I yarn stormed London

It's hard to believe that my nine days in London are almost over. The time went so quickly, yet it was long enough for me to feel the closest to being a real Londoner that I've ever felt.

Yesterday (Saturday) morning, while Spooner was at the steam bath getting all remaining traces of buffalo, pig and soil out of his pores, I took the two yarn bombs that I'd brought from home down to Meanwhile Gardens. I found good places to attach them -- I put a green one with leaf pattern on a metal railing near the pond, and a striped one on a hand-made stick railing in the wildlife garden. As I was sewing them in place, a young man did Tai Chi on the platform above the pond near my first location, and the birds and squirrels scurried and hopped around my feet at the second spot. My friend Helen used to come to Meanwhile Gardens, and to the stretch of canal next to it, often to photograph the birds, plant life, and the reflections in the water. I like to think she would have noticed my yarn bombs straight away, and would have smiled and approved of my creative mischief in her garden.

In the afternoon, Spooner and I went to two art events that bring street art indoors. The first was the Moniker Art Fair at the Village Underground in Shoreditch. We also walked around the car park behind Holywell Lane and looked at what was new on the walls there. Neither indoors nor out was as good as last year, but we saw some interesting things. After that, we rode the bus across London Bridge, walked through Borough Market for some nibbles (much of which was free samples of chutney, cheese and bread from various vendors), and took another bus over to Waterloo to see The Minotaur in the Old Vic Tunnels under the train tracks. Some of it was cool, some creepy, and some puzzling.

Another long bus ride took us to Hampstead for dinner with Greg and Esther at a nice little French bistro where we'd all eaten together a couple years ago. It was a great meal, with lovely company, and a very nice way to end my trip.

I managed to see most of the people I wanted to meet up with, though I really regret not seeing the ones I missed. I ticked off most of the things on my massive list of exhibitions, historic spots, markets and rambles. The places I didn't get to will just have to go onto the list for the next trip. Except for the first couple of days, my back held up and didn't ache. I didn't lose anything or get lost. The weather was decent -- no real rain to speak of, and the final two days were full of blue skies and sunshine. And I didn't wear my rain boots once.

Big thanks to Spooner and all my mates who made this such a fab trip.

Expenses:
£5 last top-up on my Oyster
£2 spinach packet at Borough Market
£10 tix (2) for the Old Vic Tunnels
£17 dinner and wine

17,738 steps
6.99 miles

A grand day out

The most amazing thing happened yesterday as Maggie and I were getting off the train in Guildford. We were standing in the aisle, waiting for the carriage doors to open, when Maggie whispered, "Look who that is." I looked at the backs of men's heads ahead of us and wasn't sure who she meant until she pointed discretely at the bowler hat in the hand of the gentleman right in front of her. It was Maxwell Hutchinson! My American readers won't appreciate the magnitude of this occasion, but my Brit mates will know him as the architect who comes on the Robert Elms Show on BBC London every week to talk about buildings and history and all sorts of interesting things about London. When we found ourselves on the platform, walking right next to him and the other man he was with, I did something I never do -- I turned to him and said, "Excuse me, Mr. Hutchinson. I listen to you every Tuesday on the radio on my computer in Massachusetts" and I stuck out my hand to shake his. At first he looked a bit taken aback, but then he replied, "My goodness! What are you doing here in Guildford all the way from Massachusetts?" We told him we'd come to see the George Frederic Watts Gallery and the Watts Chapel. He then said, "As long as you've come all this way, you must see the Cathedral." Although we knew this wasn't in our plan, we told him that, on his recommendation, we would try to do. I then said how lovely it was to meet him and we went our separate ways. I, of course, was grinning ear to ear.

The rest of the day just got better and better. Blue skies, bright sunshine, warm air -- the best weather of my visit. Maggie and I waited a few minutes for Ray to arrive by bus from his home in nearby Woking. We then took the local bus to the small village of Compton. Actually, we never saw Compton itself, getting off the bus at the Watts Gallery on a little lane, I assume just outside the village. I didn't know much about G.F. Watts other than that he was responsible for the creation of the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice in Postman's Park in London, a place I visit often and really love. There is a wall of plaques in the back of the park, each made of Doulton ceramic, that commemorates in just a few words an ordinary person who died in the act of saving another. I wasn't aware that Watts is considered one of Britain's greatest painters. Apparently, many Brits don't know of him either, I imagine somewhat because his allegorical or heroic subjects seem old fashioned to our modern eyes.

