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The Pink City of Jaipur

Friday 04 November 2016 – Jaipur, India.

The real culture shock hit once I got out on to the street. The hotel owner gave me directions to the ‘Pink City’ the main tourist area of Jaipur after the Amber Fort. It seemed to be a fairly straightforward walk along a main road. This is not a main city thoroughfare like you would find in any western city. There are no footpaths, and if there were they would still be used by cars and motorbikes, it was chaos out there. Though it does all appear to be reasonably safe, keep your line and everyone works around you, cars and motorbikes included. Not sure if I would mess with a bus though. Where there was a raised footpath it covered the sewer and in so many places the path was broken and the stench of the sewers mingled with the fumes of the vehicles. It was pretty unpleasant.

I walked for quite a while and saw no sign of the ‘Pink City’ gates. I started to wonder if I was going in the right direction, and soon gave up in confusion and despair. Eventually I did what I should have done back at the start. I took a tuk tuk, one of the three wheeled motorbike taxis. I asked the driver to take me to the Pink City gates, discovering that I was heading in the right direction all along; it was just a hell of a lot further than I thought.

Jaipur is the capital city of the state of Rajasthan. It is named after its founder Jai Singh II who built his capital here in the late 17^th century, the Amber Fort. As the population expanded the capital was moved down to the flat land below the fort and was named Jaipur. In 1876 the maharajah had the entire old city painted pink, the colour of friendship, to welcome the Prince of Wales. The city palace sits within the Pink City, and was my objective for today. I had about 30 minutes to get there before they stop allowing visitors in at 5:00pm.

Once through the city gates I was confronted with the bazaars, each section dealing with a different kind of product, spices, cloth, metals, leather, all have their sections. It was very crowded and a little disorientating to begin with, it wasn’t helped by the main thoroughfare being packed solid with noisy, smelly traffic. At least there was some sort of footpath along the shop fronts. I did not take a load of photos here. I am very reluctant to aim my camera at people I do not know. If you have followed my blog at all, you would probably have guessed this by now. Some people are good with people and others are not. I sit very much on the ‘not’ side of the equation. I suspect this will continue to be an issue through the rest of my India journey.

I did take some photos of the buildings though. By law all buildings have to be painted pink. I would love to have the paint supply contract!

Reluctant to offend, I did not take any photos of shops, or people near shops, or anything that tried to capture the busyness and colour of the bazaar, though I did see a few things that caught my attention. Like these dolls for instance.

And a small shrine on the side of a building.

Eventually I found my way to where the City Palace was located, I saw a bus full of westerners and decided to follow it!

Passing through a small square, full of parked tourist buses, I finally found a place that I felt comfortable taking photos in. Goats, monkeys and bikes abounded, my sort of thing.

I paid the entrance fee to the City Palace just before the office closed. There were still a lot of people inside and I had an hour before everyone was booted out.

Wondering around listlessly I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to what was going on, nor to the history of the place. In the past I tried to get a bit of background before I enter a castle or a palace or temple so I can get an idea of what I am seeing. I had not done so here and it impacted on my enjoyment, plus I had been awake for 27 hours and was knackered. I took a couple of photos and left without seeing much at all.

Though I did appreciate the silence.

I headed off round the back of the palace, down some streets that I suspect tourists do not generally go, I like back streets.

They are quieter and often more interesting – and on the other side of the gates there was a lot less pink!

I eventually found my way back to one of the main streets and as it was approaching evening I decided to grab a tuk tuk back to the hotel. Alcohol is almost frowned upon in Rajasthan, though cannabis is, I believe, legal. My tuk tuk driver was smoking a joint and offered to sell me some, which I politely declined. I am not sure if it impaired his driving or not, hard to tell on these streets.

Back at the hotel and verging on darkness I asked the hotel owner if I could buy a can of beer, he pointed me in the direction of a beer shop not far away, but on the other side of the main road. It was a challenge getting across that road, all for the sake of beer! As I walked back up the smaller, one way street the hotel was on, I discovered that having lights on your vehicle appears to not be mandatory, driving a car down a one way street the wrong way, seems to be OK as well. You really need to keep your wits about you. I drank a can of beer in my room before dinner as it is not allowed in the hotel restaurant, it was very nice!

Dinner in the hotel was good, cheap and delicious, though sleep was even better…

Welcome to India

Friday 04 November 2016 – Jaipur, India.

