England – Page 31 – Where is Phil now?

A wee trip to Cornwall.

Wednesday 31 July 2013 – Cornwall.

Crikey, another month over- 2013 is disappearing so fast !

On Sunday I picked up a Vauxhall Astra that I had hired from a rental company just down the road from El in Walthamstow, after loading a few days worth of stuff we excitedly headed off on our first road trip – and El’s first experience of me behind the wheel…

Our first stop was lunch with my daughter Meliesha in Bristol. The journey to Bristol was pretty quick, I was expecting a lot more traffic on the motorways given it was the school summer holidays, but apart from some roadworks that just seemed endless on the notoriously awful M25 it was plain sailing all the way. Luckily Mel’s new flat was not far off the motorway exit ramp so we didn’t even get lost. We went for a very nice vege roast lunch at the pub up the road and sat outside in the sun for a couple of hours before El and I left to get back on the road for the longer drive down to Cornwall. It was so nice to see Mel again, and Dickie of course !

I had to really resist the urge to go on a street art walk, there is some great stuff in Bristol, but it was not on the way to where we were going and I could have taken hours… I did snap this as we walked though.

We had no real plan for the day and no accommodation booked for the night so just drove down towards Cornwall, through Exmoor and past a whole load of places that I visited when I was supporting Mal on his epic epic 1014km run last year.

It was strange driving past some of these small villages I shot through last June, I was a bit of a bore to poor El, regaling her with memories of the run and I have just had a slight blogging detour and wandered off to re-read Mals posts about the run. Epic really is the word.

We had sort of picked the coastal town of Bude as a possible place to spend the night and arrived there in the late afternoon and conveniently the local hotel had a room available. The hotel was a classic old school English hotel, we were the youngest people by about fifty years and I am sure I was looked at sideways when I wore flip flops to dinner ! The food was very nice though and the banoffee pie was (almost literally) to die for.

We had a good walk around Bude before tea and I ended up taking more photos here than anywhere else in Cornwall, a lovely spot.

On the top of the hill I saw a marker for the southwest coast path and the trail heading off over the cliff tops and into the distance and it really made me want to go for a run. I haven’t run in weeks, no motivation, or even worse I think – lacking the inspiration to run. I now know what was missing – hills and trees and grass and mud and all those other good things that don’t come with running on tarmac. Time to change me thinks!

Anyway, we loved Bude and I especially liked this tidal swimming pool, though I didn’t jump in.

The following morning we headed off south-west making our first stop at Boscastle, a village I stayed in last year. It is a lovely little fishing village that was almost destroyed by flooding in 2004 and has been mostly completely renovated. We were early enough we missed the worst of the summer holiday crowds.

Second off was Tintagel – famous for its ruined castle that was supposedly the home of King Arthur. We didn’t go into the ruins, there were quite large queues to get in, but did walk up and around it.

In one direction there were clouds, in the other blue sky ! Tintagel Castle is just a ruin on this rocky outcrop.

There is a rather out of place and fairly ugly Georgian (Ithink?) hotel on the other side of the valley.

After a very nice, locally made ice cream we set off for our final journey to the hotel that El had booked for us in Mawgan Porth, The Scarlet Hotel, a new eco-hotel on the cliffs above the beach – it was absolutely lovely and even better it had a no children policy !

Once unpacked we went for a walk along coast path along the cliff tops in quite a strong breeze. El, Sorry about the photo, just showing how windy it was, honest!

After the walk in the afternoon we sat on our deck and drank a bottle of wine my sister and brother-in-law bought me a while ago, a bottle of Wither Hills Marlborough Pinot Noir – it was superb – thanks ! This was followed by a wonderful meal in the hotel and for a change we chose wines that were recommended for each of the food selections and they too were delicious. I did wear shoes by the way…

The following day we took a trip into Padstow as the weather was looking a bit rubbish, it seemed most other people had the same idea as though it was raining quite hard when we arrived the village was packed, though the sun soon popped out and it was another lovely day. I didn’t really enjoy Padstow, it was very commercialised, full of shops selling clothes and stuff that was unnecessary to a small fishing village. Oh, well – most others seemed to like it. We did wander up this street for lunch at this pub, but it was closed.

We went back to the hotel and I finally had to succumb to my needs and chucked on a pair of board shorts some old road shoes and took off for a half an hour run along the bit coast path that we walked the day before. I really enjoyed just getting out and plodding up hills and down rocky shale paths, it felt good to really suck down some fresh sea air!

