Follow-up to the Savoir Fayre
I’ve been a bit lax in following this up, but some beautiful photos from the Savoir Fayre have been posted on Flickr. Here are a couple of my favourites.
Some of the same people are also involved in a new project called Do the Green Thing, which aims to make it easier and more enjoyable for people to be a bit more green.
Hold the phone!
I never mentioned that on Saturday I also, finally, sampled the delightful wares of The Beigel Bake in Brick Lane. £1.50 for a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon. Finger-lickin’ good.
Museums and cheesecake
Last weekend was a bank holiday weekend but was relatively quiet for me, obviously because of the gammy leg but also because I decided to stay away from big museums and galleries as these would be overrun with screaming children. Thus, on Saturday I spent the morning in safety at home, making a very, very big cheesecake (recipe and pictures here) and an orange coulis to go with it. Though the recipe is probably only suited to such times when you have plenty of time to do things in, what with the strange business of wrapping the tin in foil and baking in a roasting dish of boiling water, it made for mighty fine eating and saw us through to Monday night very comfortably. On Saturday night I introduced the cinephobe BF to Rear Window, which he admitted was “quite good”.
On Sunday I went to the Geffrye Museum with E. I was pleasantly surprised by the outing, as was E, who, when he found out that it was essentially the museum of interior design, made it clear that he’d be steaming through it at a brisk pace. As it turned out, we were both really drawn into it, going through a succession of rooms, each decorated in the style of a different period, beginning in Jacobean times and going right up to the 1990s, as well as taking in a really magnificent little chapel and a light-filled reading room. It was free, well-sized and plentiful with information, which you could take or leave as you pleased; maybe this wouldn’t be number one on my list of destination spots for every tourist, but certainly if you’re in the area it’s a very nice little place. To the rear of the museum they had also made an effort to cultivate some period gardens too, with a Tudor garden, a Georgian garden and so on. What really made it for me, though, was the beautiful front, made up of the building, once an almshouse, in which the museum was housed, and the front garden that went with it. On Kingsland Road, such an amount of unspoilt green is rare and it’s a real island of calm in an otherwise very built-up and somewhat run-down area.
On Monday, the BF and I went to the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition Skeletons, an exhibition of 26 skeletons unearthed in London, mostly through redevelopment of their original burial grounds. It was the BF rather than myself who was most keen to go, as I anticipated correctly that, while some of the exhibits wouldn’t distress me, such as the skeleton of the man who was a beadle and a butcher, showed signs of a rich diet and died at the good age of 84, there were others that I found very harrowing – the mother with child in utero, the 11-year-old displaying signs of congenital syphilis, the baby of 24 weeks. It is a very well-put-together exhibition, with all the skeletons treated with respect, and all visitors (there were many on Monday – clearly everyone has a morbid voyeur in them) going around with a mixture of respect and curiosity. One of the most fascinating and, to me, bleakest elements of the show was the photos lining the walls, each showing one of the burial sites as they are now: some concrete bollards at the side of a road, an office block, a Burger King. I mean, if you have to dig someone up to build something, at least don’t build a Burger King in their place.
This week is my last week in my job over here and also my last week in my flat, so while I’ll be busy moving out, as well as getting my stitches taken out on Wednesday, there may not be much to report here until next Monday, which happens to be my birthday. I will, however, be at the Big Star (and Robyn Hitchcock!!) gig on Thursday, so there may be something in the meantime.
The Hayward and the hospital
Wednesday night was an eventful night. To start off with, I went to the Psycho Buildings exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, which
brings together the work of artists who create habitat-like structures and architectural environments that are mental and perceptual spaces as much as physical ones. Viewers enter and explore a series of atmospheric, spatially dynamic constructions that use elements of light, colour, smell and design to trigger profound visceral responses that heighten their attention to the relationship between the individual and their surroundings.
If you can get past the artist-ese, that’s just what the exhibition did. There’s a reason it’s been so popular, and that’s because it’s very good. For me, it was a decent size as well, with a few large, decent-sized exhibits instead of a great number of smaller works: it was possible to take in all of the works without feeling my brain melt. Also unusally with modern art, I really got a kick out of some of it, including one ludicrously detailed artwork representing the culture clash its Korean artist felt when he moved to America, which showed his Korean and American houses (at a one-fifth scale) literally smashing into each other; another was an average kitchen-bedroom-bathroom of a flat blown apart from one wall: it had deliberatly been left without context so that you could make your own story, be it natural disaster, wrecking ball or whatever. Unfortunately it was raining when we were there and the outdoor exhibits were either unusable or half-unusable. It closes this Monday and frankly I doubt any Londoners read this but if you do and you’re in time, I really recommend it.