Warning – culture shock! They should put that underneath the sign at the airport that says Welcome to India. I am pretty sure that no matter how much you prepare to come to India for the first time, no matter how much research you do, how many Youtube clips you watch or friends you speak to; when you get onto the streets you will find it is all overwhelming. I did anyway.

As usual I left home early and took two tube trains to Heathrow Airport. I was glad it was post rush hour as lugging a back pack and camera bag on the tube is no fun at all. I have decided to take the DSLR backpack travelling for the first time, with three lenses, it is big and heavy and awkward. Hopefully it will be worth it. I am also taking the pocket camera, just in case. My carry on camera bag weighs significantly more than my pack.

I was taking three flights, the first, to Abu Dhabi, was just over six hours. It was a really nice flight, good service and the meal was actually excellent! I watched some really terrible films (Star Trek, Central Intelligence, and on my neighbours screen – The Shallows. I did not need the sound for The Shallows.) I also started watching the BBC series The Night Manager, which was great. Sadly they did not have it on the next leg.

It was a quick turn round before I was on my next flight, a three hour trip to Delhi. It was not too bad either, though the chap next to me started snoring about 5 minutes after we took off, so it was headphones all the way. I watched the new Ghostbusters film. It deserved the terrible reviews it got.

The landing in Delhi was through a dense layer of low cloud, though once off the plane I discovered it was not low cloud. Just stinking, eye burning smog. Gross.

The journey through immigration and baggage was slow, luckily I had 4 hours until the connecting flight to Jaipur. I picked up a sim card for my mobile and some Indian Rupees. It took eight attempts on the ATM, they work differently to UK ones, and I had to use my UK card which was annoying as I was planning on spending NZ money as right now it is worth more !

I was pleasantly surprised by the domestic terminal at Delhi, really nice. Clean, comfy and not a rip off compared to other airports. Well done Delhi Airport. The flight to Jaipur seemed to take about 10 minutes, up and down, it was well under the scheduled hour. Being a smaller prop-jet it was the bumpiest of the three flights and there was not a lot to see out of the window as it was very hazy below.

I had arranged a pick up from my hotel, which I was not charged for. Given my hotel was £13 a night I was surprised! The journey was my culture shock moment. I am so glad I did not try and get a bus, it would have been just too much. Jaipur is the capital of the state of Rajasthan – more on it in my next post. It is the biggest city in Rajasthan, but not huge. But it was rammed, cars, bikes, motorbikes, people walking, dogs, cows, buses, trucks. Everything. Makes Hoe St in rush hour look like an early Sunday morning. Everybody honks all the time, it is not so much an aggressive, retaliatory act here – more a warning of ‘I am coming, look out’. There are lane markers on some of the roads, pointless. No one drives in lanes. Indicators – pah, don’t need one, There is a horn. I didn’t take any photos out of the cab as I was just trying to absorb it. Plus, the pollution was really bad there as well.

I settled into my hotel and had a bit of an early afternoon lie down. I had been awake for over 24 hours. After a few, very short, minutes I got changed, grabbed a map and left the building. At least I got to wear my ‘travelling in hot, dirty countries where I do not know anyone’ clothes. It has been too long since these saw the light of day. Some may say this is a good thing.

It has been too long since these saw the light of day. Some may say this is a good thing.

Exploring time!

This may be the last post for a couple of days. I want to post more of Jaipur, but the internet is quite slow where I am now and I have a few photos to go along with the text.

I had to go to Berlin to see the autumn.

Wednesday 02 November 2016 – Berlin, Germany.

The Tiergarten in November. Wow, what amazing colours! I have been waiting, fruitlessly, for the trees to turn in Epping Forest, but they have been remarkably stubborn this year and it does not look I am going to get a display before I leave on my trip to India and New Zealand this week. Berlin’s Tiergarten certainly made up for, if not exceeded, what I will miss.

I have been here once before. Way back in 1987, when Germany, as a single nation did not exist. It was the autumn then to, and there is a photo of me in an album buried in a box somewhere of me throwing leaves in the air. I enjoyed Berlin then, and I did again this time, though this was a work visit; and a very busy one too.

