Category: London

Faces on a Monument

Today I was out and about, enjoying one of those First Day of Spring days, of which we get quite a few, and I always try to get out and photo-celebrate them.

This time I walked along the river on the north side, from Westminster to the Embankment. Which took me past the Battle of Britain Monument, of which this is a detail:

That was the only photo I took of this Monument. Such is my eyesight that I had no idea how intense those faces were and are, until I saw them on my screen. It’s their eyes.

If your eyes don’t work properly and you go on a sightseeing walk, the only way you will actually get to see what you saw properly is to photo it.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Weird Piccadilly photos today

Fortnum & Mason are promoting their tea with their window displays just now, with giant teapots.

Here is a giant teapot made of bits of broken mirror, promoting Royal Blend:

And behind the teapot is me, and Piccadilly, and a woman walking along Piccadilly, into a giant pile of liquid-but-solid tea. Reflections can be very strange.

And then, when I reached Green Park tube, I saw this, in the distance, maximum zoom:

It’s Nova, complete with its crane for cleaning its windows. Weird because the light is so weird. Cloudy, just getting dark, but not dark yet.

I love these window cleaner cranes. Roof clutter above and beyond the call of duty. Best of all are ones like these, which sometimes you see and sometimes not.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The biggest exercise in keeping up appearances that I have so far heard about

I have something I need to stick up here and then forget about. There’s an architectural thing that I write about here, which I refer to as “keeping up appearances”. The best photo I have ever taken of this kind of thing is this one, which is of a quite tall but not at all wide sliver of facade, that presumably still stands in Oxford Street, but now with an entirely new building erected behind that facade.

But that wasn’t keeping up appearances. this is keeping up appearances:

It used to be a psychiatric hospital, and what it will be is the new headquarters of the USA’s Department of Homeland Security.

This newly designed building will preserve the appearance of the old, but hollow it out completely. Behind its old facade, it will be something new. Something else entirely. Which is very appropriate, I think you will agree.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Goodnight and see you tomorrow

Today I got up at 7am, worked on and off on a big piece of writing, then dined at Chateau Samizdata, out west, and am now back here, as in home, having not done anything here, as in at this blog.

Here is a photo chosen from the archives, pretty much at random:

Taken in March 2012, i.e. six years ago, when the Shard was just being finished. Taken from out east, beside the Victoria Docks.

And now I will go to bed, and get up just as early tomorrow morning as I was up today, and I will finish that big piece of writing. I promise this. That’s the plan, anyway. One thing is for sure. I am in no state to finish it now.

Goodnight and see you tomorrow.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A wedding photo session in March 2008

Ten years ago, plus another eleven days, there was a wedding photo session in Parliament Square, and I joined in, as I always do whenever I see this kind of thing happening:

I like how, top left and top right, they tied her train (?) to the railings, to get a better picture. That gives you just a small hint of how much trouble all concerned go to, to get good photos. Two Real Photographers, going at it for about half an hour.

And so totally absorbed in what they’re doing that they hardly notice me. Or if they do, they don’t care. Besides which, given what a spectacle, in a good way, they are making of themselves, they probably agreed with me that they were fair photographic game.

I wonder what sort of life they are living now. A good life, I hope.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Great Big City Thing – new Big City Things – a not so big City Thing

GodDaughter2 having dragged me into London at the crack of 10.30am (which is when that Traviata dress rehearsal started), I of course got to Embankment Tube early, on account of being so scared of being late. I had some time to kill.

So, instead of turning left at the Embankment Tube ticket machines and just trudging up Villiers Street to Trafalgar Square and on to the ENO’s Colosseum, I instead turned right, and went up onto the north London end of the downstream version of the Hungerford Footbridge(s). It’s a favourite little spot of mine, concerning which, maybe, there will (although I promise nothing) be more here, soon or whenever.

For now, consider just this one photo, taken from that spot, at that time:

Because it is the morning, the light is not what I am used to. The Big Things of the City of London are not well light, because back lit.

The big picture story here is that the Big Things of the City of London are, slowly but surely, metamorphosing into one Great Big City Thing.

But when I got home and had a closer look, I was intrigued to see two moderately Big Things already clearly to be seen.

You probably noticed this one already:

That’s the Scalpel. That the Scalpel has been going up has been obvious for some time.

But this one came as rather more of a surprise. This detail had to be enlarged, or you might miss it, as I did, until I got home and looked carefully:

That, ladies and gents, hiding in among all the bigger Things, is the much touted but seemingly never actually happening (but it actually is) Can of Ham:

The Can of Ham is called that because it will look like a can of ham:

Come to think of it, I have a vague recollection of visiting those Big City Things, about … a while back. Bear with me while I rootle through the photo-archives.Yes, here we go. I was there on June 3rd, last year.

The Scalpel was already well under way, thanks to some particularly entertaining cranage:

And it definitely was the Scalpel, because it said so at the bottom:

But the Can of Ham was also already starting to go up:

As you can clearly see if you take a closer look at what it says at the bottom there:

By trying to call this thing “Seventy St. Mary Axe”, but by making it look exactly like a can of ham, and quite a big and visible one, big enough and visible enough for it to need a particular and memorable name, they screwed up on the naming front. It was only ever going to be called the “Can of Ham”.

Some bunch of idiots long ago tried to get the Gherkin called 30 St Mary Axe, and that never stuck either.

