Britain – Page 34 – Where is Phil now?

Long live Southbank!

Monday 17 June 2013 – London

Even when I wasn’t living nearby I walked Southbank fairly often, nowadays it is my main walking route when ever I go across the Thames and into London City or the West End. One of the places I always stop to look at is the skate park in the under croft of the SouthBank Centre. The skate park has been here for over forty years and has often been described as the heart of skateboarding in London.

I am no skater, but I like the are as it is a small anarchic section of the otherwise clean and tidy tourist dominated Southbank, plus of course I like the fact that the graffiti changes all the time and that skaters of all ages and races use the park at the weekends – though it was very quiet on a weekday morning…

The owners of the Southbank Centre recently announced plans to redevelop the area into a retail park as part of a larger upgrade to the centre. The skaters would be moved on to a new purpose built area further up the river. The last thing the Southbank needs is less fun and more coffee shops….

I dispair when “progress” means destroying a cultural icon for the sake of more retail outlets.

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

From RUN to D*Face and a bunch of stuff in between.

Wednesday 12 June 2013 – Shoreditch(ish)

I follow a number of blogs and Bookface pages that have references to the London street art scene and yesterday I saw a photo of RUN painting the large wall at Village Underground. This wall is curated by Street Art London and features a different artist each month. I decided that today’s walk would be a street art walk back in the area around Shoreditch.

For a change I had a bit of a plan of things I wanted to see so I took the tube to Old St and walked down from there. I was looking for a piece on one of the side streets off of Old St, but could not find it, so not such a great start, though with the temporary nature of street art, there is a reasonable chance it had already been painted over.

I did find RUN easily enough, a little bit behind where he planned to be today, but working away on a new masterpiece.

I had a little look around the area towards Great Eastern Street and found some new characters by Space Invader.

A new piece by Otto Schade – thanks to Inspiring City Blog for giving me the name of the artist.

Broken Fingaz

ROA

Curtain St mural.

When I was watching RUN paint I heard that Broken Fingaz were painting on a wall up Hackney Rd, painting over one of the few remaining Toasters in London. This shot was taken back in winter, which I guess is obvious from all the snow…

I will say the new piece was done at the request of property owner !

I also found this new piece by American artist Giai on a side street.

I wandered back down to Brick Lane as I wanted to photograph this Tame Iti (A controversial figure, well known to most New Zealanders) that I spotted when I was last here.

I wandered up and down some of the side streets around Brick Lane on the way to my final destination and found a few pieces I had not seen before. Starting with a ROA pig – on Bacon St 🙂

A Malarky

A new piece by Fin Dac

A Dscreet

A RUN

A Stik, I really like all the little Stiks drawn on the door.

I also discovered that RUN is the artist behind the telephones I first saw at Baroque the Streets a couple of weeks ago.

Another fabulous Daleast

And some quite cool little stickers by d7606

My final planned destination for the day was the exhibition at Stolen Space gallery and a visit to D*Face’s workspace upstairs.

It was a good day out and I will have to go back next week and see the completed RUN work, plus the recent ROA mural that was my original plan before I got distracted up Hackney Rd.

Another week – another dollar (spent :( )

Sunday 09 June 2013 – London

Another week has passed and still no joy on the job front. I did have a recruitment agency call me on Friday which was very exciting, however it seems I was missing one key skill – I am of course only assuming this as I was not contacted again even though the agent said he would. This is a very frustrating process, even the agencies which profess to be different – read better, than the others are just crap at communicating with applicants. Anyways, rant over and I will keep calm and carry on as the English say.

The weather was pretty good for most of the past week, sunny but with a cool wind, but it did mean I went out every day for a decent every day, not that many were visually very exciting and though I took my camera with me I didn’t use it that much. I even squeezed in another run amongst the mega walks, it was only moderately less awful than the last one.

On Tuesday night El and I went to see one of my current favourite New Zealand pop bands, Popstrangers, playing at Cargo in Shoreditch. They were third on the bill supporting Splashh, a band made up of NZers, an Aussie and an Englishman. There was a good crowd there for a Tuesday night and I liked the venue. I did feel for Popstrangers as the sound was awful for them – very sludgy. The sound was great for the second band and for the first half of Splashh’s set and then it went to sludge again, not sure why. Splashh were pretty good and I would see them again. The lighting was poor so I only took a snap or two of Popstrangers and then gave up and enjoyed the music.