I came over with my boss to attend ICEF, a very large language school expo. We had a small booth, in one of the worse spots and were hoping to generate some leads, if not sales, for the school management software he has developed. The conference is very sales focused so I was sort of expecting to be fairly quiet as the schools were selling themselves and were not there to buy systems. 4000+ people attend this event, so there is a big audience.

We left London on Sunday morning, I had a really early start, having to drive the 90km to Gatwick in fog to get there for 6:30am. I was surprised that we actually left as it was a bit of a pea-souper.

At least it was fine in Berlin.

We went straight to the expo centre at the Intercontinental Hotel to set up the booth, once done we attended a ‘first timers’ lunch on the 14^th floor of the hotel. We were very near the Tiergarten, I took a couple of photos out of the window. Not realising that this was as close as I was going to get for the next three days.

We were busy, really busy. Unexpectedly busy. Pleasantly busy. There was a lot of interest in the system which was great news for the company. I had sort of expected to be able to take a break each day and go for a walk outside, but we were busy from 9:00 am till 6:30 each night, and then it was a quick trip back to the hotel we were staying in for a shower and change and then back to the conference centre for ‘networking’. We left the first two nights at 1:00 am, we ‘networked’ a lot.

This was as much outside as I had for the first three days, the road between hotel and centre.

On the final day, Tuesday we did have a brief respite, but it was raining, so the closest I got again was a photo out the window of the 14^th floor again.

I did not go out for the final party on Tuesday, electing to have a quiet night in on my own. My boss and I are sharing a room, and I have not spent three full days with someone who was not El since I was travelling with Benne in Sri Lanka in 2013. I needed the space – plus the Arsenal were playing a Champions League game and I had a pretty good stream 🙂

The main reason I did not go out was I wanted to get up early and go for a walk before we had to go to the airport to fly back home. I am so glad I did….

I only had 45 minutes, so it was a short walk. The streets near the hotel were a bit sterile, the shops were the same brands as in London, and Barcelona and Copenhagen, everywhere really. There was none of that solid Germanic architecture I remembered I was a wee bit disappointed to be honest.

The Kaiser Wilhem Memorial Church still has the bullet holes in it from the Second World War, when it was mostly ruined by allied bombs, the remains stand as a memorial.

I walked round the perimeter of the zoo, most of which was in this wonderful park, with its wonderful autumn display. I took quite a few photos, none of which do any justice to the park.

The park crosses the Lanswehr Canal, and has a number of small lakes/ponds in it. There were some reflections but I did not really manage to capture them. The light was a bit low as well, but I was sans tripod unfortunately.

I definitely need to go back, I wanted to see some of the Berlin I remembered from the 80s. Going back in the autumn seems like the right thing to do.

I arrived back in London mid-afternoon, tomorrow I am off again, this time to India. I am very nervous about it all now. It has been a while since I have travelled somewhere ‘exotic’. I hope I am up for it all. I am also going to miss El and awful lot!

Not quite autumn

Sunday 23 October 2016 – Epping Forest.

This will be my last full weekend in London until December. Next Sunday I am off to Berlin for three days on a work trip and the day after I return to London I am back out to the airport and off on a month long holiday trip to India, Australia, New Zealand and Dubai. I am looking forward to it, though pensively.

I haven’t travelled alone and to somewhere out of my comfort zone since the month in Sri Lanka back in early 2013. I am now a lot more settled than I was then and am happy with my life and with where I am in it. Plus I have gotten a little older, softer and greyer in the interim. There are nerves, but I am very excited by it. The planning is almost over and the trip will soon be under way.

I have been waiting for full autumn to arrive for a few weeks now. With a long and reasonably dry summer over later than normal the trees in Epping Forest have been holding on to their green colour further into October than expected. While I very much enjoyed the summer, I was also looking forward to seeing the season change. I don’t think I am going to see it.

With no more opportunities to see autumn in the forest this year I drove there this morning to go for a walk with my camera so I can see what colour had come out. Visually, it was largely disappointing, a little bit of yellow, but no dark orange and definitely no red. Yet. It will come I am sure, I just won’t be here to see it.

I took a few photos, not a lot as the colour wasn’t there and I wasn’t really feeling it either. So here are a few of them.

It was really nice to be outside in some (relatively) fresh air and take a walk among some lovely young and old trees, if they were refusing to show off their autumn colour.

I am some art.

Friday 14 October 2016 – London.

