The sound of wind blowing through the trees

After a period of inertia, I’m throwing myself into London’s cultural life again, taking up every opportunity to experience what the Capital has to offer. This has involved stepping way a beyond my comfort zone (see One no One account below for just how far outside I’ve gone!) and trying out some different things.

Recently this led to me road-testing the “production” Susurrus, which The Gate Theatre is “putting on” in Holland Park at the moment. The apparent overuse of quotation marks here is because I’m not entirely sure that the language normally used to describe theatre applies here. Susurrus is (to borrow from the publicity material) “a play without actors, without a stage and with only one person in the audience”. What that translates into, in layman’s terms, is being given a headset and a map, navigating around the park, listening to dialogue, sounds and bits of opera.

I was sceptical before it began, but was quickly won over by the soothing Scottish voices and wonderful music. The setting of Holland Park, now moving up first place in my list of favourite parks, was perfect and the elements behaved in synch with the play. While all was well in the play, the sun was shining brightly and I enjoyed strolling past the tennis courts and cafe, but just when the play took a sinister turn and I was directed to more secluded spots, the wind picked up speed and howled around me.

The story became something dark, but there was still a beauty in the words and the music and I was completely lost in this world in my headset and far from my initial self-consciousness, I was reluctant to return to real life at the end.

Elephants on Parade

During my long and fairly uneventful absence from the world of blogging, I became obsessed with the Elephants on Parade.

If you aren't in London or walk around the city with your eyes closed, you might not know about the Elephants on Parade, so I'll explain.

London's streets were taken over for a few weeks by herds of colourful elephants, decorated by designers, artists and other such people. The elephants were sponsored or bought by companies with some elephants sold at auction for thousands of pounds, with the money going to help protect Asian elephants whose numbers are dwindling.

The now-husband and I spent a lovely Saturday tracking down the elephants on a route that started at Paddington and finished on the Strand, spotting around 70 elephants as we went. We spent another morning viewing herds of the elephants when they were gathered together at the Royal Chelsea Hospital and the Westfield Centre. I like elephants and we did our bit for the cause by buying a minature one (the now-husband was keen to put in a bid for a full-sized one, thinking it would be a novel way of spending the money we received as wedding gifts, but my money sense won out).

But more than the charitable element, I loved the way that such a diverse range of people were just as smitten with the elephants are we were. The sheer delight of people chancing upon an elephant around a quiet corner. The freedom for children to clamber all over them as they wished. This is what public art should be. Not some bronze memorial to some military person whose significance has long since been forgotten. But something that people can enjoy and interact with in their own way.

The elephants have gone now from London and our streets look sadder without them.

Carnival!

I stepped out of my door, with the intention of taking the bus to the library, when I became aware of the sound of a marching band. There was no traffic in the direction I was going and then I noticed that people were standing in their gardens, on their doorsteps and on the curb.

A sign of the times, I wondered whether it might be a parade by an extremist group, but it turned out to be the local carnival. I had no idea it was happening but clearly it was a very big deal for other locals. Besides the crowds lining the street, which increased as I walked down the road, some shops had even closed for the day, with signs in their windows saying "See you at the Carnival".

So I slowed down and lingered a while to see the parade. As parades go, it wasn't really that impressive, but the fact that I saw some semblance of community for the first time seemed more important.

Having seen the entire parade pass by (a marching band, a beauty queen, one small float, a group with decorated umbrellas, some army cadets and their tank and some drummers), I decided to continue my journey to the library but as the traffic was being held someway back, I thought it best to walk. This meant that for a good ten minutes, until our routes diverged, I looked as if I was joining with the parade!

All in all, it was a cheery little event, but without the more colourful elements of the parade around it, the sight of the minature army and tank going down the high street might have been a bit troubling.

The system

Why does travelling by the London transport system always feel like such a battle? Surely a transport system is supposed to ease your passage through the city, making things easier. But not in London. Every day it feels like the system has to be outwitted, and it becomes a battle of wills, you versus the system. You feel a sense of achievement if you manage to get somewhere without too much of a problem. But if you beat the system on your outbound journey, it will punish you on your return.

And this is when "a good service is operating on all London underground lines". And for this they want a payrise, they feel they deserve more than the £50K most tube drivers earn?

I managed to navigate my way to and from work yesterday, only adding three hours onto my day. Today, I fear the system will take its revenge.

