March 31 2014 – Last of the Month

Today there are oily coots in the water – whether it’s diesel or oil that’s been allowed to seep into the river I don’t know, but it’s shameful.

The day is so still, warm but not sunny, just a hint of a glow of sun behind the white wash of cloud; just the hint of a possibility of rain, but not.  Relentless pinging of the Great Tits.  Stopped writing there for a minute, to do something else, and low, and behold, the Great Tits have gone from pinging to more gentle twittering – whatever they were warning each other about must have gone.  I wish it was possible to take a photo of today’s still quietness – I love it.

In A London Year (I have felt the need to remove its paper cover because of weekend events which I am still dwelling on) John Yeoman goes for a walk to Kew and Petersham Fields and Richmond in 1774 and comments on the enormously long views available from Richmond Park – including Acton, where I lived from 1966 to 1988: where I was married and where my children, Eddie and Chloe were born and went to school, and where we were living when Chloe died almost 30 years ago now, when she was thirteen and a half.  Kew Gardens and Richmond Park were regular destinations when the children were small.  Petersham Fields and visits to Express Dairies milking parlours also were often on the weekend outing list.  Three particular memories – 1) Eddie as a very young toddler being frightened by his first sight of cows.  2) some years later, his sharp eyes spotting a £20 note on the ground, which we dutifully took to the police station and, thirty days later, it not having been claimed, we collected, demonstrating for the children the need to behave honestly at all times.  3) The Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park – an enchanted garden that delighted the children.  Thomas Sopwith (aeroplane designer???  Must check) visits lots of people, shops and exhibitions in 1830 – I’m exhausted just reading about it all.

Sopwith was born in Kensington, London on 18 January 1888. He was the eighth child and only son of Thomas Sopwith,^[1] a civil engineer. He was educated at Cottesmore School in Hove and at Seafield Park engineering college in Hill Head.

When he was ten years old, whilst on a family holiday on the Isle of Lismore, near Oban in Scotland, a gun lying across young Thomas’s knee went off, killing his father. This accident haunted Sopwith for the rest of his life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sopwith

So This Thomas Sopwith was the civil engineer father, mentioned above,  of the aviation Thomas Sopwith.

George Gissing also does a great deal of walking in 1893 – Brixton, Streatham, Clapham, Kennington Park, then to St James’s Hall back in central London – whew!

And so ends March in 2014 and all those that have gone before.

Saturday March 29 and Sunday March 30 2014 – British Summer Time!

Again the days have run away with me.  Yesterday – Saturday March 29 – breakfast with my Glasgow friends – tres delicious!  Mess Café – old haunt and nice to revisit with old Mess companions.  Home to do a few chores and snooze in the outstandingly gorgeous sunshiny afternoon while the friends go off to their London favourites – not available in Glasgow: Muji, Uni-clo, White Stuff.  Meet up again at 5.30 to visit A, J and F so Glasgow friends can see their new house.  Then off to choral concert – a struggle through Arsenal post-match traffic madness, to Prince Albert Road, and St Mark’s Church, just across the way from that very interesting looking boat-like Chinese restaurant by the Zoo.  Gounod Mass followed by Haydn Mass – a bit like buy one get one free – only one set of words to learn for both!  Very pleasant – the Gounod was new to me and quite light – enjoyable.

Best to gloss over the rest of the night – involved illness of one of the Glasgow friends – and probably resulted in an extremely uncomfortable and long train ride back home this morning.

Sunday March 30 2014 – the clocks have moved to British Summer Time and we have a longer than usual day ahead of us.  How absolutely delightful this morning, while having outdoor breakfast with the non-sick Glasgow friend, to have the lovely Volker Dellwo pop out of Chris and Joe’s boat – over from Zurich for one night only – such fun to have the old crowd all together again.  Volker, we want you back in the marina!!!!  We need regular barbeques and pizza!!  Off to King’s Cross with the Glasgow friends, then back for an hour or so of chit-chat and catch up with Volkie.  This followed by hours spent sitting outside and reading, chatting with friend, watching the birds feeding – life is sweet.

A [sullied (ill friend)] London Year Love the Mountstuart Grant Duff entry for 29 March 1881 – wanting to prove that everything can be bought in London he took a friend to Leadenhall Market to buy an owl, to be told, “not to-day, this is Wednesday.  Tuesdays and Fridays are the days for owls!” On the 30^th, there’s another mention – Thomas Hearn 1712 – of Mohocks – “young, lewd, debauched sparks, all of the whiggish gang” who go about London at night physically assaulting men and sexually assaulting women.  Apparently the Whigs are anxious to dissociate themselves from these goings on and do that by denying that any such goings on actually happen.  John Byrom, in 1725, goes with a friend all over the City for food and coffee, has his handkerchief picked from his pocket and then goes with more friends for more food.

