WEBVTT NOTE Transcript 2024-03-09 from MP3 by https://elvery.net/prototypes/transcribe/ on my MacBook Air M1 on maximum quality setting. NOTE Body edited though mainly at the start (more TODO). 00:00.000 --> 00:02.000 Sound walk 00:02.000 --> 00:07.000 [Sound walk] 00:07.000 --> 00:17.000 Hi, I'm Damon Hart-Davis, and welcome to Earth Notes podcast on all things eco and green and efficient at home! 00:17.000 --> 00:20.000 12th September 2020 00:20.000 --> 00:26.000 A sound walk with Alison Fure with interesting noises off from motorbikes to ice cream vans. 00:26.000 --> 00:35.000 Starting at the gates of the Bonner Hill Road Cemetery near 16WW and continuing around the estate close by for about 90 minutes. 00:35.000 --> 00:38.000 More is available from the show notes for this episode. 00:38.000 --> 00:45.000 The track has been lightly edited in parts and does not quite capture the very start and end in particular. 00:45.000 --> 00:51.000 Thanks for permission from everyone participating for me to put this up and thanks to Alison for making it happen. 00:51.000 --> 00:53.000 Enjoy! 00:53.000 --> 01:00.000 (Jane) Jacobs [beep beep beep] 01:00.000 --> 01:13.000 is the person that I'm really looking at her through this prison because she was a journalist but a lot of people think she was an architect. 01:13.000 --> 01:20.000 But she was really a kind of polymath so she wrote The Death and Life of American Cities. So that's the Jane of Jane's Walks? 01:20.000 --> 01:23.000 Pardon? 01:23.000 --> 01:50.000 She fought Robert Moses who was a great road-builder, and he liked to build his roads through parks because that was the obvious place - it was open space and easy to build, so she stopped him from doing that, in around about the 1930s, something like that. 01:50.000 --> 02:18.000 [Lots of children shouting and car noises] 02:18.000 --> 02:23.000 So, a sound walk is all about sound. 02:23.000 --> 02:26.000 So it's about that sound as well. 02:26.000 --> 02:33.000 It's not really about, I make a lot of sound but I'm not really sure what the sound is. 02:33.000 --> 02:37.000 It's everything else that is the important sound. 02:37.000 --> 02:45.000 So we try to capture some of that sound and in various ways some of the sounds will speak to you differently. 02:45.000 --> 02:54.000 Some will be of interest and some won't be of great interest but they're all really equally valid. 02:54.000 --> 03:04.000 So, you know, there are all the sounds of this neighbourhood, there are all the sounds of what makes this place tick, the wildlife etc. 03:04.000 --> 03:10.000 So, I'm a little bit cauliflower fingers when it comes to the technology. 03:10.000 --> 03:16.000 So you'll have to bear with me and I'm hoping that some of you will help. 03:16.000 --> 03:20.000 It looks a bit like you were fantastic, you're expert. 03:20.000 --> 03:23.000 Don't confuse me with an expert. 03:23.000 --> 03:31.000 So, last year Lucy Furlong curated this with me and she's written some poems. 03:31.000 --> 03:46.000 She can't be here today but she has sent a recording of the poems that she wrote and that's the first quote about this. 03:46.000 --> 03:54.000 It's about changing as well and that is the first challenge because Lucy's not here because she lives in Ireland. 03:54.000 --> 04:01.000 So she's not even living in this country at all. So, all the various reasons behind that. 04:01.000 --> 04:11.000 So that's really the first challenge about this area, these forums and we're going to see a lot more. 04:11.000 --> 04:31.000 So, I think I'm going to start by playing a Radio 4 broadcast that was from last year which was about social housing and the ??? and the point of social housing. 04:31.000 --> 04:39.000 It was also about who should live in social housing and looking at an actual estate in Sheffield. 04:39.000 --> 04:42.000 So, I'll be there with you. 04:42.000 --> 04:47.000 Oh, by the way, this will take about an hour. 04:47.000 --> 04:58.000 We'll walk around the estate but we won't really, kind of, when we're talking we'll be in the calling areas. 04:58.000 --> 05:05.000 So we could be on the estate now and we're going to talk about paths and we could be on the estate there. 05:05.000 --> 05:10.000 It's kind of like invasion of privacy to a certain extent. 05:10.000 --> 05:28.000 So I'd rather talk here and then we could walk through the path and then the next time we stop we'll be in a calling area and it's less threatening for people if they see you at the bottom of the garden and group and they wonder what we're doing. 05:28.000 --> 05:36.000 Can't we go and study the people in that house over there? 05:36.000 --> 05:43.000 So, we might be standing here for quite a while. 05:43.000 --> 05:52.000 We'll just sit on the wall there please. 05:52.000 --> 06:04.000 And listening is a bit of a knot as well because people do get distracted if a car goes by, you tend to follow it with your eyes, but the car is part of the thing. 06:04.000 --> 06:12.000 Last year when we did this we had quite a lot of people and we had somebody who actually did a listening exercise. 06:12.000 --> 06:30.000 So I thought I would play this waterfall and just to get us in the listening frame of mind. 06:30.000 --> 06:42.000 It is when it works, it's ridiculous when it's... 06:42.000 --> 07:07.000 [sound of mini scooter and motorbike passing] 07:07.000 --> 07:35.000 (sound of water) 07:35.000 --> 07:41.000 I don't use to edit for a UP but I doubt you ever got very close to the presses. 07:41.000 --> 07:47.000 This is the segment from the Radio 4 broadcast. 07:47.000 --> 07:50.000 You will recognise the voice. 07:50.000 --> 08:18.000 (sound of water) 08:18.000 --> 08:41.000 (sound of water) 08:41.000 --> 09:10.000 (sound of water) 09:10.000 --> 09:11.000 So you like it then? 09:11.000 --> 09:14.000 Yeah, I'm just getting used to it. 09:14.000 --> 09:20.000 All the days they've modernised it, put the tile in the bath hole and they've extended the kit. 09:20.000 --> 09:28.000 It was a big change for me because I lived on power screens Friday night or back night so everybody had to go out whilst we were at the bath in front of home. 09:28.000 --> 09:32.000 So yes, it was a big change. 