In the afternoon El had booked some spa treatments for both us, and I will say the massage was welcome !

We went for a walk along the beach in the early afternoon, watching the heavy clouds come in over the sea, waiting for it to rain.

The hotel is the building centre right with the curved roof.

But the clouds soon blew clear so we ordered a light meal and a bottle of wine and sat out on the cliff side on some big cushions and enjoyed the last of the evening light.

The following morning sadly we had to check out and head home. The weather was again a bit dubious and it rained a bit on the way. We drove the long way as I wanted to go through Dartmoor, which was all a bit of let down as we stuck to the main highway and we didn’t see too much moor land, then again we didn’t see too much of anything for a while…

And a few hours later, that was that. We were back in London, our short and lovely holiday over. We had a great time away, everything was superb and El only swore and grabbed hold of things twice in all my driving…

Days and nights out.

Saturday 27 July 2013 – London.

I am pleased to say that the mere mention of rain and storms in my last post was enough to pretty much scare it all away and the long English summer returned with a vengeance, with some more hot days – getting up to 34 degrees at one stage. Though, the period of a guaranteed no-rain day is now over, thankfully to be honest. I was going to avoid long blog posts that covered many days, but as I am so far behind again I thought I would do a quick week catch up and then try to get back to just recording things that happened when I had photos to prove it, as it were.

El has taken two weeks off work for her summer holiday and to celebrate a birthday (Happy Birthday :xx ), this was really cool as it meant we got hang out a lot more during the day as well as doing a few celebratory activities too.

Way back when I was in Sri Lanka in March El had booked us tickets to the David Bowie exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the show had been a sell out for months and I had been waiting eagerly to go and visit, El had been while I wasa away. It was really cool, I had expected some sort of fuddy-duddy old school museum style exhibition (no idea why I thought that really), but was blown away by the massive screens and great sound – as well as all the costumes and other Bowie related memorabilia. Fabulous show… As expected no photos were allowed in the exhibition, though we did have a quick walk around the lower reaches of the V and A, looking for lunch 🙂

After the V and A we walked up to the Royal Geographic Society gallery just up the road, this is a real gem of a gallery that has outstanding free photography exhibitions and is always worth a visit. I do however, know that the travel photographer of the year winners and finalists were on display and I was keen to check it out. There was some fabulous photos, really quite inspiring stuff, and I was pleased to see it was not all professional photographers with high end cameras getting all the glory, no photos allowed here either!

Our final stop for the day was to check out the Sebastiao Salgado ‘Genesis’ exhibition at the Natural History Museum. This was a collection of (mostly) stunning black and white images taken in wilderness areas all over the world. Lovely ! No photos of course !

That evening we took a slow stroll South Bank looking for a pizza and a wine

It was then went back to my place to watch the sun set and the moon rise from my deck. I took a few photos of the offices on the other side of the Thames.

The following day we took a trip out to Greenwich, going the long way via the Emirates Cable Car at North Greenwich. Which we discovered does not actually go to Greenwich…. But it was a fun ride over the Thames anyway, with some great views over London.

We had a brief walk around Greenwich, pass the Cutty Sark.

Upup through the park to the observatory for a cup of coffee before wandering back down into town for a really nice market side lunch of Ethiopian curried veges.

I had forgotten to get the address of the bank where my mum worked in the fifties so I will have to go back again, not that I am complaining at all, Greenwich is very nice.

While I was in Sri Lanka I read a BookFace post from one of my favourite bands, Mogwai, announcing a one of London show at the Barbican Theatre with the band playing the soundtrack to the movie ‘Zidane – a 21st century portrait’ live. The film follows the famous French footballer around a match when he was playing for Real Madrid. I was glad I bought the tickets as soon as I saw them advertised as the show was a quick sell-out and was on Friday night. The theatre in the Barbican is such a brilliant place to see a band like Mogwai, great seating with clear views from everywhere and a sound quality that was the best I have ever experienced, especially with the quite tones to extreme noise of a live post rock show. I loved it !!!

On Saturday night El, her sons and I went out for dinner to a pop up restaurant, catered by the Basement galley in the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum. An old Victoria line underground carriage was converted into a restaurant for the night, what a great idea. This was our table.

The food was excellent and it should have been a fun night, but we were seated by a very noisy large group and this spoiled the evening for me, and it showed on my face. Sorry…

It was a really good week, so nice to be able to hang out together and not have to rush around doing things at the weekends.