The St George's Day Question

Part of me thinks it is a shame that we can't celebrate our national saint's day and that patriotism is associated with racism. But then I see people actually celebrating being English, I think that St George's Day is probably best ignored.



Once more the pub next door to work was flying the flag of Englishness. The bunting was being hung when I arrived this morning, and predictably at lunchtime, the band followed, subjecting us to an afternoon of songs that haven't been popular since the 1940s. A quaint, and mostly harmless notion of Englishness, although I got the impression that they were mourning the loss of the colonies and still celebrating defeating the Germans.

But this was better than what followed.

Late afternoon, the Enger-Land crowds turned up, with the Vera Lynn songs replaced by inane chants of "Enger-Land" and "I'm England til I die". In my five minute walk from the office, I was three times accosted by men drapped in St George's Crosses, starting with the innocous "Allo Treacle", progressing to the offer of "would you like to be wrapped in this flag with me, darling".

If this is what it means to be English, next time I'm accused of being Norwegian, Irish or Polish (all of which have happened), I won't contradict it.

I then passed a woman, clearly English from her accent, who looking at all of the people in flags, said to her friend, "There must be a football match on", obviously unaware that it was an important national day. There is lies the problem. There needs to be a way of celebrating St George's day for the rest of us majority who fall outside of the nostalgic and moronic.

"Your Home is a Dump"

The girlfriend of the footballer Andrey Arshavin has been reported as saying she hates London because it is dirty and the woman are scruffy. She might have a point about it being a bit on the grubby side, but who judges a place on how its people are dressed? Are you going to dismiss a place brimming with culture and history because its citizens haven't all had manicures?

If a British person went to another city and made similar comments, it would spark a diplomatic incident and within a few days, they would be apologising and back peddling.

But it is perfectly acceptable for people to insult London.

A lot of British people do it too. Every time I go back up north, someone will tell me that they don't know how I can live in London/they hate London/London is too crowded/London is too expensive. Its so rude.

Imagine their response if I replied by saying how much I hated the town where they lived. I'd probably be punched. But it is fine for everyone to insult the place where I live.

Yes, it is expensive, but so are all capital cities, and so is Newcastle if you only ever go out on the Quayside.

And the transport system isn't very good, but it is just a means to an end. We don't choose to live in London because of the tube, unless of course, you work for Transport for London.

Lucky Heather

I’m accustomed to weaving my way between Big Issue sellers, Chuggers and Living Statues in my lunch hour, but recently their ranks have been joined by another group looking for money; Lucky Heather Sellers.

Whilst you might be moved to give money to the Big Issue sellers or the fundraisers (encouraging those living statues is inexcusable), I’ve yet to see anyone parting with their money to a Lucky Heather Seller. When I’ve been feeling particularly glum, I have contemplated it, wondering if that is what is wrong with my life, but I’ve never actually succumbed. Ever the rationalist, I realise that if I want to change my life, I have to do something more about it than purchase a dried up weed from a buxom woman who accosts me in the street. Luck does play a part in most successes, but I doubt this product comes with a guarantee.

So I’ve ruled out buying it. But what about selling it? Is this a profitable business? The outlay is presumably pretty small (you could pick plants growing in the wild for free), but it is labour intensive, hanging around the street all day haranguing passers-by. My haranguing skills aren’t up to much anyway. Another career change ruled out.

Things were better then

I can see myself becoming one of those old people who constantly talks about how much better things were in the past. I'll say things like "That wouldn't have happened when I was young" and start conversations with "In my day..." I accept this. but early in the week I experienced an extreme longing for the past.

We went to the Natural History Museum.

I found out that hippos roamed where Trafalgar Square is and there was a Woolly Mammoth from Ilford!

I wish there were still hippos in Trafalgar Square, they could wallow in the fountains. And Mammoths in Ilford could only be an improvement on much of the current population. Things were definitely better then.

Summer in the City

I love London in the sunshine and each year I fall a little bit more in love with the city in the summer.

Although I've been here nearly 12 years now, when the sun is shining, I feel like I'm on holiday as it is so different from what passes for summer where I'm from. Even walking down the road near where I live feels like being somewhere exotic when the sun is out.

Lots of people moan about the tube being unbearable in the heat, but really there is so many great things about London in the summer that more than compensate for this discomfort. In the past couple of weeks, I've drank sangria in a park listening to dance music from around the world, I've picnicked at a Jazz Festival, swam outdoors, and wondered around like a tourist with my camera.