I have not been on a street art walk in Shoreditch, or anywhere else for quite a long time. I have dabbled here and there with a quick visit, but rarely have I been inspired to take photos. I have been to a few gallery openings with my mate Darryl, and have seen some pretty good stuff, but nothing has gone into the blog for ages.

I had a couple of photo exhibitions to visit today, both in the east end, and with a slight diversion or two, separated by some street art walls. It was time to take a walk – even if it was just a short one.

To be honest, the heydey of street art in this and most other parts of London seem to be over. That rush of 2012+2013 when fresh, new and exciting artists were being created locally or visiting from far of land is long gone. On the odd occasion I have had a look around, there has been nothing much to report.

However there was some good stuff out there today. I am bit out of touch now, so there are a few artists I do not recognise.

I will start with the ones I know, and very definitely my favourite from the day. I am a fan of Dale Grimshaw, I own a print of one of his pieces, but I have never seen one this big – on the back wall of the Village Underground. Brilliant! Those eyes….

I also really like the small paste ups of Jana and JS, I haven’t seem them around much, so nice seeing some of their work back in the country again.

The always colourful Thierry Noir.

Mr Cenz.

Dan Kitchener.

Ant Carver.

The rest I liked, but cannot name!

I am off to Berlin in two weeks time, it is a work conference, but I hope to be able to sneak off for a couple of hours while I am there to do some tourist things. One of which will be to check out some street art.

Two days after I get back from Berlin I am off on my travels to India, Australia, New Zealand and Dubai. I am almost organised now. Wahoo !!

The ‘YHA’ 2016 Weekend.

Sunday 09 October 2016 – Brancaster Staithe, Norfolk.

I have not been to the north Norfolk beaches before. As a child I visited family friends in Kings Lynn a few times, but as far as I recall I never made it to the coast. I was looking forward to this weekend away. My Walthamstow social group have been going together away once a year for many years, renting hostels or other large accommodations. This was to be my first year joining the ‘YHA’ weekend, and El’s first away for quite some time.

This year the National Trust Brancaster Activity Centre in Brancaster Staithe had been hired for the weekend.

As I do not work on Friday, El took the day off work and we left late morning to take a slow drive up to the coast. We have looked at North Norfolk a couple of times for weekends away but had never made it up there before. As we were in no rush to get there we took the long route and aimed for Cromer at the other end of the coast to Brancaster, we did get a bit mis-placed a couple of times on the way. After the second time I decided to get the map out of the glove box.

We arrived in Cromer early in the afternoon, and after taking a light lunch in a cliff top cafe decided to go for a walk around. Stupidly, and I still cannot believe this, both my camera batteries were flat. I had been looking forward to doing some photography this weekend, I had packed my DSLR, filters, lens, tripod, all the gear cleaned and ready to go. But I failed to charge my second battery and somehow must have knocked the power switch on when I put the camera in the bag this morning, and no charger either. I had even considered taking the other camera as well, but decided against it. 2^nd stupid mistake. I was not amused with myself as my phone has a lousy camera. All photos here are from my phone.

We didn’t go for a walk in Cromer, but here is a breakwater.

The drive to the hostel was really nice, there are some lovely little villages across north Norfolk, and they have their own style of building with a large pebble dash on the outside of the buildings. It was quite busy, even for a Friday, this particular stretch of coast is known as ‘Little Chelsea’ as it is full of Londoners’ second homes. There were a lot of London voices about.

We were the first to arrive in the hostel, and it is a lovely building, renovated recently after a high flood in 2013.

There was well over twenty of us including a reasonable size group of teens, no kids any more. Friday night was spent in, chatting over fish and chips and a couple of beers, though Paul and I snuck out for a pint at the nearby pub when the board games came out. Not our thing.

On Saturday the group hired bikes and went out for what turned out to be quite a mega-ride. El cannot ride a bike so we hopped back in the car and went out for a drive to visit some of the villages we passed through yesterday. Our first stop was Wells-next-the-Sea, a lovely village, definitely given over to tourism, embracing it and there were a lot of people visiting – and it had two shops with used vinyl as well. We will be back!

It was interesting to see a boat with a silver fern painted on the side, I wonder if this is owned by a Kiwi? Or maybe just someone who follows the All Blacks.

I loved this church in Burnham Deepdale. The tower is not one I have seen much of before, and I am guessing it is of Saxon origin. There are a few original looking churches on the coast, but I was still smarting from yesterday’s stupidity with camera batteries and was not really interested in taking photos.

