Summer in the city

Oh London, you really are the loveliest city when the sun is shining. This year I finally understood why Londoners endure so many months of the cold and the wet and the grey. For the few times it is sunny the whole atmosphere changes. Every day is Pimm's day, you go picnic on the Heath with chilled wine and meze, you go to music concerts in abandoned chapels, you laze about in one of the many public parks, you wander along the Camden locks, you giggle at how quickly Londoners are willing to take off their clothes when the sun is shining, you pop into a pub with Wimbledon on and coo at cute overheated bulldogs instead of watching the match, you visit some the many hidden gardens dotted around the city, you spot a pelican or two (whaaa?) at Buckingham Palace, and if you are bored with all that you pop onto a train and go to a beach instead. You get free bikram yoga on the central line, you go on walking tours the City of London organises every year over summer, you see protesters and policemen hugging during the annual Gay Pride parade, you find art beneath your feet, and a bench to sit on and soak up the sunshine. Thank you Summer for popping by, it's been swell. Same time next year then? xx

Living in East London

A favourite East London pastime of mine is cycling along the canals in the area. It's a great way to avoid traffic and to spot some birdlife along the way. On a saturday morning, you start off by the Olympic Park in Stratford and follow the canals past local breweries, imposing gas work structures, cosy barges selling cups of tea and books, smiling poochers, pass the daffodils in Victoria Park, and then get to Broadway market just in time for some Vietnamese coffee and a pastry for breakfast. There you will find purple carrots, a french girl with an accordion singing for her supper, and something so symptomatic of East London. Streetart. Oh so much of it. On a sunday, you get yourself to Columbia Flower market close to Shoreditch and find nothing prettier in the whole city. An entire road closed off and filled with flowers for sale. If you get there just before 2pm, you can even haggle for them at a next-to-nothing price. Shoreditch itself is just eye-achingly crammed with streetart. Some famous artists, and some lesser known ones. You pass the infamous beigel shop that is ALWAYS busy, see sneakers in the sky, pass tattoo parlours and vintage clothing shops, and leave thinking about just how many lovely, gritty, messy and creative things there are to see in this part of the city.

Wondering, wandering

London can be quite a daunting place to visit, so many choices, so many places, so many tube stops to choose from. Which one is worth visiting? Do I wander around until I find something or do I have to know where I am going before I set off? Since I am virtually incapable of decision-making, the latter more planned approach seldom ever happens, and what I stumble across usually is just the case. Stumbled upon.

Whether it be amazing street art that pops out of nowhere along Regent's Canal, Dalston or Shoreditch (you can tell since I have been living in the East),all-of-a-sudden sun glares inside the Tate, Harrods' festive lights in June, a boutique JUST for umbrellas, kissing budgies, Barbican dark alleys, old clippings of the Queen in an underground wine bar, wonderfully empty streets in central early in the morning, a spraypainted christmas tree, looking up to see a car wrecked by a sculpture, a confrontational blue pigeon, a coffee shop offering coffee grounds for compost, or a walk on the Thames at low tide. Always exploring, and still so much to see.

The waters of Sulis

Another visit to a World Heritage site! This time an entire city famed for its Roman remains and Palladian architecture, namely Bath in Somerset, a 3-odd bus hour ride from London. A place apparently first found by acorn-hunting pigs that wallowed in its healing spring waters and cured their skin ailments. We stayed just outside of Bath, in Bathford. You can follow the River Avon down to Bath, and pass lazy houseboats, spot stalking grey herons, riverside pubs and daffodil fields. If you are brave enough to stick your thumb out, you might get a houseboat give you a lift and teach you how to open and close locks! Best way to get to the city I reckon.