This week, I've been enjoying free lunchtime concerts in Victoria Embankment Gardens. The easy-going sounds of Gershwin played by a happy quartet. An old man dances along. Japanese tourists rest for a while to take in the music. Workers eat their lunch and chat to colleagues. I lounge in a deckchair, with my book.

This is what contentment is.

Gone to the Dogs

Walthamstow Dog Track to be precise.

I’d never been to a dog track before, the OH is from Walthamstow and it is closing down soon. So when a group of friends said they were going on Saturday night, I was rather enthusiastic about it.

Sadly, I was disappointed.

It was far too crowded and it was very hot, so moving about was a huge effort. People looked like they were melting in the heat.

I had hoped to visit the information stall about adopting retired greyhounds (wishful thinking) but I didn’t get anywhere near it due to the congestion.

I only bet on one race and lost.

The best bit thing there was the sign outside of the stadium, but annoyingly I didn’t bring my camera.

Indulgence

Yesterday, I spent the day at the Sanctuary Spa. It was part of my Christmas present from the OH, but it has taken me this long to pick a good time to go.

When I “checked in” I was a bit sceptical as the reception area was swarming with chattering women and I wondered how on earth it was going to be relaxing with this noise. But thankfully, once inside the spa, people were dispersed so it was actually pretty tranquil for most of the day (an exception being the morons in the restaurant who thought that the “no mobile phone rule” didn’t apply to them and also were claiming it was an infringement on their human rights not being allowed to smoke in the spa!)

For my treatment, I had an “Indulgent Egyptian Body Wrap”, where I was scrubbed, oiled, wrapped in cling film and left to stew on a water bed type thing. Later I also had a “Sleep Retreat” which involved lying on a gently vibrating bed, listening on headphones to instructions to picture yourself in a garden with a wall and a well. It was possibly hippie nonsense and it would have been easy to scoff, had I not fallen into a slumber.

My trip also included a two course meal which was delicious and my inability to decide between a starter and a dessert was overcome by the option to have a starter as a main. So I had poached eggs with asparagus spears, followed by bread pudding with whisky ice cream. Again the only word for it is indulgent!

Amongst all of this indulging and relaxing, I did manage to fit in quite a bit of exercise. I found myself having the pools to myself quite often so I had a good swim (it being women only, there were lots of people who didn’t want to get their hair wet so the pools weren’t that well used). As much as I love my outdoor pool, this was an altogether calmer experience. I even went on the “famous Sanctuary rope swing”, as they refer to, I’ve no idea whether it is famous beyond the world of their marketing materials.

To round of the day, I treated myself to a glass of bucks fizz, which I sipped while watching swimming carp.

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through...

There is always a busker in the tube station I use when I go home from work. Occasionally they are terrible, occasionally they are excellent (in which case, I may even give them some money) but usually they are just ok. Inoffensive and forgettable.

However, I've noticed over the last few weeks, that on a Thursday it is the same man. The reason I've noticed him in particular is not that he is terrible or excellent. He pretty much falls into the average category. I noticed him because he played the song "The Streets of London". The first time I heard it, I thought "that's a good song for a London busker to play" but then today, on about the fourth time of seeing him play, I've given it some more thought.

Either, it is a huge coincidence that I happen to walk past every week when he's playing that song from his repetoire (I do leave work at roughly the same time every day, but still it seems unlikely). Or that is all he plays.

I don't know how long he is positioned there, but even if it is just one hour, that means playing that song about 12 times.

Either he only knows one song (in which case becoming a busker is particularly a poor career choice). Or he is the most cynical busker ever as this is obviously a winner with passers-by.

Surely though just for variety he could play another London-themed song? "London's Burning" might not be a good choice, but there must be others?

Aqua Alfresco

I can’t believe that I’ve been working in central London for over three and a half years and this was the first time I’d gone for a swim in my lunch break. I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner.

The pool is less than 10 minutes walk from the office and complete with free hairdryers, making it just about doable in an hour. But better than that, it has an outdoor pool.

Swimming outdoors is so much better than swimming inside. Even though the London air isn’t the cleanest, it still feels so much fresher. It was a wonderful sensation. It has been an overcast day with frequent outbreaks of rain (I could be a weather forecaster!) but I was disappointed that it didn’t rain during my time in the pool, because I would have loved the experience of swimming in the rain. I’m not entirely sure whether the outdoor pool remains open during rain showers, but given the unpredictability of our weather, I think it must.