5.00 – I wonder should I be doing this now at 6.00?

Friday 28 March 2014 – ISAs -v- Cars

 

 

…and here’s cooty just after my appearance at my window gave him a start:

Well, I reckon I’ve spent the interest I’m likely to earn on an ISA by being on the phone trying to buy an ISA today!  I feel at the end of it that trying to save money is soul-destroying, expensive, time-consuming, and ultimately fruitless!!  If I wasn’t so totally opposed to gambling I reckon it would be just as worthwhile and less troublesome going and buying x number of Lotto lucky dips…………. Or perhaps I could go and buy a Nissan Figaro, which is likely (unlike many cars) to appreciate in value over a year – and maybe earn my “interest” in a more enjoyable way.  All sorts of tempting options are still open to me since completing the transfer of necessary funds today has totally failed, requiring my going into the bank on Monday to complete….. hmmmmmmm…. Might have to see what’s for sale online over the weekend.  The question will be whether blue or green.

Tonight my Glasgow friends are heading down to London and will stay on the boat tonight and tomorrow night – looking forward to an update on the refurbishment of their grand new house up there in Scottishland.  They would be surprised at the gentrification of their old neighbourhood of Lower Clapton Road – or is that the café-ication of it?  Hmmmm thinking that maybe breakfast somewhere over near London Fields would be good tomorrow – if, that is, the wildflowers are developed to suitable splendour to show off yet.

It seems to me such a shame that Kodak are no longer a viable business – not so much from the camera angle (heheh!) as I don’t know how they stand up in the current field, but from the printer point of view.  I’ve been using Kodak printers for quite some time now – enticed as I was by their original cheap replacement colour and black cartridge deal (inkjet).  I can buy these for about £21 and get loads and loads of excellent quality photos printed from them – it seemed such a great innovation.  But sadly, this does not seem to have been a sufficient draw to the general public.  I’m not sure how much in business they any longer are, but remember with great fondness the fact that some years ago, following a phone call about difficulties, they supplied me free of charge with a new printhead and ink cartridges.  They are still in business to some extent – still providing supplies, and today, following a phone call regarding problems with printing with a friend’s Kodak printer, they are supplying her with a new printhead free of charge – otherwise about £24 in the shops or from Amazon.  Perhaps this is why their business has, at least partially, failed, but I do want to give them my vote as my experience has been that their printers are cheap, supplies cheap, quality good.

So looking forward to the promised fine weekend weather to come and also to the glory of British Summer Time!

A London Year today – Mountstuart Grant Duff, in 1855, celebrating the opening of the ~Working Men’s College in Red Lion Square and Clayton Littlewood, in 2008, celebrating a particular coffee shop in Soho.

5.00pm and I believe I can see the promise of fine weather out there.

Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 March 2014 – The Bare Necessities and Happy Feet

Wednesday 26 March.  Oh when will I get back to writing every day?  Days seem to go by so fast that the thing doesn’t happen.  What oh what did I do yesterday?  Got up late I think.  Ah yes, went to B&Q for coal and compost, then to collect post en route to Waitrose, but a loud screeching, metallically scary sound under the car along the way.  Friendly painter and decorator helpfully told me that I was dragging something under the car – I was not sure whether I’d picked it up or whether I was in the process of shedding it.  So, pulled over and managed to get hold of it with my trusty umbrella – off to the garage with it to get some answers.  Freddie (otherwise Mohammed) at the garage identified it – it was mine – the heat shield for my catalytic converter.  “Not a problem”, he told me – only if  I go over something extraordinarily high, it could scrape, and ………….burst into flames – “but this never happens” he said.  However, I think I will look up a garage that does a bit of welding and see if it can be put back in place.  Meanwhile, he’s sourced a diagnostic machine he’s been waiting for (in China) which should be able to identify why my air bag light flashes.  Good.  Will be back tomorrow to get it done – now off to Waitrose for a hit of luxury supermarket shopping.  Inspired by papardelle pasta, prawns, beautiful green vegetables and fresh pesto – hmmm that’s going to turn into a delightful dinner or two.

So, now it’s tomorrow (if you want to look at it that way) otherwise known as today –

Thursday 27 March 2014.  Invitation from Siobhan for a Cooper and Wolf breakfast – a grand idea!  Done!  Car to garage – bus home – nice walk through park en route.  A nap – following another unsettled night.  Work with Christine on designing invoices, quotes, receipts for her painting and decorating work.  Off to garage to collect car (no problem found – diagnostic complete – light gone out).  Along the way I was listening to the Radio 4 film programme – I’m very interested in seeing this – Petri Luukkanen (Finnish I think), following a relationship break-up, I think, decides to take everything he owns – absolutely everything (he returns to his apartment completely naked) – and put it in storage and then film his subsequent year, when he allows himself to retrieve one item per day – exploring how this helps him look afresh at his life and at life’s essentials – apparently he concludes that there are possibly 100 items in this category – it’s available for online viewing on http://www.movie4k.to/My-Stuff-watch-movie-4975701.html I’m definitely going to watch it.  The night before last another gem turned up in the Culture Show – Savion Glover – the delightful New Jersey hip-hop tap dancer – who I’ve already seen a few years ago at Sadlers Wells

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEUO59hBt4Q

A London Year  26 March 1856, Nathaniel Hawthorne visits the National Gallery for the first time and is a little disdainful of middle and lower class people also visiting.  Ah so lovely – Keshub Chandra Sen sees snow for the first time in his life in 1870.  He seems excited as a child.  Were Arnold Bennett to be alive today, he’d probably be watching Mr Selfridge on TV, since he met him on a visit to the store in 1925.  He’s very interested in the cold storage facility for furs and book bindings made of human skin (allegedly).  There’s also a little televisual licence with time – he talks of a man on the look-out for items for his children – one 3 months old, another 10 months old and the third, a year old – a bit far-fetched.

On 27 March 1664 Samuel Pepys and his wife have an argument about her spending on clothing!  But soon make it up – the argument is in bed so it’s easy to see how the reconciliation may have come about.  Edward Oxnard is captivated in 1776 by a performance of Handel’s Messiah.  Virginia Woolf goes to the Maritime Museum at Greenwich in 1926 and is moved to tears by the items remembering the last hours of Nelson.

5.00 pm

Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday 22 23 24 25 March 2014 – Hitchcock, Pirates and Treasure Hunts

Saturday 22 March: I’ve just watched Spellbound – great Hitchcock afternoon – Notorious is on next – after a programme about the wonderful Ingrid Bergman.  I was struck by the fact that the Gregory Peck character in Spellbound shares a name with one of my Anthropology classmates – I wonder if he knows? [ps he does.  He reminded me at our class on 25th]

5.00 pm

Sunday 23 March – went to bed at 11.00 last night.  Woke at 1.50; 2.40; 3.45; 5.45; 6.30.  Not on top form today – but fun with treasure hunt preparations for small visitors –

photos and clues taking them zig-zag from boat to gate and then back again – with possibility of scary Pirate Joe encounter along the way

(which in fact took place later with much merriment – except, I suspect for poor Joe!)  The small visitors had been pre-warned to come armed with swords which were put to good use in overwhelming the pirate, his assistant and his dog.

Final hurdle to reach treasure was to walk the plank, with a quick dash back onto the boat before falling into the shark-infested waters.  Don’t know about the small people, but I was shattered at the end of that day – and to bed at eight!!!

Monday 24 March – to Brent Cross with friend on her jean buying quest – successful.  Lunch at Wagamama – first time in ages – excellent.

 

Tuesday 25 march – last of Anthropology for term – looking at art through an anthropological lense or at anthropology through a picture frame has been excellent. Next term, health and healing.

I’m half watching Mary Berry while writing this – with sound off so not to interfere with my concentration – I find she handles her food a lot – and in fact have noticed this with a number of cookery programmes more recently (professionals and non-professionals seemingly loving getting down and dirty with their food prep.   I’m sure that it’s best to handle food as little as possible, unless it’s completely necessary or there is a need for hand warmth and strength as in dough kneading.  No doubt Mary Berry, and all professional cooks, keep their hands very clean, but nevertheless, why handle it when it’s not necessary?

So in A London Year  W N P Barbellion has a “stagnant day” in 1914 (22 March).  Much as I’ve felt a number of somewhat stagnant days recently – not a great deal of inspiration.  However, the way this “Disappointed Man” writes of it, it sounds anything but stagnant.  I do like this man – he’s the one who only finds he has multiple sclerosis when he goes to try and enlist for the first world war – and although not part of the misery an horror of the trenches, nevertheless dies in 1919.  He takes an “omnibus” to Richmond and describes the various vicissitudes of the seating arrangements and the weather, but most interestingly, his companion passengers, and others he encounters during time away from the bus when he is sheltering from the rain.  I might actually get his journal – I’d like to read more of what he writes and would be interested to know how it goes as he comes nearer to his own death, morbid as that may sound – I feel a lot of sympathy for this young man and it would be an interesting alternative WW1 read.  Lord Byron writes in 1814 of the mindlessness of London parties.