The highlight for Wednesday was taking a walk up to the Southbank Centre – about thirty minutes away and picking up these, needless to say I am looking forward to this show!

On the way back from the collecting tickets I watched these guys making a sand piano on one of the small spots of sand on the Thames side.

On Thursday morning I Skyped my mum and youngest son back in New Zealand, it was the Skype since I left three weeks ago and it was lovely to see them both and catch up on some home news. I was very excited to be walking to Gosh! Comics in Soho as my favourite street artist phlegm has just released a book of his sketches and Gosh! is the only stockist in London. It took me about an hour to walk in and it was a perfect day for a long walk. While in Soho I visited the Photographers Gallery to check out the recent exhibitions, still not my cup of tea ! however the gallery is great and I will continue to visit regularly.

I had arranged to meet El for a walk and lunch in Regents Park so strolled up there next, past this abandoned pub with its ” A little pub with a big welcome” sign, I guess big welcomes was not what the punters wanted. I am constantly surprised at the amount of closed pubs – even in the centre of town.

I met El at the far end of Regents Park, back on the Regents Canal and we pretty much arrived at the meeting place at exactly the same time.

We had lunch in the park and then walked back to her office in Camden, strolling past some very expensive central London real estate, even the vicars have Ferraris….

(actually, it is probably not the vicar’s car…)

We passed a couple of bits of graffiti on the way into Camden, given its iconic ‘edgy’ status I am always surprised there is not more here, council by-laws prohibit it I am guessing.

I then caught the train home, knackered after a very long walk, but very excited to have a good look at my book. The cover is wonderful.

On Friday I did another mega walk, I started at Little Venice, sort of where the Regents Canal blends into a couple of others and a centre point for canal boats. It was a nice sunny day and a good day to be strolling again.

I walked back into west end and up to Covent Garden as I was after a decent day bag back pack, carrying cameras and other things in a shoulder bag for long periods is giving me sore back, time to try something else. I had the worst pub lunch ever in Covent Garden and then walked home. I went up to El’s after work and we popped down to the local boozer, the Rose and Crown, to see one of her friends cover band play. It was a fun night.

Saturday we walked down through Walthamstow Market to the marshes near the canal, it was another nice day to be outside, looking over the canal to Clapton, I like how the little old pub sits amongst the newer architectural monstrosities of the estate.

The rest of the weekend passed sans-camera. El and I took her youngest son (15) to see the new Star Trek movie in 3d, I enjoyed the movie, not so much the 3d…. One of El’s out of town friends was in town for a gig and staying the night so Sunday we all had breakfast in a local cafe and then went into Kings Cross to the British Library to visit the Propaganda exhibition being held there. It was OK, I would liked to have seen a few more of the classic propaganda posters from around the second world war and early cold war period, but it was interesting non-theless.

Sunday night had the start of the French TV series “The Returned”, I was really looking forward to seeing it and was not disappointed at all. Moody and brilliant, looking forward to watching it all.

I love it when I find some Phlegm!

Sunday 02 June 2013

It was another gorgeous English summer day so after breakfast we decided to walk along the Southbank, cross the Thames and visit Temple. Temple is an old part of London on the north bank of the Thames, and is one of the legal centres for the city. It is always busy during the day so I was keen to visit at the weekend and have a look around.

At the weekend, especially in summer, the Southbank is very busy, the council provide a lot of activities during the summer period – entertainers, art and a small beach full of sand to relax and play on. So, pretty much a time to avoid it really! But mornings are never too hectic and even at 10:00 there were not a lot of people around as we walked down from London Bridge. Blackfriars Bridge.

While I was running on Thursday I had spotted a new work by Belgian artist ROA on the wall of the Southbank Centre. I was really pleased to see this as the building is notoriously ugly and is screaming for something to be painted on it, and this year seems to be the year ! This year they are celebrating “Neighbourhood” on the Southbank so there are gardens set up and a bit of art has made an appearance, the first thing we saw was this mural which looks very new.

Just around the corner was this more alive installation of wheelbarrows filled with vegetable and herbs, very cool.

I found the ROA piece high up on a wall.

And WAHOO – just below it was a new piece by my favourite artist Phlegm! Very unexpected and very exciting too.

Round the corner we found a pop-up cafe and museum with a Beano theme. I used to love the Beano comic when I was child and had to have a photo as Denis the Menace.