On my way home, I got some shopping. I then managed to trip extravagantly and fall on a glass bottle in my shopping bag, cutting my leg pretty badly. I got a trip in an ambulance and 35 stitches out of it. Don’t say this blog doesn’t have drama.
Finally, some illustration!
I went to my first BBC Prom last Friday, which was a programme of some of the works of Janacek (I’m not going to attempt the accents), namely the Sinfonietta, Capriccio for left-hand piano and brass and the Glagolitic Mass. I liked the beginning and ending of the Sinfonietta, which was a very impressive brass part, but felt the middle meandered a bit too much; the Capriccio left me cold, to be honest; and the Glagolitic Mass was just mental, reminding me in parts more of a Bernard Herrmann score than any mass I’ve ever heard. The enormous chorus could reach fairly staggering volumes, while the soprano was mesmerising in her facial expressions if not her voice.
On Sunday I finally, finally managed to get to Dennis Severs’ House, a place I’ve been meaning to go every time I’ve been in London for the past two or three years. The place is, hands down, one of the best things I’ve seen this summer.
Dennis Severs was an eccentric American who bought a house in Spitalfields and did up each room in a different style, from the 18th to the 19th centuries, with the conceit that all the while the house belonged to the Jervis family, who in fact only just left the room before you yourself come in, or will re-enter as you leave it; as such the house is littered with half-finished meals and burning candles, filled with different incenses and sound effects to evoke different atmospheres. It is the nearest I think I will come to time travel: I loved this place. It is one of the most dedicated works of love (and doubtless obsession) I’ve ever witnessed: the transformation, from the modern world outside to the past inside, is so complete and, apparently, the work of just one man.
Be warned, however, that the house is open only a few choice days in the month for a few hours a time, so plan ahead to avoid disappointment. (This is just what caused my delay in seeing it as I could have gone to it long before now were it open at more regular hours.)
It reminded me a great deal of Samuel Johnson’s house in Gough Square, though this institution is quite a deal less knick-knack-filled and gloomily-shaded than Severs’ house. I suppose the similarities would be in its setting in time as well as the pervading quiet of both places. On entering Severs’ house, visitors are specifically asked not to talk, which contributes enormously to the time-travel atmosphere; in Johnson’s house, at least at the time I visited, it was not busy and those few visitors who were there were the type inclined to take things in quietly anyway, which produced a restful and meditative experience (possibly what should be aimed for in a museum visit, though rarely what I feel during one). I also think Johnson’s actual house went some way to producing this feeling.
It is done in a beautiful, neutral Georgian style with everything in proportion and God in his heaven, and things were only helped by the idea that round any corner I might just meet Robbie Coltrane.
Sieve-headedness
I managed to forget in my last report that on Sunday I also spent a little time in the National Gallery. I find these behemoth-sized museums, of which there are many in London, fairly off-putting, which might explain why it’s taken me so long to get round to it. On Sunday I limited myself to going round the most modern section, 1700 – 1900, in order that I mightn’t scare the horses. I thoroughly enjoyed my manageable little stroll, which included a variety of Van Goghs, Dégas and Renoirs, people of whom even I have heard, as well as others who aren’t so famous (my favourite I very annoyingly can’t remember, either by title or by painter [I did try to write it down at the time but unfortunately I discovered that my bastard pen had sprung a leak over my beautiful Penguin bag, but that's a gripe for another day] as well as one I could remember, which was the painter Caillebotte, whom I liked a great deal). Below is Van Gogh’s Long Grass with Butterflies, one of my favourites in this set of rooms; I’ll never forget my expedition to the Musée d’Orsay, schlepping round rather unhappily in an effort to get it “done”, when I entered the Van Gogh room – which, incidentally, comes just at the end if you work your way from bottom to top, so I was at my most unimpressable - and was completely winded, literally stopped in my tracks by the vibrancy and strength of his colours. I was never a terrific Van Gogh fan before this (I’d nothing against him but equally I wasn’t particularly fond) but that experience really made me a fan. The Van Goghs at the National Gallery aren’t quite so strong in colour, but the one below really caught my fancy. It’s almost like a magic-eye poster but, y’know, art.
