KOKO, Camden, London.

KOKO is a venue of many names - previously called Camden Theatre (1900-1909), Camden Hippodrome Theatre (1909-1913), Camden Hippodrome Picture Theatre (1913-1945), BBC Camden Theatre (1945-1977), The Music Machine (1977-1982) and The Camden Palace (1982-2004). 

It has a capacity of 1500 and was renovated in 2004 having originally opened on Boxing Day 1900 with a larger capacity of 2434. 

Among its claims to fame is that it was the site for the recording of The Last Goon Show of All on 30th April 1972 featuring Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. Monty Python recorded an album here in 1972 and Madonna made her first UK performance here. After a large fire in 2020 it reopened as KOKO in April 2022.

Mydiddee at St. Paul’s Churchyard, Deptford

Mydiddee was said to be the servant of a Tahitian Chief who was brought to England by Captain Bligh. Mydiddee was meant to be a cultural ambassador but died within a month of arriving at Deptford. Bligh was on a mission involving bringing back breadfruit plants and it seems there was an attempt to vaccinate Mydiddee against smallpox which went wrong and caused his death. He had been hospitalised in Jamaica on the return journey due to his condition so by time Deptford was on the horizon it seems his fate was sealed. 

The ships doctor, Edward Harwood, wrote his epitaph - 

Stranger, with solemn step approach, and know

A fav’rite son of nature sleeps below.

From that fam’d Queen of Southern Isles he came,

Fair Otahytey; fir’d by British fame:

And Providence each deep safe wafted o’er,

Yet only gave to hail the promis’d shore;

For here could life alas! no more supply,

Than just to look around him, and to die. 

Bligh paid for a funeral and tombstone but it wasn’t put in place until 1988 at a cost of £500 from a study group. 

An excellent account can be found here 

Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, Kent

Prospect Cottage is a Victorian Fisherman’s hut which is most well known for being the final home of director and artist Derek Jarman until his death in 1994. The timber walls are weatherproofed with tar and the outer wall has lines from the poem “The Sun Rising” by John Donne. The 1990 film The Garden was filmed here. 

Sculptures and hardy weather plants surround the cottage and Jarman wrote a book about it called Derek Jarman’s Garden with photography by Howard Sooley. When Jarman passed the cottage passed to his partner Keith Collins but was put up for sale in 2018 when Collins passed. Creative Folkestone are the custodians of the cottage after funding from Art Fund. 

All photographs from 23 September 2023. 

Jarman’s grave at Old Romney’s St. Clement Church. I have a page for the church here. 

The New York Subway

The New York subway has 472 stations and 36 lines and began operation I’m 1904. I don’t want to go into facts and figures but it’s amazing to consider it has 248 miles of route and can reach a top speed of 55mph but has an average speed of 17.4mph. I don’t normally get excited about trains and subways but I grew up in London and the London Underground is iconic entity and part of everyday life in Central London that I’ve used from a young age so it was mind blowing to ride its American cousin. 

Like a multiverse variant of something I’m already familiar with I learnt one golden rule - The Bronx is up and Brooklyn’s down. I’d already heard something similar from The Beastie Boys Hello Brooklyn “New York, New York it’s a hell of a town, You know The Bronx is up and I’m Brooklyn down”. Anyway, here are some random shots from my time there.