09:32.000 --> 09:34.000 Sorry, I touched it. 09:34.000 --> 09:37.000 Yeah. 09:37.000 --> 09:45.000 So I'm going to move on to the next recording but I'm just going to comment that when Betty arrived I was talking to Marilyn. 09:45.000 --> 09:52.000 Marilyn was actually... she was one of the original residents and has been here 40 years. 09:52.000 --> 09:55.000 Sorry, I just cut that a tiny bit short. 09:55.000 --> 09:57.000 They're all 2 minutes. 09:57.000 --> 10:25.000 (sound of water) 10:25.000 --> 10:29.000 Leslie Pearson runs the Estates Family Support Centre. 10:29.000 --> 10:35.000 Some days she has, you know, more to back-dress it now but I wouldn't say it's any different from anywhere else. 10:35.000 --> 10:39.000 Why people seem to think that we're all going to rob you. 10:39.000 --> 10:41.000 We're all selling drugs. 10:41.000 --> 10:44.000 We're all just like, we're shoutable and our party's all that. 10:44.000 --> 10:45.000 No, no, it's not. 10:45.000 --> 10:47.000 Where does that come from? 10:47.000 --> 10:52.000 Media, dare I say. Documentaries or programmes like Shameless. 10:52.000 --> 11:03.000 Right, the next recording is a bit of fun really. 11:03.000 --> 11:10.000 And it's one of the residents from the Estates talking about the sound of their house. 11:10.000 --> 11:38.000 (sound of water) 11:38.000 --> 11:44.000 I used to edit a supercomputing trade magazine many moons ago and visualisation was a big deal then too. 11:44.000 --> 11:52.000 It's no use spending millions on your experiments and number crunching if you can't actually get the results into your head or anyone else's. 11:52.000 --> 11:57.000 Sometimes we use visualisation to make a pretty image such as a graph. 11:57.000 --> 12:02.000 Sometimes we can use other senses such as touch or taste or vibration. 12:02.000 --> 12:05.000 Sometimes we can make sounds instead. 12:05.000 --> 12:13.000 What happens if I speed up data from my house to listen to a year's worth of readings in a second? 12:13.000 --> 12:21.000 That speeds up the daily cycle happened 365 times in that second or 365 Hz. 12:21.000 --> 12:25.000 That's between F and the sharp one that we see. 12:25.000 --> 12:31.000 I end up using one sense reading about every 12 minutes in each soundtrack that I create. 12:31.000 --> 12:45.000 If we listen to or look at temperature or light or humidity, we might expect not only to hear a daily cycle but also a weekly cycle in many homes and annual cycles driven by the seasons. 12:45.000 --> 12:54.000 Other fainter or messier signals may be there from Western and other calendar months, maybe even something from the more regular lunar cycles. 12:54.000 --> 12:59.000 We can look for these mathematically with number crunching called Fourier analysis. 12:59.000 --> 13:03.000 But hearing or seeing could make us even more believable. 13:03.000 --> 13:09.000 I spent a few hours messing around and have some interesting initial results. 13:09.000 --> 13:16.000 Nothing shocking but you can hear the difference between inside and outside temperatures and inside which are inside and outside. 13:16.000 --> 13:20.000 The air is the sound of temperatures at my desk. 13:20.000 --> 13:31.000 In the month of August just gone, heating wasn't on and temperatures changed especially smoothly while we were away at the end of the month. 13:31.000 --> 13:35.000 It's a fraction of a second but there is a buzzy tone there. 13:35.000 --> 13:42.000 Now here's the whole of 2018 temperatures from outside as captured by the sensor in our porch. 13:42.000 --> 13:53.000 4-0, the porch is below the window in my room 5S, the sensors are thus only a few meters away from each other, still a relatively smooth tone. 13:53.000 --> 14:02.000 And finally for today, the sound of my room 5S temperatures for 2018. 14:05.000 --> 14:13.000 The buzzing at the beginning and end of the year is the heating and Radbot working to keep the rooms only heated when someone is active in them. 14:13.000 --> 14:20.000 So with much faster temperature movements in the basic daily cycle, you can hear the effect of heating. 14:20.000 --> 14:26.000 There's more on my Earth Notes Web site at earth.org.uk 14:26.000 --> 14:30.000 I thought you didn't expect that. 14:30.000 --> 14:31.000 No. 14:31.000 --> 14:46.000 But that's one that I just slipped in because the actual one that I do play is about how Damon has used his house to produce energy basically. 14:46.000 --> 14:48.000 So let's listen to that. 14:48.000 --> 14:50.000 There's two lots of me. 14:50.000 --> 14:52.000 Sorry. 14:52.000 --> 14:53.000 There's two lots of everything. 14:53.000 --> 14:54.000 Oh okay. 14:54.000 --> 14:56.000 So each one is two minutes. 14:56.000 --> 14:57.000 Okay. 14:57.000 --> 14:58.000 So if you feel that every... 14:58.000 --> 14:59.000 You just carry on. 15:00.000 --> 15:02.000 You just carry on. 15:02.000 --> 15:04.000 It's only two minutes long. 15:04.000 --> 15:10.000 I was asked, you have solar panels alongside your fence. 15:10.000 --> 15:16.000 I would like to know more about the considerations you made for this and whether you need a separate inverter. 15:16.000 --> 15:25.000 The solar panels that I have on the roof feed power into the mains, which is great for powering gadgets and appliances during the day. 15:25.000 --> 15:35.000 I recently added a mains battery that holds on to some of that solar juice we don't need during the day, to run lights and TV and fridge and so on overnight. 15:35.000 --> 15:40.000 But there are some things that I prefer not to take power from mains for at all. 15:40.000 --> 15:48.000 And until I bought the new mains battery, I would have had no way of powering those things overnight other than with the mains. 15:48.000 --> 15:58.000 For that, I have a completely separate off-grid system with its own panels and battery and battery controller rather than an inverter. 15:58.000 --> 16:06.000 From that, I can power some small lights, the server for my website, my laptop and other bits and pieces. 16:06.000 --> 16:11.000 The big panels on the fence that you were asking about are part of the off-grid system. 