Text of this workshop - suggestions

1. The actual workshop
1. Place names:
Douglas Adam's Meaning of Lif: what do place names actually mean: enfield, 'In field'
'Tottenham' - in the eighteenth century, they used to roll children - 'tots' in ham to keep them warm.
2. Visit Wetherspoons. If you want to find out about local history, go to your local Wetherspoons
(if you're allowed in). Lots of info on the walls & pictures too. If you're not old enough, you've
heard of this new website, quite useful, called Wikipedia.
And read local history books in the library. If you think that's quite boring, just get the books out
that talk about all the murders that have happened in the area, cos everybody loves a good murder.
3. Signs you don't know the meaning of -
Archway tower, office of the court of protection, I took that to mean they protected children, and
expanded it to mean children who'd been taken away form their parents, then said they were kept on
the top three floors of Archway tower and you could sometimes hear their lonely, anguished moans
carried on the wind as they called for their parents. (That's why Fathers4Justice members dress as
Spiderman - they're trying to climb up the tower to see their kids).
4. McDonald's on McDonald Road Archway - saying that it was the site of the first McDonald's and
it was named after the street, and tat McDonald's was a local success story.
5. Interacting with environment - near statue of Dick Whittington's cat on Archway Rd there was a
little plaque about Dick Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London - he was actually 4 x Lord
Mayor of London so I put post-it notes on it reading 'Citation needed' and 'This article is a stub.'
6. Take them somewhere hidden - Like on the MisGuided tour of King's Cross, not the most
beautiful place you might imagine, there's actually a tiny church which dates back to the 14th
century, with a tree in the courtyard round which all of the graves in the churchyard were moved by
none other than Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy, who worked on the railways before he became a
writer.
5. Read Iain Sinclair - with two I's - I mean, his name's spelt with two eyes, I was assuming you
wouldn't be reading him with an eyepatch on. Great books full of local history and stories which
may or may not be true. Used to call it 'psychogeography', but he doesn't like the term now.
6. Break out into song? Why can't life be a musical? Watch I sang a song about Archway market
and all the great things on sale there and confused all the shop owners. Or outside Hornsey town
hall we sang the harringey national anthem, everyone must've thought we were an awful cult. Why
not write a song about your local area?
7. Attribute things to shady government conspiracies, the Masons, Knights Templar, Illuminati etc.
Maybe there's a pet shop where Davdi Cameron was born?
8. Tie your lies into real events to make them more credible, like the Civil war in Crouch End being
a direct result of the Local Government act 1965, in which local councils were reorganised and
consolidated. And then when you talk about how students took over the local art college in 1968,
they don't know whether to belive you or not. So the truth becomes fictionalised...Or just say 'it was
1968'...

2. Talking about the film 'Somers Town' on the King's Cross MisGuided tour when we went through
Somers Town, at the back of King's Cross station, and saying that the film was so popular that the
local park was going to be renamed 'Shane Meadows' after it's director, 'Shane Meadows.' LOOK
OUT FOR AWFUL WORDPLAY!
10. Take an existing local legend - like in Crouch End, Bob Dylan turning up at a plumber called
Dave's house when he was after Dave Stewart out of the band the Eurythmics - and expand it, like
Bob Dylan ended up having an affair with his wife.
11. Or crazy left-wing councils who spend massive amounts on public art - like there was a puddle
and I said it was a piece of public art that the arts council had pay £50, 000 for. Or the etching in the
window here in Crouch End, did you know that in 2006 they caught a lad who'd been scratching his
tag with a knife into railway carriage windows across London causing £50,000 work of damage<
and that that work of art was actually carried out as his community service sentence, and he's now a
professional glass engraver? Just goes to show there is an alternative to prison.
'This is all going to be demolished for the Olympics.'
Crouch End town hall - Actually an escape rocket for the councillors in case the civil war happens
again. Local Artist Alan Wolfson has done a picture of it...
Suicide Bridge - took a true story, that it was originally meant to be a tunnel, but collapsed down the
sides, and that now it is a popular suicide spot, then adding a falsehood that fits in with that: that the
first person to die was the architect John Rennie himself who threw himself off in shame at the
failure of his engineering.
All the suicides were caused by the Conservative govt refusing to pay for anti-suicide measures,
and that by 1983 there was about three suicides per day, 20% of the workload of the nearby
Whittington hospital.