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1
INTRODUCTION
I am one of these people who love places of transit, where people stop
but never stay. Stations, airports, hotels are for me places which have
exotic, sometimes erotic, and mysterious connotations. I always wonder
when watching people in these locations – as if suspended in time
– who these people are, where they are going, where they are coming
from. Will they come back to these busy places or is it the last time
that my memory, like in an old archive photograph, is able to capture
them. The expressions on the faces in these peculiar and yet familiar
places are revealing. Anxiety, joy in the thought of meeting a loved
one on the other side of the journey, frustrations, apprehension to
leave what one knows, for a destination yet to discover, excitement.
In these places also there isn’t always much to do – apart
from immersing oneself in a good book, or exchanging if time allows
a few reflections with a few fellow travelers– and it’s not
unusual to find oneself in a state of physical as well as psychological
transit, as if we had pushed the “pause”
button in our lives. We are contemplating what we have left behind and
we are projecting ourselves in a more or less distant future. Or we
are almost plunged in a dreamlike state of mind, being gently rocked
by what we can’t control, surrendering to the rhythm of transport
and to the unexpected adventures of travel.
The American painter Edward
Hopper (1882-1967)
is a master at capturing and conveying those moments where time stands
still as if someone had forgotten to say “Action”.
The scenes described by Hopper are often
associated with melancholy and also a sense of suspense. What has happened?
What is going to happen asks the viewer. The irony is that in the urban
landscapes of Hopper, from the New-York
Cafes to the houses by the highways, the probability is that
nothing much will ever happen. Indeed Hopper
also explores boredom and the metaphysical loneliness of souls which
have perhaps forgotten to dream. Nevertheless in Hopper’s
paintings (“Nighthawks”, “Chop
Suey”, “Gas”, “Room
for Tourists”) the main character seems to be the time that
doesn’t go very fast.
I live in London. In the same way as so
many other French people (and generally
speaking foreigners) I came to London to
improve my English. I was supposed to stay
six months. I have been here for twelve years. The reasons are complex
and multiple. Regularly the foreigners “in
exile” talk about going back to their respective country,
and then time goes by and then they stay.
This feeling to be in exile is both reassuring and uncomfortable as
one knows that one can’t be judged in the same way as a native.
Responsibilities and pressure from society to conform become then much
more bearable.
I have often passed by the A2 motorway (an
old Roman road) which goes from London
to Dover and which now defines the South
border of the World Heritage Site (Maritime
Greenwich). The area is historically rich as King
Henry VIII (1509-1547)
and his daughter Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
were born and lived there. A large adjacent common (Blackheath)
was the scene of many royal events and celebrations but also the place
where the 14th century Peasants’
Revolt led by Wat Tyler
took place.
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In the 17th and 18th
century, Blackheath became the favorite
spot for highwaymen to rob noblemen and rich merchants on their way
to the coast.
Nowadays, and this since the celebrations of Queen
Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897),
Blackheath has become a place dedicated
to popular amusements (bonfires, fun fairs, circus…). Since 1981,
the start of the London Marathon has also
been taking place in Blackheath.
It’s also – and quite notably – close to the Royal
Observatory and to the first Meridian of
the world, longitude 0°, as defined
at an International Conference in 1884.
And there, planted on the edge of the motorway – almost on the
Meridian Line – is the Blackheath
Tea Hut, a quirky structure, of about 7sqm,
open 360 days per year, 24h/24,
which sells tea/coffee, a few pastries under plastic, and burgers (with
a choice of “animal burger”,
sausages, eggs, with or without onions), and this since the 1920s.
A little shack with lighting when the London nights
are becoming cold and dark, a little oasis lost by the road that sees
every year millions of tourists and travelers passing by.
This place caught my attention really quickly and I decided to spend
a year there.
Sometimes I would like to stop the time, or fast-forward it, or come
back in time. If you can do that with film, with life this is impossible.
Time doesn’t care, time goes by and time flies. How can one define
a moment? I film this moment. It becomes “immobile
in movement”. Sometimes on film, nothing seems to be happening…AND
YET. Just like in Hopper’s paintings,
where time is suspended, the subtext, the stories, the History, people’s
lives do not come across immediately. In a year what is happening? How
do people, nature, the notion of time change? How do relationships form
and evolve?
I was to spend a year in the life of the Blackheath
Tea Hut to try and capture the immobility of time that goes by
and discover a suspended world, strange and peculiar.