On 23 March 1811 Henry Fynes Clinton wanders in London parks pondering on completing Polybius’ “1,495 pages in 62 days”.  George Howard writes in 1846 of proposals to demolish 10,000 houses for the Metropolitan Railway.  Meanwhile, 110 years later Elizabeth Bowen has been shopping in Harvey Nichols putting yellow and tangerine together in jacket and shirt with the possibility of looking like “a plate of dessert”.  Ossie Clark drove to Hampstead Heath to take his dog for a walk in 1990 and, 15 years later, Oona King is enjoying the colours of Piccadilly Circus at night.

24 March 1603.  John Manningham reports elequontly on the death of Elizabeth I – “hir Majestie departed this life mildly like a lambe, easily like a ripe apple from the tree….”.

And finally I catch up to today, 25 March, 1841, with Thomas Raikes writing of an errand-boy repeatedly sneaking into Buckingham Palace, apparently to hide awhile and nothing more.  William Michael Rossetti writes in 1850 of (Holman?) Hunt looking for a beautiful gypsy woman on Battersea Fields to sit for him.  I enjoyed Clayton Littlewood’s description of the “Panhandling Pam” in Soho in 2008.

5.00 pm

Wednesday Thursday and Friday 19 20 21 March 2014 – catching up and reading late

 

So, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday have slipped away.

Wednesday to Marion’s for a cup of tea and chat about past times and uncertain futures.  I love a friendship that – even though it’s lasted for 45 years – still has things to reveal.

Thursday seemed to pass in a haze of tooing and froing to the laundry, vacuuming and dusting, and eradicating some of the winter’s film of coal dust.  I went to bed tired at 10; woke at 1.45 read until 3.45 – finish Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks – a heartrending and dreadful account of the horrors of the First World War and the apparent utter failure to place any value on the lives of the men sent over and over and over again to inevitable injury and death, and underneath, the tunnellers burrowing through tons of earth in the smallest of spaces – all of them lice infested, under-provided with washing facilities, rest, food, warmth, dryness.  No matter how right it was thought to be to fight that war, and no matter how fictional is this account of it, there is enough evidence in the literature of the period to make it seem undoubtedly the case that those men’s lives were felt to be entirely expendable and of insignificant value.

Today has also run away from me – shopping, treasure-hunt preparations, and not much else.

Two things of note over the past couple of days:  men tunnelling towards and under a Tesco cashpoint machine to steal – apparently £80,000 – hope it was cost-effective!  Joanna Lumley’s idea for a garden bridge over the Thames is said to be coming to fruition (heheh!) in 2017 – looking forward to that.

In A London Year Samuel Pepys goes to the King’s play-house on 19 March in 1666 to get a look behind the scenes at the machinery and costumes – the sights enough, he says, to “make a man split himself to see with laughing”…………..hmmmm I’m definitely going to use sml on Facebook as soon as I get a chance!  On 20 March 1810, Colonel Peter Hawker, with his injured leg, had to crawl up Haymarket because he couldn’t get a cab.  In 1907 Sir William Treloar comments on the poor tooth hygiene of Board School children in South London.  On 22 March 1775 Thomas Campbell, on a visit to England, is surprised to see a “Whitesmith” (one who works in tin and pewter as opposed to iron and steel) making himself comfortable and at home in a coffee house and reading society, as he was perceived to be of the lower classes.  In 1870 Keshub Chandra Sen arrives in England, and two hours later by train, in London.

Keshub Chandra Sen was an Indian Bengali Hindu philosopher and social reformer who attempted to incorporate Christian theology within the framework of Hindu thought.  (Wikipedia)

In 1928 William Inge went to the Old Bailey and was shocked to see an eight times convicted burglar get bound over to keep the peace and a bigamist get 5 years imprisonment.

Cormorant and swans

5.00 pm

 

March 18 2014 – Mark 2 – oops forgot the Diary!

Oh dear – forgot the Diary!!!!!  Here goes.  Here’s a strange find in A London Year.  Charles Wriothesley writes in 1545 of a fishmonger being “whipped at a cart’s arse about London” – apparently a common form of punishment at the time

George Macaulay picked violets in Clapham in 1797.  Colonel Peter Hawker, though not so well in 1826, manages to go and hear Carl Maria Von Weber conducting his own Der Freischutz.  In the year of my Father’s birth, 1907, Sir William Treloar reports on the 12 months’ hard labour handed down to a cook for stealing marmalade and bacon from his employer.