16:11.000 --> 16:15.000 One feature of those panels is the lake point due south. 16:15.000 --> 16:18.000 The ones on my roof point east and west. 16:18.000 --> 16:24.000 The combination makes it easier to soak up some light all day long, especially in winter. 16:24.000 --> 16:32.000 Those panels also act as handy privacy screening since what they are on is rather low. 16:32.000 --> 16:39.000 The big panels were an experiment to see if I could make a significant difference in the total solar energy that I collect in the middle of winter. 16:39.000 --> 16:44.000 And so far the answer is not really, but I'm continuing to try. 16:44.000 --> 16:56.000 When the big panels are getting lots of sun on a bright day, my system automatically transfers a couple of gadgets, such as my internet router, from being mains powered to the off-grid system. 16:56.000 --> 17:00.000 Sometimes those gadgets can stay off-grid all night too. 17:00.000 --> 17:08.000 There's lots more on my Earth Notes website at earth.org.uk about all of this. 17:09.000 --> 17:13.000 I wish I had bought my little gadget. 17:13.000 --> 17:18.000 My grandson bought me this little black solar panel with holes in it. 17:18.000 --> 17:25.000 You float it on a bucket of water and when the sun shines a little spray comes up like a miniature fountain. 17:25.000 --> 17:32.000 It fascinates children because they can cross their shadow on it and it goes down and then they stand back. 17:32.000 --> 17:39.000 Before we leave Damon's household, just one more to play. 17:39.000 --> 17:48.000 This is the housebarrows and on the estate there's a colony of about 150 housesparrows. 17:48.000 --> 17:53.000 About 30 of which sit on my windows pecking at something at times. 17:53.000 --> 17:57.000 They're on the ground pecking at so times. 17:57.000 --> 18:02.000 I'm just sitting there and I hear them go "choo choo choo". That's not chipping. 18:02.000 --> 18:05.000 They're on the windows so it's really interesting. 18:05.000 --> 18:09.000 Then they see me and fly away in the panic. 18:09.000 --> 18:22.000 This Damon's sparrow is hanging around in that. 18:22.000 --> 18:28.000 Hanging around in that ... yeah exactly. By the front door basically. 18:28.000 --> 18:42.000 [sparrows chirping] 18:42.000 --> 18:54.000 [sparrows chirping] 18:54.000 --> 19:12.000 [sparrows chirping] 19:12.000 --> 19:18.000 It's a lovely beautiful sound. It makes so much difference here. 19:18.000 --> 19:25.000 Anyone that's got a bush or a hedge in the front, that makes a big difference. 19:25.000 --> 19:31.000 But for years I didn't hear them. When I was a kid in Yorkshire I distinctly remember we had underneath my bedroom window 19:31.000 --> 19:38.000 we had a hedge, a private hedge or something and they used to squabble and swarm and maybe chase one another. 19:38.000 --> 19:43.000 I didn't basically hear sparrows for years and years and years and then suddenly they reappeared. 19:43.000 --> 19:46.000 When you took that recording it was two or three years ago right? 19:46.000 --> 19:49.000 All the recordings are last year. 19:49.000 --> 19:52.000 Is it that recently? Alright but not much before then. 19:52.000 --> 19:53.000 Suddenly they were back. 19:53.000 --> 19:58.000 I have got some in 2018 but I am playing the ones we did last year. 19:58.000 --> 20:01.000 But yes it's a lovely sound. 20:01.000 --> 20:03.000 It is, it's joyful. It's absolutely joyful. 20:03.000 --> 20:07.000 Well actually that's not even squabbling but when they're squabbling it's also quite a fun life. 20:07.000 --> 20:13.000 And I sometimes stand under the bush here by the cemetery which overhangs the pavement 20:13.000 --> 20:17.000 and just watch the droppings coming out of it when they go to roost. 20:17.000 --> 20:19.000 All these little white droppings. 20:19.000 --> 20:23.000 But what we've been sending here, we've had a load of other sounds as well. 20:23.000 --> 20:29.000 And particularly the jackdaws and they are a very local noise. 20:29.000 --> 20:34.000 There's a mix of ordinary crows and jackdaws. Lots of them. 20:34.000 --> 20:39.000 And we get parakeets as well. That is our sound. That is our neighbourhood. 20:39.000 --> 20:43.000 And so there's another noise in here. 20:43.000 --> 20:46.000 I took this from the gate. 20:46.000 --> 20:50.000 So it's actually the cemetery. 20:50.000 --> 20:53.000 Let's see if you can guess what the other noise is. 20:53.000 --> 20:57.000 [Dogs barking] 20:57.000 --> 20:59.000 I'm doing it for myself. 20:59.000 --> 21:20.000 [Dogs barking] 21:20.000 --> 21:22.000 Come on nature boy. 21:22.000 --> 21:25.000 We've got all this composition from the real ones. 21:25.000 --> 21:29.000 Yes, that's tricky. I thought I heard a squirrel in there. Maybe. Maybe. 21:29.000 --> 21:30.000 That one. 21:30.000 --> 21:32.000 No, that one. 21:32.000 --> 21:35.000 No, I have no idea what that is. 21:35.000 --> 21:38.000 Hi John. 21:38.000 --> 21:40.000 Yes. 21:40.000 --> 21:41.000 Yes. 21:41.000 --> 21:42.000 Oh, Sabrina. 21:42.000 --> 21:45.000 No, someone's taken it away unfortunately. 21:45.000 --> 21:47.000 Well, stolen it. 21:47.000 --> 21:50.000 Well, I noticed it this afternoon. 21:50.000 --> 21:52.000 I'm going to use it as a cut-through. 21:52.000 --> 21:57.000 Sabrina saw a cow with an air bank triggered. 21:57.000 --> 22:00.000 So presumably something ran into it. 22:00.000 --> 22:02.000 A nightingale. 22:02.000 --> 22:03.000 Oh, fox. 22:03.000 --> 22:09.000 There was a couple of times where I actually get a buzz of a bee in there as well. 22:09.000 --> 22:12.000 Yeah, but that wasn't barking. That was a different noise, isn't it? 22:12.000 --> 22:13.000 There was a young friend. 22:13.000 --> 22:14.000 Yes. 22:14.000 --> 22:15.000 A young cat barking in there. 22:15.000 --> 22:16.000 Yes. 22:16.000 --> 22:18.000 Not bad. Well done. 22:18.000 --> 22:24.000 Yeah, I sometimes bark back at the fox to make them go away because they come and play and make a terrible noise. 22:24.000 --> 22:26.000 And I bark back at them until they go away. 22:26.000 --> 22:29.000 How can I make the dog in the house next to mine go away? 22:29.000 --> 22:32.000 If you hire me, I'll come and bark at it for you. 22:32.000 --> 22:46.000 Right. So now I'm going to talk about paths and trees because they're quite important features of the estate. 