3
THE LEGEND OF THE TEA HUT
The Tea Hut is a mystery, on different levels:
Some archive documents apparently tell of the existence of a refreshment
place for several centuries. Charles II (1630-1685)
– says the legend – would have ordered that such places be
in permanence on Blackheath for men and
their horses to quench their thirst. From live memory we can go back
to the 1920s when a horse-drawn Tea
Hut was serving refreshments from dawn till late afternoon when
most of the tourists and visitors to Greenwich
had gone. After that it’s difficult to say. Some people say that
the current structure has been built from the wooden components of the
first Tea Hut. Others say that the Tea
Hut disappeared for a few years after the death of the horse
(or the horse’s owner). Nobody knows for sure and there are no
official documents about it because the local authority cannot - by
law – grant a license or planning permission for such a structure
to settle permanently on the motorway.
What is certain is that towards the end of the 50s,
a structure made of a few planks appeared at the same spot. Aerial photographs
of the time provide evidence. The locals still remember the shack which
they were affectionately calling the “Greasy
Spoon”. But there again the Tea Hut
was closing relatively early, at the end of the afternoon when business
was reduced. At the end of the 80s, two
elements have contributed to make the Tea Hut
what it is today:
- First of all the traffic and the number of cars and trucks on the
road have increased significantly and in the same proportion as the
number of people likely to want a cup of tea at all time of night and
day.
- Secondly one man (Peter) quickly saw an
opportunity to get a regular job. Every afternoon, after the Tea
Hut had closed for the day, Peter
would come with a white van and would take over selling sandwiches,
tea, coffee and soft drinks. Around the mid 90s,
the owner of the Tea Hut decided to retire
and sold the Tea Hut to Peter
who is the current owner.
The Tea Hut is open 360
days per year (it is closed 5 days for Christmas)
and 24h/24.
Its location, just like its history, is peculiar. A few meters away
from the Prime Meridian of the World,
longitude 0° 0'
0", Latitude 51°
28' 38",
on the A2, between two boroughs (Greenwich
and Lewisham) and since 1997,
on the buffer zone of the World Heritage Site
(Maritime Greenwich) – which gathers
several organizations such as the Cutty Sark
(the only remaining Tea Clipper in the World),
the National Maritime Museum, the Royal
Observatory, The Fan
Museum, the Old Royal Naval College…
The Tea Hut seems perched in an environment
that overwhelms it.
A detail strikes me. The Tea Hut has wheels;
wheels that have not been in use for a few decades and that are now
partially buried in the ground. A moving detail that resonates with
the situation of immigrants, of displaced people, of people in “permanent
transit”. Here for a few months, temporarily (a lasting
temporary), ready to leave again, here for ever.
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It offers a poetic detail by certain aspects, but also very much rooted
in the administrative and legal realities. Indeed the law cannot authorize
the Tea Hut to become a permanent structure.
The wheels are a proof of its temporary status.
Nowadays the existence of the Tea Hut is
jeopardized by a development plan. Nearly £2
million will be spent on the Heath
in the forthcoming years to improve the traffic flow and the
Heath itself. The Tea
Hut hasn’t been included in the plans, on the contrary.
The Tea Hut is still there but for how long?
Time will tell.
II)
TO PECULIAR PLACE, PECULIAR CHARACTERS AND MOMENTS
After the Royal pageants, the Peasants’
Revolt, the ceremonies organised by druids
officiating in the underground caverns of Blackheath,
the area has become a giant playground where amateur football matches
take place regularly. It’s also there that funfairs and the circus
settle during Bank Holidays weekends. The
roundabouts show toddlers and young children that life is a big circuit
where people follow or pass each other. A roundabout of Tea
Cups in which we can sit transport us in the world of
Lewis Carroll where objects can come alive and fulfill an important
meaningful place. The big wheel shines at night overlooking the funfair
and reminds us that life is made of highs and lows. The stallkeepers
use the Tea Hut when they have shut their
stalls and roundabouts for the night. Before going back to their caravans,
some like to enjoy a last cup of tea. Others wish beer could be sold!
The starting point of the London Marathon and
the November bonfires are events where crowds
gather. Thousands of feet invade Blackheath
in search of the best observation post. One admires the multicolored
bonfires; one admires the athletes who run after the watch. These are
important days for the Tea Hut whose income
suddenly increases tenfold. After all, you have to sell a lot of teas
at 50p to make a living.
