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

Groundhog Day

I'm finding myself retracing steps and revisiting places quite a bit on this trip. Yesterday (Monday) was almost a carbon copy of the last Saturday of the 2010 trip, except without Spooner and Malcolm. I was on my own for the day while Spooner got his hair cut, bought Wellies and made other preparations for his upcoming 3-day expedition with his students to an organic farm in Hampshire. So, I spent a chunk of time at the V&A, then walked up Exhibition Road to Hyde Park, visited this year's Serpentine Pavilion (ho-hum) and the Serpentine Gallery, and then walked up to Bayswater Road.

At the V&A, I saw a great exhibition called The Power of Making, which was all about crafts taken in new directions with incredible results. I also saw parts of the Medieval and Renaissance galleries, wandered through the ceramics gallery in search of an Ai Weiwei exhibition that hasn't started yet, and saw the (free) photography part of the (not free) Postmodernism exhibition.

Lunch -- a cup of lovely roasted veg soup -- was the best part of my stop at the Serpentine Pavilion and Gallery. There's a retro Citroen van, converted to a snack truck, sitting outside the gallery. I'll have a photo up at some point, but meanwhile you can see this one by my mate Malcolm.

Speaking of my photos, here's the story: there's an open wireless network at Spooner's flat, but I can't connect to it because Tony (the owner of the flat who is now traveling around the world for a year) has set it up as a LAN and he has to be here to allow new computers to be part of the LAN. I don't really understand it, but it means that I have to use Tony's desktop computer rather than my netbook, and I'm reluctant to dump all my photos from my camera onto his computer. So, my posts will go unillustrated until I'm home. So sorry to disappoint my faithful readers, but you'll just have to come back here at a later date.

In the evening, Spooner and I went up to the Almeida Theatre in Islington to see Tracey Ullman in a new play. She hasn't been on stage in London for 20 years, and I had high hopes that she'd chosen something really fab for her return. But it's not. I'm no theatre critic, but I know a crummy play when I see one. 'Nuff said. We did have a very nice pub meal at the Charles Lamb before the show, however.

Expenses:
£1 for map of the V&A (yes, they charge for this now)
£3.50 soup and roll at the Serpentine
£9 meal and a half pint of bitter at the pub

22,483 steps
8.87 miles

Market Day

Sunday is a big market day in London, and we took in three of them -- the Queen's Park Farmers' Market just up the road from Spooner's flat, Columbia Road flower market, and Brick Lane market. We wandered our way down through the East End from Columbia Road to Whitechapel Road, passing through Arnold Circus, starting at the top of Brick Lane and weaving our way in and out of the crowds, back and forth on various side streets -- Bacon, Sclater, Hanbury, Princelet, Wentworth -- checking out the streetart along the way. I'd read a lot about the East End over the winter, including Child of the Jago, The Worst Street in London, On Brick Lane, and re-reading parts of East End Chronicles. I always have in my head dozens of spots that I want to see, and streets that I want to explore, and I never seem to get to all of them. Having now done this on a Saturday (last year) and a Sunday, I'm not sure which is better -- on Saturday, the streets are rather quiet and less interesting, without any stalls, vendors or many people, but on Sunday it's too crowded in places and I get so overwhelmed with just trying to navigate through the hordes of people that I often forget the various places I want to go in my effort to make it through the mob and not get separated from Spooner.

We stopped into two different galleries -- the one that's in the old Rochelle School in Club Row (Arnold Circus) and the Whitechapel Gallery. I'd wanted to go to the Whitechapel to see the hall of mirrors by Josiah McElheny, but was somewhat underwhelmed -- or it was just over my head because I didn't know enough about the intellectual premise behind it all. However, there's a fabulous exhibition in an upstairs room -- the selections from the Government Art Collection, curated by Cornelia Parker, called Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain. Throughout the upcoming year, different people will be selecting pieces from the vast art collection of the British government, to be arranged around a theme. The works in the current exhibition are all hung salon style, according to the color spectrum -- Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain is a mnemonic for ROYGBIV. Have a look at the exhibition booklet to get a sense of the range of pieces and the humorous juxtapositions. We enjoyed seeing which government ministry owned particular pieces.

Our evening was a quiet one spent back at the flat -- a glass of wine, a hot bath, and dinner.