After seeing the gallery and having lunch in the tea room, we set out on foot for the chapel designed by Watts's wife Mary. This small funeral chapel is said to be one of the best examples of British Arts and Crafts architecture, and Maggie and I had been wanting to see it for ages. We walked all around it, inside and out, gazing at (and photographing) the amazing details. The cemetery there is also lovely and peaceful, on a hillside looking out over fields below. Then a guided tour group of old dears arrived and the spell was broken.

Ray had suggested we take the bus to Compton, uphill all the way, and walk back downhill to Guildford along the footpaths. We couldn't have asked for a better day to do this. Much of our walk was along Sandy Lane, a well-named sandy, one-lane road, which made for some interesting maneuvers when trucks came from both directions, with the three of us sandwiched between them. Eventually we reached the towpath along the River Wey and followed that back into Guildford just as the sun was sinking low.

Expenses:
£13.90 cheap day return ticket for Guildford
£2.20 bus to Compton
£7.50 for Watts Gallery
£5.00 for egg mayonnaise sandwich on granary bread in the tea room
£1.45 for late afternoon beverage

20,966 steps
8.27 miles

A quick update

I'm writing a second post today because I have to be out the door really early tomorrow. I'm meeting my pal Maggie at Waterloo to take the train to Guildford, where we'll meet up with Ray and go to Compton to see the George Frederic Watts Gallery and the Watts Chapel.

This was the day without a plan, the day to do whatever I hadn't worked in on other days. It turned out to be a day with a lot of seeing but not much walking, which is ok because I know I will more than make up for it on our walk tomorrow. Just before I left home, I read about the new exhibition at the British Museum by Grayson Perry, about whom I knew absolutely nothing, called The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. I'm running out of superlatives, but I must say that this was one of the best exhibitions I've ever seen. I totally enjoyed Perry's "love of stuff." This was all about a pilgrimage made with his teddy bear, named Alan Measles, to Germany and through time to other pilgrimage spots around the globe. But it's all imaginary and done through story telling, connecting artifacts and objects from the British Museum's collection to new objects made by Perry for the exhibition to examine shrines, talismans, totems, and other pieces of craftwork in a new context. It's hard to explain, but it was really fun. Photos from the Guardian here.

From there I wandered through Bloomsbury, up to the Euston Road, where I stopped in to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery (she was the first woman doctor in the UK) and the crypt gallery at St Pancras Parish Church. In the EGA Gallery I learned about the founding of the first hospital in London for women and staffed by women. In the crypt gallery, I saw and heard some cool and creepy stuff that had something to do with the descent into the dark. I then revisited the Wellcome Collection to spend more time in the Charms and Miracles exhibition.

When I was on the Number 7 bus in the morning, headed towards the British Museum, we passed Selfridges with its window displays for the Museum of Everything, which I had on my list of things to see but had forgotten about. So I stopped there on my way back home at the end of the day. It's all outsider art. Nothing special. Kind of ho-hum.

Back at the flat, I warmed up the goat cheese and veg pie that I bough the other day at one of the markets we visited. I'm now going to watch a bit of Downton Abbey and then turn in.

Expenses:
£10 for Grayson Perry exhibition at the British Museum
£3.40 for tat at the BM shop
£2.20 for a spinach roll at a farmers market in Torrington Square

13,962 steps
5.5 miles

Good mates, good art and good beer

With those three elements, I'd say it was a perfect day.

Wednesday had an appointed beginning (meeting Judy at Tate Modern) and end (Guess Where London meetup at Craft Beer Co. in Leather Lane), but lots of room in the middle for spontaneous choices and a walk in the sunshine, when it made a brief appearance, along the Southbank. The first (and the best) thing we saw at Tate Modern was Tacita Dean's new Unilever installation in Turbine Hall, which had just opened the day before. I purposely didn't look at any press coverage of the opening, because I didn't want to have any images in my head of what it would be like. It's big and it's fab! We viewed it first from the bridge across Turbine Hall, and then went down below, where people were sitting on the floor to view it and little kids kept running up and touching the screen. It really needs to be seen from both vantage points, as in incorporates architectural elements from Turbine Hall itself and you need to experience it from both angles and in both scales. I'm doing a mental inventory of the four or five Unilever installations I've seen, and I think that this is by far my favorite.

After Judy treated me to lunch, we wandered across the river to One New Change to check out the views from their 6th floor roof garden. Nice view of the dome of St Paul's, but you really can't see much of the City or beyond because parts of the building itself -- which is an ugly shopping centre -- are in the way. While you can get some glimpses of bridges, the river itself isn't visible. And there are no views to the north, which I would have enjoyed. I guess I'll just have to wait for next year's Open House and go to Broadgate Tower if I want panoramic views.