The remainder of the time the Tea Hut sways
to the rhythm of the seasons and by the moods of the people who work
there or who are just passing.
A lot of people will only stop once. There are those who have made a
family tradition to stop there once a year for an “animal
burger” and a cup of tea. There are all those professions
working at night, emergency services, ambulances, policemen, breakdown
vans, truck-drivers. The milkman and bread delivery man, the men picking
up the rubbish are regular passerby and remind us how these jobs are
numerous and important. We discover the men behind these activities
so rarely valued and acknowledged.
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It is a little microcosm of social history because at the Tea
Hut all the jobs are represented. And all these men and women
who are working have different schedules and diaries. They meet at the
Tea Hut at different times just to have
a necessary break and take the time – the time for a cup of tea.
And then one discovers the “regulars”.
Some used to come with their parents when they were only toddlers and
still come to this day, sometimes every day.
The regulars have become, as time went by – and completely naturally
the main characters of the film.
The importance of the Tea Hut in Nick’s
life is surprising. Nick is in his thirties.
He must have come to the Tea hut for about
18 years. There he took his girlfriend, the future mother of
his two children. She has since left him, to be with someone else who
she may have met at the Tea Hut. Nick
is hoping to be able to see his children sometime. He has also lost
his parents at a relatively young age, and for years the Tea
Hut has for him – and completely paradoxically for such
a “fragile” structure –
been the only stable element of his life.
The story of John who works at the Tea
Hut is original. John has been suffering
from insomnia since he was young. He has had many different jobs before
becoming a truck driver. Often he had stopped at the Tea
Hut to have a cup of tea when he couldn’t sleep, and one
day Cathy, the manageress offered him to
work there. John knows what he’s talking
about. He complains about the hypocrisy of the Blackheath
Society (the association in charge of the preservation of Blackish)
and of the politics. Why put a board along the side of motorways which
warn people about the danger of driving when tired, and of the necessity
to have a break, if there is nowhere to stop, and relax, the time of
a cup of tea?
There are other people who are telling me stories each more surprising
than the one before. They start playing the game while I am becoming
an identifiable character, recognizable and regular. I am starting to
understand what makes the charm of the Tea Hut.
Of course there are the birds who tame themselves from the moment they
were born to the moment when they will teach their young how to come
and beg for food at the Tea Hut. All day
but especially in the morning, the builders, decorators, truck drivers
give them an “English breakfast”
by hand. At night the foxes are the ones who come and wait for a little
bit of meat (if the customers of the Tea Hut that
night are well inclined to give them any).
There is of course the huge pleasure of seeing the sunrise on the horizon
and draw a perfect arc in the sky. Blackheath is
one of the rare places in London where you
can observe the movement of the moon and the sun without their being
obstructed by buildings.
There are the variations of the traffic, which changes from a handful
of cars to a long ribbon of thousands of cars depending on the time
of day, and the planes that are taking off in the morning transforming
the sky into a giant motorway. And of course the seasons passing by.
The leaves taking a yellow then rusty shade, the trees undress themselves
to then make room for new flowers.
6
The Tea Hut appears to me like a little
observatory of life and the universe. One feels free and one exists
there: the feeling of being part of a small world within a giant if
not anonymous universe is reassuring. We are small but we have a place.
Our inner clock is our own. We are unique but we are part of a whole.
I witness a lot of amusing, odd, or more solemn moments:
- Nick and Alan
are reading the “cars for sale”
section of the Loot, before reading their
stars, at 4 o’clock in the morning
under the full moon.
- An Irish sister who has just been nominated
for “the Catholic woman of the year”
has stopped at the Tea Hut with her niece
and enjoys a cup of tea, her favorite drink especially when the tea
is Irish! She tells me how for years she
has worked for a charity and was serving tea to lonely men or to impoverished
families. A little cup of warmth in a lonely and tough life sometimes
means a lot.
- An (empty) prisoners’van has stopped. The drivers have a tea.
In the foreground some birds fly by.
- One night a young fox tries to cross the road but doesn’t. There
are too many cars, it’s too noisy. The following night, almost
at the same time, I find it dead on the road, crushed.
- Another full moon. Someone is playing golf a few meters away from
the Tea Hut.
- Some men approach. They wear helmets with a white flashing light.
They look like underground workers. They fly kites on the Heath,
at night and by day, at all seasons, and wear helmets to see and be
seen.
