Second Week: More art and many walks

Now that I've settled into my London routine, I thought I'd tell you a bit about that and how I organize my time. I've found I like to alternate days of time spent on my own rambling and taking photos with days involving activities with friends. If I spend too much time on my own, restorative as that is, I miss the company of my mates, though I do tend to chatter like a magpie when I eventually meet up with people after chunks of silent time. However, as an introvert by nature, I need the solitary time and there's nothing I like more than walking, getting lost and discovering new things and places along the way. 

As I'm doing my pre-trip research and planning throughout the year, I keep an ongoing spreadsheet listing the places and exhibitions I want to see, along with columns for any specific dates that something might be on, the postcode of the location, and notes about opening times and prices. I usually sort the spreadsheet by postcode. Once I've book a ticket for something -- an exhibition or a guided walk -- or planned a meetup, I look to the spreadsheet and Google maps to see if there are other places in the same or nearby postcode that I can work in before or after the planned event. For example, I had made plans to meet up on Tuesday afternoon with my friend Malcolm to see the Frieze Sculpture 2023 in Regent's Park. Since Bloomsbury is due east of there, I decided to take the tube to Euston station that morning and mooch my way westward, first visiting the Foundling Museum, then eating my packed lunch in Tavistock Square, and popping into the Petrie Museum for a quick look at some of the Egyptian artifacts before a fast walk to our meeting place Great Portland Street station, arriving only two minutes late (a miracle for me as I always underestimate walking times). 

Or, on a wide-open day like Wednesday, here's how I filled it up: I had errands to do in the morning (the weekly Swiss Cottage Farmers' Market, the magic money machine at NatWest in the Finchley Road, Waitrose for some other grocery purchases). I ate lunch back at the flat at noon, by which time the air had warmed up and, though overcast, it looked to be a pretty decent day. With nothing else on my itinerary, I decided I fancied a walk down to the canal and west on the towpath, something I hadn't done for many years. I ended up walking to Little Venice, on to Paddington Basin, catching the tube from Paddington to Maida Vale, and then zig-zagging my way on foot to St John's Wood. I had dropped several "Want to Go" pins around the area on Google maps (I've set these pins all across London), so I pulled up Google maps on my phone and had a butcher's at those nearby pinned items -- a giant bath plug and the rolling bridge at Paddington Basin, and in Maida Vale a double-height red phone box (public art) and a lovely tiled panel on a Victorian dairy. Before getting back on the tube to Swiss Cottage, I stopped into Panzer's Deli in St John's Wood (pinned as "Favourite" in Google maps) to buy a loaf of their fabulous rye, raisin and walnut bread. The rest of my week was a similar combination of planned activities and serendipity.  

Week Two found me doing more art exhibitions, some historical things, and several guided walks. First up, here's the arty stuff I saw (or didn't, as the case may be):

• Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm at the National Portrait Gallery. I'm not a huge fan of the Beatles (I'm much more "Let it Bleed" than "Let it Be") so I went to this exhibition somewhat reluctantly at the behest of my friend Molly. Expecting to see a bunch of amateur snaps, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, at the time these photos were taken, McCartney was working hard to develop a good eye and composition technique, learning a lot from his photographer brother Mike and from the many photographers who traveled with the Beatles during that year. After viewing the extensive exhibition, covering the group on tour in Britain, Paris, New York and Miami, I exited through the gift shop and bought Molly a book and postcard. I spent a little more time at the NPG, looking at the galleries of portraits from 2000 to present, including self-portraits of women, contemporary commissions and "Making a Modern Nation."

• The Mother and the Weaver at the Foundling Museum. This exhibition, in one of my favourite museums (free with my Art Pass), featured 40 works of modern and contemporary art by women, all of which come from the collection of Ursula Hauser, a great collector of women's art. Many of the pieces are by Louise Bourgeois, whose work I love, and there were other pieces by artists who I recognized. 

• Search History by Paul Stephenson and Niña by Sofia Enriquez, both at the StolenSpace Gallery in Shoreditch on Friday. I'd never been to this underground art gallery before -- it's small, but has done interesting shows. I'll be sure to return on future visits. 
• Continuing up Brick Lane from the StolenSpace Gallery, I turned into Heneage Street to go to the newly-opened Gilbert and George Centre, only to find building work going on and the gallery closed for the week. Thoroughly gutted, I proceeded on up Brick Lane. 
• Ghost Lines by Dan Kitchener (DANK) at the Brick Lane Gallery. I've been watching DANK paint on the streets of London for years and enjoyed seeing this exhibition of his signature street scene reflections. 
• Not an exhibition per se, but I popped into Nelly Duff, a print gallery in Columbia Road to see what was on the walls. I really liked several prints -- by Shepard Fairey, Jo Peel and Eine in particular -- hanging there. 