50 St Mary Axe is also a Thing, but such a small Thing that nobody cares what that’s called, so that actually is called 50 St Mary Axe.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Quota taxi covered in quota red flamingos

I’m trying to wrench my sleep patterns back into something like sanity, and this now leaves me very tired. Which is the plan working, but it makes blogging rather difficult. So, today, one photo, and that’s your lot:

Plus, although I’m tired, here is a detail, that emphasises the flamingo aspect:

The relevant bit of the website.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

ENO Traviata dress rehearsal

Yesterday GodDaughter2 arranged for me to accompany her and and a selection her singing student friends to a dress rehearsal of the ENO’s La Traviata. Like every show at the E(nglish) NO, It was sung in English. It was also somewhat strangely directed, as operas tend to be nowadays. So, the students were all grumbling afterwards. What were those peculiar gestures the soprano kept on doing? “Such torture” to have listen to it in English!

As for me, my problems were that we were the usual third of a mile up and away in the sky (but with no windows through which I might have taken photos of London’s Things), and I couldn’t properly see what was happening down there in the distance, beyond the woman in front of me’s head and those brass railings that she was able crouch down and look under. I wasn’t bothered by all the strange “acting” that the singers were apparently doing, because I could hardly see it. It was all I could do to decypher the English crib (and thank goodness for that) above the stage, of what they were singing (in English also (but as often as not you still can’t make out the damn words (because of how they sing them))). But the music, by Giuseppe Verdi, which I knew only as a random bunch of tunes that I had just about quarter-heard before, is so good that I was kept constantly entertained. Plus, I understood enough of what was going on to really enjoy it, and to really learn something.

It’s quite a story. A young woman (the Traviata of the title) is trying to juggle short-term pleasure with and against long-term romantic fulfilment, is fretting about whether her true love can truly be depended upon, but also doesn’t want to get her true love into social trouble because of her lurid past causing everyone to think he could have done better, which will dishonour his entire family and make his younger sister much less marriageable. Plus, she is not in the best of health and has to keep seeing a doctor.

I can remember, way back in the sixties, when it was believed that all that social pressure stuff was dead in the water. Plus of course, in the sixties, everyone was far too young to be having any health problems. Girls could shack up with guys and have consequence-free sex, and then live happily ever after with … whoever. I think I remember thinking, even at the time: well, we’ll see. And it turns out that young girls can now be “ruined” a lot like they were in olden times, that “society” has not gone away, that people still get ill, even sometimes ill because of sex, and that La Traviata is still bang up to date.

The Father of the Traviata’s True Love very much wants True Love to stop being Traviata’s True Love, and begs Traviata to give him up. For the ENO, yesterday, this Father was sung by Alan Opie. He was especially good. A bloke had come on at the beginning and said that, what with this being only a dress rehearsal, some of the singers might be holding back a bit, saving it for the real show. But you could definitely tell that Opie was the real deal.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Devil’s Dice in Piccadilly

On March 21st, Roz Watkins, author of The Devil’s Dice, will be signing copies of that book at Waterstone’s Piccadilly, an event which I will attend. This afternoon, finding myself in that part of London on account of needing a new battery for my ancient Casio watch, I dropped in on Waterstones to see what, if anything, they were doing with the book.

They had just one copy on show, in a New Crime Hardbacks display:

Can you spot it? Memo to self: If I ever design a book cover, make the title on the front either in dark lettering with a light background, or with light lettering on a dark background. The Devil’s Dice, with its light orange title on a light coloured sky, is second from the right, bottom row (on account of Watkins beginning with W). Another memo to self: When I become a published author, have a surname starting with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet, rather than almost at the end.

Anyway, here’s a close-up of it, just so you know it was really there:

I needed another copy of the book, because I gave the advance copy Roz sent me to someone else. But I was reluctant to buy the only copy of The Devil’s Dice that they had on show, thus depriving Waterstonians of any further sight of it. I asked at the desk if they had a paperback. Oh no, they said, not for at least six months. I asked if they had any more copies on order. Yes, said the lady, sounding rather impressed when her computer told her, we have eighty copies coming, ordered this morning.

I have no idea what that means. Maybe those copies are just for the book signing, and maybe many will be sent back after that. But maybe this is good, and reflects how well the original launch in Derby went, assuming that this did go well. Anyway, with eighty more copies on their way to Waterstones, I bought that one copy that they had today.

See also, The Devil’s Dice with dog, in Waterstones Brighton. Again, right down by the floor with the other Ws.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A temporary RCM corridor – the inside and the outside

I visit the Royal College of Music quite a lot these days, thanks to GodDaughter2 studying there. There were those Bach Cantatas. Last Thursday there was a recital of songs by Women Composers, in which GD2 performed. And this evening, there was the RCMIOS (RCM International Opera School) production of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. All excellent.

It doesn’t feel right taking lots of photos while in the place, but here was a snap that I both liked and didn’t feel bad about taking:

They’re hardly going to call that snooping, are they?

The RCM is a truly bizarre agglomeration of buildings. The corridors joining this bit of it to that bit of it are labyrinthine. I never know where I am, if only because I am usually following GD2 around the place, rather than finding my own way around.

Here is another snap I reckoned it okay to take, of some building work in progress:

The fact that both of these snaps feature things which are only temporary is what makes me think them not to be breaches of etiquette. I don’t know if that’s truly right, but it feels right to me.

However, the point of these two photos is, as I later (like: one hour ago) realised, that they are both photos of the same things. The first photo is the corridor from the inside, and the second photo, in addition to all that grubbing about in the earth at the bottom, also features the same corridor from the outside. The outside of a corridor is not normally something you get to see, is it?

The reason I found myself inside that corridor is that it is the temporary way of getting from the main part of the Royal College to the college bar and canteen. I took the above photo on my way from that bar and canteen to the main entrance of the College. I was on my own at the time.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog