.

On leaving the deli, I saw the first of the day's decorated postboxes, more Ukrainian flags, and came to The Half Moon on Herne Hill. It's a good pub, I last visited with Shep on the way to the UXD in December, but I was still holding out.

Brockwell Park looked even more tempting in the sunshine but I was on a mission so I carried on along Norwood Road, past two craft ale bars, and turned right into Rosendale Road. A long straight road that passed the Peadbody building where my friends Dan and Misa used to live. I stopped in Jolly Good Food & Wine for a Mars ice cream and a packet of Bobby's Spirals and as the road rose higher and higher I was afforded magnificent views of the Crystal Palace transmitter.

Past All Saint's, West Dulwich, and a housing bloke named for many of your favourite birds (from cormorants to fulmars and falcons to dunnocks but I'd never heard of a maranada before!), I finally reached the Rosendale pub. I'd last been in many years ago, on a walk tracing the route of the mostly hidden Effra river, so it was good to be back.

I had a Brixton lager, charged my phone up, read the paper, and watched the world go by. It was pleasant but not enough to stay for a second. There was walking still to be done. Park Hall Road took me to The Alleyn's Head and, tempting though it looked, it was far too soon for another pit stop so I cut under the railway line on to Alleyn Park and, in front of me, the views of Dulwich College were absolutely outstanding.

Dulwich College has a long list of alumni that includes PG Wodehouse, CS Forester, Ernest Shackleton, Nigel Farage (a bully at school, unsurprisingly), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeremy Deller, Raymond Chandler, Dennis Wheatley, Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, Chemical Brother Ed Simons, Adam Kay, Peter Lilley, Paul Sinha, CFA Voysey, and Bob Monkhouse (who was expelled for climbing the clock tower).

But, more than that, it's a beautiful building - or ensemble of buildings. Founded by Edward Alleyn, of course, in 1619 and painted by Camille Pissarro, who was living in Upper Norwood having fled the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870, the buildings we can see now were designed by Charles Barry Jr who also laid out nearby (I'd doubled back on myself, quite intentionally) Dulwich Park as well as Crystal Palace railway station and the Great Eastern hotel near Liverpool Street station.

You have to briefly walk along the A205/South Circular to get to the front of the college but it's worth it. I took some more photos of  the buildings bathed in the golden glow of the afternoon sunlight and carried along to the last remaining tollgate in the whole of London.

I'd like to think the little house to the side of it was once the tollmaster's lodgings but, even if it once was, these days there's a little booth where a, presumably often bored, man takes your money or swipes your card as you drive on through into the delights of Sydenham Hill.

It is quite nice actually. If you appreciate retro fonts you'll not be disappointed by Woodhall and if you like old churches you can admire the tall spire of St Stephen's. But if you like hills, you're in for a real treat because the footpath that leads from College Road to Crescent Hill Wood is both steep and quite long.

It gets steeper near the top too. For an extra challenge. You are, however, immediately rewarded with the sight of the Dulwich Wood House, a Young's pub with a large garden and one I've often wondered why me and my friends have not used more. I had a Camden Hell's and rested my legs in preparation for the final stretch of the day's walk.

Which began by going back down the footpath, about halfway, I'd just come up. Until I found a gate in to Dulwich Woods and Sydenham Hill Woods. It's almost impossible to work out which of which you're in. Even though I've been there, running, walking, and generally mucking about, many times before.

There are so many paths you're never quite sure which direction you're heading in and, this time, I never passed the ruined folly or the disused railway tunnel, but I did pass the pond and several dog walkers and I enjoyed the sun setting behind and through the trees, giving them a most auspicious aspect and allowing me to get some of my best snaps of the day.

I left the woods via Cox's Walk and came out, again, on the South Circular quite near where I'd first entered SE21. Now I left it, but it was a short walk home and I was in much earlier than I'd normally finish a walk. That didn't matter. It had been a lovely day and though I could never claim to enjoy these solo walks as much as those I take with friends I do find them much much better than sitting at home on my own and I always see something I've never seen before as well as something I have seen before but never really investigated properly. Looking forward to the next one but even more looking forward to returning to TADS duty on Saturday for a stroll from Didcot to Dorchester on Thames and back that I'm calling Wittenham Clumps.