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Things have been fairly quiet the past couple of weeks as I’ve been trying to sort out my return home to Dublin (a more involved process than you might think) and generally take care of things that aren’t worth reporting on here. I have some things coming up, however, including a trip to the Hadrian exhibition next week and that Big Star/Robyn Hitchcock gig at the end of the month, so please keep checking back every now and then.
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This is post number 50 on Basil Exposition.
It’s raining again …
I went to Borough Market on Saturday morning in beautiful sunshine. The last time I was there I only arrived around lunchtime and the place was unpleasantly packed with crowds, though more pleasantly packed to the rafters with some gorgeous food. This weekend I decided I’d go to the market and fill up on some lovely grub but, crucially, get there before the plebs. I arrived around half past nine and if you’re in the vicinity, this is when I recommend you should go. It’s not too early for the traders to have set up (everyone had their stalls set out and were beginning to look for custom), the selection is still at its freshest and best and while you’re not so lonely that you feel you’re the only person about, neither does it take you twenty minutes of pushing through massed bodies to get from one stall to another. I made off with some eggs, sausages, bread and fruit and veg (all very nice, all very fresh) for a reasonable price and was home by half ten. I call that good work.
Next up was the Savoir Fayre in happy Hackney’s City Farm. I think I generally expect things over here to be better in some way than they would be at home – in Dublin, there is always some in-built preparation for disappointment, whereas in London I’m used to things really knocking my socks off. The Savoir Fayre was well-organised, the people involved whom I spoke to were as open, welcoming and informative as could be, but all the same I felt it was not quite what I’d been expecting – it was a bit smaller, a bit more ramshackle perhaps than I’d anticipated, even somewhat unimaginative in some ways - this was a homespun, environmentally-minded effort to exchange skills, and there was, predictably enough, a knit and general crafts area, which to me is not especially unusual anymore (though it might have been better if they’d got in a few old lags who really knew what they were doing, possibly even one or two who were making something impressive-looking, but there was only one other who really knew how to knit and crochet apart from myself and the rest had all, apparently, learnt in the past week).
Still, I have no wish whatever to do it down as I had a very pleasant time chatting to people in the drizzle, went home with some ecological all-purpose cleaner and I hope I managed to impart something useful of the art of knitting to one of the girls at the cruelly unsheltered crafting area. But I think now that they’ve started it, I’d like to see what they come up with next time if they were to try it again. It was ambitious and well-intentioned, but I think with some development, experience and possibly getting others on board, it could be something really special.
After this I went into town again (by now grey and wet), first to spend a pleasant half-hour in the London Review Bookshop and then a pleasant hour plus in the LRB café beside it. The LRB café charge something like £2.50 for a pot of tea. Not only did they give me a very sizeable pot of tea, they gave me the same amount again of hot water; thus I was there quite some time, mostly reading (I’m currently on Tess of the d’Urbervilles again) and occasionally looking out the window and betting myself the rain would have stopped by the time I’d drained the next cup (it never did).
Beside the LRB was a place I’d heard of and half-forgotten and so discovering it beside the LRB was a lovely surprise: Blade Rubber, a shop entirely given over to the rubber stamp. I will be making a return visit.
Later I met up with E and some of his friends to go on a London Walk – a pub walk around Bayswater. It was still drizzly but the tour leader (Seán?) was a real gent and managed to be very entertaining, informative and good company throughout. He was also quite a good singer. He showed us some very pretty pubs in the area (the Mitre and the Victoria) but I have to say I could see why this one was on the list of rotating walks rather than a regular fixture. It seemed somehow shapeless.
On Sunday I went to a pretty disappointing Mass at Westminster Cathedral. I’d specifically looked out for a Mass with a choir, preferably in a nice church: when I got there I found almost all of the interior to be masked by scaffolding for renovation works and, worse, that the choir were on recess. However, one thing that I think the English do more than the Irish is go mad on the incense, which is an element I like very much and which was greatly in evidence yesterday.
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I leave London in about a month’s time. If anyone has any suggestions of things I really must do, please give them. Aside from the weekends and my evenings after work over the next three weeks, I will have a week or so free in London between finishing work and going home, and so I hope to fit in as much as I can then. My birthday and the bank holiday are also coming up soon, so if you can think of anything to do or see, be it off the beaten track or so blatantly obvious that I could easily overlook it, I’d really appreciate it.
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Below: I love! I want!