We crossed over the Thames and found ourselves outside Somerset House, which had an exhibition on by the late New York fashion photographer Erwin Blumenfeld. The exhibition space in the East Wing of Somerset House is really good and a great place to see photography. Blumenfeld shot a lot of images for Vogue, Harpers, etc in the 40s and 50s and was quite innovative in his day.

To our dismay we found that the gardens and area around Temple is closed at the weekend, which was a real shame as it was the main objective for the day. We sort of wandered aimlessly for a while, up past St Clements church – the official church of the RAF.

We decided to walk right through the city to the East End and have lunch in Spitalfields, we passed Fleet St along the way. Fleet St was the traditional home of UK newspapers for centuries before technology and computerisation caught up with it and the old printing presses were shut down and new printing sites were set up further east in Wapping. It was a hugely contentious time, with a number of violent demonstrations.

We had a nice lunch in a Vietnamese place in Spitalfields and then carried on wandering around for a little bit longer, my feet were starting to ache after a couple of three or four hour days of walking in flat soled shoes. This guy was beatboxing in Brick Lane and was phenomenal, not usually my cup of tea, but there are exceptions to most rules and he was definitely one of those.

I was trying to not look for street art, but when you are up in the east end, it just kind of jumps out at you ! I really liked this new work by Chinese artist Dal-East.

And this older piece by Broken Fingaz that I have not seen before, both in Pedley St, just off Brick Lane.

We concluded our walk by strolling back to Liverpool St where El got a train back to Walthamstow and I got a bus back to London Bridge. It was a really good weekend, finished with home-made pizza while watching a pretty dreadful England draw with Brazil in a football friendly. I still love the view from my balcony 🙂

I know how those heads feel !

Saturday 01 June 2013

Well it’s June the first – official first day of the English summer, and for a change the weather took notice and we had an even better day than yesterday, which was not too bad at all.

Last night El and I met some of her friends in one of the pubs near where she lives in Walthamstow, east London for a drink or two and I was feeling the effects of too many glasses of rose when I finally woke from a bad sleep. Today was not a day for lingering as we were off to Oxford to visit El’s oldest son and to have a quick look around the city.

We caught the train from Paddington Station, and I really should have taken a photo there as it is a pretty cool place, but I was desperately in need of caffeine and had to go find coffee before we boarded the train. The train was packed – not in a Sri Lankan way of course, no-one had legs hanging out of open doors and I am sure there was no-one on the roof either, just packed in an orderly English way! The first sunny weekend in a while meant a lot of people were heading out of the city for the day or weekend.

Oxford was no different to the train and the high street was very full.

We wandered down through the high street and into some of the old part of Oxford town where all the colleges are. The old part is lovely – ancient colleges and university buildings form the centre of the old part and it is nice place to stroll, albeit rather crowded….

There a number of very famous colleges – such as Jesus, Balliol and Christchurch, some are open to the public and some are not. All the colleges I could see seem to surround greens and I popped into one that we were allowed into, though stupidly I did not write its name down.

El’s son is studying at Brasenose College, which has been in the centre of Oxford since the early 16th century. The main buildings are from the 17th and 18th century. The public are not allowed in, but as we were meeting El’s son there we were allowed a brief tour of the place, beautiful ! Not allowed on the grass though 🙂

We visited the quad of the famous Bodelian Library, which I also really liked.

It was then time to go and hunt down some food and a cool drink, we walked past the not so famous “bridge of sighs” in Oxford.

Before heading to the Turf Tavern for a ginger beer…

Our next mission was to visit the Pitt River museum, which I think is the coolest museum I have been too. The main floor is packed with interesting things to see, including shrunken heads – which is why we went. The main focus of the museum seems to be anthropological and there was some quite interesting NZ artefacts there as well, somewhere I would highly recommend visiting if you had a couple of days in Oxford.

We had lunch in a kebab shop and then farewelled El’s son and then El and I went for a walk around the botanical gardens – and a lie down on the grass in the sun.

It was soon time to head back to London, I had only seen a tiny fraction of Oxford and I am definitely going to head back.

Street Art – Baroque the streets exhibition in London.

Wednesday May 22 2013 – London.

Yep, I am back in London – again and I will do a more general blog post when I have something worth writing about and the photos to prove I have done it.