Tuesday March 18 2014 – Art and Anthropology Again

 

A great final day of student (and teacher) presentations about art today in Anthropology.  What an amazing range of  diverse ideas, with, at the same time, many similarities and links and connections – particularly the journey from Mali, via Addis Ababa and Haile Selasse, to Canterbury and Sir Thomas Becket.  Also, particularly interesting, was the way art impacts on us, on our beliefs, our ideas of creation and creativity, its centrality to all that is human.  Finally, the various modes of delivery demonstrated creativity in action – it’s been a great term – final session next week sadly – so much more that we could look at, talk about and explore.  There was one piece in particular today – Picasso’s goat sculpture – which reminded me of another of my favourite artists, whose work centred on a favourite animal – Barry Flanagan’s Hares – wish I’d got that in my presentation now – but here’s an example in any case:

…………and of course, any photo of a Barry Flanagan hare has to be accompanied by my beautiful hares – one given me by my friend Cath, another by my lovely nephew and niece, Chris and Jenn, and another I bought for myself on a mug – along with my beautiful dragonfly candle holder given me by Siobhan and the little glass vase found in my Grandmother’s village of Kojsko, Slovenia, containing a gorgeous white carnation from the plants bought for me by my brother Mike, and sister in law, Lyn.  My, my what lovely friends, family and things I have!

5.00 pm turned out nice!

Monday 17 March 2014 – a dreary day lightened by memories of Sofia

 

Some days are just not great – nothing particularly exciting to report; a trip to ToysrUs a bit disheartening – a lot of cheap, tawdry, but overpriced stuff and nothing amazingly exciting – plus the place is not doing so well so few customers and few staff – dreary and a bit depressing; Ikea okay, but the plan I had to buy a storage container to put under the computer to raise it up a bit turned out to be too high – and sent the computer up too far and so at the wrong head angle.  Ended up with some boards instead which did the job but without the added benefit of storage.  However, on a brighter note I have a fun jumping bean – one too many for the treasure bags I’m putting together for a treasure hunt for some small visitors at the weekend.

Today is the birthday of Sofia Majewski.   Sofia and I lived opposite each other in Eden Hill, Western Australia, when we were 10, and became friends.  Even though it was a short-lived friendship (Sofia went to the Catholic high school and I went to a non-religious one and then we moved away),  I’ve always remembered our friendship and 2 or 3 years ago I found her through various internet researches, and then, in 2012, visited her and her lovely partner, Peter, in Canberra.

 

 

Photos from round and about Sofia and Pete’s home

Even though our lives had diverged by several thousand miles, there were a number of similarities – of political outlook; music; living lives a bit outside the conventional.  It was a good friendship to have rekindled and to maintain.

Blimey!  If I think today is a bit dreary, it’s positively glorious in comparison to the one Henry Machyn reports on in 1563, in A London Year.  He writes of a man hanging himself in his privy house (I Presume, toilet); a maid falling out of a window and breaking her neck, and another woman trying to kill herself with a pair of shears and failing, but dying anyway from her injuries.  Looks like this has never been a very good day for anyone – in 1748 Miss Ireland Greene and her companions were in a coach which overturned – they were not hurt.  Colonel Peter Hawker is “Tortured with a toothache” in 1842, and is much relieved to have it extracted.  In 1881 Louisa Bain writes of an attempt to blow up the Mansion House.  And, a little personal history – David Bruce writes in 1968, of the Grosvenor Square anti-Vietnam demonstration.  I was there.

5.00 pm

Sunday March 16 2014 – Outside

 

So, it’s been an outdoory sort of a day today, after a late breakfast, spent mostly in the rocking chair,

reading Birdsong, hearing bird song, watching birds feeding and singing and generally hopping about,

 

 

talking composting toilets in boats, listening to a cacophony of horn blowing up on the hill – traffic stalled and frustrated it seems with the Purim celebrations of the Hassidic community – which each year gets more animated, musical, and extremely costumed –  with a couple of interludes – one to inspect the composting toilet, and another with the hedge clippers, cutting long grass.  Even the 5.00 pm photo is from outdoors today – a view from the rocking chair.

Meanwhile in A London Year John Evelyn, in 1687, is on Blackheath, watching a trial of mortar bombs being set off.  Sir Frederick Pollock goes to hear Dickens read in 1858.  In 1925 A C Benson heads to Billingsgate and is appalled by the stench.