Sweet singing of the choir

Nothing much to report : between the end of the semester and the festive preparations I've mostly been being boringly busy.

Well,except that on Tuesday I went *ice skating* with a bunch of friends outside the *Natural History Museum* and it was *cold* and had *pretty lights* and *carol singers* and I did remember how to skate, and it felt properly like *Christmas*, and just about the only thing that would have made it better would have been if they'd suspended a pterodactyl skeleton over the ice rink.

After all this, won't you give me a smile?

Re the so-called 'battle of the free evening papers' - there is no battle, in my opinion. Save that of trying to get past the people being paid to hand them out.

London Lite couldn't hold my attention when there was no competition, and my alternative was reading the adverts on the tube (this is not hyperbole - I was in this situation last week, due to poor planning on the book provision front). thelondonpaper, though, is fairly interesting and gets bonus points for trying to draw attention to the Astoria situation in the first issue.

I think that's all the commute-based news I was going to talk about.

Except that TfL have finally got their customer charter claims page working, so every time you're delayed 20 minutes or more it's a little easier to fill out a claim form.

Well, I spied a berry bush as I was strolling home

Today J and I headed south of the river to go to Nunhead cemetery, for blackberrying with my friend JJ. TfL's journey planner was more-than-usually off about timings, so we were rather late, but getting there was the only tricky part.

Roaming around the huge, overgrown, beautiful Victorian cemetery picking lots and lots and lots of luscious blackberries while chatting was ace. It really is beautiful, and peaceful, and I wished I had a camera with me. The giant colander full of rinsed blackberries getting frozen in batches is a most satisfying souvenir though.

She stares up at the sky as if entranced

Yesterday evening, J took me out to dinner to celebrate his new job, and we got to sample some of the performances that are part of the Trafalgar Square Festival. To be fair to Nitro, I could only see about half the staging area, but IMO a fairly long narrative, like Mass Cari, doesn't lend itself to street performance that well, and mostly I was confused and the opera-style singing's not really my thing.

Song of the Sirens (by Mécanique Vivante) was fantastic though - the sirens are mounted on these fantastic cream spires, so they look like flowers against the sky, and the sound is - it's almost indescribable. It's musical sirens, in four part harmony, and I'll bet you could hear it for miles. Impressed.

We also caught the end of Strange Fruit's Spheres, which was gorgeous and elegant and ethereal, and totally different to their Canary Wharf performances, while using the same skill set.

The highlight for me, though, was Saurus (by Close Act) which absolutely hit my 'child-like wonder' buttons. For that half an hour there were three silver dinosaurs roaming around Trafalgar Square, and I was in love with them. Even after I worked out how they were doing it, they were still totally magical.

Maybe these maps and legends...

Thanks to Londonist, I have discovered this blog, this site, and, through them, this toy, which is just *cool* - 3D mapping of areas of London cross-coded with air pollution levels over the past three and predicted future four years - my inner geek is very happy with this indeed.

I got a lust for life

So yesterday, in honour of my friend E's birthday, I went to the park where there was talking and water-fights and cake and silliness and fun, but I did manage to come home with a) sunburn, despite the sun cream and b) a bit of thorn lodged in my foot. Not the *best* of preparations for today's Walk for Life ....

I managed, eventually, to excavate the offending Very Small Twig (about 3mm small - it hurt though!) after I'd spent half an hour with my foot soaking, and fortunately I wasn't too sore this morning.

After last week's heatwave, we had bright blue skies, but noticeable breezes, and temperatures around 25c, which is hot, but not horrid, so, practically perfect weather, really. The route - starting from Prince Albert's gate, through Hyde Park down to Buckingham palace, up to Trafalgar Square, down to the river before Embankment, down the Thames to St Pauls, over the Millennium Bridge, back up the South Bank to Westminster, and then back into Hyde Park - has plenty to look at, was really well marshalled, and my co-walkers made for some interesting people watching.

Now, earlier this week, I treated myself to a teenie tiny digital camera, for a tenner, in the sure and certain knowledge that it would probably be a bit naff, but it'd be better than no camera at all. Let me put it on record, that I was wrong.

It's worse than no camera at all.

Not only does it have some combination of key presses (which is, at most, one 'hold down' rather than a 'press firmly' away from taking a photo) which deletes all the photos, it's also point blank refusing to talk to my computer and cough up the thirteen photos it *might* still have in it ....

Due to a combination of these factors, I have no evidence of the various very cute dogs, or any of the other various things I snapped.

You'll just have to believe me that there was a teenager with lime green liberty spikes, which clashed with his yellow and purple fund-raiser t-shirt [I wasn't wearing one as, by the time I checked in, they were out of adult sizes, which didn't make me that sad, because it was bright YELLOW, but it would have been nifty to be wearing it during the walk, really. ] And the short guy with his dyed black shaggy hair, and his pinstripe suit jacket, and his giant Rodhesian Ridgeback dog, which was wearing his t-shirt. And the teenage rottweiler, and the MAC crew. And that the bit of riverside path just before the Millennium Bridge was swarming with yellow shirts and yellow balloons while I was on the bridge taking photos, and that the interactive fountain outside Queen Elizabeth Hall was making the most amazing patterns of water against the pure blue sky. You'll just have to believe me. They were all pretty cool. In the fountain's case, literally.

So - yes - that wasn't a bad thing to do with my Sunday, and thanks to everyone's generosity I've raised a shade under £500 for Crusaid - I can't tell you how grateful I am for the support! THANK YOU!!!!!

So - who's coming with me next year?

this London life in the summer

I walked the longer way home tonight, and I didn't get properly rained on. I did get slightly rained on, but only that specific combination of heat, humidity, and rain that makes you wonder if you're wet because it rained or if, maybe, the humidity just condensed on you.

