Britain – Page 36 – Where is Phil now?

Snow !

Friday and Saturday, 18 and 19 January 2013 – London

During the week the weather forecast had been building towards a snowy end and I must admit that I was getting a wee bit excited as the doom mongers forecast cold white chaos for Britain’s transport systems. There was a report in the Metro, a free morning daily paper that the coldest winter for one hundred years was coming – and soon. If you have ever lived in England during an autumn or a winter, you will know what snow means to the trains ! And Friday was to be the day it started.

As usual I slept poorly and was awake very early; I eagerly opened the blinds with the expectation of seeing a blanket of white outside, but no, all I saw was the same old concrete and green – so back to bed, roll over and attempt more sleep. When I next looked outside there was a small smattering of white on the leaves of the bushes and top of the wall and I started to get a wee bit more excited. Over the next couple of hours the depth of the white started to grow and more and more was falling from the sky. What started as a sleety mix of snow and rain eventually turned into just snow and I knew it was finally going to happen. I smiled 🙂

I had arranged to meet a friend in Pinner, North West London. Pinner is towards the edge of the city, has some nice old buildings and there are some green fields up there as well, so we were going to go walk for a bit and I would get to see some different parts of the greater London area. We had factored in that it might snow a bit but had not really expected as much as there was. There was a pretty good covering even at Shepherds Bush station.

By the time I got Pinner the sky was dark and the snow was falling quite heavily.

We decided to sit it out for a while; I was dressed for the cold, but not really for the wet that comes with the snow melting on jeans and jacket. After a few hours over coffee and wine or two – and a fall of three or four inches, the snow finally abated enough to go for a walk around a few blocks before the dark set in and it was time to head home again. While the trains were still running !!

I lost a glove, I think it was on the tube. This is the second glove in seven days, not an auspicious start to winter. Not the brightest end to what was a very nice day.

It was a similar start to Saturday, though this time the snow failed to come at all. I will admit this was as forecasted (roll on Sunday though !). I could not be fagged getting out of bed for a run, ( in a running rut this week, I hope it ends soon !) so lazed for a while and read in bed.

I finally made it outside in the early afternoon. I wandered around to Holland Park which is closer to my house than the other big parks, though strangely I have not been there before.

This was obviously a serious mistake, it is a beautiful park, especially under a moth-eaten and holey snow blanket. It seems to be more of a peoples park than the royal parks, it had a play ground and a sports field as well as walks, trees and of course the traditional large house. The park was being well used by families sledding on the gentle slopes and lobbing snow balls at each other. It was nice, and I think nice is the right word.

As I was leaving the park I found a meman, the first meman I have seen in many many years.

A very long time ago I watched the Raymond Brigg’s “The Snowman” on video with the daughter of a friend or family member. I cannot remember who, though I vaguely recall it may have been the daughter of my cousin Pamela and I think it was 1985; it is only a vague recollection. What I do remember is how much the young child loved the movie and it was the called “the meman”. Ever since that day I have thought of snowmen as memen. Weird how some things remain in the head.

After the park I grudgingly made my way to the mall and bought another pair of gloves, pair number four. These are so much better than the last ones though, lovely soft leather – thank God the sales were still on. Hopefully this is a sign and I won’t lose one of them!

It appears I have a white balance issue between the two days of photos !

The view from the hill.

Thursday 17 January 2013, Primrose Hill

I am loving this winter weather ! These cold yet dry days are perfect for roaming London, especially as there seems to be fewer people about. I had heard that Primrose Hill had good views over London and I am pretty sure I have never been there before so today seemed like the perfect day for another walk.

I caught the tube to Marble Arch and then walked up Baker St as I wanted to at least pass the Sherlock Holmes Museum. I did think about visiting but a large group of (I am assuming) Chinese had just gone in and I knew it would quite crowded in the small space. I may go back as I have long been fascinated by the famous detective.

It is a short hop from the museum to Regents Park and I am not sure if I have actually been there either, I would like to think I have visited in the past, but have no recollection at all. The park had very few visitors which was perfect and I was really surprised at how frozen the lake was. I was not tempted to walk on it myself of course, but the gulls were definitely walking on water.

I then skirted the rest of the park and followed Regents Canal around to the bottom of Primrose Hill, the canal is tidier here than in Hackney and while there is a small amount of graf on some of the walls there is no street art to look at. Different suburbs with different priorities !

I wandered up Primrose hill for the famous view, and was not overly impressed really, it is more of a lump than a hill, even by Auckland standards – and Auckland’s hills are often mocked by those from other New Zealand cities for being merely large humps. It was nice up there and is probably beautiful (and crowded) on a really clear day.