22:46.000 --> 22:56.000 So there's about ten paths, alleyways, that are separated from traffic. 22:56.000 --> 22:59.000 We refer to them as Twittens, don't we? 22:59.000 --> 23:00.000 Yes, as what? 23:00.000 --> 23:01.000 Twittens. 23:01.000 --> 23:04.000 Yeah, they're are Twittens in London. 23:04.000 --> 23:08.000 The Loudon Twittens are recognised and they're protected. 23:08.000 --> 23:10.000 They're protected by the council. 23:10.000 --> 23:11.000 They're listed. 23:11.000 --> 23:16.000 They're in Loudon and they're quite close to Echincommen. 23:16.000 --> 23:19.000 But these Twittens... 23:19.000 --> 23:21.000 Pardon? 23:21.000 --> 23:27.000 These Twittens are part of a design called Radburn. 23:27.000 --> 23:29.000 They're Radburn lines. 23:29.000 --> 23:35.000 And they are from America and 1960s estates. 23:35.000 --> 23:42.000 So part of the landscaping, part of the ethos about what people should have, 23:42.000 --> 23:47.000 what were they entitled to as residents, you know? 23:47.000 --> 23:57.000 To be separate from the traffic, to meet each other, but to know who lives on your estate. 23:57.000 --> 23:59.000 This is the streets in the sky business. 23:59.000 --> 24:02.000 So they have these aerial walkways. 24:02.000 --> 24:05.000 And we have everything here, the same. 24:05.000 --> 24:11.000 Radburn lines, paths separated from traffic, and the streets in the sky, 24:11.000 --> 24:17.000 so you can meet your neighbours and know who lives on your estate with you. 24:17.000 --> 24:23.000 But in Britain, they didn't necessarily always get translated properly. 24:23.000 --> 24:32.000 So for example, the Radburn lines over near Barrett Road 24:32.000 --> 24:35.000 are really become a car park. 24:35.000 --> 24:37.000 And it wasn't meant to happen. 24:37.000 --> 24:40.000 You were meant to have a back and a front to your house, 24:40.000 --> 24:46.000 with the back, a lovely garden, not to have the communality at the back. 24:46.000 --> 24:52.000 But we still have these alleyways, and there's actually 890 metres, 24:52.000 --> 24:57.000 which is nearly a kilometre footpath, which they're all going to go. 24:57.000 --> 25:06.000 And the footpath that they will be provided, they're of absolutely no use to most people. 25:06.000 --> 25:12.000 They will go north-south in parallel lines from Vincent Road. 25:12.000 --> 25:19.000 But at the moment, we can walk down this one, which I frequently do. 25:19.000 --> 25:23.000 Well, there's one over there, which a lot of people don't use, 25:23.000 --> 25:29.000 and they go north-south and east-west, they're like a grid. 25:29.000 --> 25:37.000 And the main east-west spine is 200 metres long, so that's a hell of a lot of path to lose. 25:37.000 --> 25:42.000 But the other thing is, a lot of these paths come off Bonner Hill Road 25:42.000 --> 25:49.000 down the back of the garden, and people let their creepers or whatever go over the fence, 25:49.000 --> 25:55.000 almost do meet, and that's where the sparrows congregate as well. 25:55.000 --> 26:01.000 So you see a lot of birds, there's only about 14 bird species on the estate breeding, 26:01.000 --> 26:05.000 blackbirds, garden birds, robins. 26:05.000 --> 26:10.000 But that's where you're likely to find them. 26:10.000 --> 26:15.000 And what we're going to do is take a walk down the Twittens. 26:15.000 --> 26:26.000 Before we do, I want to read something at home that I wrote, 26:26.000 --> 26:32.000 which is in the Little Book of Pass, some of you have seen this one. 26:32.000 --> 26:36.000 So, Sim contributed to that as well. 26:36.000 --> 26:44.000 And I wrote this poem for a reading that I did at Cable Street. 26:44.000 --> 26:48.000 No, not Cable Street. 26:48.000 --> 26:53.000 Cable Depot, Cable Depot in Whooping. 26:53.000 --> 26:57.000 It's called The Estate. 26:57.000 --> 27:02.000 A mixed housing estate with three-storey balcony access, 27:02.000 --> 27:07.000 walk-ups, aerial walkways and streets in the sky, 27:07.000 --> 27:10.000 four tottering ten-storey towers, 27:10.000 --> 27:16.000 230 air-cleaning nutrient recycling trees, 27:16.000 --> 27:20.000 once planted on top of former 1960s hubs, 27:20.000 --> 27:23.000 such as the Plebbers Public House, 27:23.000 --> 27:28.000 a church of something and an ice cream pie. 27:28.000 --> 27:34.000 Those haunted conversations soon found voice in a row of 1970 shots 27:34.000 --> 27:39.000 heralded by a giant printing press next to a hairdresser, 27:39.000 --> 27:42.000 a mini-mart and a news agent, 27:42.000 --> 27:48.000 where the latest heart attack and domestic disputes were hot, hot, hot. 27:48.000 --> 27:54.000 Appearances on dramas, such as The Bill and currently The Capture, 27:54.000 --> 27:58.000 are not reputation enhancing for any estate, 27:58.000 --> 28:00.000 but crime-ridden is unjust, 28:00.000 --> 28:04.000 as it's a neighboring wall that statistically rises to the top, 28:04.000 --> 28:06.000 by a factor of four. 28:06.000 --> 28:11.000 Politicians suffer amnesia from sentiments in the Addison Housing Act 28:11.000 --> 28:15.000 downplaying positive acts, such as hardworking, 28:15.000 --> 28:16.000 community spirit, 28:16.000 --> 28:18.000 beauteous gardens. 28:18.000 --> 28:21.000 Sometimes these places are more beautiful 28:21.000 --> 28:25.000 when the winter swept the politics clean out of the walkways, 28:25.000 --> 28:29.000 down the Radburn lines and into the sunset. 28:29.000 --> 28:35.000 By night, bats enter ten twittens or urban alleyways 28:35.000 --> 28:38.000 that run more south than east west, 28:38.000 --> 28:42.000 a gridded glada of insects attracted to lion flowers, 28:42.000 --> 28:46.000 horse chestnut candles, apple and cherry blossom, 28:46.000 --> 28:51.000 for the flower-filled turf of bird's foot trefoil and the vane. 28:51.000 --> 28:57.000 There the one hundred feather bundles which sparrow along the roofline, 28:57.000 --> 29:00.000 popping in and out of drop tiles, 29:00.000 --> 29:02.000 sweeping dusty gutters, 29:02.000 --> 29:08.000 pale-eyed jackdaws, call and door around the peaks of the tottering tower blocks, 29:08.000 --> 29:11.000 where secret lives are conducted. 