Expenses:
£3 raisin walnut loaf from farmers' market
£4 Map of Spitalfields Life, bought at Labour and Wait
£5 Lunch at Meraz Cafe in Hanbury Street
£1 juice

19,216 steps
7.58 miles

A Sweater and a Souk

Score! When I was packing for my trip, as I folded my 25+ year old cashmere cardigan that always comes with me to London, I realized that it was no longer fit for travel. A small hole had developed in one of the sleeves, and the seams were beginning to come apart under both arms. Regretfully, I left it home, thinking I might be able to find a substitute at a charity shop in an upscale neighborhood. Since our plan for Saturday was to be in Notting Hill, I had jotted down the address of Mary Portas' (Queen of Shops) charity shop for Save the Children, called Living and Giving, in Westbourne Grove. Our route through Notting Hill took us down the Portobello Road (after a stop at Lisboa Cafe in Golborne Road and the newly-renovated public toilets in Bevington Road), through the Saturday market. I passed half a dozen stalls in the stretch by the Spanish School that had a rack each of sweaters, many cashmere, but saw nothing that seemed right. Then, just before the Westway, was a stall of nothing but cashmere sweaters. On the rack of cardigans, I found one that was just a shade darker than the oatmeal color of mine. It fit and it was a good deal at £20. As the vendor explained, and as I knew, it's quality English cashmere, not the cheap Chinese variety that they sell at M&S. Success, and before noon on day 2!

We picked up some food items, looked at some bits of street art, and then got out of the market by turning right on Lancaster Road. From there, we walked up Ladbroke Grove to the top of Notting Hill where the hippodrome was located in the 1830s, and then down the west side of the hill into the old Piggeries and Potteries area, which was, in the mid-19th century, one of the most fetid slums in all of London. The clay soil here, which was responsible for the close of the hippodrome some 6 or 7 years after it opened because the jockeys refused to risk any more injuries to horse or man on the track, was used in making bricks and ceramics. And pigs apparently wallowed in it. Along the way, we saw a 19th century kiln used for firing bricks. Some history of the area during that time is here.

Carrying on, and after crossing Holland Park Avenue, we took a small detour into Aubrey Walk to see the new blue plaque for Dusty Springfield. Next stop was the cafe in Holland Park for some lunch before pushing on to Leighton House. Because there was a Souk Nour being held in the studio of Leighton House, entrance was free. As Spooner examined the books and other goods for sale in the souk, I roamed around the house to look at the jaw-dropping gorgeous tiled walls, ceilings and floors, as well as the silk wallpapers and various paintings.

On the way home to Maida Hill, we stopped at the London West Bank Gallery in Westbourne Grove to see an exhibition (a few interesting paintings). We also stopped at Living and Giving, where I didn't see anything I liked nearly as much as the sweater I bought in Portobello Road. Back to Spooner's for a quick meal and then on to the Shaw Theatre to see Far from Kansas, an offshoot of the London Gay Men's Chorus, perform their popular double-bill of We Could Have Danced All Night and Little Shop of Homos. Good, campy fun.

Expenses:
£2.50 walnut bread (eaten immediately) and custard tart for later from Lisboa
£3.80 veggie pie from the Portobello Road (for when I'm on my own for dinner)
£20 for cashmere sweater
£3 lunch at Holland Park
£4 glass of wine at the Shaw

18756 steps
7.42 miles

Arrived ... and knackered

Despite my major pre-travel anxiety, the journey went well and I'm here in London. I was a bit nervous because I was flying a different airlines (Delta instead of Virgin Atlantic), from a different terminal at Logan (A instead of E), arriving at a different terminal at Heathrow (4 instead of 3), taking the Heathrow Connect into town instead of the tube, and going to Spooner's new flat in Maida Hill, a part of town I'd only seen briefly from the #31 bus a couple years ago. Some things were better about this scheme (less crowded plane, so I got to spread out over two seats; much shorter line at immigration; far speedier train) and some were worse (inferior in-flight entertainment, jarring bus ride from Paddington to Maida Hill). But I had no trouble finding the flat, no difficulty with the front door lock, and was greeted inside by a trail of post-it notes pointing me to the toilet, computer, power shower switch, and my room -- a bit Alice in Wonderland or Hansel and Gretel.