I’m rather smitten with the whole place. It is pretty shabby and the pool is overlooked by the rest of the leisure centre and what look like council flats, all ugly Brutalist concrete structures that I find oddly reassuring.

I intend to go back again tomorrow and for once I’m hoping for rain.

I love the Southbank

Last week work involved a day working on the Southbank. I arrived far too early to go into my event, but I didn’t mind just ambling around because I love the Southbank. It is especially nice early in the morning when there aren’t too many people about.

I had my camera with me so decided I’d take a few photos. Of course, the views around there are really incredibly touristy. I couldn’t resist taking photographs of Big Ben and the London Eye. Much to my embarrassment, a man stopped me and asked if I wanted him to take a picture of me with the Houses of Parliament in the background. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I wasn’t a tourist, so I just said “No, thank you” in a way that I hope sounded like English wasn’t my first language (I’ve been accused of this before anyway) .


Lots of people hate the buildings on the Southbank. Prince Charles ranted about the National Theatre buildings. Admittedly, they aren't the prettiest. But I love them. I think it is possibly because my university (UEA) was designed by the same architect so it feels like home there amongst the Brutalist concrete structures.

I wish I worked there as I feel nothing bad could ever happen and I'd be happy to go to work everyday.

Muñoz, Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia and Me

I had been meaning to go to the Tate Modern to see the Juan Muñoz retrospective since it started and then the other week, I realised that it was very nearly finished and I still hadn't been. So today I had to motivate myself into leaving the house on what was a rather grey day and get down to the Tate Modern, which is a bit of a trek with Sunday transport.

There was a combined ticket offer for both the Muñoz exhibition and the Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia exhibition, so I saw both.



Here are my thoughts:

• Juan Muñoz is my favourite sculptor (although I can't really think of many more than five sculptors off the top of my head)



• Some of his work was disturbing, some of it I found soothing, perhaps because it reminds me of home



• Sometimes seeing work in a gallery isn't the best place for it. I first came across Muñoz's work as a set of his work on the beach in my hometown, and in contrast to that, where the weather, seagulls and public are free to interact with the pieces, sometimes the gallery's restrictive environment didn't feel right.
  


• My favourite pieces were "Many Times" (pictured above) and "The Prompter".
  


• I didn't like the work of Duchamp before and I still don't. It irritates me.
  


• I don't mind a bit of May Ray and Picabia's stuff wasn't bad either
  


• I would have been quite tempted by the May Ray Chess Set in the gift shop if either a) I could play chess or b) I thought the OH knew who May Ray was.
  


• Overall, the gallery was far too crowded so I didn't look at much of the permanent collections except;
  


• Cornelia Parker's "Thirty Pieces of Silver" which was quite stunning
  


• In theory, I'm in favour of the major galleries being free but in practice, it leds to overcrowding and people coming with no interest in art whatsoever, namely;



• Toddlers. The Under-3s tend not to be interested in modern art in my experience. They may like drawing, but they've usually not much time for the surrealism, modernism or any other isms. Yet, there were hundreds of them, mainly being dragged round reluctantly by mothers or in one case, lay spread out in the middle of a gallery surrounded by craft materials and toys, but still miserable. I'm all for introducing children to art but does everything have to be tailored to suit them? They've got swings and ice cream.
  

Sampling the Local Cuisine

We were having a quick drink the pub next door to the restaurant we were eating in on Saturday. Next to us were two foreign girls, obviously tourists in London, judging by the way they kept taking photos of themselves. They were having some of the pub food and my friend noticed that they were having the "traditional Sunday roast" along with a side order of toast.

Toast with a roast! Apart from the rather pleasing rhyme it seemed a bit of a strange combination. But more than that, the toast was burnt.

Burnt toast with a Sunday roast? It was not offered on the menu - I did check.

Presumably they had requested the toast, but judging by the amount of scraping going on, I don't think they'd requested it burnt or well done. Fair enough, they may have fancied a bit of toast, but what possessed the pub cook to serve it burnt? Why did they consider that acceptable?

Its no wonder English food is mocked by other Europeans if this is what we serve up to tourists.

The White Stuff

Today's plan to do some gardening has been put on hold because it has snowed.

April, spring should be well under way and here we are with snow. I don't think I've ever seen snow on a palm tree before.

The children next door loved it. They were giving little squeals of what could only be described as glee.