The short and steeper section near the top seemed to be very popular with runners doing circuits, I watched them for a while, running ever slower laps up and down the triangular path. I really surprised myself by not being jealous. Normally when I see people run I immediately want to join them and capture that rush of endorphins I get when a hard run has been completed. For some reason I am just not into a running groove at the moment, even a week ago I was running happily – yet this week I have zero motivation. It is not a situation I am happy about either, but that is not making me want to run!

Picking up the canal again I followed it down into Camden Town.

I went for a brief back street walk looking for street art, and surprised myself by finding almost none, perhaps I should have done some research first, though I did like this old car.

Not finding much else to see or somewhere that had the food I wanted to eat, nor the indoor space I wanted to eat it in, I went home again.

Happy to have seen more of this lovely city !

Battersea Power Station.

Tuesday 15 January 2013 – Battersea

It was a cold and reasonably clear day with no rain or snow forecasted so I took the opportunity to do a long walk down to see Battersea Power Station – the iconic London building made even more famous by Pink Floyd when it was placed on the cover of their album Animals back in 1977. It was on my London to-do list and I am trying to make the most of the clear days while I can.

I walked down through Knightsbridge and visited the Royal Geographical Society exhibition room as they had a wonderful series of photos by Basil Pao who has travelled with Micheal Palin on his journeys since 1988. I am very jealous of the opportunities he had to experience some amazing things.

I walked down through the back streets and passed the beautiful old apartments in Chelsea.

Down to the Chelsea Embankment on the Thames which overlooks the long defunct Battersea Power Station.

There are a lot of trees along the embankment so it was impossible to get the exact shot I wanted.

I crossed over Chelsea bridge to the south side of the Thames, for another angle.

Sadly the area surrounding the station is being turned into apartments so I could not wander along the Thames Path in front of the power station and had to walk around via the road. The power station itself is also being renovated with the intention of starting it up again, though not as a coal burning site. The entire site is walled off and I only managed to get one photo through a small hole in a gate were a padlocked chain passed through. A real shame !

The whole section of the Thames south bank from Chelsea to Vauxhall bridge is one massive construction site with apartment blocks being built on both sides of the road.

I caught the train from Vauxhall back to Shepherds Bush after what was close to a three hour walk. At Shepherds Bush I stopped for lunch at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, I did not realise until later in the day that A) it was a chain and B) it was owned by a New Zealander. Though it should have been obvious as I had a Kiwi Burger – it had beetroot and egg, YUM ! there was also a lovely wall size photo of Karekare Beach on Auckland’s west coast, one of my favourite places in the whole world. I got a wee bit home sick !!

The following day a helicopter crashed into a crane on the top of a tower block and crashed into the street where I had been walking. It was the first helicopter crash to ever happen in the city and unfortunately the pilot and a passerby were killed. It was the morning rush hour and could have been a lot worse.

Sleet is not snow, just wet and cold.

Monday 14 January 2013 – Bethnall Green and Shoreditch.

[edit] hmmm, I have just reviewed the entry after posting and it seems I screwed up the image sizing, not going to go back and redo it sorry ![/edit]

The weather forecast for the past couple of days has brought a promise of plummeting temperatures and snow on the ground in London. Sadly, all that has happened so far has been the plummet in temperature. A week or so ago we were averaging ten or so degrees during the day and now we are down to one to two. Wisely I had been making the most of the new year sales and had bought a few winter items, else I would be trapped indoors, and with the cold forecasted to last for a month – it would have been a real drag.

I decided to head back east and walk more of Regents Canal, take some photos of the canal boats and try to find some of the street art I did not photograph due to low light when I was last there. I tubed it to Bethnall Green station and found the canal easily enough.

Naturally soon after arrived it started to gently snow, not enough to create any sort of base, but just enough to make me cold and wet – I was not prepared for it and only had a woollen jacket on. I did not linger on the tow path in the end.

I really like the “reflecting” sign on the building, very clever !

This nearly deserted Samuel House apartment block has images of its residents on boarded up windows. It is an interesting story, and well worth a visit if you are walking Regents Canal. http://www.iamhere.org.uk

As the light snow started to change into a more steady stream of sleety rain I turned onto Kingsland Rd and headed back down towards Shoreditch and Liverpool St station, quite by chance I found Rivington St which had the two Banksy pieces I saw the other night. They are both in the garden of Cargo Bar and are covered up with screens. Sadly there was still reflection from the bar lights but here they are anyway.