A stormy night in London town.

Tuesday 23 July 2013 – London.

The two and half weeks of pretty much perfect weather had to end at some stage and it did in the wee hours of this morning – in fairly spectacular style! The television news had reported that thunder storms were expected overnight in London so before I went to bed I dug my tripod out in case something special happened.

It was a very humid night and I really did not expect to get a lot of sleep but must have dropped off as I was awoken by the rumble of thunder around 1:30 am. I lay there for a while before finally deciding to go and have a look at the action as I was awake and unlikely to go back to sleep any time soon. Disappointingly there was nothing really happening on my side of the block and I stood there on the deck for a while watching the flashes of light in the clouds from the lightening out of sight on the other side of the building. I went into the kitchen for a look out one of the side windows and could see a massive rain storm sweeping in from the north west. All of a sudden the wind hit the side of the building and started blowing things around the kitchen as it howled through the open window, it was so strong I struggled to push the large window closed. That was it, photography was on !

When I got back onto the deck with my camera set up on the tripod the horizon to the South had all but disappeared in the rain.

I had not taken photos of lightening before and experimented with a few methods without really knowing the results until I uploaded to my laptop this morning. This was the first one I got, a lucky break on a ten second exposure. The wind was really starting to hit so this is a bit soft.

The rain soon followed the wind gusts into the deck and I made a hurried exit back into the house 🙂

I also realised I was being a bit daft shooting straight off the deck when I could turn the camera forty degrees and I would have Tower Bridge as my back drop. As I waited for the wind to drop I swapped lenses from the 16-35mm to the good old nifty fifty as the images were just not sharp enough on the wide angle.

I took a lot of twenty and thirty second exposures, just hoping lightening would strike while the shutter was open. More often than not it didn’t, seemingly arriving just as the shutter closed. I have an awful lot of images of the skyline.

But I was very lucky a few times….

It was a great storm, spectacular, and it only lasted for a few minutes before it blew away to the east and I could go back to bed.

It was well worth the effort, as photography often is – I just need to remind myself of this more frequently and get out and do it.

Southbank photo walk.

Thursday 18 July 2013 – London.

Well it has been a pretty busy week with social activities happening every day. It is a pity I cannot say the same on the job front, but I am still plugging away at it with a couple of agencies rung and jobs applied for, one day, one day.

Today I had two things on, a visit to Sydenham to see the new street art which I wrote about in the previous post and then in the evening I met up with a fellow photographer and music lover Steve for a photo walk along South Bank – though I will say not a lot of photographer happened.

I have been waiting for the shutters to be down on these shops near my house so I could get a photo of the old Malarky paintings. The last time I saw them down I did not have my camera on me.

I met Steve at the skate park and took some photos while I waited, there was not a lot of action at the time but I did manage to get a couple of good shots, I am a bit gutted I cut his hand off, otherwise this would be near perfect !

The next one was a better photo, just the action wasnt as good 🙂

Steve and I didn’t take any photos between the skate park and London Bridge, we walked and chatted and battled out way through the crowds taking advantage of another lovely summer evening. I stopped for a look at Hays Galleria on the far side of London Bridge and there were some people playing petanque over a glass of plonk (or more I suspect).

We walked around the More London area for a while, past the Batman logo of the PWC building.

We had a bit of a play with some of the angles in the buildings around here.

As we passed Tower Bridge I took this picture to add to my collection of skylines. You have to love that sky!

I had heard that the barge I photographed earlier in the week with a new painting on it by Alice Pasquini was being painted some more so we walked up to have a look, but the new painting was hidden behind an old sailing barge so there was not much to see apart from this on a wall.

We crossed over Tower bridge and took a walk around the rich kids play ground of St Katherines dock, we were looking for a decent angle to get a sunset over Tower Bridge but there was not much happening there so we decided to head back over to the south side of the Thames and grab a pint or two. As we were crossing the bridge the alarm went, the gates were closed and the bridge was raised. This was very cool, I have never seen the bridge up before – a new experience.

We did end up having a couple of pints, it was a good night and an end to a good day.

Shoreditch street art updated.

Monday 15 July 2013 – Shoreditch, London.

Shhhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone, but it was another glorious glorious day here in London with nary a cloud in the sky all day – so it’s a good day to for a ride up to Shoreditch for a street art walk/ride then! I have not been to Shoreditch for at least a week so of course there is a load of new things to see and photograph, and having the bike meant getting further – and more coolly. By cool I am, of course, referring to temperature, not me being stylish – something I definitely was not today!