And despite getting about an hour of sleep on the plane and another hour when I got to Spooner's flat, I boldly ventured forth today and covered a respectable amount of new territory (and a bit of old pavement as well). I left the flat just a few minutes past noon, and headed down the Harrow Road to the Ha'penny Steps, crossed the footbridge, and walked down the towpath past (and a bit through) Meanwhile Gardens. Though I'd never been here before, these spots looked quite familiar -- the blue railings on the bridge, the paths through the gardens, the coots and geese in the canal, the reflections of the buildings in the water -- because I'd seen them so many times in my friend Helen's photostream. London seems empty with her no longer in it. I know I'll think of her often and miss her enormously during this visit.

Continuing on down the towpath, I walked through Little Venice, on the pavement through Lisson Grove (no access to the towpath through some sections here), along the edge of Regent's Park, and up to Camden Town. Weather was kind of variable -- some grey skies and warm, then blue skies and blustery, chilly wind. I took a lot of photos, but haven't reviewed them yet. I'll try to add one or two to this post tomorrow or the next day.

I started out with every intention of walking up Kentish Town Road to Jeffrey's Street to see the new-ish Banksy piece (particularly as his pieces along the canal have been buffed out), but was just too tired by the time I reached Camden Town. So, I decided to do something tried and true. I hopped on the #168 bus, rode down to Euston Station, and went into the Wellcome Collection for a few minutes to see the brand new exhibition -- Miracles and Charms, which is all about Mexican votive paintings, milagros and other amulets of faith and healing. I only had about 20 minutes to spend there, but really liked the exhibition and may try to go back later next week.

Spooner has gone out for the evening to a play. I just took a hot bath and am now making my dinner. I'm going to try to stay awake until about 9 pm, and am hoping to get a good night's sleep and wake up with energy and good spirits for tomorrow's adventures.

Expenses:
$2.40 Mass Pike toll
$22 bus ticket (return) from MassPort lot to Logan
$2.29 bottle of water at the airport
£8.50 Heathrow Connect (single) to Paddington
£20 to top up my Oyster card
£2 for a piece of quiche at Camden Lock Market

21,858 steps
8.62 miles

My Year in Dullsville

Yes, we had an earthquake, but I didn't feel it. We also had a hurricane, but it brought me only a lot of rain and some small branches down in my back yard. The winter was absolutely dismal, and I'm not going to mention it again ... ever.

One of the highpoints of the year was joining up with Riot Prrl, a knitters' league for positive mischief. I've always wanted to be a yarn bomber/yarn stormer/urban knitter, and I added to Riot Prrl's tree project in Northampton, done for International Yarn Bomb Day (June 11). Since then, I've made a few pieces to adorn some of the street furniture around town. Here's a photo that ScribeGirl took of me working on one of my pieces:



I'm hoping to do a lot more of this in the coming year. It sure beats my previous feminist activist endeavor, which shall go unnamed, and which was cause of much frustration. I'm also working on some pieces to take with me to London in October. My plan is to place them in Meanwhile Gardens, in memory of my dear friend Helen, who I think would have enjoyed seeing them. She often visited that stretch of the Grand Union Canal to photograph the birds, buildings and reflections. I miss her company, her humour, and her inspiration as an activist, a feminist, and a photographer.

Planning for my upcoming trip to London is well under way. I'm hoping to make some new discoveries and to revisit some favorite haunts. I'll be staying in Maida Hill rather than Belsize Park, as Spooner has moved flats. I'm looking forward to walking the towpath along the canal to Camden Town, and to getting to know W9/W10. I promise to post regularly while I'm there.

Art on walls, in the park and on the street

My last day in London was just as full of adventures as the first. I'm now rushing around to pack and leave for Heathrow, so this post will be a short one. Here's a recap of what Spooner and I did on Saturday:

• Saw Shadow Catchers at the V&A. Really fascinating stuff -- beautiful, mysterious and haunting photographs made without the use of cameras.
• Met up with Malcolm in the Madejski Garden, walked up Exhibition Road and into Kensington Gardens to see the Serpentine Pavilion and the four reflective sculptures by Anish Kapoor that are sited on the lawns and in the water.
• Took the tube to Liverpool Street, walked up to Great Eastern Street, and saw the Moniker International Art Fair at Village Underground. My favorite piece in the show is by a streetartist named Boxi, who I'd never seen before. Spooner heard from one of the gallery staff that Boxi was working on something out on the street, and, as luck would have it, we walked right past it on our way to Old Street. Boxi was putting the final touches on the work (photo above), which is quite stunning.
  

