I was walking over Westminster Bridge today and saw a rather nice Dutch barge on the water. I wondered if it was one of the many boats that’ll be taking part in Sunday. By the time I got my camera out it was too late for a photograph.
Looking towards Lambeth Bridge, I saw some boats travelling in what looked like formation.
Formation
It can quite easy to attribute human characteristics to the most unlikely objects. Some houses seem to smile, others glare down on passersby like Victorian beadles judging the undeserving poor.
Bicycles somehow lend themselves to this anthropomorphism quite readily. I haven’t given my bike a name, but Andrew Sykes’ bike is called Reggie, and even has its (his?) own Twitter account.
But I did read Flann O’Brien’s books at a susceptible age, and sometimes there are bikes that seem to confirm his theories. In case your own education has somehow omitted his writing, here’s a taste:
“The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles…when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.”
― Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman
So when I saw this bicycle, apparently loitering on a corner, riderless, I naturally started to wonder. Because of course the bicycles are also half man…
Loitering
A photo from the City that I took at lunchtime yesterday.
It is Richard Rogers extension to the Lloyd’s Registry of Shipping. I have posted other pictures of the older building before. I find both wonderful in entirely different ways.
Reach for the Sky
A dingy section of street under a Victorian railway arch is not the most likely place to find mosaics, let alone mosaics of important buildings in Spanish town complete with graffiti.
La Casa de las Conchas
I’ve been to Salamanca several times. I even spent part of one summer not learning Spanish there. It is very beautiful, but the scenes of hell in the cathedral make you remember the zeal with which the Inquisition purged the populace. And why London ended up with a Spanish and Portuguese synagogue. There is a rather lovely and peaceful convent, but the name slips my memory. It’s been a long day. Continue reading
Don’t you just love the way you stumble across little bits of history that conjure up people and lives in places you know?
Just along the Albert Embankment, not far from Lambeth Palace, is White Hart Dock. before the embankment was built, it led directly to the Thames. Later, an underroad tunnel led to the river. It was a public dock that from the early nineteenth century was used by one of the great Lambeth potteries, Doulton. Doulton’s main factory was just round the corner on Black Prince Road. Edward the Black Prince died young. It was his death that precipitated the Wars of the Roses as Richard II’s ambitious uncles fought for power. The White Hart was Richard’s emblem.
Forgotten and neglected, White Hart Dock was just another overlooked part of London’s history. Then in 2009, refurbishment of White Hart Dock began as part of an ongoing public art project funded by Lambeth council.
Handspring Design, a small interdisciplinary practice in Sheffield, was chosen to produce artwork to celebrate the site.
The result was a series of arches, like the ribs of a boat, above the dock, and boat shaped street furniture on the Embankment.
Just perfect. Shame about the Coke can.
If last summer was the summer of hollyhocks, this season has to be the tulip spring.
These tulips are undoubtedly on their last legs. I nearly put them in the compost yesterday, but there is something so beautiful and vulnerable about them.
They are like ballerinas. Each time I look, they have moved to new, achingly fragile poses.
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I have posted this picture before.
It always makes me smile.
I hope it works for you too.
Perfect Happiness
One of my best ever weekends was working as a volunteer steward for Thames 21, on the foreshore in front of the Tower of London. I got to wear a fluorescent jacket and stomp about in gum boots with a black plastic bag and a litter-picker. It was National Archaeology Weekend, and the only time that stretch of the foreshore is open to the public.
Not that I was terribly keen on most of the litter, at least not the modern stuff. It’s truly dreadful how many little plastic straws from tetra packs of fruit juice and Ribena end up in the river. But I do like a bit of historic rubbish; old roof tiles, bits of broken china, rusty nails from boatyards, seaglass. I wouldn’t mind the odd coin or piece of jewelry either, but I’ve never found any.
A few years ago, some children out with the Thames Explorer Trust found some fragments of Roman mosaic. My most exciting find has been a small whetstone. I keep it on the kitchen windowsill.
So you can imagine how much I enjoyed Mark Dion’s Cabinet of Curiosities when it went on display at Tate Modern back in 2003. The contents all came from two sites on the Thames foreshore, one at Bankside, the other at Millbank where Tate Britain stands on the site of the old Millbank prison.
I was like a child with my nose pressed to the sweetshop window.
Opposite Millbank, there’s a slipway. It is used by DuckTours, a company that does guided tours of London in amphibious craft. It looks a lot of fun, but I have heard some of the info they give is dodgy.
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About twenty-five years ago, I bought a magnolia tree for my parents. I bought them another tree too, but I don’t remember what it was called. Magnolias were quite exotic then. I just knew that my parents had said they would like one.
Now they are ubiquitous, so it is fortunate that they are also beautiful and come in so many colours. This one, a vibrant pink, is near my home. I think it is magnificent.
As those of you know who follow this blog, the cat I write about now, my sweet ginger ninja, is not the cat with whom I first shared this page. A boy of decided opinions, and strong personality, I’m sure had he been literate, the page would be called CatandIsobel. Or possibly, Cat.
He converted this dog person into a cat appreciator, kidnapped my heart and proceeded to conquer my friends and family, as well as making me new friends from his own large circle of admirers.
It sounds like a big claim, but he changed my life. He was a tie, a responsibility, a worry. All those things that people say when they tell you why they don’t want pets. Things I had agreed with. But he gave more than he took, even when he didn’t know it. A visit from Cat brightened Mother’s day. He sliced through her dementia to the animal lover she remains. She was proud that I could let him out of the car and he would walk straight up her garden path to greet her.
When she hovered between life and death last March, he slept on her bed, and she beamed to see him there.
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