What I did do last Saturday was attend “Baroque the streets” a street art festival in Dulwich organised by the very worthy Street Art London. The concept behind the exhibition was for a bunch of well-known international street artists to create pieces based on the historical art works housed in the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

El and I had a late start to the day and headed down to Dulwich in the late morning, via a very nice full English breakfast in Islington on the way. It was another cool day in London and I am hanging out for some warmth to kick this rather delayed spring in to life – maybe I have gotten to used to warm days again ? We took the overland train to Denmark Hill and had a nice walk down to East Dulwich where the street art started. We were not aware that there was a street art walk until we had arrived at the exhibition and found a map – but we did see a good section of the work on the way. Starting with these pieces by Remi Rough and System.

Conor Harrington from Ireland

One of my all time favourites, Stik.

Dscreet from Australia.

One of London based South African, Christiaan Nagel’s famous mushrooms.

The bulk of the work was done in a house at 265 Lordship Lane, the house is soon to be demolished and the owners gave permission for the massive artworks to be completed inside and outside the house. It was very cool, but also quite crowded. It was one of the days when I wished I had my big old Canon camera and its wide-angle lens so I could really capture the art on display, but sadly I had not picked it up from my uncle’s house yet.

Israel’s Broken Fingaz crew on the fence outside.

There were a couple of gems in the garden, including these two pieces by My dog sighs, the first one being my favourite in the house.

There were loads of small pieces by Mexico’s Pablo Delgado all over the place, inside and out.

The garage was painted by Malarky.

And the side of the house by Italy’s RUN.

Cityzen Kane had produced a whole series of very cool sculptures, some on a wall under a mushroom.

There was a fabulous piece by Belgium’s ROA above the back door, like the Phlegm pieces I loved the level of detail in the painting.

Dscreet had a piece outside as well as an entire room inside the house.

France’s Thierry Noir was painting in his room.

The Rolling People had a very cool room, but it was really busy in there so I did not get a chance to capture the whole thing.

Christiaan Nagel room, all created with foam.

Some of the many small Pablo Delgado works scattered all over the house.

As well as these phones. I do not know who did these but I really liked them – if you know please let me know too!

Dscreet had obvioulsy visited the bathroom.

The kitchen had some really cool faces by My dog sighs, I have not knowingly seen his stuff before, but I am definitely going to look for some more.

I bought a poster of the event created by RUN, one day I will actually have a wall to hang it on ! We also grabbed a map of the art on the street as I wanted to find the Phlegm piece before we left.

On the street outside the house we found well known chewing gum painter Ben Wilson at work on the street. Ben has been painting chewing gum that has been left on the side walk for many years.

Just round the corner we found the Phlegm on the side of a house. Wonderful as always!

We both really enjoyed the walk and the art, a fantastic idea and I marvel at the talents of these artists. Thanks Street Art London and Dulwich Picture Gallery for putting on this event.

A new adventure begins !!!

Sunday 10 March 2013 – London – Colombo, Sri Lanka

After bidding farewell to El I walked back to the flat to shower and finish (start) packing before saying a thank you and see you later to Kevin. I left him sitting in the lounge with the entire contents of the kitchen stacked around him as a total kitchen renovation had started a couple of days ago, fortunately arranged around my departure date. Thanks Kevin, I really enjoyed staying in the flat and your company.

I left in the late afternoon and walked in a cool drizzle back to London Bridge station and caught the long slow tube out to Heathrow Airport. I was there semi-early and the check-in process was smooth, friendly and pain free – basically the best part of the Sri Lankan Airways experience… Once in the departure lounge I had a couple of glasses of Shiraz in one of the bars, caught up on some last minute emails and FaceBook messages and wondered if I would enjoy a month on my own on the road again.

The last bit of solo travelling I did was back in August in Spain and it was a fairly miserable time, with pretty much all of it spent as the sole English speaking traveller in the small villages I visited in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Hopefully Sri Lanka will have a good pool of travellers to share stories, experiences and the occasional meal with.

I am also a little concerned about the cost of Sri Lanka, from all I have read and heard it sounds like it is not a cheap place to stay – especially as a single traveller – has to be cheaper than London – surely!

For a full service flight, albeit a cheap one; the flight to Colombo on Sri Lankan was, as commented in the many unfavourable internet reviews – entirely average. I could not eat the food, the worst type of low quality airline food that I thought went out in the eighties. The service was slow – but with a smile, so credit where it was due. The seat was uncomfortable and I was wedged in next to a rather large young man, who sort of oozed over onto my seat as soon as he sat down. I had screwed up my seat selection and ended up in the middle two seats in the centre block of four, damn airlines inconsistent seat numbering systems !!