So, this brings me to the end of my 2010 trip to London and Liverpool. It's been utterly fab, filled as always with new adventures and wonderful mates with whom to explore the city streets, art and history.

It's been good to have my netbook with me, as it's made my blogging easier and I've had access to all my stuff in Google docs, etc. Each night, I've dumped the day's photos from my memory card onto the netbook to take a look at them. I've realized that this computer doesn't have good resolution for editing photos, however. They seem a bit blurry and pixely to me, so I'll wait to get home and put them on my desktop computer before fine tuning them. I think there's a metaphor in there somewhere. Right now, my whole trip is a bit of a blur, with images and recollections running around in my head in a disjointed way. When I get home, I think that things will come into better focus as I really examine the photos from each day and the memories of my friends and my adventures.

Distance: 16,341 steps (6.7 miles)

Expenses:

• £5 for Shadow Catchers exhibition at the V&A
• £3 for chicken and veg pasty at Liverpool Street Station
• £1.23 for Hobnobs to take home
• £15 to Spooner for food and booze
  

A Tale of Two Tates

It was another day of great mates, interesting art and no rain (although no sun, either). And it was another day in which I neither got lost nor lost any of my possessions.

I visited both Tates with Helen and Judy -- first the Tate Britain in Pimlico, followed by a boat ride to the Tate Modern on the Southbank. The major exhibition at Tate Britain now -- other than the Turner Prize, which I didn't see --is the photography of Eadweard Muybridge. I always thought Muybridge was American, but he was born and buried in England, which qualifies him for an exhibition at the Tate Britain. And I'd always associated him only with stop motion photos of horses trotting and athletes running, but he also did some extremely impressive landscapes and cityscapes as well. The latter were very large format photos, shot on glass plates using a huge wooden camera that he lugged around to capture vistas in Yosemite and panoramas of San Francisco in the 1870s. No sacrifice was too much for his art -- he even chopped down trees if they were blocking the perfect view. The photos are incredibly detailed and beautifully composed, regardless of the era but more remarkably so when you consider the time and the technology.

The next exhibition we saw transported us to an entirely different reality. Or unreality. Coral Reef is a series of small rooms, connected by dirty, narrow corridors, each of which contains the objects of real or imagined scenarios. One room was something like a mini-cab dispatch office, one like an evangelist's reception room, one that reminded me of my car mechanic's shop, which still has the grease and grime of 1975. The rooms were alternately perplexing, disturbing and amusing. Helen, Judy and I chuckled our way through the whole labyrinth.

The boat took us to the Tate Modern in Southwark, where we had planned to see -- and touch -- the new installation in the Turbine Hall. The installation, which opened just three days ago, is by Ai Weiwei, who has filled the hall with 100 million ceramic sunflower seeds. Apparently, it's been wildly popular, with scores of people walking through the seeds, playings in them, touching them, moving them about and -- here's the significant part -- stirring up clouds of ceramic dust. The clouds have been so intense that Health and Safety has closed down access to the exhibition. When we got there, we met up with Ray, another of our Flickr mates, and were only able to view the installation from the balcony above or from behind a rope on the main floor of the Turbine Hall. A member of staff was beside the rope, explaining that they are investigating different means of controlling the dust and hope to have the problem solved soon. Other Turbine Hall exhibitions have also run into H&S difficulties, so they should be used to it at this point. I guess we have to put it down to witnessing a piece of Tate Modern history.

Back in Belsize Park, Spooner and I went down to his local, The George Washington, for birthday drinks with one of his mates. It's now raining -- the first real rain of my visit, which is truly remarkable ... and most fortunate.

Distance: 9,959 steps (4.08 miles)
Expenses:

• £1.75 for tea at the Tate Britain
• £11 for lunch at Pizza Express
• £3.75 for Tate-to-Tate boat
  

More art, foundlings and a medicine man

Today's ramble lacked a coherent theme or geography, other than being more or less along the Number 24 bus line. I'm happy to report that, for several days now, I've returned in the evening with all of the items that were in my possession when I walked out the door. Whew!