I had a great few hours out and about around Shoreditch, I got to see a few things I was looking for and finally found a massive wall by ROA that I have tried to find twice before. I also ran into fellow street art aficionado Darryl who I met once before while watching RUN paint the wall at the Village Underground.

One of the things I had been planning on doing for a while was visiting the exhibition by RUN and Dscreet at the Cock and Bull Gallery in the basement of The Tramshed in Rivington st. It was really worth the wait as there were some great pieces on show there, as well as a very cool backdrop of painted walls, I bought a booklet on the show and am tempted to buy an art work as well.

After a wee coffee break I rode up Bethnal Green Road in search of the large wall painted by ROA a few weeks ago, and this time I found it. Though only having a fixed fifty mm lens on the Canon I could only shoot some of the details as there were too many cars in the narrow alley way to get a wide shot. I will go back as it is such a cool cool painting.

From there I rode around the streets of Shoreditch and snapped a few photos, most are on Flickr, but below are a couple as a sampler.

In a park behind Brick Lane I found a theatre group doing an outdoor rehearsal so I watched them for a while which was cool.

I was really excited to find this Phlegm that I knew was around but had never seen before, again I was not able to capture it all due to today’s lens choice. Weight won over flexibility – plus it is always good to shoot with a fixed a lens every now and then – keeps me honest!

Alex Diaz has been painstakingly painting this wall by hand with a tiny brush for most of a week, stunning piece.

A Jana and JS I have been looking for, I really like their stuff.

And a Stik I haven’t seen before.

It was a great few hours out 🙂

A bike ride to Richmond

Wednesday 10 July 2013 – London.

We have had fine weather for ten days now, loving it ! I decided I would take the bike for a ride over to Hampton Court as I haven’t been there in decades. It is very expensive to get in, but I planned on just visiting the outside, with the journey being the main activity.

Though, I actually never made it to Hampton Court. I am just a little too competitive on the road and just cannot pootle along slowly and enjoy the view, or read road signs. I did make it according to my plan as far as Putney Bridge but got a bit misplaced after that and ended up barrelling along Upper Richmond Road, where I had a hand gesture argument with a dickhead in a Range Rover. He failed to understand that the large area at traffic lights with a bike painted on it is for bikes, not dickheads in Range Rovers – I did try to educate him.

After that wee burst of energy I arrived in the lovely zone of calm that is Richmond Park. I was sort of looking for some of the many deer that live here and found a large heard relaxing under some trees. It was then I realised I didn’t have my camera on me, so all photos are courtesy of my phone, sorry – they are pretty crap…

It was then I decided I would not ride the few extra miles to Hampton Court, but enjoy the park and force myself to ride slowly back home as far as I could along the Thames tow path.

Bizarrely, even though I lived in Richmond for almost two years in the eighties I never actually turned right at Richmond Bridge and went along the path to Kew, well I certainly do not remember it. I was surprised to find there was a lovely shaded pedal along an unsealed path.

It was hard to believe I was still in London.

The ride was really nice, and I did manage to take it nice and slow and enjoy some of the view and make the most of the cooling breeze in the shade as I pedalled through the mid-day heat.

Eventually it popped back out in to normal south west London Thames side city life – it is not quite the same on the east side of London…

I stopped for a very nice cold drink, coffee and a muffin in Mortlake to cool down for a while.

Before crossing over Putney Bridge and riding back through Chelsea to the city.

It was a pretty good ride. On my rides so far I have found most drivers are very courteous to bike riders, though sadly there are always exceptions. The roads are OK, a lot of the main routes, like this one on Chelsea Embankment, have clear bike lanes and a good surface and there are signs other roads are being fixed as well. I really like how this clearly goes around the bus stop and not through it, which really sucks when there is a bus.

My only quibble is with signage. I got misplaced a couple of times today, and not really because I was going too fast and not paying attention, I assure you (mum) I pay lots of attention to the road when I am riding. The bike path signage is just inconsistent; in the main there are good sized signs up high so you can see them, but then there will be things like this at intersections. Impossible to read if there is a large vehicle in front…

Sort this out Boris and I will be an even happier rider.

Time to rethink blogging…

Sunday 07 July 2013 – London.