What good there was to say about it was the ride was smooth all the way to Colombo, and it was a relief to get off. Getting through immigration was a breeze as I had arranged visa on-line before departing London and I was soon in the back of a car that my friend Trudy had booked to take me the thirty kilometres from the airport to her apartment in Colombo’s district 2.

First impressions of Colombo from the back of a car ?
Clean and tidy. As is usual in Asia the horn is the most used piece of the car, even if the roads are not crowded. It ‘feel’s OK, I don’t feel intimated by being in an alien environment like I did the first time, nothing looks really strange. I like knowing that I have grown from my first touch of Asia fourteen months ago, and even the heat wasn’t too bad…

Trudy is an old friend from way back, we travelled Europe together twenty five years ago and though she is Australian and I have seen her a few times since, most recently in London in June, she has a job that gives her a 10th floor apartment in a 35 story block just outside the ‘centre’ of town in Colombo 2.

There is a lot of building work going on in the area as more tower blocks are being built, which is as usual a bit short sighted as there is too much capacity as it is, though I guess no-one knows what the future will bring.

Once I had got myself sorted we went for a walk down towards the waterfront and Galle Face Green. It took about twenty minutes to get to the ocean and we passed this open air laundry on the way.

Galle Face Green faces onto the Indian Ocean and is hugely popular at the weekends with people flying kites, bathing and couples courting. It was a lovely evening so the beach was very crowded as we left. I love the modesty of the Sri Lankan people, no bikinis or even swimsuits here. I find it quite endearing.

We walked to the far end of the green to the old lighthouse, bizarrely only the side facing the see has been painted, or maybe that just be logically!

This is the old parliament building and taking photos of it is prohibited, sorry Sri Lanka I am bad. But it is a lovely old colonial building and there are not that many that can be photographed.

We walked back to the Galle Face Hotel for a couple of sun downers

before heading back to Trudy’s, in a tuk-tuk. I was knackered, the heat zapped me today. I am sure I wont take long to get used to it though.

I was dropping off through dinner so had an early night, barely making it to 9:00 PM. Sri Lanka is five half hours ahead of London, which is just so out of whack.

Final London days

Saturday 09 March 2013 – London

Another week has passed; this one all too quickly, I am not sure how really ready I for solo travel in hot and humid climates again, I guess I will find out when I get to Sri Lanka tomorrow.

On Wednesday I caught the train for a thirty minute ride to Barnehurst in Kent where I met Joan and Alan – an uncle and aunt. We all went down to Canterbury in their car to meet up with some more of my dad’s family, his two sisters – Barbara and Margaret, Margaret’s husband Roy and my cousin Anthony for lunch at a pub. Barbara lives there and it is the most central location for all. It was lovely to catch up with everyone again and I had a great time. For dessert I had banoffee pie, I have never heard of it before, a mix of banana and toffee on a biscuit base. It was so sweat, heart attack pie. Yum! I have been sleeping really badly the last few weeks so highly unusually for me I fell asleep in the back of the car on the way back to Barnehurst and my train back to London.

As it was my last week in town El took Thursday off work so we could hang out for the day, we had sort of planned to go to nearby Epping Forest so I could get some photos of the bare trees, however the weather did not play ball and it was raining. We decided to go the massive mall at Stratford as at least we could get a walk in, plus shopping is always good fun. We lunched at the Real Greek, a chain restaurant and it was damn good !

We took the tube up to Bethnall Green to the Childhood Museum, a vast collection of toys and things that entertained small people over the years. It was really cool, I loved it. So many of the old books, games and toys I remembered from mine and my children’s childhood. It comes highly recommended, especially for your inner geek.

On Friday I went back up to Dartford on the train to take the rest of my accumulated junk back to my Uncle Jim’s place. I was going to send a load back to New Zealand, but now I am not so sure on whether I will stay there or come back to England after my trip. I have decided to leave stuff here in the interim, though there was more of it than I thought. Jim and I had lunch in the local pub, The Ivy Leaf. I cannot believe how much cheaper food was outside of London, lunch for both of us was under six pounds, be lucky to get lunch for one in a pub in London!