29:11.000 --> 29:16.000 The Autumn's Festival feast is enjoyed by squirrels and winter thrushes, 29:16.000 --> 29:22.000 a wassail conducted on acorns, contours, crapples and pyrocanth, the berries. 29:22.000 --> 29:26.000 It is peaceful, no extraneous intrusions, 29:26.000 --> 29:30.000 just a cultural blend of blowquots, chews and palm, 29:30.000 --> 29:34.000 olives with silver maples and copper beaches, 29:34.000 --> 29:41.000 accepting the occasional siren, breaking these networks diminishes us all. 29:41.000 --> 29:49.000 So we're going to walk down the twitten. 29:49.000 --> 29:58.000 We're going to look at the paths that run east west while we go north-south, 29:58.000 --> 30:00.000 Just taking the... 30:00.000 --> 30:05.800 the kind of effect of the path. We're going to mix it up with a little bit of trees as 30:05.800 --> 30:14.080 well. So if I go on to... Hi Sharon. Hi Elsa, hi. Hi, thank you. Come on. But I just wanted 30:14.080 --> 30:23.080 to point out that personally walked past early at home. In that poem a lot of the references 30:23.080 --> 30:31.480 came from him because he was one of the original residents and his, I think his mum was born 30:31.480 --> 30:39.320 in one of the cottages. And he used to talk about ralinerans, there used to be two scrap 30:39.320 --> 30:45.760 metal merchants on the estate. And they would tape bits and pieces, they would get money 30:45.760 --> 30:50.760 for it and if there's any change they'd go to the ice cream parlours. And he said that 30:50.760 --> 30:57.480 the ice cream parlour was, it wasn't a shop, it was an ice cream parlour. It was just a 30:57.480 --> 31:07.720 static kind of hatch, hard to imagine really. And the feathers was here, the pub. And there 31:07.720 --> 31:14.160 was a brewery, Hobbskins Brewery, there was an offshoot of the Hobbskins which was in 31:14.160 --> 31:20.760 the town centre. There was also a microwave brewery here, so it's interesting that we've 31:20.760 --> 31:28.760 got the Parlour Brewery coming back. Yeah, that's interesting. And the reference to the 31:28.760 --> 31:35.760 printing press, I actually thought, I remember seeing it, the shop, Tadlow, had all these 31:35.760 --> 31:46.760 hairdressers, the news agent, probably a bit before the time. But it was a static, it was 31:46.760 --> 31:54.760 the hairdresser stabbed her husband and it was all the gossip. Everyone used to come 31:54.760 --> 32:02.760 out and just chat about it, it's so exciting. So I think he died, but it was kind of such 32:02.760 --> 32:12.760 a long time ago. And then the people had the mini mart, they also had to own the news agents, 32:12.760 --> 32:17.760 and then he had a heart attack and I think that's why it all came to an end and the council 32:17.760 --> 32:21.760 didn't really let their own reasons. 32:21.760 --> 32:26.760 I've never seen someone really sniffing around, that was the ice cream parlour. 32:26.760 --> 32:28.760 Possibly, I don't really know. 32:28.760 --> 32:35.760 There used to be a chap who had the ice cream van at the back of us in Glastonbury, but 32:35.760 --> 32:40.760 he's long gone now. But I do remember that printing press, because he used to go in the 32:40.760 --> 32:47.760 shop, the door was open, he used to walk in and the printing press was the whole shop. 32:47.760 --> 32:50.760 That's all I remember and nothing else, you know. 32:50.760 --> 32:53.760 Well how old is the estate? 32:53.760 --> 32:57.760 It's about the same age as me, so the person who was our neighbour moved in pretty well 32:57.760 --> 33:01.760 to one of the very first available houses, it will have been about 40 years ago, but 33:01.760 --> 33:09.760 these were built in '66, '67, '68, something like that. So that's how old they are. 33:09.760 --> 33:11.760 And the town blocks? 33:11.760 --> 33:13.760 Hard, I have no idea about the town blocks. 33:13.760 --> 33:22.760 Yeah, there is an older part which is the 1950s block, which we will just peek at now. 33:22.760 --> 33:29.760 Alright, so I can then, to clarify then, so round here anyways, my house is pretty much 33:29.760 --> 33:33.760 the same age as me, we're twins, one of us a bit bigger. 33:33.760 --> 33:34.760 Yeah, twins. 33:34.760 --> 33:35.760 Twenty-four. 33:35.760 --> 33:37.760 Thank you, you can come round with a tea. 33:37.760 --> 33:43.760 The trees are kind of 1970s really, I've got photographs of them being planted. 33:43.760 --> 33:49.760 When they were planted, in London Plains, they're huge, they put in rooms which are 33:49.760 --> 33:56.760 quite large trees, so men. 33:56.760 --> 34:03.760 Before we go, we're going to talk about trees now, but hello. 34:03.760 --> 34:10.760 Suzanne came on this walk last year, so she knows what I'm talking about. 34:10.760 --> 34:16.760 We're talking about all the changes that there's been since last year, one of them being 34:16.760 --> 34:19.760 that Lucy lives in Ireland now. 34:19.760 --> 34:24.760 Yeah, she lives in Ireland, so I've got a recording of her voice reading her poetry. 34:24.760 --> 34:34.760 Yeah, so I think what I'll mention before we get down onto this date is CAVAT. 34:34.760 --> 34:41.760 So, CAVAT is a system of valuing trees, and it's really done by tree officers, and there 34:41.760 --> 34:51.760 will be a lot of CAVAT going on on these trees when all the trees that are going to be held 34:51.760 --> 34:53.760 are valued. 34:53.760 --> 35:03.760 Well, I'll remove it one step back and talk about another estate where this happened. 35:03.760 --> 35:10.760 So, the council gave this date over to a developer, and the developer has to have the trees valued. 35:10.760 --> 35:14.760 And that's something that tree officers are used to doing. 35:14.760 --> 35:18.760 You can read about that on the London Tree Officers Association website. 35:18.760 --> 35:28.760 You can read about how they assess the trees aesthetically, but in terms of longevity, 35:28.760 --> 35:33.760 they measure the diameter, they measure the height, they look at the condition. 