Ghost Forest

As I was coming across Trafalgar Square this morning, I was stopped in my tracks be Ghost Forest, by Angela Palmer - there's something very powerful about this assembly of downed trees - their sheer scale, for one thing. (There's a handful of my photos here)

It's in place until Friday, and well worth a side trip to see in person.

life takes turns like fiery shadows

Last night I had the privilege of going with a friend to the award ceremony for the first Welcome Trust Book Prize - a new and extremely generous prize, intended to stimulate interest and debate about medicine and literature.

You might think that with medicine and illness being such a central common experience in human life, such a prize would be redundant, so I was most surprised that the winner - Andrea Gillies - mentioned during her speech that the Guardian had declined to publish a review of her book because it wouldn't have suitably general appeal. Keeper is a story about living with someone who's living with Alzheimer's, and it's startling to think that that's considered a niche thing - I know so many people who's lives have been touched both by the disease itself, and by how that illness has changed people they love. It's certainly a book that's now on my reading list, along with several others from the short list.

since they took down your name

Foyles have posted their events listings for the run from tomorrow (Martin Bell with his new book on the MP's expenses scandal) through to December (Redefining a Classic - Making Classics Relevant in the Modern Age) - there's a rich vein of free events, with a sprinkling of paid ones, all brought to you by one of my favourite London bookshops.

Check them out, and email your reservations soon before they run out of tickets.

(Unrelated: post title comes from '95 Charing Cross Road', by The Penny Black Remedy, and is relevant only by accident of address.)

* Photo by Adam Greenfield, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Feed your mind

Can you get to Gower Street at lunchtime? If so, check out these free lunchtime lectures - what a wonderful richness of subjects: today, Vampires, new week the interaction of courts and hospitals in the nation's health, and the list goes on.

(Unfortunately, I can't get to Gower Street in my lunch break, so I'll have to settle for watching the video versions they provide.)

So, the Spear-Danes in days gone by...

Free tonight? There are still a handful of tickets available to see/hear Benjamin Bagby giving a performance of Beowulf in Old English, at the British Museum, in honour of the one thousandth anniversary of the epic.

If you're not free tonight, the performance goes with a free exhibition, where the original manuscript will be on display until January. (The Heaney translation is in our library, too, if any of my students are reading this)

* Photo by dunechaser, used under Creative Commons, with thanks. (Check out his gallery of Literary Minifigs!)

But summer`s gotten away from us

So, One and the Other ended yesterday, and I must admit as I came into work this morning, the plinth looked not just empty but somehow bleak and bereft. I'd gotten used to the always looking up as I cross the square to check who was there and what they were doing.

It's been grand - not just the plinthers themselves, but the wider conversations, especially as it seems to have outlasted the 'modern art is rubbish' knee-jerk. As I was walking home the other day, I saw a policeman explaining what was going on, and talking about some of the other plinthers who he'd seen to a little girl, about 6 or 7 years old, while her mum was taking photos of the square. How often do you get policemen talking to kids, at length, about modern art? Not often enough, I'd guess.

In totally unrelated news: Angels - costumiers for film and tv and fancy-dress suppliers to the stars - are holding a uniform sale next month. 250,000 items, almost all genuine issue, dating from 1900 onwards. I predict that the queue will be huge, and entirely worth it.

* Photo by chrisjohnbeckett, used under Creative Commons.

runs on without you

Today is National Poetry Day, and I'm just squeaking in before midnight...

~~

I keep coming back to this as a favourite London poem, and this is both a fabulous reading, and a fabulous presentation of it : Benjamin Zephaniah reading The London Breed

~~


For a total change of pace, here's some John Burnside: a contemporary Scottish poet whose work has a way of winding its way into my memory and my heart.

Dark Green
(From Myth of the Twin)

There is always a place on the way
where the path curls in the dark,

into the smell of dust
and the stillness of nettles.

There is always a litter of stones
or a broken roof

a few steps into the shade;
an empty skull, a ribcage stitched with grass,

barely a trace of vapour that had lived
before you came:

a remnant of mucus and water, hatched on a bone,
like the silver-and-eggshell perfume after a birth,

or the whisper that swells and recedes in the quick of your mind
when you wake in the day, and the bright dream runs on without you.

