Tuesday 29 August 2006

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.

Friday 4 August 2006

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.

Wednesday 2 August 2006

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.