There are walking audio guides of the city (how thoughtful!), where you can gander past the honey-coloured limestone buildings so typical of this place. On the cathedral, make sure to look up and see the sad-looking souls clambering up the stony ladder to heaven,  haven't quite seen something like that on a church before to be honest. The Roman Baths themselves really are a wonder. Sulis, the Celtic nourishing, life-giving mother goddess evolved into Roman Minerva and her Greek counterpart Athena and has a temple dedicated to her inside the baths. Temple goers would give offerings by throwing coins into the baths for her to punish wrongdoers. On pewter scrolls you can read requests for Sulis Minerva to impair the physical and mental well-being of various perpetrators, by denying them sleep, ceasing normal bodily function or causing death, until the wrongdoing had been made right. Constellations of crimes beneath the steaming waters, waiting to be fixed.

Onto another famous lady, Jane Austen also lived here! We saw the only sketch ever done of Jane Austen (the original is in the National Portrait Gallery in London) it was done by her sister, apparently an unflattering representation of the author however, she was much more pretty than that. None of the books published in her lifetime had her name on them, they were described as being written "By a Lady".

Musicians playing in every street cove, Gorgon masks, steamy baths and spring sunsets. Oh and the best almond brioche. Ever. Not to be beat really.

Kew gardens and Eel Pie Island

On exploration days like this I love London. A while back little Miss Gerbil came to visit from Amsterdam and off we went for a free David Nash tour at Kew Gardens. I would have been none the wiser at understanding his artworks if I had just roamed around the gardens and come across his sculptures without knowing his lifelong exploration of natural materials. We discovered his propensity to work with trees, living ones with their roots still in the ground (which energetically link his works to the site he says) or trees that had succumbed to storm or age or disease, scattered across the 121 hectare site. The one specific statue is from a 300 year-old oak that had been weakened by drought, it became distressed and gave off pheromones which beetles picked up on and moved into. Along the way I saw 2 trees that were the same species, but one was male, the other female, her leaves were completely different and she was smaller. I loved the idea of trees that beckoned beetles to their doom, and husbands and wives that were rooted next to each other forever.

The Gardens houses the world's largest collection of living plants. We saw one of the oldest pot plants in the world, the 238 year-old cycad Encephalartos altensteinii which had been brought from SA in the early 1770s. The name Encephalartos in Greek apparently means ‘bread in the head’. Hottentots would remove the pith from the cycad's stem and bury it for 2 months before kneading it into bread and baking it in embers.

Then something I never expected to find, a new-found female idol known as Marianne North. She was a Victorian artist who travelled the world by herself and recorded the world’s flora with her paintbrush. There is an entire gallery of her works at Kew, filled from floor to ceiling of the natural sights she documented on her travels from Japan to Java. What an inspiration. At the end of the exhibit you could take a tag and write down a memory you have relating to a plant, reading some of the childrens' answers are worth a giggle.

The final stage of the day was a visit to an island on the Thames! Who knew. Close to Twickenham, I was drawn to visiting it by some hearsay that the hippy haven had denounced the Queen way back when, and had formed their own state for a day or two before the bobbies came and put them in their place. This was complete 'bollocks' a resident told me, but from the gnomed, mannequined and crocodiled decor, one could tell its not of the mainstream so to speak. Although a trendy apartment development had recently made its way onto the island, which means bankers will move in at some point and spoil the renegade charm of this artist collective. What a pity. All in a day's walk in London.

Legible London

As I am sure you have noticed, I like me some pretty typefaces when I come across them. Be they the product of urban scrawls or houseboat signage, DIY lettering or Victorian barber signs, the Queen's greenway or City of London crests, grimey underground placards or art deco hotels, Hackney tags or vandalised telephone boxes, there's always something worth a glance and a quick shot.

Finally, some snow!

Snow finally arrived! Many a snowball was thrown around Hampstead Heath (that looked magically quiet until reaching Parliament Hill, the place to go apparently with your snow sled and sproglet kids in tow), many off-shaped snowmen were spotted, and much oggling was done on a walk to Audley End (that impressive manor-looking place close to Cambridge). Nothing quite like walking over abandoned rail tracks covered in snow, and following a quietly-trickling river to an English heritage site.