********

Or something more traditional? Maybe Christina Rossetti?

This section of Goblin Market, for example:

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries-
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries--
All ripe together
In summer weather--
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy;
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye,
Come buy, come buy."

~~~~~~~

* Newspaper blackout poem 'All In A Night's Work' by Austin Kleon, used under Creative Commons.

Like the ribs of a broken umbrella

London, like many big cities, is already made up of many overlapping versions of itself, so the idea of one more, just a slip-though-the-cracks away, is fertile ground for fiction.

A while back, I picked up Black Tattoo, by Sam Enthoven , which is a YA fantasy book, set not just in London, but in parts of London I'm very familiar with. (The author used to work at a bookshop just up the road.) While talking about it with a friend, they were started to discover I'd not read Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville. I hadn't even heard of it; had no idea he'd ever written a YA book, but I'm really glad I tracked it down. I haven't been so charmed or entranced with a London story since Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

Gaiman's London Below is quite different to Miéville's Ab-Cities (London is not alone in having an alter-ego - there's also mention of No York, Parisn't, Lost Angeles, Sans Francisco, Helsunki, Hong Gone, Romeless ...) but they share that same kernel of one more 'other London' which is so terribly tempting. After all, the London experienced by premiership footballers is just as unfamiliar and impenetrable to me as Un Lun Dun, and rather less interesting to me!

Not only does Un Lun Dun touch on many of my favourite fantasy elements, subverting the standard 'prophesy and the chosen one' line, for example, it's also alive with Miéville's love of language. This is a space where the puns can run wild (quite literally) - 'un-brellas' and the very word 'binja' amuse me far more than I should probably admit in public.

I wish I could buy all of these books for work's collection, but leisure reading isn't our focus, so, instead, if there are any of my students reading this: Westminster Libraries have multiples of all three.

* Photo by m.by, used under Creative Commons.

We are the office block persecution affinity

Over on the LUP's group blog, we're talking about favourite buildings, ahead of this weekend's Open House Weekend events.

It feels like almost everywhere else is talking about the launch of Dan Brown's new book, though, and the combination reminded me of something: Freemasons. Specifically, Freemasons’ Hall in London, which is an imposing art deco building near Covent Garden, and the headquarters of the oldest Grand Lodge in the world.

You might be surprised to hear that this secret society offers free public tours, but they do, so if Dan Brown's fictional account of Freemason ceremonies has piqued your interest, you can get inside the Grand Temple with no subterfuge required.

Down by the Thames, lights that sparkle like gems

Planning ahead - the BFI London Film Festival will be running through the second half of October, and ticket bookings open soon, not just for the film screenings, but also for the range of talks, workshops, and other events that go with them.

Also, confirmation that the Trafalgar Square screening will run again this year - free, fascinating short films from the BFI National Archive and London's Screen Archives, in London's living room.

***

In less long-range planning news, it's the Thames Festival this weekend, which offers loads of free events to get involved in, like the Feast On The Bridge and the Night Carnival

Follow Friday, aka twitter resources

Two of my colleagues have started using Twitter as a way of getting timely info to students this semester, and as a result a bunch of students have joined Twitter for the first time.

(This Telegraph blog post is a decent general run through of how to get started on Twitter.)

'Follow Friday (or #FF) is a Twitter 'tradition' where users post recommendations of people they follow. Personally I don't find a list of just account names particularly helpful, so I'm going to take a whole blog post to put together some suggestions of accounts our new-to-Twitter and new-to-London students might want to check out:

General

The BBC, the Guardian and the Times all do a range of feeds, from just the big breaking news stories (eg @bbcbreaking) to more in-depth subject focussed feeds like @bbchealth or @guardiantech.

@DowningStreet - official account for the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown

London

@londonist - if you're not reading this site regularly, the twitter stream is a great way to keep an eye on London news and upcoming events

@londonwestend for West-end focussed updates, including lots of free events

