Mick Hartley

I was, perhaps, the only person apart from mayor Boris to show any enthusiasm for Anish Kapoor's Olympic site sculpture, the Orbit – aka the ArcelorMittal Orbit - when it was first unveiled last spring. And now – look! It's starting to grow:

It's close to Greenway and the View Tube, so we'll be able to keep an eye on it this summer as it expands, curving and squiggling upwards like a great red metal organic, um, planty thing. I hope someone's taking a daily picture of it, so they can do one of those time-lapse films. I don't think it'll be me though.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the neighbourhood, away from the Olympic site and – you know – keeping it real:

And not forgetting the patriotic car breakers next door in Hackney Wick:

Which, when you think about it, offers a kind of down-market parallel to Kapoor's more stylish effort a half-mile or so to the east. Or perhaps it should it be seen as a critique. A subversion. A deconstruction, even. Twisted metal and nationalism? You see?

No? Ah well….just a thought.