Hmm, I was just writing another long missive that seemed to be documenting everything I did in the past week except visits to the loo. Yes, even I will admit my weekly blog posts have become boring and way too long to read.

It is supposed to be my record of my travels, but the thing is – I have stopped travelling, Maybe I should stop blogging too and just post photos that I like? I have become a little cynical about the ‘blogosphere’ as well as my motivations for blogging, so time to think on it all. Anyway I have deleted everything I wrote over the past few hours and have started again.

So here is a brief and semi-visual review of the last week. The weather has been pretty good lately so I have been out and about on the bike a bit with a couple of long rides, including up to the Serpentine.

I spent a great day on Wednesday with Sanjeev, who I met on leg one of my Africa trip. Sanjeev and his wife Vaishali have just moved to Cambridge from Boston and came down to London for the day. Vaishali was busy with work so Sanjeev and I roamed London for a few hours.

My first Trooping of the Colour for a very long time, crazy busy !

We had to visit South Bank of course.

Sanjeev has an interest in some of the street art I have posted on my travels so we took a walk over to Shoreditch as well, it was a bit quieter there….

Leadenhall Market for an ice cream.

Before heading back over London Bridge and calling it a day.

On Saturday El and I visited Kew Gardens for a walk in the sun, my favourite part was the indoor Lady Di memorial garden.

Very unusual to come across a lizard in London !

Kew Palace.

Maybe if people didnt leave banana skins around it would be safer!

Contemplating blogging ? Nah – just enjoying a sunny walk with El in a small part of Epping Forest – just before a very average pub lunch…

Long Live South Bank skate park, – BMX action

I took another trip back up to Southbank yesterday evening to see what was happening and hoping to see some of the BMXers who also use the skate park in action, and for a change I was lucky!

I will confess to being way out of touch with who is who in the biking and skating world, but this sole BMXer who was using the park was damn good, pretty much pulling off every trick seamlessly. He was great to watch.

I need to learn some leasons shooting both skaters and BMXer’s, I missed the important part of the tale whip, getting the bike 180 degrees out from the rider.

But I got most of them right….

Maybe not this one….

or this whip again 🙂

I will end on a positive note though.

I really enjoyed watching this guy ride and aim to go back tonight and see if there is a repeat, now that I know what I need to sort out photographically. I was pretty happy with my images, pretty well in focus, pretty well exposed, as sharp as I would expect shooting a moving object without flash from sunlight into shade against a confusing backdrop. So yeah, happy.

I am enjoying my photography for a change!

If you are reading my blog for the first time, The Southbank Centre have proposed an expansion of the Southbank site to allow more space for art and music, which I do agree with…. What I do NOT agree with is the taking of the undercroft skate park to turn into it retail space to help pay for the expansion. The skate park is one of the oldest existing skate parks in the world and has existed here since 1976. Its is wrong in so many ways to close it.

To read more about it and support those fighting the change read more here. LLSB!

http://www.llsb.com/

The week I bought some wheels, and the rest of the bike.

Sunday 30 June 2013 – London.

For a wee bit of variety I thought I would start this post on a Saturday rather than the more common Monday. It’s not that I even achieved what I planned for the Saturday either, so nothing particular to write about. There was a club organised trail run that I completely failed to attend, I had excuses in my head – but that was all they were really, excuses.

At lunch time I met El in Walthamstow and we joined one of her friends for lunch at another foodie month pop-up cafe, this time at a local house. The food was good, we ate in the garden until the rain came down and then it was time to call it quits. We sort of mooched for a while, I was feeling uber lethargic and a little de-motivated; I think the lack of work is starting to wear me down a wee bit, and it was a slow afternoon until we left the house to go for a walk up to the indoor market on Wood St, where there are a few little second hand record stores. I wasn’t going to buy anything – honest ! but in the end could not help myself. Three singles for seven pounds, they were begging to be bought. We had a good time in the one stall we visited, there was loads of cool stuff and when I get a job, a house and a turntable I will visit again.

In the evening we went to a James Bond themed 50th birthday party, we both dressed up for the occasion, me in my new suit, though I wasn’t going to go fully posh, not really in my character, so I wore a skinny black tie and my Converse sneakers. El looked great. The party was good fun, in keeping with the Bond theme there was a roulette table which I played once I learnt how it worked and I also had a few hands at poker, all in fun of course! There was also a vodka luge, which looked great – it was made of ice. A shot (or so) of vodka was poured in the top and came out the nipples, I had a couple of attempts, though most of it seemed to go down my tie 🙂

I snagged this off of Bookface, thanks party photographer Juliet…

Sunday was slow, I was not unduly hung over as I did not drink a huge amount, but it was good to just walk down to the cafe at the end of the road for sausage, egg, beans and chips for breakfast…. In the afternoon we went back to El’s friends place and watched a few more episodes of season three of Game of Thrones, such a good series…

I have spent most of the past week looking for a bike, second hand or new I wasn’t fussed, cheap was my main priority. I was really after a single speed mountain bike with road tyres but never actually saw any advertised and haven’t seen that many on the roads either – and there are an awful lot of bikes on the road in London. I checked out a whole bunch of bike shops and spent hours on the Gumtree sales website before finally settling on a bike with gears. Practically it makes sense, my fitness is not what it used to be and I plan on riding a bit so a single speed may just have been a bit too much.

Here she is anyway, an old Gary Fisher – with gears…

On my roaming on Monday I went up to a bike shop near Brick Lane as well as visiting an exhibition of images from some of the UK’s universitie’s photo schools at the old Truman Brewery. The exhibition was OK, I was not overly amazed, however not much of the work was to my taste so I am being horribly unfair by saying it was OK I guess. It was a huge space and there was a lot to look at with so many schools being represented. The show was part of a seven week program of art and design from students at the various universities – so definitely something to be supported and encouraged.

On Tuesday I went over to Canary Wharf and me my mate John for lunch, it was nice to have decent sunny day and I really liked how the Canary Wharf managers had some big screens on Canada Green showing Wimbledon to the lunch time crowd that assembled there. When the sun is out any patch of grass in London is covered in office workers lunching, I think it is great.

I caught the over ground over to Shoreditch and walked up to Hackney Central to visit a couple of bike shops but was not excited about their stock so slowly walked back to Shoreditch again. I was definitely off my game as I wasn’t even really interested in looking around for any street art, but I did see this Stik on the way.

As I got to the edge of the city I ended up catching a bus back to London Bridge, I have been feeling really tired and worn all week so must take a rest day soon, and probably eat some meat, feeling protein deficient !

Wednesday I had my final failed attempt at getting a bike from a shop up in Waterloo, but I did revisit the Leake St graffiti tunnel near Waterloo which was cool, there were a lot of people there taking photographs and it is quite obvious that street art and graffiti are becoming reasonable tourist attractions now.

El came over after work and we walked up to Bankside and had pizza for tea, yum yum – it has been fat too long between pizzas! We walked back past Southwark Cathedral just as the sun was setting and the lights from inside lit up the stained glass windows quite nicely.

I picked up my new wheels on Thursday and took a ride over to Temple to test it out. I have been keen to visit Temple for ages as it looks really interesting from the Embankment. Sadly I was completely underwhelmed by it all, plus it started to rain so I rode home again!

On Friday I walked back up through Shoreditch again specifically to see a new piece of street art by Australian artist Kyle Hughes-Odgers, and it was worth it – I really like it….

Plus I also found a new piece by Jana and JS. They haven’t been to the UK for a while and I have now found out there are a few new bits and pieces around so I will have to go and have a hunt sometime soon, before they get painted over !

I was going to walk over to meet El after work in the usual in Camden, I walked the Regents Canal from Kinglsand Rd but ran out of steam in Islington and ended up catching the train, definitely not got the energy I used to have, plus I have been getting a lot of foot pain lately, old age maybe ? 🙂 Anyway I was forced to have a pint and read the paper while I waited, which really was not as awful as it sounds.

We had a couple of parties on over the weekend again which was all good fun plus we got to watch the last three episodes of series three of Game of Thrones which was very cool indeed. Sadly it will be another ten months or so to the next series I guess. It may be time to read the books…

It was a good weekend again, and we even experienced the hottest day of the year so far. Wahoo !

The art of Leake St tunnel.

Wednesday 26 June 2013, Leake St, Waterloo, London.

Leake St tunnel is a legal graffiti area near Waterloo Station and I was last there back in January and talked about it briefly in this post. One of my fellow street art bloggers, the always cool Inspiring City, went there at the weekend to have a look at a paint jam organised by London Vandal to raise money for cancer research. I would have gone if I had known about it !

I have not heard of most of the painters in action at the weekend so it was time to go and have a quick look see. Though I did not recognise much of the work, it was still pretty interesting and there were quite a few other people there taking photos as well.

Icon.