Friday night El and I went to see the Welsh band ‘The Joy formidable’ at the Camden Roundhouse. This was my first gig of the year, I cannot believe I have slipped into the routine of not going to see bands so quickly ! It was great to be able to go to a gig with someone though : ) The show was good, the roundhouse is not a bad venue, I would call it midsize, but I guess it is considered small by UK standards. I really liked how they had the drummer stage front and side on – Fraser, one for you ?

Saturday was my last day in England for a while and my last day for a while with El, it was a funny old day. I had decided I wanted to have a final good English breakfast and as El had not seen my flat in London Bridge we went over to the south side for the day.

Starting with a visit to a recently fully re-opened Borough Market; which is just fabulous if you like cheese, bread, wine and deli-food from all over Europe – and funnily enough I do. The lunch options were just so tempting, but I had greasy breakfast on my mind, so we just had to walk past and enjoy the mingled aromas coming from the various stalls.

Next stop was one of my old favourite south bank haunts, the Tate Modern, I really like this gallery, the building is amazing and I love the wee stands of silver birches out the front. I really should have come here in the snow as one of my MUST DOs is to photo silver birches in the snow – I guess I will have to take a trip way up north to get them in the wild.

I also found the huge Monet ‘Water lillies’, I have no idea how I have missed this on my previous visits to the gallery ! As I have said before , I really appreciate being able to take photos in the Tate.

I bought a couple of prints this time, my first Tate acquisitions; though I am talking six pound art prints, not multi-million pound originals !

After the Tate we wandered slowly back up the Thames to Bermondsey St, where against all hope Al’s Cafe was open. He does a great big breakfast and I fully enjoyed my last one, too much so as I did not think to take a photo. It was great to share my last meal in England with El before showing her round the flat and introducing her to Kev and Phil.

And that was that, really. I walked El back up to the station at London Bridge and bid her a farewell – not a good bye, as I hope and want to see her again.

A quick walk to Greenwich

Monday 04 March 2013 – Greenwich.

A quick post. I am running out of time before I leave and though I am reasonably busy and sort of excited about getting onto the plane and travelling again, I am also very unmotivated and going through a rather lazy patch!

I have been meaning to visit Greenwich for weeks but have never ever made it and today I had no intention of making it either as I had a number of things to do, but….

I needed to go to the post office to get a couple of boxes to mail some stuff back to New Zealand and Australia. I would be arriving in the late autumn and would have no clothes suitable for the colder weather and now I have shopped here in London I really did not need to buy any more clothes. The Borough post office is not that far away from here so early-afternoon I decided to walk in the opposite direction, capitalise on some nice weather and get a decent walk in. I just seemed to carry on going east and ended up in Greenwich.

The Thames path moves in and out of side streets and sadly cannot follow the river all the way from London Bridge to Greenwich so for most part I just walked the main roads, it was still an interesting walk, occasionally I dropped down to the river for a look.

Canary Wharf from the other side.

A really helpful sign!

I reached Greenwich mid-afternoon and did not give myself enough time really see the place. I had not realised how big the historic site is, and a beautiful place it surely is. A place I will certainly come back to when I do get back to London.

The Cutty Sark is one of only a small number of preserved clipper ships anywhere in the world.

I know nothing about most of these buildings, just that I like them.

I have heard an awful lot about Greenwich, none of it bad, and I can see why. It is another beautiful part of London, especially on a stunning spring day like today. I cannot wait to come back again.

Five more sleeps until I am on the plane to Sri Lanka !!!

A week of it

Sunday 03 March 2013 – Bristol and London

With my departure from London looming I seem to have become incredibly busy all of a sudden. The ‘things to do’ list seems to grow longer and longer as the time to do them grows shorter and I remember all the things I need to take with me when I travel to rather more tropical climes.

Shorts and t-shirts seem more appropriate in 30+ degree Sri Lanka than the jeans, jackets and scarves that I have here in London Bridge so I took a trip to Dartford to swap winter clothes for summer and catch up with my uncle for a wee while.

On the good news front my lovely daughter Meliesha arrived home from three months travelling in India with her partner – so I took a trip down to Bristol on Tuesday to see them both. They are between homes at the moment and dossing on a friends couch while they hunt for a flat so I ended up staying the night in a ‘cheap’ hotel. It was ab fab to see them both, looking so well and brown and relaxed. As always it was a great time in Bristol and I will miss her when I leave, just as I miss my sons Dom and Aiden now.

The view of the Bear Pit from my hotel stairwell.