On this slightly longer wander I passed

- a truly impressive giant dog, panting in the shade. Huge and solid and jowly with a bit of a smooched face, and a lovely rich rust-fox plush coat.
- three people engaged in Shakespeare, in costume, apparently for their own amusement. At least, they were doing it in a sort of 'dead end' bit of space, facing away from the passing foot traffic. They hit the 'what? your tail in my mouth' part of Taming of the Shrew as I wandered past.
- an entire costumed cast preparing to perform the Pirates of Penzance aboard the Golden Hind. Which sort of hurt my head, but in conclusion it's clearly a cool thing.
- human beings being - human. (imagine that said in a Dr Who sort of voice) People watching is fun.

And I got to walk across two bridges and confirmed that the nifty-looking building between the Tower of London and the Gherkin is the old London Port Authority building.

Thanks to the fantasticness and generosity of my friends, I've broken the £200 mark on my sponsorship page for the Walk for Life on Sunday - I'm sending proper thank you notes out slowly, but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! (and keep it coming! It's an excellent cause!)

She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge

J and I spent Sunday taking advantage of Somerset House's Free Days to go and poke about in the Courtauld and to see the Byzantium exhibition in the Hermitage Rooms - I still get a real kick out of seeing pots which I have written about in the flesh ;)

Greatly enjoyed the Byzantium set, but, while I was wowed by some of the pieces in the Courthauld, I remain slightly boggled that they can charge what they do, when there's so many other paintings by the same artists elsewhere in London. The Kandinsky's were interesting, though, so I might have to wander down to the Tate Modern at some point to see more.

There was dance stuff of variable quality going on in the courtyard, though, some of which was really fun. Just the fact they'd organised a whole weekend where these government buildings are opened up so kids can go and play in the fountains (they even had a drying tent set up) is a good thing in my book.

Sushi and sitting in the park was a really nice way of finishing off the day, before we walked home down the river to test drive my new shoes.

On days like these when skies are blue

Today has been a good day, sitting in Embankment Gardens with friends and sushi for a leisurely picnic, and then wandering up-river to wander around the Tate Modern (cubism and futurism gallery this time) before heading down to Tower Bridge and home.

In the offices of the city

The Scoop's back open soon - free films, in the open air. Moulin Rouge, unfortunately clashes with existing plans, but Walk the Line's quite tempting.

all because you made me laugh

It's right on that cusp between glorious and actually too hot and sunny today. Hopefully it will have cooled off a little by the time I'm walking up to Saddler's Wells. I walked down from Embankment to Tower Bridge last night, just around sunset, and that was perfect - warm with cool breezes and the sounds of the water. I do love living in London sometimes, I really do.

Like, for example, Tuesday, when I got to sit in a room with my best and oldest friend, S, and listen to Stephen Fry and Phil Jupitus be mad and erudite for an hour or two - and Alan 'puppy' Davies won which made us feel very special indeed. The other two guests were a comedian I've never noticed before, and one I generally find faintly annoying, so it was nice to watch him being put down by Mr Fry occasionally. Ahh QI filming - all hail Applause Store and the wonderful Miss S - not least because she's scored another set of tickets, so we'll be doing that again in a couple of weeks.

And I am walking in London

Yesterday I walked around half of central London in search of my friend H and Tag: a combination of my assumption it was at Sadler's Wells, when it's actually at the Peacock, and my brain insisting the LSE was really over by IALS, which it's just not. But hey – I got to go walking!

TAG - me vs the city – I am toying with the idea of writing an email to the creator, so I may post more in the future, but in brief: wow. Physically stunning, and beautifully choreographed. Amazing – and well used – set and did I mention the sheer virtuoso skill of the dancers? But a nagging feeling throughout that I was missing things – about the piece, about the dance, about the music – I suspect some of the words I didn't get were names? I'm very glad I saw it, but I'm not 100% sure yet what my reaction is, if that makes sense. The post show talk was interesting, and very interactive, but I still don't think I've processed my reaction.

*****

Today - meeting up with a friend, C, who is over from Washington, along with his brother and a friend of the brother's. St Paul's for the best approach to Tate Modern – and it's freezing out there, but such a cold clear night the moon above St Paul's was just breath taking, and you could actually see stars from the middle of the millennium bridge. Wandered around the Tate Modern, before heading down river a little for dinner, thanks to the gallery's positively civilised opening hours – the giant white cube installation is *fun* - it's crying out to be touched and climbed, whatever the signs say, and impressive in person in a way the pictures I've seen totally failed to bring across (a bit like the Big Red Thing which is still my favourite ever use of that space)

The Poetry and Dreams gallery had some beautiful pieces and some that, did nothing for me. Hits for me included a Fini! Unfortunately hung a little high, IMO, as it's such a dark, detailed piece. I'm made even more happy because I stopped and was captured by the picture before I saw who it was by. There's a little tiny Henry Moore that I wanted to pick up and touch, Dadaville, which is incredibly tactile, and I thought for a second, something by Cathy De Monchaux, which was actually this piece by Trevelyan. I'm trying to remember if I've ever heard her cite him as an influence. Tucked away in a corner room is a whole bank of archive boxes, by Susan Hiller, which juxtapose fragments and photocopies, collections and creations, casually slipping in realities and periods under the cloak of the brief evocative prose of a catalogue record. I could spend a lot of time in there plotting narratives to thread the pieces together.

close my eyes and count to ten

I don't have anything important to say, but sometimes life's all about the little things, like noticing that it's finally light as I'm leaving work, and mentioning that on Monday there was an eighteen feet tall inflatable Grommit in Trafalgar Square, and one of the thing I love about my city is how almost everyone just sort of blinked and smiled and went about their days.