WALKING AND DIFFERENCE

 This is a photograph of Jaques Derrida walking:

Derrida has been on my mind, well, more than usual, because I just read a review in the LRB, 10 October 2024, by Jonathan Rée, discussing the recent translations of Derrida’s  Hospitality, Volumes 1 and 2.

 

Rée writes “Derrida had a marvellous literary range, and a sharp eye for details that might elude the rest of us.  (Reading him reminds me of taking a walk with a friend who will spot a ghost orchid, a heath fritillary and an alpine swift while I am just enjoying a companionable stroll.”

 

This is a ghost orchid:

This is a heath fritillary: 

 

This is an alpine swift:

Speaking as someone who couldn’t identify any of those things, I do wonder whether it might not be rather annoying to walk with somebody who was constantly pointing out things that I didn’t recognize.  

Though I suppose being with Derrida might create other irritations, such as his obvious vulnerability outside off stump.

TOTTERING IN TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD

 I’ve been walking in London, nothing too fancy.  It was tiring but I was tired BY London, not tired OF London, a distinction Dr. Johnson would surely appreciate.

 

I used to live and work in the area and I always find myself there any time I'm in Central London. 

 

Of course large parts of Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross Road are barely recognizable from even just a few years ago, though fortunately those twin Brutalist peaks of the St Giles Hotel and Centre Point are still in business.

 

There was this wonderful bit of idiocy on a building site just north of the St Giles.

 

You know I suspect those lads up on that gantry have never so much as skimmed Derrida’s Writing and Difference. This is the fun-loving man himself, walking:

 

 

Much as I like the Tottenham Court Road/Charing Cross Road nexus, I’m not sure I’d take anybody there to try to impress them with the wonders of London, but as I was standing on the corner waiting to cross Oxford Street I saw and overheard two young women, teenagers I suppose, maybe out oft owners  though they didn’t look like innocents, and one of them was saying to the other, ‘I’ve never been to this part of London.  It’s really NICE!’

 

This pleased me enormously.

I'm not in the business of giving advice to tourists but if I were I'd have suggested they pop up to Whifield Gardens, now supposedly improved as part of the 'greening' of Tottenham Court Road.  I'd have suggested they savour the fact that this used to be a graveyard associated with grave robbing, and very close to the spot where the last V2 fell on London.

It looks like this: