Britain – Page 33 – Where is Phil now?

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.

Artista

Unknown 🙂

There is a load more stuff to look at, mostly graf rather than ‘art’, but is a cool spot and worth a visit.

Life is about using the whole box of crayons.

Friday June 21 2013 – London.

To save having to repeat myself I should just refer you, dear reader, back to the opening paragraph of my last week wrap-up post which discusses the complete lack of progress on the job front… Oh well, good things come with time.

On Monday I signed myself up to Twitter, not that I can ever see myself tweeting, there is no way I can say anything in just one hundred and sixty characters! I signed up because it seems to be the best way to find out about things I am interested in, in the most expedient way. Hopefully from now on I will not miss so many good gigs and interesting exhibitions, plus of course football results when the season starts.

On Monday night El and I went to see Siouxsie Sioux and band perform at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the Yoko Ono curated Meltdown Festival. I had only heard about the gig quite late so by the time I got tickets we were in the third row from the back. There were so many great acts playing as part of the festival, I would have really liked to have seen Patti Smith and the Stooges – especially supported by Savages, a young English band who I really like.

What can I say about the gig ? I guess “Wow” sums it up pretty well. The sound and lights were amazing, Siouxsie looked amazing in a skin tight white vinyl body suit and her voice had not changed in thirty years, she sounded fantastic. The band was not the Banshees, but still good.

The bulk of the set was the album Kalaidoscope played from start to finish, with the opener ‘Happy house’ sending shivers up my spine – it sounded that good. It was a surprise as I really expected a greatest hits show, but it is a great album, so no complaints. There were a couple of encores, with a bunch of classics ‘Israel’, ‘Spellbound’ and ‘Arabian nights’ being the highlights. They did of course do the big hit ‘Prudence’, but meh, a Beatles track is never going to be a favourite of mine, though the rest of the crowd loved it ! Siouxsie did a few songs off a solo album I have never heard and none of them really got me going – average rock songs I thought. It was great show – hour and half long, awesome venue and she still has the voice and the moves. Siouxsie was supported by another old punk hero, Viv Albertine from The Slits, who performed some songs from her first album in twenty five years. She was pretty good too.

As the gig was just up the Southbank from my place we walked home. its not bad walk..

On Tuesday I walked back up to the Southbank again as I noticed some of the graffiti had changed at the skate park and I really liked this new one and thought I should photograph it before it was painted over.

I walked back home via the streets rather than the river side and found this little Space Invader under one of the arches for the train tracks to Blackfriars station.

I also found a wonderful photography exhibition from members of the Arena group at the Menier Gallery in Southwark. I was there for a good hour, which is pretty remarkable for me in a gallery. There was a good range of styles on display from a number of very good photographers. I loved it and would have liked to have shared it with El but it finished later in the week sadly.

In the evening I went over to Dartford to visit my uncle and to pick up my tri-pod -I must do some night photography sometime soon, no excuses now!

On Wednesday I had arranged to meet a friend for lunch in Shephards Bush so took the train over to Westbourne Grove and had walked over to SheBu and looked for some of the small patches of street art in the area – it is the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea so I was not expecting too much. There is an old Banksy at the far end of Portobello Rd though.

I caught up with my cousin for a beer in Soho in the late afternoon which was great, I have been very slack with catching up with family and for that I do apologise !!

I have been thinking about getting a pushbike for a while now and on Friday I decided to start having a serious look around, I found a couple of bike shops on the internet that were reasonably local and went for a walk to see if I could find something. Sadly one place no longer existed and the second did not have anything I wanted – basically a single speed with raised mountain bike style bars. I am not in a particular rush but it would mean I could roam a bit further without having to use public transport – plus I want to be able to ride to work if I can, when I get the elusive job!

I found out on Twitter (only time it has been useful so far! ) that it was world skate day today so I waited to late in the afternoon and then grabbed my big camera and zoom lens for a change and went out to have a look see. There were a lot of skaters there and a couple of them were pretty good. I watched from the wings for a while, snapped a few photos and then started the walk back home.

It was great to be out with the big camera and long lens and I took quite few other photos around and from South bank. It was all good fun.

The skyline of London is slowly changing, especially over the ‘city’. The tall building in the middle is known as the cheese grater. It is designed like this so that it does not sit in the sightline of St Pauls – the council allows that no building should spoil some designated clear sights of St Pauls, which I think is pretty cool, especially when I get shots like the one below.

Outside the Tate Modern some buskers were bubble blowing massive bubbles to the delight of a lot of children – and one or two adults as well.

Further along the Thames at Bankside I found these young buskers playing cellos which sounded amazing in the tunnel of the arches.

It was a pretty good week, I didn’t achieve much on the work front but I saw some good stuff, heard some great music and spent some time with some great people!

Southbank Skate park

On Monday I finally did something I never thought I would do and signed up to Twitter. It seems a lot of activities that I am interested in like gigs and exhibitions are now promoted on Twitter first. Today I saw a tweet about go skateboarding day being held today and thought I should head back along to Southbank to see what was happening.

For a change I took the big camera with the big lens as I hardly ever use it and it seemed like the best option for shooting skaters. The skate park at Southbank is covered and a little dim for flash free photography, so a reasonably tough shoot. There were a couple of quite good skaters there, along with a couple of photographers and some guys shooting video so I kind of stayed out of the way.

As I mentioned on this post there is a proposal to move the skate park and re-use the location for retail outlets and frankly this sucks….

More here http://www.longlivesouthbank.com/

Here is what I got.

The (limited) street art of Ladbroke Grove.

Wednesday 19 June 2013 – Ladbroke Grove, London.