After dinner on Saturday most people went for a drive and then a walk to the beach for a beach fire, we didn’t go in the end. The beach is quite a way from the hostel, this area is full of estuaries and small rivers and the area is a national reserve and a bird watchers paradise.

Sunday morning was all activity as we had to be out of the hostel by 10:00. Once the bulk of the cleaning had been completed and we waited for the stragglers to get organised I went for a walk out behind the hostel at the edge of the estuary. I was now used to the fact I had no camera, and went to take some photos with my phone, though regrets I had a few ! The light and clouds were brilliant, and I do love brilliant clouds, the DSLR would have loved it out there.

We arranged to all meet in the village of Blakeney Quay, before moving on to our activity for the day from the village of Morston Quay. I took one quick photo at Blakeney before we were back in the car and off again.

Caroline who had organised the weekend had booked us on a seal watching trip to Blakeney Point, were the estuary meets the North Sea. There are seals here all year round, both common and grey seals, with numbers of each type varying at different times of year.

The weather was not too bad for a boat ride, it was cold, but not too windy and there was no chop at all on the estuary, though there was some rain coming in. Which I was fascinated with all the way out to the point.

There were a few seals out on the point, common seals on the land and a couple of young grey seals playing in the water. I definitely missed having a camera here and the phone did not do justice to the occasion sadly. Lovely seeing the seals, they are such funny looking animals when they are on the land, yet so elegant in the water.

On the way back to land we stopped off for a brief walk around on the reserve, there are a number of small wooden huts in the low dunes, and they very much reminded me of New Zealand, the whole scene could have been uplifted and dumped ‘down under’ and nothing would have looked out of place.

Well, maybe the life boat house would have!

Back on dry land, we reconvened in Blakeney Quay for a quick pub lunch before jumping back in our cars and heading back to London.

It was a great weekend away, I feel very lucky to have been able to join in with such a long standing tradition. Thanks to all those who organised, shopped, cooked and kept the weekend going. Wonderful.

We will be back – and next time I will double check my camera batteries and then check them one more time!

The Telescopes with Flavor Crystals @ London Fields Brewhouse.

Thursday 22 September 2016 – London.

I really like the psychedelic, droney, shoegazey, not sure how you describe them, band, The Telescopes. They have existed in one form or the other since the late 1980s, though the singer Stepen Lawrie is now the only original member. I have seen them once before, about a year ago, and at the same venue. So I kind of knew what to expect. Low light, high volume.

Until this morning I had not heard of, nor heard support act, Flavor Crystals, they are from Minneapolis and are in the UK, I am guessing, for the big Liverpool Psych Fest festival on this coming weekend. One year I will make it up there as it looks to be a good show.

I really enjoyed Flavor Crystals, I noted bits of Yo La Tengo and Kinski in their sound, and those are nothing but good things in my book.

They have released a split 12” single with The Telescopes and I suspect that will end up in my record collection fairly soon.

The Telescopes mainly played tracks off the last LP, ‘Hidden Field’s, though things tended to blur a bit, some of the sounds blending into another. I really like the LP, but they were a little uninspiring tonight. Maybe it was the small audience ? I am not sure, but I was a bit disappointed by their set.

Photographically The Telescopes were a bit dull as well, Flavor Crystals were well lit, but The Telescopes had flat red lighting, I hate flat red lighting. So, all the photos have been converted to black and white.

Stow Festival Friday night.

Friday 16 September 2016 – London.

The annual Stow Festival has been running for four years and gets bigger and better each time. It is a weekend long celebration of music in Walthamstow, NE London. Where I live. I am a massive music fan, have been since I was a teen, so music is a key part of my life and I have been giving to gigs since the 1980.

I am a bit of a music snob, and am a bit fussy about what gigs I go to, rarely going to anything that is not to MY taste. I have not been to many of the Stow Festival shows in the past, even though it is local; and I do support local, there has not been much to my taste before. This year was different, there was a lot of interesting music in the festival so El and I were keen to get out.

This year is the 40^th anniversary of punk, and there have been a few exhibitions and gigs celebrating this/. Walthamstow had a part to play in punk rock history, with the Sex Pistols playing early gigs here and the long gone, but internationally famous, Small Wonder Records just down the road from home. Small Wonder was not just a shop and mail order business it was also a record label that released singles by artists such as The Cure, Bauhaus, Crass, Cockney Rejects, along with a host of others not quite that famous in far off New Zealand.

