We're Off To Peckham Rye

On Wednesday after I had had my mind blown by the Sarah Sze installation at Peckham Rye station I went exploring. I wanted to see why there was Peckham proper and Peckham Rye for a start. Once I had started thinking about it I was infested with ear worms, which like the old lady who swallowed a spider, wriggled and squiggled and tickled inside me. I did not swallow a bird to stop it. How absurd to swallow a bird. I just learned to live with the theme tune for Only Fools and Horses competing with ‘We’re off to Peckham Rye’ sung to the tune of Button Moon. It was an alarmingly loud adventure.

Peckham in old English is the village on the hill. The Rye part is old English for a brook. Once I started thinking about Rye my ear worms were joined by driving my chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry courtesy of Don McLean’s American Pie and The Seven Seas of Rhye by Queen. By the time I got to Camberwell I was drowning in noise. I think being exposed to big, thinky art that altered my perception of time and space did a real number on my brain and made it extra spongy.

There was a lot going on in both Peckhams. Life seems very much lived on the streets there. Shops spilled over onto the narrow pavements offering gnarled chillis, flares of brightly coloured squash, hairy yams and fibrous coconuts and every kind of banana you can imagine. Fishmongers had heaped counters of accusing fish, staring at you from jumbles of ice that cascaded down onto the floor, melting in pungent dribbles across the kerb. Much shopping was happening in many languages. Outside of Central London I don’t think I’ve ever been to such a bustling place.

I visited some excellent charity shops where I tried on a selection of hideous clothes. I picked up a really promising jumper, a deep, mild green colour with chunky cable knit and a rolled neck. I put it on thinking I would look like a sea faring woman. I looked like a sweaty baby with no neck, peering out of a ship’s funnel. It was not the kind of sea faring I was after. I left with the Persephone edition of Diana Athill’s Midsummer Night in the Workhouse. It fit me perfectly.

I accidentally got caught up in a protest after an altercation in a shop a few days previously had caused anger in the community. It was beginning to pick up pace as I arrived so I made my excuses and left after a flashback reminded me of that time my friend Rachel and I accidentally joined a Poll Tax demonstration and left our theatre tickets on the table in Pizza Hut.

Camberwell was calmer and I took refuge in The South London Art Gallery, which is in both a repurposed fire station and across the road next to Camberwell Art School. They are both excellent and very different spaces. I saw Lagos, Peckham Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes. There were some marvellous installations. I particularly enjoyed a short film embedded in an installation by Adeyemi Michael called Entitled. It was so beautiful I watched it twice.

Rather than head back into Peckham I walked on through Camberwell, which from the glimpses I enjoyed on my way through made me want to explore it on another trip. Walking from Southwark into Lambeth I decided to see if the house my mum was born in was still there. It was 25 minutes walk away and I had minutes to spare so I went to 14 Heyford Avenue to pay homage. It’s an ordinary, Victorian, three storey house sandwiched between housing estates and a bunch of Canary Wharf style tower blocks. When my grandparents were demobbed they came to London and rented the top floor flat there to make a new life, like so many other people. I stood outside and thought of them until I decided I probably looked like I was casing the joint.

I went home via the Oval, where New Zealand and England were playing cricket and the crowds were roaring and singing in a very polite manner. I’d never imagined you could roar politely until I heard the cricket fans. Outside the tube station two very drunk English fans were talking to two bemused and sober New Zealand fans. One of the drunk men kept clapping a confused Kiwi on the shoulder while slurring: ‘Mate! I mean MATE! Come on! I don’t begrudge you that last good win. I mean, MAAATE you were magnificent!’ It was like watching the antithesis of football hooliganism. I thought it was a good note to end on, so I took my ear worms and hit the Northern line.