- The police intervene. Some young men are supposedly using the
A2 as a Formula 1 circuit and are
racing on the road. The police are determined to make a stop to this
activity. The young men tell me that they are only comparing the high-powered
engines of their cars. They wouldn’t do anything so stupid like
racing on the motorway for example.
- A man is sitting in front of a hole on the motorway. He is using sophisticated
measurement tools and tells me that he is calculating a “Californian
ratio”, designed to inform him about the road resistance
when work will take place to improve the state of the road.
- Some Canadian geese are relaxing on the
grass.
Bikers come to the Tea Hut twice a week
to meet their friends and hit the road towards the next meeting point.
Behind their intimidating appearance, I discover some rich and warm
personalities.
Nick keeps telling me about the importance
of the Tea Hut in his life and in other
people’s lives.
7
III) A STORM IN A TEA CUP
In the 16th and 17th
centuries, wealthy people would use candles. The poor would rise
early and would go to bed relatively early. The appearance of electricity
and of public lighting (at the end of the 1880s)
was to revolutionize people’s way of life, the days becoming longer.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Anne
Scagell, who gives lectures all over the world about the history
of afternoon tea – tells me that Anna,
Duchess of Bedford (1793-1847)
decided to have a cup of tea and a few biscuits to appease her hunger
between lunch and dinner. This became a formal occasion, whereby ladies
from the aristocracy with time on their hands would catch up and drink
this exotic beverage, a status symbol to an extent because of its price.
Nowadays people work at all times of the day and night. The working
day is not defined anymore by sunrise and sunset. Therefore,
Anne tells me, and in a very British
way (the British being strongly attached
to their traditions) that it would seem that tea has become not only
a popular and refreshing drink – associated worldwide to the British
“Way of Life” – but
also the occasion to have a break. It’s not the possibility of
having a break that defines the occasion to have a tea, but the other
way round, having tea defines the occasion of making a break. The opportunity
of having a cup of tea is like a mini psychological and temporal transit.
Unconsciously it’s as if we were taking stock, respecting the long-standing
traditions but also looking forward. To this day Her
Majesty the Queen still enjoys her afternoon tea. Tea is the
drink, which gathers all classes and all backgrounds in
England. It’s the democratic drink “par
excellence”.
Today 165 millions cups of tea are drunk
everyday in England. An adult drinks
3 cups a day on average; 62 billion
cups of tea that are drunk annually.
Neil Rhind, the local historian, a former
journalist and chairman of the Blackheath Society
(association for the preservation of Blackheath
which has been lobbying for the disappearance of the Tea
Hut for nearly 30 years) is not amused.
The Tea Hut, a little bastion of resistance,
takes on the allure of a revolutionary symbol, a bit like the village
of Asterix and Obelix
to take an example drawn from the popular cartoons. The Tea
Hut and the land that it occupies becomes the stake for a class
struggle. The bourgeois find it an eyesore, ugly, dirty and even noisy
(despite the fact that the nearest houses are 500m
away) and responsible for attracting an all range of “bandits”.
The visitors to the Tea Hut, sensitive to
its charm, rebel against so much unfairness and feel despised by people
who do not understand them or their need for recreation and harmless
fun.
8 CONCLUSION
I have spent a year filming life at the Tea Hut.
Thousands of cups of tea have been drunk and I have drunk several litres!
The characters have evolved. Alan doesn’t
go there anymore. He has his own reasons. Nick
is looking forward to seeing his children again, if his ex-wife
allows him to do so. Peter might sell the
Tea Hut and retire, one day. Time goes by,
life is changing. The baby birds learn very quickly where to get an
“English Breakfast”, Summer
is on our doorstep, one takes the mini bikes out again and one is playing
the fool again on the road and on the Heath.
John got married to Pei
in China. Perhaps he will go and
live there one day? That year two of the regular “characters”
of the Tea Hut died as well…
One of the last images I filmed at the Tea Hut
was the new wooden table. There are flower pots all around. Some
people will find the Tea Hut less ugly like
that. There are also posters informing customers of the importance of
throwing their dirty plastic cups and papers in the bin. If not, the
Tea Hut will be fined and the price of a
cup of tea will then increase!
Some customers or passersby threaten: they will fight to death not to
see the Tea Hut disappear. George
who was born in 1920 is very sad just to
think that this little landmark might one day disappear. He has so many
childhood memories there and he still enjoys going there. It’s
the opportunity for him to have a walk, to get out of his house and
to take his friend’s dog out.