• Modernism at the Mall, a small exhibit at the Isokon Gallery about the artists who lived and worked in the nearby Mall Studios. Many of them, including Barbara Hepworth, shaped modernism in British art. The exhibition is mostly text boards, but they were showing a great companion video about a visit to the studio home of sculptor and printmaker Celia Scott who still lives and works there.
• On Sunday I briefly visited the Conservatory at the Barbican Centre. The conservatory is generally open to the public at select times, the rest of the time (I think) being available to residents of the Barbican Estate and/or hired out for private functions. From October 1, there's a site-specific installation called Cloud songs on the horizon by Ranjani Shettar, featuring six large sculptures spread throughout the huge conservatory. Tickets are free but you have to book a time online and they are going like hotcakes. I'm happy to report that, for the first time ever, I made it into and out of the Bloody Barbican without getting lost. 

There was also the aforementioned Frieze Sculpture 2023, but all the photos I took were on my proper camera. Since Regent's Park is near to my gaff, I'll pop down again and take some photos on my burner phone so I can drop them into a future blog post. 

I also took in some history this past week:

• Unforgotten Lives at the London Metropolitan Archives -- an exhibition of stories of Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous heritage who lived and worked in the city between 1560 and 1860. There's an enormous amount of wall text to make it through, but I chose the stories I wanted to read and found those all very interesting and compelling. 
• A brief stop at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. This small museum holds thousands of artifacts, only a fraction of which are on display, excavated in the early 1900s and donated to UCL. It was more than I could take in, but I did enjoy looking at the jewelry and was astounded to see three dresses that had been painstakingly conserved and reconstructed from fragments. 
• On Friday, at the northern end of my walk from Aldgate and up Brick Lane to Columbia Road, I pushed on and visited the Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum). Not much has changed since inside I was last there nearly 20 years ago (except for adding some more inclusive stories to the rooms), but since then they've opened a really lovely garden in the back. 

And finally, the THREE fantastic guided walks I went on:

• Ghostsigns of Islington, led by my friend Jane Parker who does her guiding through Footprints of London. Anyone who looks at my photos on ipernity will know that ghostsigns have long been a keen interest of mine, so it was delightful to do this walk with Jane. I always learn so much about commerce, industry and everyday life in London through these signs, many of which are at least 100 years old. Often, a prime sign space is used over and over by different commercial endeavors -- as the years and the elements erode the layers of paint, it's like peeling back layers of time. Along the way, I saw parts of Islington that I knew and many spots that were new to me.

• Lost Monasteries of Clerkenwell, led by another friend, Lesley Thompson, who leads walks through Islington Guided Walks and independently. Again, this was an opportunity for me to revisit some familiar sites, learning about aspects of Clerkenwell and its history that I hadn't known. Lesley skillfully led us around the remains of the medieval monasteries of St Bartholomew, St John, the Charterhouse, and the nunnery of St Mary, evoking a sense of what these places were like before and after the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. It amazes me that so much medieval stuff -- from fragments of walls to entire buildings -- has survived to this day and that these institutions still have an impact on London life. 
• From Monoux and Morris to Beer and Bacon Jam, a walk around Walthamstow led by Joanna Moncrieff, also a Footprints of London guide, who I met for the first time on this tour. Again, this was a walk in an area I'd been before (but not since 2004!) and I got to see it with fresh eyes through the tour. Walthamstow has changed dramatically over the past nearly 20 years, but I recognized many places I'd seen before. Since gentrification, there's been a lot of new builds and refurbs. The stops along the route illustrated the rich history of the area. It was a fun tour -- and we saw not one but two almshouses! (I do love an almshouse as much as a ghostsign.) We started the walk at the William Morris Gallery and ended at God's Own Junkyard, a collection of neon signs many from former sex shops in Soho.

There's not much to say, let along complain about, regarding the weather. It chucked down rain a few times during my first week, but there was none during the second. It's primarily been overcast, with sunshine and blue skies occasionally. Temps have been in the mid-60s F every day. While rain has not been dropping out of the sky, the conkers have been! I started seeing them on the ground four or five days ago. I can't resist picking up the fresh, shiny ones and stuffing them into my pockets.

The stats:

Monday:

£11 Paul McCartney at the NPG (Art Pass price)

£2.30 pastel de nata

£ merch for Molly

15,738 steps

6.39 miles

Tuesday:

£3.50 slice of cake

£6 loaf of bread from Panzer's

18,213 steps

7.48 miles

Wednesday:

£10.30 groceries

£9.85 wine

£2 cookie

25,238 steps

10.32 miles

Thursday:

£10 Islington walk

£2.05 lunch (Forgotten Ends sushi from Waitrose)

£12.13 groceries

17,521 steps

7.22 miles

Friday:

£3 banana bread

19,800 steps

8.01 miles

Saturday:

£12.50 farmers' market

£11.07 groceries and wine

£15 Clerkenwell walk

£6 tea with Lesley

£20 to top up Oyster card (for out of zone 1-2 journeys)

18,088 steps

7.38 miles

Sunday:

£10 Walthamstow walk

£2.80 flapjack

16,877 steps

6.91 miles