This was a great and very detailed piece.

And this Banksy “copy” that I photographed nine days ago, next to its original, has gone already !

The shifting face of street art!

I stopped for a coffee and a bit of shelter before wandering a little further up Rivington St to see this cool shop front by Cranio.

And I really like this face by an artist I do not yet know….

As I was getting damper from the drizzling sleet I started to get a bit cool so headed back to the warmth of the flat – and another couple of episodes of Game of Thrones, my new favourite TV series – into season two, awesome.

It was good to get out, even if the sleet was wet and cold.

Please wait here until you are useful. Thank you.

Saturday 05 January 2013 – Hackney, Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Brick Lane – London

London’s run of not too awful weather continued for a few more days so Saturday afternoon I met a friend up in Hackney to go hunt for some of the great street art that has been made in the area.

My friend knows the area quite well so it was more like a guided walk for me and it was a lot of fun – though I will never find some of the places we visited again, I should have paid more attention 🙂

We started in Hackney Central and walked down through London Fields to Broadway Market. The market is open on a Saturday and mainly sells food and drink, I had a nice risotto for lunch followed by a really nice proper Vietnamese coffee – complete with condensed milk, yum. The market and surrounding area is hipster central. Loads of skinny jeans, short beards and checked shirts, single speed bikes all over the place. Book shops and second hand shops lined the street around the market. I loved it here, in fact I was pretty much in love with all the places we passed, I could easily live here!

Now I have described it as hipster central, my photos show other wise, always happens.

There was a Stik next to the Vietnamese coffee stall.

The next stop was Regents Canal, there is a lot art and plain old graf along the tow path, it was a nice walk down to Victoria Park, the area has a kind of post-commercial bleakness to it, maybe bleakness is a bit strong, but it is a bit run down in parts, just my sort of thing. There were an awful lot of house barges as well, which will be a whole photo essay by itself one day.

I really like these small pieces by Bortusk Leer, there are loads of them all around here.

There was also an old Eric Monopoly as well.

After stopping for more coffee at another very hipster cafe we strolled down and around Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, Brick Lane and Shoreditch – I will confess to having no idea where one bit started and another stopped as I was too busy chatting and looking around at the sights – and spotting things to photograph.

I had one of lifes weird little experiences as we walked. A couple of years ago Sam, a friend of my daughter from Bristol came and stayed at my place in NZ while he was on his travels. He has been living in London for a while now and we have talked about catching up one day. I ran into him on the street. Very nice to see him and totally weird !!

There is some really good street art here, the area around Brick Lane is especially vibrant, I liked that some of the new boutiques have not cleaned up their walls.

Unfortunately we ran out of daylight so I didn’t get to photograph a ton of good stuff, but it does mean I get to go back sooner rather than later. It was a good afternoon !

After a quite delicious Vietnamese meal we went to look at a couple of Banksy’s and saw a guy painting on a wall outside a shop. We stopped to watch and say hello and it was Paul Don Smith, I said I had seen some of his work in Portobello Rd and we chatted for a while. He had recently been doing graffiti on a movie set for a coming Brad Pitt zombie movie – World War Z and was doing a small stencil for it. It was interesting to watch him at work.

I will be back for sure. A few of my favourite pieces.

This is my favourite ! Jana and JS

Ben Eine – according to a graffiti tour guide we overheard as he was leading a tour in Brick Lane he is the only British artist to ever have work hung in the White House…

Jimmy C, there was one amazing Jimmy C that was too dark to photograph – I just need to be able to find it again. His pictures are very detailed.

More street art. [edit] Hmmm, seems WordPress has changed and I cannot do a slide show any more. I don’t like the “gallery” mode, oh well. m[end edit]

Temples of Mammon

Thursday 03 January 2013 – London.

It was another reasonably fine day so it was a day to get out and explore a bit more of London. I decided to visit Canary Wharf; firstly as I thought it would be quieter on New Years week and secondly it is the centre for a lot of big business and a potential place of any future employment . So it seemed a good time to check it out, plus I have never been on the Docklands Light Railway!

I was completely wrong with “it would be quieter” ! Maybe not completely wrong, but the mall area where the lunch bars are located was just heaving with prople and as chaotic as any mall with New Year sales on. Ugly ! I did have a very nice laksa for lunch at Eat. I have lunched at three different Eats in the past couple of weeks and had three different types of international soup and they have all been pretty good value and very nice indeed. I think I will have a go at making laksa in the next few days.