Back across the river, we returned to the Tate Modern. All together, we saw Diane Arbus photos, Contested Terrains (four African artists), and did a quick walk through the very, very grey Gerhard Richter exhibition (my advice is to skip the rooms with the grey stuff and go straight for the color).

A wander in the warm sun brought us to the Hayward Gallery, where we met up with our mate Malcolm and chatted under a festive bunting of white underpants. More white underpants, this time in the form of a large chandelier (called the "Massachusetts Chandelier" -- don't ask me why as I haven't found out yet), awaited us inside -- all part of Pipilotti Rist's Eyeball Massage. This exhibition was great fun -- full of videos, projected onto walls and gauze curtains, onto objects small and large, inside pocketbooks and shells, and even from a tiny hole in the floor. You can walk in and out of the curtains, stick your head into holes to see things in a large box, or lounge on the floor on pillows made of stuffed trousers and shirts. This review describes it much better than I can.

When our eyeballs were thoroughly massaged, Malcolm and I said goodbye to Judy and walked up to Leather Lane (with a quick stop to look at the inside of The Black Friar pub, which I'd never seen) for the GWL meetup. The Craft Beer Co. is a lovely, new-ish pub that serves a great variety of crafted ales (I had one called Winter Meltdown and another called Hophead -- thanks Malc and David for treating me!). As always, it was lovely to catch up with old mates and to meet new ones.

Another note of explanation for my faithful and observant readers: My posts are time stamped with Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5). Please don't think that I'm awake at 4 in the morning writing these -- I'm too knackered to stay up that late or wake that early.

Expenses:
(Judy treated me to lunch and exhibition entry at the Tate Modern)
£2.75 for beverage at the Hayward
£8 for the Pipilotti Rist exhibition

20,975 steps
8.27 miles

A Retrograde Ramble in the City

Most of yesterday was taken up with future-oriented activities: doing a load of laundry so that I'd have socks and underwear for the second half of my visit, and various errands that Spooner needed to do in order to be ready for his expedition to a farm with his students (leaving today, returning on Friday). One of his missions involved a trip to Citibank to deposit a check. The nearest Citibank branch is in Hanover Square, which put us very close to the Opera Gallery in New Bond Street, where I'd just read that Mr. Brainwash was having an exhibition. We figured this was not to be missed (note that I didn't say "too good to be missed"). It was as we expected -- Mr. Brainwash's work is largely derivative, but in case he shows up in another movie (he was the subject of Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop), I wanted to say I'd seen his gallery show in London. His non-derivative pieces involved using bits of broken vinyl records to replicate black and white posterized portraits of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, etc. Though somewhat creative, these weren't exactly interesting. But there were some things in the gallery by other artists that we enjoyed seeing.

The highpoint of the day was a backwards-looking activity -- Through the Time Tunnel: A Retrograde Ramble, a guided walk in the City. We met up with my Flickr mate David at Tower Hill Station for this two-hour walk backwards in history from the 21st century to Roman London. Our guide, Steven, is an amateur history buff who had worked in the City for 30 years, using his free time to explore and learn about its history and hidden gems. Now retired, he leads seven different walks each week. He showed us the old Royal Mint building, a hydraulic pumping station, the first Peabody estate in London, remnants of a rail line used to bring goods from Shadwell and Limehouse docks to the warehouses in Tower Hamlets, Wellclose Square and Wilton's Music Hall, St Katharine docks, and some bits of the foundation of St Mary Graces (destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries; I had seen a skeleton from this location in an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection several years ago, so it was really interesting to connect it all together). Our walk ended at All Hallows by the Tower, where we saw a Roman tile floor in the crypt. This was only the second guided walk I'd been on (the first was about Jewish radicalism in the East End) -- both were non-commercial, done by local history enthusiasts, and were highly informative and really fun.

After the walk, we dashed off to do the last of Spooner's errands. This afternoon, he and his group of 14-year-olds will take a bus to somewhere in Hampshire, where they'll stay in a hostel, cooking their own meals, and will work for 2 days on an organic farm that has buffalo, pigs, chickens and vegetables. I can't wait to hear the stories when he returns on Friday.

Expenses:
£20 to top up my Oyster card
£5 for the guided walk, which goes to Oxfam and Cancer Research UK

13,578 steps (and a lot of bus and tube journeys)
5.35 miles