35:33.760 --> 35:40.760 They're not like us ecologists who like lots of poles and loose bark and weeds, etc. 35:40.760 --> 35:43.760 They like a perfect tree. 35:43.760 --> 35:49.760 So, I have a friend who's a tree officer, and I invited him to come and value some of the trees 35:49.760 --> 35:55.760 that I know that are going in the development. 35:55.760 --> 35:58.760 Because it's quite lucrative business for the council. 35:58.760 --> 36:06.760 They will get that money, and they can use that money then to spend on replanting some trees anyway. 36:06.760 --> 36:15.760 So, I had a tree officer come and value a horticultural variety of sycamore. 36:15.760 --> 36:23.760 It's a sycamore, but it's a first class sycamore grown by a nursery for its candelabra shape 36:23.760 --> 36:32.760 and for the wonderful leaf that it would generate during the autumn. 36:32.760 --> 36:36.760 And it came out at £48,000. 36:36.760 --> 36:39.760 So, I'll just give you an example of what the tree stock is. 36:39.760 --> 36:45.760 Just for reference, that's what I think a single car parking space is worth here in terms of real estate. 36:45.760 --> 36:48.760 Things which people expect to park on for free, it's about £50,000. 36:48.760 --> 36:54.760 So, just for reference, I mean only here, right? But that's an interesting line up there. 36:54.760 --> 36:58.760 £48,000. We went to the Piper Willow. 36:58.760 --> 37:03.760 Piper Willow is kind of in personified. 37:03.760 --> 37:13.760 Perhaps to take the heat off the E/E cork below, because that willow is in better condition 37:13.760 --> 37:16.760 and worth a lot more than the Piper Willow is like. 37:16.760 --> 37:20.760 But the Piper Willow is valued at £32,000. 37:20.760 --> 37:24.760 So, you can see less, £32,000. 37:24.760 --> 37:29.760 And it hasn't got as much longevity as the E/E cork willow. 37:29.760 --> 37:32.760 But the E/E cork willow is in the way. 37:32.760 --> 37:41.760 So, £32,000 for the Piper Willow, £48,000 for the candelabra shape sycamore that is off Willingham Way. 37:41.760 --> 37:46.760 That's if they're maintained properly and they keep their nice shapes. 37:46.760 --> 37:50.760 At the moment we're having some very harsh cutbacks of the trees. 37:50.760 --> 38:02.760 So, that makes the point really about how the heat go to stay in Southwark, 38:02.760 --> 38:07.760 which I did work then, did some back surveys in the early stages. 38:07.760 --> 38:13.760 They valued the trees under CAVAT, £3 million. 38:13.760 --> 38:18.760 When the council was given the £3 million by the developer, 38:18.760 --> 38:23.760 but when they came to replant trees, because what they do is they go a bit silly 38:23.760 --> 38:28.760 and spend a few thousand on one tree just to get rid of the money 38:28.760 --> 38:31.760 and buy huge specimen that's never going to take. 38:31.760 --> 38:35.760 It's much better to get a young tree grown. 38:35.760 --> 38:40.760 So, what they did is in the expanded footprint of the building, 38:40.760 --> 38:46.760 they found that they couldn't plant any trees because all the surfaces went away. 38:46.760 --> 38:50.760 And if you look around all the paths where they've marked all the surfaces, 38:50.760 --> 38:56.760 it's just the imagination to think where any more trees might be. 38:56.760 --> 39:02.760 So, anyway, it's a little silly. 39:02.760 --> 39:05.760 And what we'll do is move through... 39:05.760 --> 39:08.760 It houses the sounds. 39:08.760 --> 39:10.760 Yeah, it does. 39:10.760 --> 39:12.760 We'll move through Twitters. 39:12.760 --> 39:15.760 ...trees scream of anguish as well. 39:15.760 --> 39:19.760 OK, let's walk to the Twitters. 39:19.760 --> 39:22.760 Never mind. 39:22.760 --> 39:24.760 Seven. 39:24.760 --> 39:27.760 We are coming in bad jokes. 39:27.760 --> 39:30.760 That's a six-word. 39:30.760 --> 39:45.760 When I was in Yorkshire, it was "ginnels" and "snickets". 39:45.760 --> 39:48.760 And when I was in Edinburgh, it was "wynds". 39:48.760 --> 39:52.760 So, there are lots of different names for them. 39:52.760 --> 39:56.760 Yes, you had all of my terms in there in your list. 39:56.760 --> 40:04.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 40:04.760 --> 40:07.760 Let's walk. 40:07.760 --> 40:31.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 40:31.760 --> 40:59.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 40:59.760 --> 41:09.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 41:09.760 --> 41:17.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 41:17.760 --> 41:20.760 You have to get the salt. 41:20.760 --> 41:35.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 41:35.760 --> 41:38.760 Because we've got two in our garden, we've got three. 41:38.760 --> 41:41.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 41:41.760 --> 41:44.760 Yeah, we've got an apple and a pear, definitely two. 41:44.760 --> 41:48.760 We've got the much-malined suckers, but it's very nice. 41:48.760 --> 41:50.760 It's not a leylandii. 41:50.760 --> 41:53.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 41:53.760 --> 41:58.760 Yeah, no, so you've got a pretty nice one. 41:58.760 --> 42:05.760 And it's got nesting and long-tailed soaps and don't press. 42:05.760 --> 42:07.760 And all of them. 42:07.760 --> 42:11.760 Of course, it's got pigeons and squirrels as well. 42:11.760 --> 42:29.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 42:29.760 --> 42:33.760 All of my say, all that could happen is... 42:37.760 --> 42:47.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 42:47.760 --> 43:14.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 43:14.760 --> 43:24.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 43:24.760 --> 43:53.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 43:53.760 --> 44:22.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 44:22.760 --> 44:33.760 [INDISTINCT CHATTER] 44:33.760 --> 44:36.760 And the creatures. 44:36.760 --> 44:41.760 Well, they're travelling, you don't have to remember all that. 44:41.760 --> 44:45.760 Then you realise that anything which isn't full of people is superfluous, right? 