All over the city...

Today I think I overdid it - from Tottenham to Clerkenwell to Ealing Broadway to Dulwich to the West End to Tottenham to North Finchley to Clerkenwell to Tottenham, cramming in five meetings in the process. As ever, I go to London and exhaust myself. This afternoon in Ealing was altogether lovely - I met with the photographer and artisan Doig Simmonds, a spritely 70-something who lived on and off in Nigeria from the early 1950's to the early 1970's. It was an honour and a priviledge to meet someone with his range of experience, insight and adventurous life story. A close friend of Pierre Verger, Wole Soyinka, Ulli Beier, J.P. Clark and Frank Speed inter alia, Doig comes from a generation of intellectuals and artists who gathered in places such as Osogbo in the 1950's and 1960's and helped to create a new wave of expressive output. My passion is to be part of something similar in our times. It shall be done.

First on the menu, there will be a retrospective of Frank Speed's work at SOAS this October, including a screening of perhaps his best work, Tides of the Delta, gloriously narrated by J.P. Clark (more details posted later). Meanwhile, Doig would love to get back in touch with J.P. Clark. If anyone has contact details, please drop me an email ([email protected]) or leave a comment. Thanks in advance.