There is the Financial Times on the table.
It’s the premonitory sign that times are now financial and that
the Tea Hut is now rich of its reputation;
or is it the sign that the big investments which will be spent on the
Heath will soon swallow this little oasis
of freedom?
Time will tell as it always does…
9
PRODUCTION NOTES
I started to film in July 2003. The idea
for this film had come to me a year before. I really quickly realised
that for the film to make sense, I had to literally immerse myself in
the life of the Tea Hut, I had to meet the
“regular customers”, I had to
make myself accepted as someone with a outsider look but not an hostile
one. I had to spend time there and I had to go at all times of day and
night to portray and convey what is the originality of the Tea
Hut. Without a “budget”
I couldn’t really ask the few people who offered to help me on
set to wake up at 2am because suddenly I
felt like going to the Tea Hut. Nor could
I ask them to spend hundreds of hours under the sun, the rain and the
snow waiting for something significant to happen.
At the beginning filming was difficult. People were suspicious, the
noise of the traffic was constant (and then you get used to it), I wasn’t
too sure what I was going to find nor really what I was looking for.
And then little by little things fell into place. I got all the authorization
I needed (Cutty Sark, National
Maritime Museum, London Marathon,
Scotland Yard…) one after the other,
and the financial support of PG Tips (even
small) has been a tremendous encouragement. Once I had been accepted
by the “regulars” and by the
people who work at The Tea Hut (not all
of them have accepted to be filmed), my contact with the passerby was
facilitated. I was almost part of the furniture. My neutral, amused,
positive outlook has, I think, helped people feeling comfortable in
front of the camera and play the game, spontaneously acting or emphasizing
gestures or attitudes.
I hope that this film – even if this is not the reason why I have
started it – will contribute to offer a new and positive outlook
towards this peculiar place.
Retrospectively I realize that the filming had been like it should have
been. A larger crew with some more heavy equipment than my portable
camera (canon XM1) and my directional mic
(Sennheiser) would have slowed the filming
and would not have allowed me to get on film the weird moments I witnesses
and that I had to capture quickly, almost instinctively.
The main narrative thread is provided by interviews with Nick,
Peter (the owner) and Kathy
(the manageress), but other interviews show the diversity of lives and
people crossing or passing at the Tea Hut.
There are a lot of shots of the seasons (and what is specific about
the succession of the seasons), some shots, almost abstract where I
play with the lights of cars, of the sun, the dancing lights of the
funfairs. I want to convey all the poetry of this peculiar place. The
cars like the pearls of a giant necklace.
“L’essential est invisible pour les
yeux” disait Saint-Exupéry.
If nothing seems to be happening on the surface it doesn’t mean
that feelings or emotions do not exist and that people do not experience
joys and sorrows in their personal lives.
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The noise of traffic is omnipresent and here again I see some opportunities
to do a specific work of “sound design”.
Let the cars pass and then suddenly cut the sound and let a melody appear,
a tune influenced by jazz music, by rap, chamber music or perhaps only
a few notes - à la manière de John
Cage – which emphasizes silence. Perhaps a “theme”
music will be heard at regular interval to take into account the cyclical
element of the film (life and death of the fox and of the birds, the
succession of the seasons, big wheel, roundabout, the clock of the Tea
Hut, etc..), or perhaps some more commercial music could be added.
The editing as such takes into account the changes of rhythm and atmosphere
that I have noticed. If in the summer the “regulars”
enjoy their cup of tea for hours outside, in the winter they are sometimes
in their cars (as in an American drive-in,
listening to some music, and watching life at the Tea
Hut going by) or else they are popping in and out of the Tea
Hut. They warm themselves up near the cooker in the poky interior
of the Tea Hut and then go out again talking
about the disgraceful weather between two sniffles.
Now, more than two years after I finished filming, I also realize that
the Tea Hut is not only a quirky little
place where one can socialize and have a cup of tea, but a place where
a lot of people just go to escape - even for a short time - their everyday
life. And as some just sit there looking at the horizon daydreaming,
I decide to create yet another level in the film by evoking the notion
and the need for daydream, especially in big cities where our attention
and concentration is so often called upon. The structure of the film
will be made to reflect the different moments and narrative threads
(historical, quirky, dream-like) which the Tea
Hut encompasses.
Copyright:
Alexandra Moskalenko, 2003-2006.
All rights reserved.
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