So the garden will have to wait. I predict a day of tea and biscuits instead.

Variations on a Theme

It often seems to happen that little things in my life with coincide so it feels like a there is a theme. What I mean is that I will be reading a book about something and then quite by accident (or perhaps sub-consciously) I will watch a film or read a newspaper article on a similar subject. It happened a few months ago when I was watched Little Miss Sunshine and read Miss Wyoming, while the Miss World Competition was happening in the real world.

It has just happened again. Last night I went to see a film “The Inheritance”, that turned out to be a Scottish road movie (neatly coinciding with my weekend post). During the film I was contemplating the idea of a road movie in our small country, that you can really drive from one end to the other quite easily in a day. The film got around this by slowing the journey down by a) having a slow driver who wanted to take in the scenery, b) a useful navigator so they kept getting lost and c) a clapped out old camper van that broke down every so often.

Then there was a bit of dialogue in the film about Greggs. Greggs for anyone who doesn’t know (which means you definitely aren’t northern) is a chain of bakers. It started in the north where it is ridiculously popular – the high street of my hometown (which comprised about 40 shops) had 3 branches of it on that one road, plus a few others around the town. Pasties are their big thing. So these two brothers in the film, one who lived in London, the other who’d stayed in Scotland mention Greggs and I realised that Greggs is a huge subject in the north-south divide.

When I first left the north, I was horrified to find there were no Greggs in Norfolk. What was I supposed to eat? Babies in my town are fed Greggs pasties as soon as they are old enough to hold them. There were no Greggs in London when I first moved here either. So this became a valid topic of conversation, both with Southerners and with my family and friends on returning home, where I would have to gorge myself on their Cheese & Onion pasties every visit. Then a few years ago, they expanded and now there are quite a few in London. But here is the thing, they aren’t the same – the pasties are a different shape down here, smaller and of course, more expensive. So I never eat them down here, but now “the difference between Greggs in the north and south” has become a new topic of conversation when I return to the north.

So I concluded (during the film last night) that the issue of Greggs is the crux of the North-South issue.

This morning, I started reading the book “Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North” by Stuart Maconie. It was a present from my friend who has never left the north as she thought it would be appropriate for a “northerner in exile”. Its easy enough reading, amusing but not life-changing. I felt that I could have written something similar myself. Within the prologue, he discusses whether a road trip is possible in England and Greggs the Bakers. Actually so far, I feel as if I have written it already.

So there it is, the common themes in my life at the moment are UK road trips and what a chain of bakers means to regional identity.

Riding the Tube with Bobby G

People who don’t live in London often ask me if I see lots of celebrities around London, and I really don’t tend to. This may be because a) my eyesight isn’t very good, and b) I often struggle to recognise people outside of context in which I know them (for example I once walked past my own mother on the high street, obviously I didn’t recognise her outside of the confine of our house). It also might be down to the fact that I don’t really frequent the sort of places that the rich frequent.

But this morning, I saw Bobby Gillespie on the tube! Actually, the OH saw Bobby Gillespie and I initially doubted him. Unlike me he is often mistaking people for celebrities like the time he was convinced football managers Gerard Houllier and Sven Goran Eriksson were having a pint together in our local – they weren’t. But it turned out he was right. And he (Bobby G that is, not the OH) was getting off at the same stop as me! Fancy that.

I realise that Bobby Gillespie is hardly A list celebrity, but in my world, he is, having been in two of my all time favourite bands and I have described him as my ideal man on several occasions. So it was nice to start the day seeing him in the flesh - he looked ghostly white, knackered and was wearing dubious pointy shoes, but I still would have done it with him there on the concourse if he'd asked.

But I must admit I was surprised to see him on a crowded tube train at 8.30 in the morning. Surely he can afford a cab? According to some tabloid or other (as the OH informed me later) he was out partying with Kate Moss last (Bobby G again, not the OH) and was spotted leaving her place at 5am.

That still leaves quite a few hours unaccounted for though, unless he really struggled to work the ticket machine.

Today's Burning Issue: Fruit

Why has the lone market stall near by work changed from selling fruit to selling toasted chestnuts and fake designer t-shirts? The chestnuts, fair enough as they are staple Victorian Christmas fayre. But what is with the knocked-off t-shirts? What use are they to me? I need fruit. I still need my 5 a day, even if it is Christmas (actually I especially need my 5 a day to get me through). And aren't satsumas Christmassy?