The day started and ended in the noise and traffic of the Euston Road. I took the tube to King's X/St Pancras and walked down to the Gagosian Gallery, which I'd never been to before. As I approached it, I saw one black cab after another as people arrived or left the gallery. Inside, there were hordes of people -- trendy, arty types -- milling around with champagne flutes or cups of tea. The exhibition was incomprehensible -- something to do with form and light. The trendies were queuing up to put on funny booties, climb some steps and enter a box of colored light. I left in a hurry.

I then meandered down Gray's Inn Road and made my way to the Foundling Museum, getting there just as mist was turning to rain. There, I learned about how Thomas Coram established the first institution in Britain to care for abandoned children in the mid 18th century. In addition to exhibitions about the history of the Foundling Hospital, and about Hogarth and Handel's philanthropy on behalf of the institution, there was a special exhibition called "Threads of Feeling" that had to do with bits of cloth, ribbon or trinkets that the moms had tucked in with their babies when they left them for admission to the institution. The staff always attached the bits to the child's admission form, thus building the country's largest collection of textile fragments from the 1700s and 1800s.

Fortified by another lunch of tuna and sweet corn sandwich and bevvie, eaten in Tavistock Square, I grabbed the #24 bus to Trafalgar Square and went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the 19th century photographs of Camille Silvy. Afterwards, I checked out some of the recent portraits, including photos by Mary McCartney (Linda McCartney's daughter, and a talented photographer just like her mum).

Next stop was St Martin-in-the-Fields, across the street from the NPG. I hadn't been in the crypt since the major renovations that were completed a year ago. They've currently got small models of the six sculptures that are on the short list for the next installation on the Fourth Plinth. There's a golden boy on a rocking horse, a bright blue chicken, an ATM/pipe organ combo that is supposed to make sounds, a cake made of bricks, a war hero guy on horseback who is all decked out in beads and bobbles, and a mountainous island that's actually Britain upside down. I was thinking about going into the crypt cafe for tea and a little snack, but it was really crowded and noisy so I beat a hasty retreat upstairs to the church, where I listened for a while to a choir rehearsal. They weren't doing a classical or religious piece or anything that I recognized, but I worked out that it was something to do with the first scene of Macbeth. It was hard to understand, but I distinctly heard "weird sisters" and "boiling, boiling" and "cauldron."

Back into the grey mist, I took a quick look at the current Fourth Plinth sculpture (photo above) before jumping on the #24 going north, getting off at the Euston Road, and walking down to the Wellcome Collection where I got to have my tea and a lovely apple flapjack pastry. I looked at most of the "Medicine Man" exhibition of Mr Wellcome's collected stuff from around the world, mostly medical or dealing with birth and death. The Collection is currently asking people to donate an object, no bigger than their head, to expand the collection of unique and/or mundane objects. That stuff will be shown starting next week in an exhibition called "Things" that I think could be quite amusing. I'm encouraging Spooner to donate one of his kitschy objects.

Distance: 14,443 steps (5.92 miles)

Expenses:

• £4.28 tuna & sweet corn sandwich, apple and bevvie
• £5 for Silvy exhibition at NPG
• £3.50 tea and pastry at Wellcome Collection
• £10 to top up Oyster card
  

A Stroll along the Regent's Canal

Yesterday's adventures provided a lovely change of pace and a new vantage point from which to see bits of Islington, Hackney and Bow. I met my pal Maggie at the Angel for a leisurely stroll along the Regent's Canal to Limehouse. Highlights of what we saw included:

• The Secret Garden Project in Duncan Terrace
• Alfred Hitchcock's gigantic head at the former site of Gainsborough Studios (knocked down and rebuilt as luxury apartments)
• I Am Here and the Victorian bath house in Haggerston
  
• Broadway Market, where we saw F. Cooke's Pie and Eel Shop and had a very nice pub lunch (not at the eel shop)
  
• The Ragged School Museum

Along the way, we passed street art and mosaics along the canal wall, old warehouses, several locks, a gasometer, lots of canal boats, Victoria Park and other green spaces, and many people riding bicycles, pushing prams, walking dogs or fishing (not that you'd want to eat anything you pulled out of the canal). Although the busy streets of East London were just above us, it was calm and quiet along the canal and we contently chatted away as we strolled.