Canary Wharf is a relatively new development, by that I mean it was built in the last twenty-thirty years and houses a lot of the big banks in its glass towers. From a distance it looks pretty good and it was not too bad close up either. What I like about it the most is rather than stick a whole bunch of modern high rises in the lovely low rise centre of London they have built it a few kilometres away and left the centre with its mainly old stone buildings alone. Wonderful forethought in central planning, something that Auckland City Council totally suck at !

One of the other council initiatives I like is “Boris’s Bikes”, Boris Johnson is the current mayor of London, love him or hate him, but he is into bicycles and was instrumental in the setting up of a hire bike system in London, which is loudly sponsored by Barclays Bank. There are bike racks everywhere and the bikes are cheap(ish) to rent. This is the first time I have seen a full rack.

I had a good walk around the area for an hour or so, it is not large, but it has been well designed and there is plenty of space between the towers and it is surrounded by water, from the Thames and canals. I could work there.

The temples of Mammon !

Back to the Tate Modern !

Wednesday 02 January 2013, London.

Wow, two posts in a row in a supposed period when not much was happening. Not that I did anything particularly post worthy, though I did leave the house with the trusty Canon in my bag and that is always a good start.

I wandered along the South Bank for a bit.

Found one piece of street art, not the most likely place for it, so a pleasant surprise.

And this very cool sculpture called “under the baobab tree”.

Of course a walk along the South Bank has to include a visit to the Tate Modern, and I was pleased to see some things I had missed last time I visited, or the permanent collection had changed a bit.

There are a few nice Picasso’s here and I particularly liked “Bowl of fruit, violin and bottle”.

And “nude woman with necklace”.

While I really enjoy all the carvings and sculptures I have seen in temples and cathedrals I have never been a fan of sculpture in a museum setting. However I did really like this Matisse, I am wondering if it is because of the Picasso influence on my tastes ?

Sadly the weather had turned when I left and I had a damp walk across the Millennium Bridge over the Thames in search of soup for lunch and a train home.

It was another good day !

A new year street art hunt

Tuesday 01 January 2013, London

Posting will be really sporadic for a while, I will only post when I have taken some photos or done anything that is even remotely interesting.

I guess the rolling over of another year, especially the successful rolling over of another year when the world was supposed to end, is worth recording.

New years eve was not exactly riveting, not that the last few have been either! I had been pondering walking down to one of the bridges over the Thames to watch the fireworks, but lost interest as it got closer to midnight and the thought of a forty five minute walk there and back in the cold just was not tempting enough. So I spent the night in as usual, though I did make it to midnight and watched the spectacular ten minute fireworks display on TV.

So, it is another new year, what does it hold for me ? at this stage who knows !

The first day of 2013 was by English winter standards, lovely, clear skies and not too cold – to start with anyway. I decided I had to go out and do something so caught the tube up to central London to watch the London New Year parade. I managed to get an OK spot, though the guy next to me kept up a non-stop inane monologue to his family that finally drove me to leave – and I had headphones on, he was loud too ! As it turned out virtually all my photos were crap, I was shooting at far too low a speed to get anything good and I deleted most of them as soon as I got home. A beginners mistake and I should have known better.

I loved this wee steam truck.

On my way out of the parades route and away from the supposed 500,000 people who came to see it, I came across this marching band getting ready to merge in, they played a more funky style of music to the traditional English style and were quite good.

I had decided to walk home via Portobello Rd.

I had visited there on a rainy Boxing Day to try and find the Rough Trade record store that is a feature in a book I bought myself with some money from my mum (thanks mum 🙂 ), however it had moved. So I did the smart thing and looked up the address this time and found it easily. Unfortunately it was closed !

The second reason I visited the area was to try and find some street art, as the west of London is slowly being gentrified the street art is slowly disappearing and is quite rare. I knew there were a couple of pieces around so was keen to find them, and I found more than I expected, including this lovely wall at Notting Hill, I do not know who the artist is but I loved it.

IMG 6233 PS

Up Portobello Rd I found

A Banksy, yay 🙂

A CODE FC

An Alec Monopoly

A couple of Paul Don Smiths

This one commemorating the slaying of two police women last year.

And some others.

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I enjoyed the hunt, and seeing some of these pieces as I am sure they will not be there for long !

St Albans – A day trip

Monday 17 December 2012, St Albans, Hertfordshire, England.

Well, I know I sort of wrapped up most of December in one post earlier in the week and hinted that I had not actually done a heck of a lot since, but I have not been a complete bed potato – I have no couch, so no couch potatoing!

