Walk In Silence
Well, another weekend and another trot around the Capital, we had booked some free tickets for an Art Exhibition at the Town Hall in High Street Kensington with over 200 artists' work on display, to be honest it didn't take so long to look at, the work was good in some cases, but quite over priced, still made a nice change. We came out and headed along High Street Kensington via some charity shops towards the Design Museum (again another free to visit), unless you want to pay for specific exhibitions. It wasn't bad for a 'freebie' I guess.
Then we decided to head towards Portobello Road and decided to cut through Holland Park which is quite a beautiful green space in the middle of a hubub of noise. We got part way through and as it had been threatening to do all morning the Heavens decided to open, we were lucky in finding a shelter out of the rain where we sat and made friends with a lovely chocolate coloured Labrador Retriever๐ temporarily delayed from his walk by the inclement weather.ย
It gradually eased off a bit so we walked on (in the wrong direction) ๐งญthanks to my dumb navigation skills. Doh๐คฆโโ๏ธ!ย Anyway weย managed to jump a bus to Notting Hill and soldiered on through the rain to Portobello Road by this time getting quite soggy.
Finally making it to our destination we dropped in to many of the lovely antique shops and to avoid getting any wetter decided to pop into a lovely pub called The Elgin Arms and had a couple of wonderful bottles of fruit ๐บ๐ and watched the world scuttle by dodging the showers.
With the 'munchies' gnawing away we then headed off in the direction of Ladbroke Grove Station and popped into a Thai Restaurant which I took a photo of the last time we visited the area which was in May of 2022 and is featured as part of my post relating to Ladbroke Grove at Vampires Stole My Lunch Money.ย I Must say the food and service was great and the Pad Thai quite delicious.
So after that we hit the end of the trail and after mooching around more market stallsย decided to head back when the plaque and art work on the wall opposite Ladbroke Grove station stopped us in our tracks with a sobering reminder.
The words beginning:
"We Walk In Silence Out Of Respect...
We Walk Because We Are Mourning...."
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The poem was written by Daniel Renwick a videographer and author that has worked with the Grenfell Community and you can watch the video of him narrating the 'We Walk In Silence' at the youtube link, his own website is at newarab.com. It is very thought provoking and also alarming as to how time just goes so quickly. The incident referred to is Grenfell which cost so many people their lives occurred on 14th June 2017. Fire spread throughout the tower block which was exacerbated by poor quality cladding (the original contractor to clad the tower was rejected due to cost and a cheaper option sought by the housing committee), safety fears by residents over a number of years were highlighted to the Council which were largely ignored. Once again the desire by the greedy to 'cut costs' and 'make profit' ran roughshod over people's safety and ultimately their lives. More tragically those responsible have still all these years on not been held to account.
An arts community project was set up which remembers those 72 who lost their lives by getting people together to create large scale public mosaics in memory. Have a check out the walk and the mosaics at the web site acava.org.
The plaque, the artwork provoked my memories, the sounds of the passing traffic, groups of people noisily chatting and the 'bus stop loon' shouting at passers by all faded into the distance, my mind went quiet as I read the poem and the song that popped to the forefront of my head almost immediately carries lyrics that mention 'Walk In Silence', the track is 'Atmosphere' by Joy Division from so long ago back in 1980 on the Factory Records Label, much as in the same way the music world lost a great it feels like the song fits as a kind requiem and mark of respect for those lost at Grenfell too.
A mixed day of emotion, but that is London for you!
Picture Sources
Photo by Tiplister on Unsplashย
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