Museum and gallery accounts in cultural areas you're interested in - @BarbicanCentre, @Tate, @V_and_A, @Sadlers_Wells, @RoyalOperaHouse etc etc

@londonweather for your daily forecast

@towerbridge (see this Londonist post for the best summary of why, or why not)

@BBCLondonNews - London news from the BBC

@gigsinlondon - gigs in London, including the free and the 'secret'.

Libraries

@nd_lup_library for updates on the LUP library (shameless self promotion - check)

@WCClibraries for news on Westminster Library events and promotions

@SenateHouseLib to keep up to date with the building works if you're thinking of taking out membership there

@BritishLibrary - Britain's national library.

Personalities

@stephenfry In the words of the song 'thou shalt not question Stephen Fry' - there is a very good reason that he's one of the most followed people on Twitter.

@EddieIzzard - comedian, currently running a ring of back-to-back marathons around the UK.

@neilhimself - author Neil Gaiman

@JohnCleese - the man himself

@MayorOfLOndon - Boris Johnson

Readers who are on Twitter: who or what would you add to this list?

Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle

On the one hand, there's an argument to be made that the demise of thelondonpaper, scheduled for the end of this month, is a good thing for London's streets. There's the opposing argument, though, that it's the wrong half of the free-evening-paper brigade that's going, and there's no question that it's a loss for everyone who works on the paper.

They are at least going out with a bang, though - their Headliners mini festival gives you over 50 acts, in 13 central London venues, over two days (16th and 17th Sept) and it's not too late to get a ticket. Check out the website for venues, line-up, and ticket info : http://thelondonpaperheadliners.com/

We wait in the shadows

I'm at work today, despite the bank holiday, and at 8am this morning, the streets of east London were deserted. Really, eerily, did-I-miss-the-zombie-apocalypse deserted.

I think my sensitivity to the empty streets and lack of traffic might have something to do with one of the books I read this weekend - Stephen Baxter's Flood, in which the world ends, starting in London. Well, starting in London from the perspective of the characters in the book, at least. The descriptions of the the early floods in central London are really vivid, which I'm sure I'll remember them next time I walk down the Embankment at high tide, plus now I'll have something to think about whenever I'm stuck on the Dartford Crossing bridge looking over at Lakeside! (glug, glug, glug)

It's not Romanitas or Neverwhere, which are two of my favourite alternative Londons, but it certainly lingered in my mind this morning!

To the safety of the town

It's not good to get home, turn on the late night news, and find yourself thinking 'Oh - so that's why there were all those police officers at the station.' Still less so when the news is about rival football fans in a street-battle that sent several people to hospital.

It's particularly startling to me because West Ham fans are the people who, over the years, have convinced me that living next to a football club isn't such a bad thing.

I used to live right down the road from another football club - a smaller one, lower down the leagues, and I learned pretty quick to plan my weekends around their games so I wasn't sharing a tube station with fans on their way to matches if I could avoid it.

The experience almost put me off moving into a house so close to a much larger club, but I went back to view it a second time on a match day, and was pleasantly surprised. The tube was busy, sure, and a bit loud, but it wasn't threatening. There were whole families wearing team colours, and a big burly guy with a can of beer in his hands leapt to his feet to offer his seat as soon as an elderly lady got on at the next station. Very different from my experiences before. My neighbour goes to matches with his kids - and his youngest girl was only about 6 when I moved in next door.

I'm not a football fan, but I've recommended Upton Park to friends as a place to see a match in the past, and I've never felt uncomfortable when I'm sharing my streets and my tube carriage with people on their way too or from a match.

But the news on Tuesday told a far different story; one that saddens and worries me.

Crowds are always volatile things, and it's always good to be aware of how quickly the mood can change. Maybe it's just a few bad apples. Maybe it was just this match, with it's historical rivalry.

I really do hope that it was a one-off, an aberration, and that my neighbours, and the other fans and families like them will make it clear to the guys who were out for a fight that they're not welcome.

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter

Dan Zambonini's alternative tube map has got me thinking about suggestions to make for the right hand side of the map, which is looking a little thin compared to the Northern Line and zone 1.