Jackie was one of the great people I met on the Cape Town to Livingstone leg of my recent Africa trip and lives not too far from London. We had arranged to meet in the historic town of St Albans for a walk around and lunch.

One of thing I hadn’t mentioned in my wrap up was I had a bad head cold for most of a week, and the start of it was this day ! I work up with a very sore throat and had to spend some of my dwindling funds on various medicines as the cold worked its way from being a sore throat, through a very runny nose and down to a horrible chest cough. One medicine does not conquer all anymore !

I got the direct train from St Pancras to St Albans, very fast and very smooth, and only twenty or so minutes. St Albans is twenty or so miles from London and, I have said this before, I cannot believe how much green space there is between the city and the surrounding towns, for such a crowded country it is incredibly rich in green space – long may it continue!

Jackie picked me up from the station and we drove into town and a bit closer to the cathedral, it is a lovely clear day but quite cool.

We had a brief walk around some of the older parts of town and stopped for a look at the old clock tower, built in the early 1400’s, I loved the side door : )

Some of the houses are incredibly old, but still in use today, I have no idea of the history of this building but I really liked the way if kinda sags in the middle – I know how it feels, it must be middle aged !

We next had a look at the old great gateway of the long gone monastery, the gate was built in the 1360’s and has been used as a monastery, has housed the third oldest printing press, was a prison for three hundred years and has been part of a school since 1871. Amazing, I just so love these things.

From there we walked up to the cathedral and spent a good thirty or so minutes looking around. The cathedral was started in 1077 (Man that is old !!!) and has been in constant use ever since, it is a stunning building with some very well preserved sections. One of the things I do love about some of these old buildings, especially the churches / temples/ mosques, is that they have never stopped being used for their original purpose and visitors are welcomed.

The cathedral is huge, and standing in the oldest section and looking up the length I again marvelled at how places like this were built before the age of large cranes and other machinery.

There was some good detail in the cathedral, including some old wall paintings that I liked as they had not been restored, though I guess they will have to be at some stage !

I really liked this eighteen century poor box – that is of course, still in use.

After the cathedral we took a walk around the outside, Jackie had recently done a guided night walk here and pointed out some of the haunted houses, like this one next to the graveyard….

After a walk up to St Peters church at the other end of town we stopped in for a drink in a pub and then lunch at an Italian place before Jackie dropped me back off at the station and I returned home.

It was a really good outing, nice to catch up with Jackie and see somewhere new.

Mono @ The Village Underground in Shoreditch

I have been a fan of the Japanese post-rock band, Mono for quite a while now and have a few of their albums. They are currently touring their latest album “for my parents” which I own on lovely vinyl – though I have seen it yet as it was delivered to my nephew in New Zealand. I do of course have the download and while it is not my favourite album, I still love it and it got played an awful lot while I was on the truck in Africa.So, I was very excited to see that they were playing in London a couple of days after I arrived.

So, on 8 December I went to see them perform at The Village Underground in Shoreditch. I arrived at the venue about thirty minutes after the doors opened and was disappointed to see there was already a good sized crowd in front of the stage, which meant I was going to be a good five rows back, which also meant it would suck for photos. This was a lesson learnt, get to a gig on time. In fact a further lesson was learnt the following week when I decided to go and see another band, Male Bonding at a pub in Hackney – it was sold out! I am glad I checked first, but from now on I will book tickets first and then get there early.

The venue itself is fabulous, I would estimate it held about three hundred, high ceilings and brick walls with arched entrances to the bar area. I loved it. The sound was not too bad at the front, but very good at the back, it was sold out.

I bought a drink and made my way as close as I could get to the stage to see the support band, “Physics House Band. There were not really my style, like Mono they were an instrumental act, but too funky for my liking. Though the drummer was phenomenal.

Mono played for about an hour and a half and a mix of tracks off of “for my parents” and the previous album “hymn to the immortal wind”. They did not play either of my two most liked songs “com(?)” or “16.12”, but they did play “pure as snow” which is close behind.

Someone who got there before me, and had his camera in front of me all night, you can see him in some of my photos. I could not get a shot of the far guitarist as there were some tall people in the way, gutting. Not bad video though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQajzFOlhq4

It was all lit in red or blue with strong down spots so I shot everything in B and W. Being five rows back and to one side was pretty hopeless, and there was no way I was going to get any closer. I took a few photos and then put my camera away after Pure as Snow and went to the back and stood on some steps and just enjoyed the music.

They were really good, a great show !