100 London things: 69

This is somewhere you might want to put on your itinerary for the next round of London Open House - assuming it's even on the list for the next one - because it's a stunning piece of English modernist architecture (discussed here in that context), a purpose-designed community health centre, which is now yuppie flats. With a gate. I suppose you could get more counter to the ideals of the founders of the Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham...

There is a local London Borough of Southwark plaque mounted outside the gate, but the blue plaque, which is obliged to be attached an actual building and accessible to the public, is on the modest house near Peckham Rye station in which the pilot Centre was established.

The Wikipedia entry is not bad.

A film is available online - directed by Paul Rotha, 1947.

Its soul goes marching on: apart from the work of the Pioneer Health Foundation, which keeps the ideals of the Centre burning, it's featured in BBC documentaries, gets name-checked by political commentators, and there is a History and Policy paper on the subject.

It's quiet... too quiet...

At the moment this year feels remarkably unpressured, compared to last. I'm not starting the year with a book manuscript to do the final round of editing on followed by all the joy of seeing it through the press, and so far not the accumulation of Other Academic Stuff Of A Very Assorted Nature which made 2012 too much like a merry-go-round I wanted to get off, and furthermore the several life-admin things that were on my list did all get done by the year's end, even if that was a lot later than had been the initial intention.

Not to say that I haven't had things taking up my mental energies this month: putting together a conference panel proposal, writing references, critiquing someone's article, revising a chapter for book emerging from a conference that has been in the pipeline for, ahem, some years now.

So there have been one or two things that I would have liked to do but that I just did not have quite enough space in my brain or time on my schedule to get round to.

I do have some things penciled in on my dance-card - a conference paper (remix of old work), a conference keynote, an abstract for a chapter of a forthcoming book I've been invited to contribute to, a conference paper to turn into an article at the solicitation of the editors of a journal special issue... oh yes, and a conference paper that the signs are has been accepted, but if so, the panel organiser has failed to inform me; but at the moment, compared to last year, this feels relatively relaxed (this statement may be tempting fate).

I also have a few work presentations and a work-related conference in Berlin in the spring.

I have also got some fun excursions to organise for self and partner, since such things don't Just Happen, but at least I can think about this without feeling the somewhat meltdowny state of last autumn when fun excursions began to feel like Just One More Thing.

I'm feeling a little languid, a little laid-back, a bit lacking in zap. And that's OK.