My current favourite street artist is Phlegm, from Sheffield in England, I really like his characters and the level of detail in them, each unique. He has painted a wall in Tangalla in Sri Lanka and I am going to try and find it when I am there. It was great to just come across a wall of his in Bristol’s Stokes Croft.

Mel, who hates having her photo taken and will hate this even more, sorry!

Back in London, on Thursday El and I went to see an exhibition of portraits from the photographer David Bailey, he is mainly known for his fashion photography and for images of the rich and famous, however this exhibition focused on some of the work he did in the 60’s in the east end of London where he was brought up. It was really good and I am always amazed at the quality of these old images, especially when we spend so much time these days ‘pixel peeping’ digital images at 400% magnification to look for flaws…

The exhibition was in the William Morris Gallery in Walthemstow, east London so after the gallery we took a walk around the old part of town; with buildings dating back to the time when it was a small village on the edge of Epping Forest. It constantly, and pleasantly, surprises me that in the middle of so many of these suburbs and suburban towns there is an enclave of ancient and well preserved buildings, with some of them trying to record and maintain the history of the area, just very cool.

Saturday was a visit to another photo exhibition, I cannot believe how much good quality free art is available in London – if you know where to look of course ! There was an exhibition of work from Norman Parkinson at the National Theatre. Parkinson is a fashion/society photographer who has worked in the industry for decades. There were some great images from across his career, including from the sixties music scene. This is a recent photo of him.

From the exhibition El and I walked a bit of the South Bank

Finally, crossing the Thames to the city side. I have had a look for this bridge leg a few times, it is well known as the final resting place for skateboards that get broken at the South Bank skate park.

Ever since I arrived in England I have been pondering the purchase of a new camera and have had a look at a variety of options as well as brief thoughts about buying an underwater housing to go with a new camera. After a lot of reading on the complexities of underwater photography plus the price tag on a housing I decided to give up on that idea. However, I still wanted a new camera and had been looking at the Panasonic Lumix GX1 – an upgrade on my travel camera the GF1. They were on special so I decided today was the day and dragged El up towards Oxford St so I could go shopping. On the way as we passed through the back of Denmark St I spotted a small Space Invader on a building, these are quite rare and seemingly hard to find, so it was cool to find one.

This was followed by finding a Stik on the back of a building though I was unable to get a clean shot as access was fenced off.

And then another Space Invader – wahoo 🙂 I love it when I unexpectedly come across some street art!

This is my new purchase, the GX1, it looks and feels similar to my GF1 but works totally differently, it took me ages to work out how to change the aperture in manual mode, and I still had to Google it.

I have supported Arsenal Football Club for many years and this year they are playing average at best. Sunday was a season defining game against north London arch rivals Tottenham Hostpsur so I decided I would walk up to Islington – Arsenal homeland, and find a pub to watch the game in. It is not a huge walk from London Bridge, maybe one and half hours – but it does pass through part of Shoreditch so I was looking for opportunities to try the new camera as well.

A bit of the past, present and future. I really like the ‘Gherkin’ it is not as cool as the Shard, but still a dramatic building in the downtown business heart of London.

I walked past the Village Underground building to see the completed wall that Thierry Noir and Stik were painting a few days ago – I wonder how long this wall will last before a new piece is painted on it ?

Thierry had also completed the pieces on the front of the building as well.

As I walked up Great Eastern Rd towards Islington and I found this large Stik on a car park wall, I am getting quite a good collection of Stiks. Admittedly they all look kind of the same, but I still like finding them around the place.

And round the back of the car park I saw these guys finishing off a piece, I do not know who they are though and they were too far away to talk too, but it looks great and I think it is fabulous that some property owners allow, or even commission, artists to paint their walls.

And finally this on a window in City Rd. Possibly the last bit of street art I will see in London this time round, I really like it though.

I made it up to Islington well before the game started so bought a paper – The Observer, and found a seat in a pub for a pint and some lunch. I really like The Observer, a great Sunday read. I will really miss quality English newspapers when I leave – and yes I can read them on line but it is not the same, browsing a paper is the just best way to keep informed on all the random bits of news that I never pick up on on-line.

Anyway, I won’t say anything more about the game other than I and the rest of the jam packed pub left disappointed.

To all the people who read my blog, this message on the back of a sign in Soho Square, says it best.

I have just ‘discovered’ embedding links to other places on the web. I always knew they were there, just have never used them, something I now regret. So very useful.