The first event El and I attended tonight was a talk at Walthamstow Library. Author Clinton Heylin led a panel discussion with journalist Jonh Ingram, Buzzcocks manager Richard Boon and Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock.

The talk was illuminating and a bit of fun, with some interesting anecdotes and stories from 1976. It was followed by a short but great set from Glen Matlock. He played ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘Stepping Stone’ (which the Pistols used to play) and an excellent cover of the Richard Hell punk classic ‘Blank Generation’.

It was a great start to the evening.

After a quick bite we went to the Rose and Crown pub to catch three bands. We missed most of the set by the first act, The Left Outsides. A duo playing a kind of southern gothic folk with an English twist, I think that is best description I can come up with. It was not really my thing, but I kind of liked it, dark and murky.

I had listened to a couple of tracks from The Hanging Stars, the middle act of the night, we both really liked them. I could hear hints of REM, The Feelies and the psychedelic folk rock of The Dream Syndicate. With the slide guitar there was definitely a country tinge as well. Thought they were great and if they played locally again I would go and see them. Nice to see a band with three guys who could sing.

The main act was local psych rock outfit The Oscillation. I have been wanting to see them for a while, from what I have heard of them I like there droney, shoegazey psychedelic rock. Naturally the lights went down for them, so photography got a bit harder. It is always hard to get a decent photo of a drummer, especially from the side of the stage. Shot through the guitarist was the best I got. The rhythm section were absolutely brilliant, really tight, great musicianship and really worked the ‘motorik’ krautrock style well.

I thought the keyboard was way too high in the mix, I would have liked to have had the bass/drums higher, followed by the guitar, not that it was my choice 🙂

Lyrics were a bit naff, but you get that with psychedelic rock! But anyway; I was there for the music.

We enjoyed what we saw of their set, but did not make it to the end. We have both been sick for most of the week and the late night was getting too much so we left for home after a few songs.

It was a good night out, would have been a lot nicer without the head and chest colds!

Watch your palace fall – Conor Harrington Exhibition.

Thursday 14 September 2016 – London.

It has been a long time since I wrote anything about street art or street art related activities. The London scene has shrunk remarkably from those busy, busy days of three of four years ago. I occasionally go out with Darryl for a look around and he invites me to gallery openings and viewings, but like so many things I never seem to have the time to go to much. I have been sick these past few days, nothing serious, just a draining fluey cold. El has had a slight variation as well, and we have both been off work with it. Being off work sick is less fun when you are being paid daily. No workee = no money, so I am not milking this!

In preparation for my trip to India in November, and deciding to travel with the DSLR for the first time, I have had the camera’s sensor professionally cleaned. I have noticed smudges on it the last couple of times I used it and it has been a long time since it was done. I had to pick it up today so decided to head in to the city, grab the camera, quickly catch up with Darryl and go see the Conor Harrington exhibition in Soho as it was not too far from the camera shop.

I have been a fan of Conor Harrington’s work since I first saw it on the streets of London in 2013. His street work is usually done on large walls, and he has quite a unique style. I have seen a couple of canvases in galleries, but not been to a solo show before.

The show “Watch your palace fall” is being held in the Pace London gallery space, in conjunction with the launch of a book of his work.

The pieces are all loyal to his ‘street’ style, big canvases, with loads of colour and a mix between realism and abstract.

As I was picking up the DSLR I packed a small 50mm lens in my bag, normally this is fine for galleries, but not today. There were poles in the viewing area which prevented me from getting far enough away to take photos of a couple of the pieces. Oh well, seeing is just as good.

My favourite was this diptych of a tug of war, battle for our souls between red and blue, left and right. Lovely.

It is a great exhibition and if you get a chance to go and see it, I highly recommend it.

I have seen a few of his street pieces over the years, there is even one in Walthamstow, which was painted in 2015.

I have had a look around my collection and found these, though I am sure I have seen more of them. I think themagnificent, indoor/outdoor exhibition, ‘Baroque the Streets’, in Dulwich in May 2013 was the first time I saw one of his pieces, and it’s still one of my favourites

Whitecross St, July 2013.

Bristol, Sep 2013.