After leaving Limehouse Basin, we hopped on the DLR to Tower Gateway and were instantly plunged back into the noise and traffic of the streets of London. Our destination was a bit down The Highway, just past the turn to go to Wilton's Music Hall which I visited two years ago, where Banksy has just painted a new piece. It's only a few days old, and hasn't yet been tagged, painted over or covered in Perspex. Maggie has seen it a couple days ago when the paint was hardly dry. I know that Banksy has his critics, among them the rival streetartist Robbo, but I'm always thrilled to see a new work.

I ended the day with Spooner, Greg and Esther having pizza and drinks up in Hampstead. A very long, but totally enjoyable day filled with interesting sights and good mates.

Distance: 28,670 steps (11.75 miles)

Expenses: £8.40 for pizza and wine (Maggie treated me to lunch, and the museum was free, though I did drop some change into the donation box.)

Mr Hardman, Mr Gormley, Spooner and Me in Liverpool

Spooner and I are just back from Liverpool, where we had a fab time. Before I write about the great stuff we saw, I have to fill you in on my mishaps. I did something I never, ever do. And then, not an hour later, I did it again. I lost stuff. First, as we were walking from the train station to our hotel, I took the pocket map out of my bag, checked it, and then put it in my back pocket. Two blocks later, when I went to check it again, it was gone. We backtracked and looked for it, to no avail. Not the end of the world, though. We went to the tourist info center and got another (not as nice as the one that I'd ordered from amazon.co.uk, but perfectly fine). I then folded up the spreadsheet of our Liverpool plans and put it in my back pocket. A half hour later when I went to consult it, I found that it, too, was gone. I put this down to wearing something other than my trusty, though not particularly stylish, cargo pants with button closures on the pocket flaps. I've never lost a map, spreadsheet, Oyster card, sunglasses, or anything I've put in my cargo pockets. Spooner says it's down to my age. From now on, screw wearing the nice pants. It's back to the cargo pants where my stuff will be secure.

Our first stop was a tour -- a very long tour -- of the house and photography studio of Mr Edward C. Hardman, a professional portrait photographer who lived and worked in a Georgian house (c. 1780) in Rodney Street. The house is just as it was when Mr Hardman died in 1988, and it hadn't been changed a hair since he and his wife Margaret, who ran the business and was an accomplished photographer in her own right, moved in around 1948 or so. And they never threw anything out, so the house is a real time capsule with clothing, dishes, furniture and even canned goods dating from the 1950s and '60s. It was quite enjoyable to listen to the knowledgeable guides and to peer into the Hardmans' lives and work, but the best was the room with the photos that Mr Hardman took as his avocation -- scenes of pre- and post-war Liverpool, its buildings and its people. (Note to self: do some serious decluttering when back home in Northampton so as not to leave 100 bars of soap or 40-year-old tins of tomatoes when I die.)

On the way to and from Rodney Street, we walked up and down the Ropewalks, which are very old streets dating from when the area was full of warehouses and merchants serving the shipping industry of the 18th and 19th century. Rope was literally "walked" down various streets, the length of which determined where the rope would be cut for the various sailing ships. The cobbles are uneven, the streets are narrow, and many of the warehouses are now derelict.

Monday's adventures saw us at the Albert Dock, the Pier Head, and up the hill to the Walker Art Museum. The Liverpool Biennial is currently going on all over the city, with contemporary art showcased in the museums including the Walker and the Tate, in galleries and the streets.

Spooner and I finished Monday with a train ride (20 minutes or so) north of the city to the Blundellsands and Crosby station and then a short walk to Crosby Beach to see some of the 100 or so cast sculptures of/by Antony Gormley that are standing on the beach and in the water. The installation, called Another Place, was totally lovely to see at sunset, while taking photos of the sculptures and getting muck all over our feet. We both took off our shoes and socks and went into the low water, but I quickly returned to drier sand while Spooner walked quite a ways out into low tide to snap the sculptures. Lots of people were walking up and down the beach, some with cameras, others with kids or dogs. After the sun sank into the Mersey, as we walked back to the footpath and tried to clean off our mucky feet, we passed a man about our age who took one look at us and chuckled, "You're too old for that sort of thing." Yes, we might be, but we were glad that we could still act young(er) and stupid every so often.

Today (Tuesday) was all about the Biennial, including the Tate Liverpool, a stop at FACT, and a really quick look at some of what was on at the Biennial HQ. Then it was back to Lime Street Station for the 14:48 train to London.