For a while now I have been wanting to check to see if there was any street art left near the Westway at the ends of both Portobello Rd and Ladbroke Grove. Yesterday I was meeting a friend for lunch in Shephards Bush so I took the opportunity to catch the tube to Westbourne Grove and have a look around, before walking to She Bu. Naturally I chose the hottest day of the year so far. At 26 degrees and with high humidity I really should have worn shorts as it was a sticky walk.

There are a couple of pieces at the end of Portobello Rd that I have seen before, mainly this piece by Banksy.

and this piece by Paul don Smith.

This piece by CODE FC, looks quite old as well.

I walked up Portobello Rd as I was looking for the Graffik Gallery which has a collection of very expensive work for sale, but was in between exhibitions. On the outside of their building was another one of the “Thomas the tank’ stencils I saw for the first time in Blackall St last Friday, I now know they are by iCON.

The area under the arches of the Westway was barriered off with hoardings and behind them I spotted a couple of Stiks as well as some other work but I could not get a clear look at them so I followed the Westway down to Ladbroke Grove in the hunt for some rumoured painting there. I did find two walls in the same block that had been painted. iCON seems to be quite prolific here.

As well as a piece by Elmo Hood

And a few other bits and pieces

I walked around a bit more but did not find anything else, though I was pretty happy to find any at all, the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is not really a street art / graffiti place !

Another week goes by.

Sunday June 16 2013- London

A further week with no recruitment agencies or employers leaping out to offer me fantastic roles. In fact it was a very quiet week on the job front, with not many IT management roles even being advertised. I will give it to the end of the month before changing strategy – not sure to what yet, but this applying for roles on-line does not seem to be working out so far. I do need to exercise patience though, as I know this is not going to be an absolutely straight forward process.

Looking back at the week it appears I didn’t do too much, but I was always busy so I must have achieved something! I have had a flatmate for the past week, Amjad is a Palestinian American who is completing a PhD at Kings College here in London. He was Kevin’s first flatmate and usually stays here when he comes over from Chicago. He is in London for nine days and is staying at the flat for the duration. It is quite nice to have someone to chat to during the day for a change, and we have had some good discussions. The weather was pretty good too so on Tuesday we took a fairly long walk into London and had a very nice lunch for a very good price in an old pub near Kings.

We started off walking along the Southbank, at the Southbank skate park I was taking photos of the graffiti and started reading some of the posters about a new development at the Southbank which will mean the closure of London’s oldest skate park. Like many others I am very much against this and have signed an online petition supporting the skaters.

I am writing this post a week later and that small mural has gone already !

Amjad had never visited the area around Westminster Abbey and the houses of parliament so we crossed the bridge and looked around the area before walking over to Kings for lunch. It was a good day out.

I had heard that London based Italian street artist RUN, was painting the wall at the Village Underground in Shoreditch so on Wednesday I caught a tube to Old St and then walked down to have a look see at the art around the area. I posted some images here.

Thursday was a big day for me – I bought a suit ! I have been thinking about getting one so I am ready for any job interviews that come up. Plus next weekend El and I are going to a party with a James Bond Casino Royale theme and I need to dress up for that. So yeah, it was time to dress like a grown up again (for the first time? ). I went to the big mall at Stratford and wandered blindly around for a while before El came along after work to help me choose. This was definitely a wise idea – that lime green toweling suit was cool though ! I ended up paying a little more than I would have liked, but not too much more, and now I have a very nice contemporary dark grey suit.

There was another major event in the house on Friday – I shaved my beard off. I was kind of getting sick of it and like the suit, losing it was probably going to be a requirement for job interviews. Though I am already over shaving 🙂

Once I was smoothly faced I went back to see the completed RUN painting and then had a look around all the street art in Blackall Street before walking up to Camden to meet El after work.

Our first ‘date’ was at the Hawley Arms pub in Camden and we pretty much meet there most Fridays now as it is close to El’s work and more importantly, it is a cool pub. Service is a bit crap mind, but the Clash used to hang out there along with Amy Winehouse and any number of other (in)famous rock and rollers. It also plays pretty good music, it’s the only pub I know that plays Joy Division to the Friday after work crowd.

We only stayed for one drink and then went to one of El’s friends house to start watching series three of Game of Thrones, which we were all very excited about. And it was good! We saw the first three episodes and I am looking forward to watching the rest of the series – though I do not what happens in the new famous episode nine.

The weather was a bit off and on over the weekend, but we did manage to do some gardening at El’s which was very enjoyable. I didn’t think that would happen, but now that I do not own a garden of my own it seems so much more fun to be pulling weeds, mowing lawns and hacking up trees.

Walthamstow has a food festival on at the moment and we went to a pop-up restaurant at the William Morris Gallery for a drink and a meal, it was a very nice evening. We were also shown how to make origami cranes – mine is the crumpled one !

Mum / sisters, here are a couple of photos for you…

Blackall St – ‘Art thieves operating in this area’

Friday 14 June 2013 – Shoreditch, London.

I frequently walk up to Camden on Friday afternoons and today I decided to go via Shoreditch and visit Blackall St, an alley off of Great Eastern St.

Blackall St, is a narrow single lane road surrounded on both sides by the back of office blocks, it is also the home to a wide range of graffiti and street art. I imagine it is worth a visit every couple of months to see what is new. It is a cool little street and I had an enjoyable twenty minutes perusing the large number of small pieces, too many to really take it all in.

I did not recognise many of the artists, so will start with the few I do know.

RUN

I have not seen any Bortusk characters since my first street art walk along Regents Canal back in December – and the ones I saw then have all gone from the canal walls.