Finally, a gallery piece from the awesome ‘Brutal’ group Exhibition, held in Nov 2013. This show was held in the basement of an empty office block in the Strand. What an amazing venue for an exhibition, dark, damp and a little eerie.

Thanks Conor for brightening up the streets 🙂

And thanks Darryl for getting me along, though I did have to lie down when I got home.

Emptying the nest.

Sunday 11 September 2016 – Torquay and Exeter, Devon.

I am an empty-nester yet again.

I don’t talk on here about my family that often , and even less so about El’s, so I am not going to go into much detail now as I do not want to intrude into their privacy. El has two sons, Joe and Charlie. Joe has been away from home for four years, has completed a degree at Oxford and is starting his masters in Nottingham. Charlie finished his last term of school in July, got the excellent grades he was expecting and this weekend he too left for university, starting a history degree at Exeter.

Charlie is going down to Exeter with his dad and El and I are going to make our own way down and stay the night, slightly further into Devon, in Torquay. There is a music festival on in Exeter and with a lot of students turning up with their families to add the temporary population explosion there was no where to stay on Saturday night; and to be honest it is far nicer being by the sea!

We left Walthamstow about 8:30 on Saturday morning, I was expecting it to be a five hour drive, and I was not disappointed at all, or evenly pleasantly surprised. It took five and half hours to get to our hotel in Torquay.

We had a room with a view of the sea and down the coast path to Paington and Brixham; fabulous. I love seeing the sea, only a blue sky over it would have made this better 🙂

After unpacking we took to the roads and explored Torquay. It is an interesting town on the wider Torbay, and part of the ambitiously named ‘English Riviera’. I am guessing it is an old fishing town, that embraced tourism back in the 19^th century. The port is full of private yachts and motor boats now. It is part faded glory and part modern tourist spot. It took a while to warm into it, but we really liked it in the end.

I am not a big fan of the sight-seeing wheel that now seem to dominate the horizon in every town, though I liked the relationship this one had with the surrounding buildings and land.

I think this photo shows the changing fortunes of many a seaside town. The good old pavilion, ‘THE’ place to hang out for many decades, shuttered and closed and the money is spent going (slowly) round the wheel.

Though tourism has not quite fully replaced fishing – yet.

We had not banked on Torquay being so busy. We went out to look for dinner at 8:00, thinking we would walk in to anywhere we wanted, only to discover that most places were full. We ended up sparing no expense and having a small pizza each at Pizza Express, no complaints though, it was good pizza and the service was excellent. There appears to be lots of stag/hen type nights in town, lots of groups of blokes and women prowling the streets and filling the bars and restaurants, I think it is that sort of town now.

It does have a nice waterfront to walk along and the lights around the bay are lovely.

We didn’t linger in the hotel on Sunday and were on the road soon after breakfast, heading off on the slow road into Exeter. it was very nice being by the sea, I really miss it, and just being near it again does give me a real lift.

Charlie is staying in halls for the first year and had an arrival slot of 12:30-13:00 to unload his stuff into his room. El and I wanted to have a look around Exeter, so parked up and had a walk around the centre of town. Starting down by the really nice quay.

I have been here before, almost four years ago to the day, and explored all the historical places back then. Though we did pass a few on the way up to the cathedral, starting with the wonderful medieval bridge, crossing a piece of grass that is a hundred or so yards from the river.

We stopped for a coffee in the square, the church behind the cafe is the last church Saxon Church in England, consecrated in 1065, the year before the Norman invasion.

After coffee we walked up to the university area on the edge of town, I left El at Charlie’s home for the next year, to wait for his arrival and went off for a walk on my own.

I walked up past the remains of the castle walls.

A wonderful piece of street art, I am assuming by Vhils, it is in his unique style. He uses small amounts of explosive to blow out tiny sections of the wall, leaving behind a wonderful piece of art.

Passed an ancient alms house.

Ending up back at the cathedral again.

Soon after arriving in Cathedral Green I had a call from El to let me know that Charlie was settled in, so I went back to the car and drove up to the uni for a look around his room, before we all went for a late lunch in a nearby pub.

This lovely day out was followed by a less than nice five and half hour drive back to London and home. We arrived knackered at 8:30 and didn’t stay up much beyond that!

For the next wee while, during term anyway, El and I will be empty nesters. A new chapter in our life.