london – Page 9 – Where is Phil now?

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.

MOTFU

MOTFU and Alice Pasquini’s lovers

D7606 stickers

And loads of other things, I really like the Thomas the tanks and the sheep.

The woman on the bottom of the door is by C215

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/

Swan with hands – the completed RUN painting

On Friday afternoon I went back to the Village Underground wall in Shoreditch to have a look at the newly completed piece that I spent some time watching street artist RUN paint on Wednesday.

I did not take the Canon with the wide-angle lens, so could not quite fit it all in – it is a big wall!

I love the painting though – and it will be gone in a month…

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 🙂

Two weeks in London. Catching up!

Friday 31 May 2013 – London

I should confess to being really slack lately and having little motivation to write blog posts since I have been back in London, so I have now left myself with two weeks worth to catch up on. Fortunately I have not actually done a heck of a lot worth recording, though I have been managing to use up all my time. My other excuse is I have been experiencing a bit of neck and shoulder pain typing on my small travel laptop so I was waiting to get my full size laptop back from my daughter, which I did last weekend.

My flights from Sydney to London via Kuala Lumpur on Malaysian were as expected – long, tiring and rather boring ! I flew on one of the new A380s fro the first time from Sydney to KL, they are huge, they feel so much larger than a B747 – though it has been a while since I have been on one of them I will admit. Malaysian are great to fly with and if it wasn’t the fact it took almost twenty eight hours to get from one side of the planet to the other it would have all been almost enjoyable.

El took the day off work and met me at the airport, it was (of course!) lovely to see her again and I am really looking forward to spending some time together hanging out.

As I am English it is my birthright to talk and complain about the weather, so I may as well get that all out of the way now. Apart from a couple of nice sunny and vaguely warm days it has been pretty miserable since I have been here. It was reported on the news last night that it was the coldest spring since 1962 – good timing on my behalf I guess. It has been damn cold though and I am very glad I had appropriate clothing when I arrived this time around. Today was the best day of the year so far, hope it is a sign of things to come!

So, what have I done ?

I have moved back into the room I was staying in in London Bridge – which is fabulous, it is nice to know the area I am living in, but there is also a lot to explore around here as well. I have been applying for jobs left right and centre, but not having any luck so far – this was expected though and I am not too worried about it all yet, I will leave that for the end of next month ! Though next week I aim to change my strategy a bit and see if that makes any difference, it is a tough market.

I have been managing to get out and about most days, though it has been cold it has been reasonably dry so walks most days have been achievable. I even got out for a run yesterday, which was good. My first ever run along the Thames, it was almost enjoyable – I always struggle with the first run after few weeks off so it was never going to be great fun!

I have taken my camera out on most of my walks, so here are a few things I have done, starting with a visit to Canary Wharf to visit my mate John for lunch.

I have, of course, seen El a few times and after meeting her for lunch one day in Camden I decided to do one of my favourite walks and strolled the tow path alongside Regents Canal to Angel, picking up a bit of street art along the way.

I am going to say the anti-climb paint puts me off far less than the massive spikes on top of the gate!

The next day I walked along the Southbank, watching the rain coming down over the city on the north side of the Thames, fortunately it remained on the northern side until I crossed and then it swung south so I managed to stay dry on my way to the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square.

I love the gallery, (along with loads of other people !) and it was quite crowded, I was trying to enjoy a moment with Seurat’s Bathers at Anieres which I love, but it was proving too difficult – and I did get told off for taking the picture…..

Though no one saw me grab this one of this artist painting an interpretation of one of the works.

Last weekend was a long weekend in the UK and on the Saturday El and I visited Broadway Market near London Fields in Hackney where there was a couple of good bits of new street art. I really like the bird by Boe + Irony.

After lunch we took a walk along a bit more of Regents Canal and walked to and round Victoria Park for a while. Outside of the exhibition last weekend I have not seen so many Christiaan Nagel mushrooms in one spot.

After Victoria Park we walked back up the canal, past Broadway Market and on to Shoreditch. I have never seen a canal boat going through one of the many locks before so it was quite interesting to watch for a while.

We visited the Geffrye Museum of the Home. I loved the building which is a series of 18th century alms houses. The museum itself was only vaguely interesting, furnishings not really being my thing 🙂 But there was an interesting photo exhibition there which we enjoyed.

On the way back to the station I found this piece by Israeli artist Tant, part of the Broken Fingaz Crew. There used to be two Tant pieces on the front of a closed pub on Shoreditch High St, but the pub has been completely renovated since I was last there and the paintings have gone – one of things I liked about street art.

Back in Shoreditch on Sunday I met up with my daughter Mel and her BF, Rich who were up from Bristol for the weekend. They stayed at a friend’s place on the Saturday night and he joined us too. It was a nice sunny afternoon and Shoreditch was packed so we ended up buying a couple of beers and sitting in Hoxton Square park with loads of others and enjoyed the sun and a good catch up. We wandered down to Brick Lane for a curry and it was heaving with people and loads of buskers to keep the crowds entertained. I really liked this guy playing drums in a van…

Dinner was good and while we were there Mel’s friend got a text from a family member and we got invited to a rather posh infused gin tasting at the Hoxton Hotel, it would have been rude to have refused ! They were very nice too.

Mel and Rich stayed at my place on the Sunday night and after breakfast on the Monday we ventured into west London. Mel and Rich went for a picnic in Hyde Park with a friend and I met up with El for lunch in a cafe before we strolled up to the park , finally catching up with Mel at the Science Museum which was our goal for the afternoon.

After the museum El went home and I spent a short time over a beer with Mel and Rich before they caught the bus back to Bristol. It was lovely to see them both and I look forward to seeing them again.

On the Tuesday I visited my uncle over in Dartford and picked up a pile of clothes and things that I had stored there, after a reasonably fine weekend the weather returned to normal!

I did a mega walk the next day and wandered up past Elephant and Castle to Peckham and then back down to London Bridge, it took over three hours and I was knackered at the end of it. It was nice to get out for a really long walk, plus explore a potential running route, but not the most scenic part of SE1 ! I did like this old abandoned housing estate in E and C, I would love to have explored it but I am guessing it would have been seriously hazardous to my health. But there was some quite good graffiti and street art around, including an old Malarky ‘fox’ head.

That was pretty much it for the week !

I did get this email and got excited for about 10 seconds before guessing, correctly, it was a scam 😦

As a result your application, I would like to invite you to attend an interview.

You will have an interview with the department manager, Edie Wilson. The interview will last about 30 min.

Please bring three reference (If available), as well as a copy of your ID, e.g. Passport, Driving License to the interview.

Please contact me on 07064848733, in order to arrange an interview

We look forward to seeing you

Best regards

Charles Brown

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 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.