44:45.760 --> 44:51.760 So the willing way won't exist, just for an example, because that'll be the middle of that. 44:51.760 --> 44:57.760 Curiously, it's been meant to be knocked down for ages and it was built as a temporary thing, but they seem to be... 44:57.760 --> 44:59.760 I don't know is the answer. 45:00.000 --> 45:06.640 keep patching it up a bit but there isn't another community tent here so I think you'll go on patching it up a bit. 45:06.640 --> 45:25.200 I suppose if they got rid of this then the Alpha, you know the church, would have to be the voting 45:25.200 --> 45:30.000 polling booths and stuff like that because there wasn't another obvious. That game that's 45:30.000 --> 45:33.360 meant to go that's why they cleared out all the shops. See that was the old hairdresser. 45:33.360 --> 46:02.960 [Music] 46:02.960 --> 46:08.960 I'm Des Kay, I'm the director of a local charity in Kingston upon 46:08.960 --> 46:16.400 and we've also got an offshoot that we call Save the Food Club and what we do is we go around 46:16.400 --> 46:24.720 collecting all the surplus food from the supermarkets at the end of the day and we distribute it and 46:24.720 --> 46:34.400 we have to distribute it around the Cambridge estate into the Piper Hall, the community facility 46:34.400 --> 46:43.680 and it's used by the local community and it's also used by the refugees so we come in here 46:44.640 --> 46:56.640 six nights sorry five nights a week we bring in the food fill up the fridges and the non-perishable 46:56.640 --> 47:04.720 which we put on the work surfaces and they just give you a thick, we don't have to 47:04.720 --> 47:11.920 prepare the food it just goes straight out again to the refugees and to the local community 47:12.880 --> 47:20.000 and obviously saves them a little bit of money and of course stops it so that the food just 47:20.000 --> 47:26.720 being completely wasted which is normally what happens to it it either gets incinerated or it 47:26.720 --> 47:35.680 ends up being composted but that's that's quite a rare occurrence unfortunately because of all 47:35.680 --> 47:42.000 the packaging and everything they just shove it all in a big incinerator and and then they show 47:42.000 --> 47:49.440 off where they're using the energy for things like generating a lot of energy when of course 47:49.440 --> 47:56.800 it's much much more sensible that this food which is perfectly good and perfectly edible 47:56.800 --> 48:03.040 goes to families who sometimes have to choose between eating and eating 48:08.240 --> 48:21.920 thank you Des and then I listened to Lucy's poem about a beautiful popular tree 48:21.920 --> 48:33.600 um there 48:34.480 --> 48:45.280 anyway 48:45.440 --> 48:56.960 so 48:56.960 --> 49:12.640 so that certainly wasn't here when I moved here 15 years ago but the the the shop was the um 49:13.360 --> 49:19.360 grocery shop there. Hairdress was empty for a while this lot wasn't the previous one. Yeah 49:19.360 --> 49:27.280 yeah the hairdresser's got taken over by somebody else somebody told me the story of that when I 49:27.280 --> 49:39.040 pardon well this is where countryside this is the council and this is basically offices for the 49:39.040 --> 49:48.720 developers 49:48.720 --> 49:50.720 [car noises] 49:50.720 --> 50:04.720 home on here I hope I can find it 50:05.360 --> 50:17.440 is a shaking leaf sea surrounds us in sound waves wishing whispering washing wishing rustling 50:17.440 --> 50:26.000 whistling festering festering a shaking leaf sea surrounds us in sound waves breaking shore shingle 50:26.000 --> 50:33.360 branches breeze dancing breaking shore shingle branches breeze dancing 50:34.720 --> 50:39.920 I'm actually going to play that again because you didn't hear the beginning but scytherism is the 50:39.920 --> 50:47.440 noise that the leaves make as they sort of rustle in the wind and last year this is another change 50:47.440 --> 50:54.400 last year this tree was alive it was huge now it's really been packed back into another compound 50:54.400 --> 51:01.760 and so I'm going to play it again because it's a really lovely poem and I'm glad that Lucy sent 51:01.760 --> 51:09.200 me the recording because it's it's very difficult to to say it it's a tongue twister 51:09.200 --> 51:17.600 scytherism whispering washing washing whistling flustering 51:17.600 --> 51:25.600 festering a shaking leaf sea surrounds us in sound waves wishing whispering washing 51:25.600 --> 51:33.840 washing rustling whistling festering festering a shaking leaf sea surrounds us in sound waves 51:33.840 --> 51:43.360 breaking shore shingle branches breeze dancing breaking shore shingle branches breeze dancing 51:43.360 --> 51:50.000 so thank you Lucy from uh from from clodie 51:51.760 --> 51:55.200 at the moment where she is 51:55.200 --> 52:04.560 well we've talked about people who live on the estate and the trees and the paths and 52:04.560 --> 52:11.840 those pharaohs we've listened to them I've tried to give wildlife some voice and 52:11.840 --> 52:21.280 we're going now to where people worked and that's another change another big change on the estate 52:22.240 --> 52:22.800 um 52:22.800 --> 52:33.120 when we do go down there we're going down another twitten by faldom and this is one that isn't 52:33.120 --> 52:41.200 used very often please take care of the steps and it can get quite dark there and there are 52:43.600 --> 52:54.080 robin and the siren always siren yeah always the siren and so on the way 52:54.080 --> 53:00.880 there is a little bit of corn salad growing and I thought we'd try and find it because there's 53:00.880 --> 53:08.000 some quite unusual plants on here like the vivain which I only find in woodland you know not there 53:08.000 --> 53:15.520 is some on the barge walk but there's the rain doesn't grow in many places in Kingston and yet 53:15.520 --> 53:23.840 there's one um play area absolutely full of the vein this year because there wasn't mowge 53:23.840 --> 53:33.760 and it was about 90% of the vein likewise the bit along hamden road is absolutely full of birdsfoot 53:33.760 --> 53:40.480 trefoil there's a lot of fungi grows there as well