Having spent the morning designing a friendly (as possible) form with which to collect street games with, I headed out at a gap in the clouds to East Street Market - a place I hoped would be a neutral and natural interaction point to start my conversations with people and begin my collection of street games.
I left Pembroke House at around 3.30pm, a little later than I had planned and in fact almost not at all, as I had spent the previous hour plucking up the courage I suddenly needed to trial my questions and introduce myself more officially to the area.
East Street's stallholders had begun to pack away, the remaining schoolchildren ambled along in dribs and drabs and a days' worth of flotsam and jetsam floated across the tarmac or hung entangled in the tree branches above as I began to wonder how I would strike up a conversation about street games with people who clearly had their own lives and inconveniences to be getting on with. I walked past every stall, all the way to the Walworth Road entrance, before turning back again under its cast iron sign feeling somewhat defeated: I had set my ambitions too high, and it was idealistic and naive of me to think that local people would want to talk to a random girl in a mac with a clipboard.
I decided to ask a stallholder when would be a good time to speak to people, thinking I had clearly missed the boat for today. He kindly advised me to come back on a Sunday, however this initial communication was what I needed to begin conversations with others. I remembered the feeling from approaching people for photos on Lower Marsh - the first few lines, body language and tone potentially defining the entire interaction. However, the conversations it lead to can be fantastically rewarding - and they were.
Fruit and veg stallholders described chases round circles, shouting and fighting in the streets, biking and football, while Mr. Sing used my pen to illustrate 'Gulli and Danda': a game hittting and batting sticks he had learnt as a child on the streets of India before wandering off thanking me for reminding him of 'my younger days'. Patrick Costin, the 78 year old lollipop man - with a real London accent and impeccable charm - taught me in great detail the rules of 'Sticks', 'Weak Horses' and 'Releaser'. Patrick remembered with fondness his turns at being 'the guard' - a title only awarded to the toughest of kids. When asked if he would like to play again he said he would love to.
Gary, a stallholder selling shoes of all kinds from great mountains layered across stacks of wooden boards, recognised me from a previous photography walk. It was starting to rain and I had begun to hurry back when he called across to me and promptly told me to take a photo of his son Ronaldo's six pack:
The rain became torrential and Gary let me take shelter under the empty marquee's, where we sat on the boards and I tried to talk about street games to Gary as Ronaldo showed me photos of him clubbing from his pink Blackberry. They were warm and welcoming and encouraged my work and the importance of creativity (via six packs or otherwise).
As the rain plummeted the tarpaulin Gary suggested a title for this last photo: 'London in drought'. I felt officially welcomed.
Pembroke People
Eleanor Shipman
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