16-25 August, 2014
I’m pretty sure one
experience I had in London is going to take some beating for being a
total delight. Currently there are 50 books turned into park benches
dotted about London. I spotted one in Gordon Square.
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| Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway" book bench - Gordon Square |
I was about to move on when
four young ladies came into the square. They were so alive with fun
and happiness. It was written all over them and unbelievably
infectious. It turned out to be a “hen’s ‘do’ ” for one who
is getting married in September. Instead of the usual tacky pub
crawl, they were having a day out trying to find as many of these
book benches as they could. One gave me a sheet so I could go
spotting in the immediate vicinity. It was sad that they were almost
apologetic about it: they said they did like pub crawls too, but
seemed 100% unconvinced, that they had to say that so they wouldn’t
be thought to be whatever today’s equivalent of “square” is. I
just thought it inspiring that they were having so much fun, they’d
remember it, and they wouldn’t be ashamed to remember it, wishing
they hadn’t done it. Wonderful young women.
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| Paddington Bear book bench |
I did a “fan” thing –
went and looked at the building that was home and office to Poirot in
one of the earlier series.
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| Poirot lived here! |
Nearby I was lucky enough to
find what must be the perfect example of one of my favourite treats,
usually hard to find – Eccles cakes!
It was hard not to see
London’s latest supposedly iconic building, the Shard.
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| The Shard |
I wonder if Londoners will
come to rue the day they started allowing skyscrapers to be built. To
me, the Shard has none of the “wow” impact factor of the Gherkin
which I vividly remember seeing first during the latter stages of its
construction.
The “walkie-talkie” has more impact than the Shard,
even if some of that impact is unwanted – the curved surface
concentrating and reflecting the sun so that it was burning or
melting things and one wall has been covered in some sort of fabric
to avoid that not-so-little architectural stuff-up!
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| Walkie-Talkie building - with anti-sun-glare curtain |
I went off my beaten track
again, this time north to Hoxton and the Geffrye Museum. This has
been housed for 100 years in almshouses that were built 300 years
ago. It’s main display is of what we now call the living- or
lounge-rooms of the “urban middle classes”, from about 1600 to
the 1960s. All fascinating but you wouldn’t want to live in most of
them – too dark, too cold, too ‘busy’ with too much decoration.
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| Geffrye Museum - former almshouses |
I followed this up with a
trip to Kew Gardens.
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| Kew Gardens - mind the gap |
This time I got on the wrong
branch train. It was jam-packed. I had no idea what it was about,
maybe football but no football gear, but it sure was a noisy party.
Many squashed stations later, just about everyone got out. “What’s
up?” I asked one of the few remaining passengers. “Notting Hill
Carnival”. Goodness knows where the people on the train were going
to fit in the already jam-packed street I saw as the train
clickety-clacked over a street bridge.
Another train – the
Gardens tourist train. It’s a huge place and very nice but apart
from scale it wasn’t a whole lot better than Melbourne’s
Botanical Gardens. But just as I was about to give up looking for the
bonsai (a very small display) and go home ….
…. I found a really WOW!
section of the gardens – the student plots, and plots planted with
“like” plants, i.e. from related plant families. These were
great! Like the allotments I saw earlier in the Fens area but ever so much more
up-market. (No offence Sue!!!)
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| Allotments ... Kew style! |
I did the tree-top walk –
and felt really ill at the height. But I only saw one person turning back. She had
more sense than the rest of us! The whole visit was accompanied by
the sound, and sight if you looked up, of planes coming in to land at
Heathrow. That was OK. I love the sight and sound of planes 🙂
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| Prepare for landing |