Sunday stats: 16,009 steps (6.56 miles)

Monday stats: 22,208 steps (9.11 miles)

Tuesday stats: 11,538 steps (4.73 miles)

Expenses:

• £22 for train to/from Liverpool
  
• £77 for my share of hotel
• £6.30 Sunday dinner at pub
  
• £7.50 Liverpool tat for pals and myself
  
• £5.50 lunch on Monday
• £3.20 Blundellsands return ticket
• £7 food and wine for Monday dinner
• £3.50 snacks
  

A Day on the ELL

Even though I got a really late start (not out the door until 11:30 am), the sun didn't come out, and the train journey through the Thames Tunnel was a bit of a disappointment, all-in-all it was a happy day. My plan for Saturday was to follow the East London Line, which is partially new and partially reincarnated and is a line I've never been on before, from Dalston Junction to Rotherhithe, alternately riding and walking between stations, and exploring some new or new-to-me bits of the East End. The overground train service has greatly improved since I last rode it from Hampstead Heath -- new carriage stock, smoother and quieter.

When I got to Dalston, I discovered that the two stations, one on the older overground line and the brand new one on the East London Line, are a few blocks apart. I took a long route between the two stations, walking through a very bustling Ridley Road Market and around the Eastern Curve Garden, which is where I took the photo above (by the streetartist Stik). From there, I rode down to Hoxton, then visited an open artists' studio in Cremer Street (not planned, but I can't resist an "Open Studios" sign) on my way to see Ben Eine's "The Strangest Week," which he painted on a hoarding the week that David Cameron took one of Eine's prints as a present to President Obama.

Pushing on, I walked down Shoreditch High Street to Middlesex Street to see another brand new Eine mural and the alphabet letters that he's painted on corrugated metal shop shutters along the street. At that point I thought I was running late, so I hopped a bus on Whitechapel Road, not jumping off at the Whitechapel Gallery as I'd planned, to Whitechapel Station. Spooner rang me just as I was getting off the bus, and we arranged to meet in Rotherhithe around 3:30, which gave me some extra exploring time.

I decided to get off at Wapping Station to wander around a bit, without a map but with some images in my head of things I might see there. This proved to be the best bit of the day -- I've always meant to roam around Wapping, but have never gotten there before. It's full of wharfs, stairs down to the Thames (tide was quite high when I was there), cobbled streets, old churches, and although there's lots of trendy (expensive) housing there now, I could easily imagine the place full of sailors unloading the boats, stumbling drunk down the streets, visiting opium dens, thieving and murdering and doing all the other things that 18th and 19th century sailors did, just as Dickens would have seen it.

A tuna & sweet corn panino and a beverage in hand, I hopped back on the ELL, rode under the river and got off in Rotherhithe, emerging from the bright and shiny new station within seconds of Spooner. We had ample time to walk around St Mary's churchyard, see the bluecoat school (bluecoat schools are 18th century charity schools that always have statues of a boy and a girl wearing blue, placed in alcoves above the door) and the watch house (where the watchman kept an eye out at night for bodysnatchers or "resurrection men").

Spooner went down into the remains of the entrance shaft to the tunnel, but I was too creeped out be the looks of the rickety steps and 3-foot high entrance to go in. He heard a lot about how the shaft and the tunnel were constructed, but I'll just read that online. I won't say much about the train ride through Brunel's tunnel except that it was a regular ELL train that did not slow down and had no additional lighting for the occasion as TfL had promised. The guide kept yelling at us about what we would have seen if we could have seen it.

We decided to separate ourselves from the group when we arrived at Wapping Station. We walked down Wapping Wall to the Prospect of Whitby, the oldest riverfront pub in London, for a pint. Along the way, a couple asked us for directions to the Wapping Project. I told them to keep going down Wapping Wall and it would be on the left, hoping that was correct and that they wouldn't be wandering lost around Shadwell Basin due to bogus directions from an American who didn't have a map and had never been there before. But I was right -- the Wapping Project is actually just across the street from the pub. It's a Victorian hydroelectric power station that's been converted to a restaurant and art/performance space. We were very glad that we stopped in -- it's quite cool and would be a lovely place to have dinner sometime when they've lit all the candles that are placed on top of the remaining engines and other machinery.

Our last stop was back at Hoxton Station. From there, we walked to the garden of the Geffrye Museum to see a fiber optic installation called "Sitting the Light Fantastic" by Kei Ito. Fortified by a quick dinner at Song Que, we headed for home and were back in the flat by 8:30 pm. It's now 12 hours later, and time for us to pack and leave for Liverpool. No blog posts until I get back into town on Tuesday.

