The above legend has long been my favourite bit of local graffiti. It’s hardly worthy of that term to be honest, but it’s also not a tag in the ‘Nat Has Herpes’ or ‘I Fart3d in Yoga’ tradition, as I’ve never seen it scrawled anywhere else.

Gracing the bulging wall of the long-lost Richard of Chichester School on Royal College St, it won’t feature as a stop on the passing guided street art trails, but does have a touch of the same righteous subversion that helped turn Banksy into such a folk hero.

Another minor act of petty vandalism, but with a guerrilla public service announcement sentiment. And even a charming spelling error.

But in a week when wealthy fascists and political grifters have once again dominated the national discourse with their hateful populism, (and the meatheads have duly done their bidding and torched another neighbourhood), we sorely need quiet little daily reminders like these.

Reminders that the vast majority of people are lovely and well-intentioned, despite the stream of negativity and confrontation that is algorithmically thrust towards us, and which seems to have sucked some of the most powerful people in the country/world deep into the twilight zone of its bot-infested post-truth vortex.

And such gentle reminders are absolutely everywhere, but you do need to step back from the critical cacophony to appreciate them, since the heart-warming can easily be drowned out by the harrumphing of modern life.

In the last few days, I’ve seen a uniformed schoolgirl darting to help a parcel delivery guy navigate his trolly over a tricky step. Two burley strangers at King’s Cross Station clock each other’s Arsenal shirts, crack smiles and fall into a joyful embrace, before rushing onwards about their day.

And a guy on a packed Northern Line train instinctively grab a stranger’s head and guide it away from the closing doors, after his concerned cry of ‘watch your head!’ was not enough. An uneasy moment of urban camaraderie in the carriage ensued, as the usual adversarial atmosphere of the commute was broken, and nobody really knew quite how to react. So we all smiled.

Pitting people against each other is a scarily well-funded global political movement these days, with those persuasive little screens in our pockets reinforcing the narrative minute-by-minute. That leaves precious little room for us to notice the actual kindness, empathy and collective spirit that is the real story of our culture each day.

Right now, we have a duty to each other not be disheartened - or worse, persuaded - by the constant tub-thumping from those who seek to divide us for their own misguided power games. It’s all but impossible to avoid their noise, but resistance need not mean shouting louder to be effective.

As our mystery Camden proto-tagger suggests, just remember the mantra to ‘practice uncalled for courtesy’ here and there, as a way to shock the terminally online and politically radicalised out of their negative stupor for a hot minute - often without the need to even say a word.

So called random acts of kindness are brilliant and heart-warming, but acting with courtesy implies additional layers of respect, manners and abiding by social rules, too - all the stuff we’re being told has broken down. We all have the power to prove, with very little effort, that no, actually it hasn’t.

Nothing like the defacement of a wall to remind us of the fragile beauty of respecting a few social rules, eh?

SHOW: 🍵 UAL Central St Martins in Granary Square is hosting its free summer shows 2026 across three floors of its studios from Thurs 18th - Sat 20th Jun, featuring innovative graduate work from courses across fine art, biodesign, performance ceramics and more. You can sip from a MA Material Futures speculative coffee machine, which invites visitors to taste historical versions of the caffeinated dark stuff and imagine how environmental change could shape what we drink in the future. Or see a jewellery collection that transforms discarded date pits into luxury pieces to investigate ideas of value and preciousness from a BA (Hons) Jewellery course graduate.

EXPERIENCE: 🚴🏼‍♂️The glorious World Naked Bike Ride is back this Sun 14th Jun with the usual local meeting place to just rock up and disrobe located in the Regent’s Park Outer Circle, with no need to book. You’ll them cycle off to join hundreds of other nude and body-painted riders converging from spots all over the city. Judicious application of factor 50 advised.

FESTIVAL: 🐶 It’s the big Highgate Village summer mainstay The Fair In The Square this Sat 13th Jun, with two live music and performance stages, a children’s tent and masses of stall selling arts, crafts, and tasty thing to eat and drink all afternoon.

ATTRACTION: ✒️As previewed last year in this very publication, The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration has just flung open its doors for the first time in Clerkenwell. The 93-year-old Quentin cut the proverbial ribbon last week creating the largest place dedicated to illustration in the world, in the process. It’s based in a £12.5m conversion of a historic 18th century waterworks that was once the HQ of Thames Water that’s been transformed into a series of galleries, learning spaces, public gardens, a shop and café, open Wed-Sun.

MUSIC: 🎶 The highly regarded country-blues singer songwriter Elsie Franklin performs a rare acoustic set in the idyllic setting of the gardens at St Paul's Church in Camden Square this Sat 13th Jun.

EVENT: 🥵 The Somers Town Community Action charity are one of the partners is a multi-city, multi-year project called Melting Metropolis, a Wellcome-funded exploration of how Londoners, New Yorkers and Parisians feel about heat and its impact on their health. On Sat 20th Jun, they’re hosting Somewhere the Sun is Always Shining across the neighbourhood with everything related to extreme heat, from ice cream trucks, to cooling kits, storytelling, to visual art sessions, film screenings to craft workshops and academicians and researchers sharing valuable info on how we might live, cool down and look after one another as our cities heat up.

COMEDY: 🎤 There’s free open mic comedy night Schtick this Sun 14th Jun (and every Wed and Sun night, in fact), at NW%’s classic craft beer pub The Rose & Crown.

MUSIC: 🎸 Friends of the newsletter, Naked Yoga, are back in their spiritual home of MAP Studio Cafe on Fri 19th Jun with some special guests playing meandering instrumental goodness. Revisit the hilarious milk-whisk infused Camdenist interview with the band from last year here.