Photo Essay: A Passageway to Harrow

While rushing around to drop my princess off at her drama class, I just happened to glance to the side of a very short passageway between the car park and the shopping street and noticed a very interesting thing on the wall. So I came back after dropping her and took some pictures of this passageway.

Here is the passageway in question, looking at it from the street side to the parking lot. About 15 meters in length. Very innocuous in view.

 

It had a blue rubbish bin when I started taking the pictures and then one chap came haring out of a shop and then dragged it away. Can you see the mural at the far end of the wall behind it?

 

Here’s the mural. Its graffiti actually, lol. Shows a policeman. And I felt that I had seen it before. Then it struck me, it was Banksy. Here are some of his works. He is absolutely brilliant. He has become iconic and actually people have started thinking that its art. But here’s the ironic thing. Its graffiti but art, and then somebody else has spray painted some more graffiti over it!. Its like graffiti-art-graffiti.

 

Here’s a close-up of the face. Shows a copper with a hatted pigeon on top!. Stool Pigeon? Crapping on the copper? Damn flying rats.

 

Here’s one of the damn rats in question. its sitting on one of the lights and dirtying it with its poo.

On the right, you can see some manky pipes, all discoloured but they have the anti pigeon plastic spikes on them.

Here’s another light on top of the mural along with peeling plaster.

There was obviously some kind of a leak from the flat on top of the passageway. And that leak has discoloured the ceiling. And the paint is peeling. And there is mould growing there.

The beam which is supposed to be very powerful and actually it load bearing. Its supposed to be supporting the floor of the apartment above. But look at it. The underlying netting which is supposed to keep the concrete safe is open. And you can see the rust. And its exposed to the elements. Not very safe is it?



Nor is the roof/floor. As you can see, the backing material is open and exposed. You can see the ceiling. It was reddish and all mouldy.

The protective paint on the wall is peeling off in large chunks as well as cracking off.

 

Here’s the underside of the staircase going up to the apartment above. You can actually see the staircase, which is open to the elements, the underlying cover has dropped off in manky bits exposing the wood underneath. With a boarded up cupboard.



Couple of beer cans, some wire, gravel, cigarette butts…typical detritus in any corner of a modern city.

A very old fuse box. All the fuses have been lost, but the base still exists, with a broken lid on top.

Strange patterns on the wall

Plaster has fallen off the wall exposing the brickwork underneath. And there are hanging wires. All this in 15 meters of passageway which connects an open car park with a busy shopping street. Pretty dismal if you ask me. But nobody notices, they are either heading to their cars or to shop, this bit is ignored and is left for the graffiti artists, pigeons and a sadly decaying set of walls.

Full '>'>slide show here.