which has a lot of red tail bundle bees on on it 53:40.480 --> 53:47.040 at the appropriate times of the year so this is all part of the ecology that's grown up over a 53:47.040 --> 53:53.760 long period of time god be fighting this corn salad here north Kingston but for the first time ever 53:53.760 --> 53:58.000 I don't think it's the area is better less nitrogen during the lot today 54:00.000 --> 54:06.400 it's normally an arable region 54:06.400 --> 54:16.240 of course salad I want to tighten just a little collector's corn salad just coming up 54:16.240 --> 54:20.400 and a sweet blue woodruff over there 54:20.400 --> 54:26.800 yeah 54:26.800 --> 54:37.920 yeah a lot of corn salad but over there is sweet woodruff so you know it's just really 54:45.840 --> 54:54.080 you've tried a few things yeah I know yeah very good so um Betty are you okay with your lift from 54:54.080 --> 55:01.920 your daughter yeah what's the time now it's quarter ten to ten to sorry about that do you need to just 55:01.920 --> 55:08.960 ring her yeah if you really do that that wouldn't be about another page since we were last here last 55:08.960 --> 55:18.960 year and it's about people's jobs people who work on these things very near Hawke's Road 55:32.640 --> 55:41.520 so Simon came on the walk last year hi I'm Simon Dreen I'm a nurse and I work here at the Hawke's 55:41.520 --> 55:46.960 Road clinic which is the health centre on the Cambridge Road estate I don't work here full time 55:46.960 --> 55:52.720 I work at Kingston hospital full time but at least once a week I come over here and we do a very 55:52.720 --> 55:57.200 specialist clinic on a Monday and Tuesday evening which is a contraception clinic which is 55:57.200 --> 56:02.400 predominantly female orientated so lots and lots of women who live locally come to the clinic and 56:02.400 --> 56:07.840 you get their contraception from us and after having been at Kingston hospital all day it's 56:07.840 --> 56:16.960 a really nice environment to come into it's a slightly older building some people do kind of 56:16.960 --> 56:20.480 have the opinion it's going to rack and ruin there are certain parts of it that could certainly do 56:20.480 --> 56:25.680 the little bit of TLC but you can see that it's somewhere that's been very well used for a very 56:25.680 --> 56:32.640 long time and I really enjoy coming here there's a nice team of people that use the building on a 56:32.640 --> 56:38.640 daily basis so when we come in there's usually been other people that have ran their clinics before us 56:38.640 --> 56:42.320 sometimes we have to wait for them to finish because their clinics have run late a sense of 56:42.320 --> 56:48.400 camaraderie and people are always happy to sort of help out and the people that come here are 56:48.400 --> 56:53.600 certainly from a patient point of view quite loyal we have a very sort of strong following of people 56:53.600 --> 56:57.920 that come regularly it's nice to see some of the sort of familiar faces people at the back 56:57.920 --> 57:05.120 but it is a really nice place to be when you look out of the window which I'm doing now it does feel 57:05.120 --> 57:12.720 quite an urban type setting you are surrounded by flats and houses and lots of people must be there 57:12.720 --> 57:18.720 but actually it can feel quite quiet you feel it's quite a sort of subdued environment sometimes 57:18.720 --> 57:23.120 you can hear things in the distance but immediately outside the building it's actually quite a quiet 57:23.120 --> 57:27.840 setting it's a really nice place to sit particularly in the summer so I really enjoy 57:27.840 --> 57:31.760 working here and really hope that the building's here for a long time to come 57:31.760 --> 57:37.520 now I'm going to play his boss Tanya 57:47.680 --> 57:53.920 hello my name is Tanya and I work for a Hawkes Road Sexual Health Clinic which is a specialized clinic 57:53.920 --> 58:00.320 I do evenings here every week on a Monday and Tuesday night we see a lot of families 58:00.320 --> 58:06.000 with their kids coming for their sexual health needs so we also do a lot of contraception 58:06.000 --> 58:12.640 it's a lovely environment building could do some updating however we have a free car park 58:13.440 --> 58:22.560 as well as a playground for kids it's got a bit of trees around it's got sun pit to play with 58:22.560 --> 58:29.440 and a lot of kids love coming here they enjoy it it's a very safe area it's very quiet in the 58:29.440 --> 58:36.400 evening we do loads of different activities during the day with kids still in this clinic as well as 58:36.400 --> 58:43.200 the run local clinics or eye clinic or podiatry it's very central and everyone's really happy to 58:43.200 --> 58:48.480 be here people are very friendly nurses come and go in the evening but everyone loves being here 58:48.480 --> 59:02.480 so what happens now when you want contraception or sexual health advice is you have to get two 59:02.480 --> 59:11.440 buses and go to subton I think we came here for some of the antenatal for our second one I think 59:11.440 --> 59:19.360 so that would have been 11 years ago I had everything here I had all ben's oh he's 39 59:19.360 --> 59:25.760 now but all of his weight baby weigh in oh yes we had some of that here too I've had podiatry here 59:25.760 --> 59:32.960 boy trips but that's it then I tried to persuade when you already shut 59:32.960 --> 59:39.440 I hope so I haven't been open for four months anyway you would get me yeah I tried to persuade 59:39.440 --> 59:44.320 me put solar on room because it's south facing right but um they they've never talked to me that 59:44.320 --> 59:48.640 was years and years ago long before the redevelopment was a possibility because it's a really good roof 59:48.640 --> 59:56.560 to put solar on, nice angle south-facing no no that won't overshadow it you know really good roof but 59:56.560 --> 59:58.400 no one got back to me it's a shame 59:58.400 --> 1:00:08.400 [SILENCE] 1:00:00.000 --> 1:00:02.480 The bat detector is on 45 kilohertz. [BAT NOISES] 1:00:26.480 --> 1:00:32.800 There's more on my Earth Notes Web site at Earth.Org.UK.