Distance: 9.88 miles (24,080 steps)

Change

One of the first things I saw as I walked west on Old Street from the roundabout was this new piece by Eine, spelling out CHANGE in an area that certainly is changing (it used to be quite dodgy, but is now upwardly trendy). I decided that "change" would make a nice theme for my visit. Bits of London are so old and seemingly unchanging. Because I'm here only once or twice a year, I sometimes think that everything should be just as I left it on my last visit. But it's an organic city, in a constant cycle of destruction and renewal, for better or worse. It's been through fires, bombings, slum clearance, economic booms and busts, buildings falling into dereliction or being gentrified. I'm walking around with new glasses -- both literally and metaphorically -- and noticing what's changed, what's gone and what's new.

I met up with my pal Mondoagogo at the Museum of London for a hands-on experience with ancient London. We did a workshop in the archaeology department, learning about how they sort and catalogue the millions and millions of ancient bits that are kept in their massive archives (the largest in Europe) in Hackney. Our task was to dump out bags of dusty bits of pottery that had been dug up in 1975 in a dig under the nearby General Post Office. Some bits were pieces of Roman amphorae and other bits were medieval. To our surprise, they are all mixed together and catalogued not by the era in which they originated but by the "context" in which they were found. So we wrote out labels for "GPO75" and the strata number of the layer the bits came from. The Museum of London relies on hundreds of volunteers to help with maintaining their archives. So, a new activity for me, handling old bits that have seen the light of day due to the regeneration of a building site.

The Boris Bikes are new since I was last here. It's the central city cycle hire scheme that's recently been launched by Mayor Boris Johnson. Bike stands have popped up all over the central areas, and the bikes themselves are another opportunity for corporate branding. They should probably be called Barclays Boris Bikes, but that's just too much.

Here's another change I saw in Chiswell Street. This ghetto rat stencil, by Banksy, has been here for years. Banksy's original had "London doesn't work" on the placard. Robbo, a rival graffiti artist, has been leaving his mark on various Banksy pieces. There's a whole history of the feud between Banksy and Robbo that's not worth going into.

As a change from the usual pub meet with my mates from Guess Where London on Flickr, we did a pub quiz. Nine of us formed two teams for a quiz sponsored by Londonist. The quiz was quite hard, and though neither of our teams won, we had a respectable showing. We came in 4th and 6th, losing only to teams made up of professional London guides (ringers!).

Distance: 7.96 miles (19,404 steps)

Expenses:

• £20 to top up my Oyster card

• £10 for dinner at Mildred's (vegetarian restaurant in Soho)

• £2 pub quiz entry fee

• £3 for tea at the pub quiz

Get me to the airport, put me on a plane. Hurry, hurry, hurry, before I go insane.

The Ramones were singing "I Wanna Be Sedated" on the radio this morning as I drove to work. When they wrote the song, they were itchy to get out of London. I, on the other hand, am anxious to get there. Anxious as in I can't wait, and also in that my pre-travel anxiety level is sky-high. Did I remember to pack everything? Will everthing be ok at home while I'm gone? Will my wonky knee hold up? I'll settle down as soon as I'm on the plane, but will then be nervousy about getting from Heathrow to Belsize Park on the tube. I usually take the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square, where I change trains after climbing about 30 steps to the Northern Line platform. For me, that change at Leicester Square is the absolute worst part of the journey. This time, to cut down on the number of stairs that I have to negotiate with a suitcase and a 10-pound messenger bag, I'm going to change for the Victoria Line at Green Park, and then for the Northern Line at Euston. This will add about 10 minutes to the journey, and will probably involve more walking between lines at Green Park, but it's worth it to cut down on stair steps. I'll still have to climb about a dozen steps to get to the lifts at Belsize Park (it's one of the deepest stations in London) and then a miserable 51 steps up to Spooner's flat. After a nap and a shower, I plan to head out to the Museum of London, where I'll meet up with Mondoagogo to do a hands-on workshop in the archaeology department, handling bits and pieces of antiquity that have been dug up around London. From there, it's on to the pub quiz at the Royal Institution. I hope I can stay awake. Keep watching the blog for tales of my adventures in Blighty.