A London miscellany

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ATP finals, Cenotaph, Fashioned from Nature, Lorenzo Lotto, National Gallery, Nervous States, Regent's Park, SS Mendi, The Guardian, Willaim Davies

After visiting the Fashioned from Nature exhibition, I made my way to Westminster and walked up Whitehall, stopping at the Cenotaph which had been the scene just four days previously of the remembrance service, 100 years to the day after the ending of the First World War.

My father served in the RAF during WW2

I was particularly moved by the text of this African wreath: 

“Be quiet and calm, my countrymen, for what is taking place is exactly what you came to do. You are going to die….. but that is what you came to do…. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers.  Swazis, Pondos, Basutos, we die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with or bodies.” Reverend Isaac Wauchope Dyobha – Address to the doomed men of the SANLO, aboard the SS Mendi, sunk on its way to France 21 February 2017.  

In fact she sunk in thick fog, struck by a Royal Mail ship.

Continuing up Whitehall, I was pleased to see that this gathering of Brexit supporters standing opposite the Cabinet Office, where (yet another) crucial Cabinet meeting was about to takes place, was nothing like as numerous as 700,000.

I was aiming for Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery 

where I met Mary for lunch.  Afterwards we went to the Lorenzo Lotto (c1480 – 1556) – no, I hadn’t heard of him – portraits exhibition there.  

I had been pleased that the Fashioned from Nature exhibition had not restricted photography, (it was my failure to ensure there was a memory card in my camera that had) but was reprimanded after I had taken a few at this one, so I shall content myself with sharing just these pictures I took during an introductory video.

This really gave me a desire to visit the north Italian countryside…

In the evening I went to a very interesting talk at the offices of The Guardian, where one of the newspaper’s editors interviewed William Davies, Reader in Political Economy at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. He had just published a book, Nervous States – how feeling took over the world. 

William Davies is on the right

His explanations around the rise of populism and fake news in politics were extremely interesting. 

The next two days were spent at the O2 watching the tennis, so I was not looking for too much activity in the hours remaining on Saturday.  Mary and I went for a gentle walk in Regent’s Park.

Then we joined four of her tennis club friends for a coffee in the club’s café in the Park.

My London visit was completed by watching, with Mary, the first of the ATP tennis semi-finals on television.  Then it was time for me to make my way to Hammersmith for my long-distance bus home.  Somehow I managed to stay awake all the way, catching up on downloaded radio programmes through headphones. That had been quite some four days!

‘Fashioned from Nature’

This is the name of an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, on until 27th January. I made my way direct to it when I arrived in London last Wednesday, passing some excited schoolchildren on the way. 

I went into the V and A by the new Sackler entrance

and have been rather alarmed, just today, to read in today’s paper that the philanthropic family is being heavily criticised for pushing opiates – legally – and possibly prosecuted in the States for fraud and racketeering.

I had a few minutes before my timed ticket was due, so I wandered a little aimlessly in the fashion gallery nearby. 

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This is the aim of the exhibition I was headed for. 

I took just a couple of pictures in the exhibition 

and then my camera told me that storage space had run out – there was no memory card in it!  I had to force myself set aside that disappointment, and the knowledge that my forthcoming trip to the ATP tennis finals would be all the less pleasurable were I not able to take photos there, and concentrate on the exhibition. (I managed of course to buy a memory card within ten minutes of leaving it.)

What a contrast between the beautiful garments and the horrible means of obtaining them.  Animals slaughtered by the million, natives of the originating countries exploited and mistreated, and the health and wellbeing of workers in the UK likewise damaged and threatened.  Not to mention the increasing harm to the environment by processing.  

The exhibition resonated with a book I am, quite coincidentally, reading currently, Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather, by Tessa Boase, purportedly an account of the founding of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds by late 19th century women appalled at the trade in bird feathers, whole birds, and other animals, for hats and other clothing.  But it is of much wider interest than that, a social history of the position of women of all classes at the time, and the Women’s Vote campaign figures large as well.  It’s only in recent decades* that wearing animal fur has become unfashionable, and environmental harm persists to this day, on an even larger scale, through mass-produced, ‘fast fashion’ in today’s throw-away society.  Here’s an extract from a letter to The Times in 1897 from the illustrator Eleanor Vere Boyle, who had just given up the fight. ‘I have been forced to the conclusion that, where fashion in concerned, the world of women are utterly and entirely callous and blind to every consideration excepting their own selfish vanity.’ 1897 was particularly bad because of the fashionable balls held to celebrate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee.

The same did not happen in celebration of the present Queen’s 60th anniversary on the throne, but environmental damage is now much greater because of the chemicals used to treat clothes, synthetic microfibres escaping into the seas, and the sheer volume of waste. 

In the absence of many photos from me, here is a link to the V and A’s rather bland – they don’t want to deter people from visiting obviously – description of the exhibition. 

Apparently some top designers are using less damaging methods of producing clothes, but I was left with two thoughts – they aren’t telling people just to buy fewer clothes, which would solve many of the problems, and the sorts of shops I can afford to buy from are certainly not stocking such clothing. I really shall try to clothes shop even less from now on, and if I can limit even more the synthetics…  

*I’m not going to spell it out here, but this is the  horrendous way that astrakhan fur is – still – produced.

Tennis, ATP finals

Tags

Alexander Zverev, ATP finals, Bruno Soares, Federer, Hawkeye, Jack Sock, Jamie Murray, John Isner, Kevin Anderson, Marin Ciic, Mike Bryan, Nicolas Mahut, Nishikori, Novak Djokovic, O2, Pierre-Hugues Herbert, Roger Federer, Sascha Zverev, Tennis TV, Thiem

Less than four weeks from my previous visit, I was up in London again, this time the principal object of my visit being to attend two days of the ATP (that is, mens’) world tennis finals.  I had been for one day (which means two session) in 2017, but failed to see Roger Federer. So this time I booked for the last two consecutive days of the round robin stage, Thursday and Friday.  All that RF had previously to do was to qualify in the top eight ranked in the world, which of course he did easily.  And keep fit, which he also did.

That said, he had had played abysmally on the Sunday in his first round robin match, and lost to the bottom seed of the eight, Kei Nishikori.  I started to worry about my investment in the expensive tickets.  However, he did better and won his match on Tuesday against Dominic Thiem on Tuesday, leaving himself with a chance of reaching the semi-finals. Even if he won his round robin match against Anderson (who had stormed through his first two matches) on Thursday, it could still depend on how the remaining match, Nishikori/Thiem, worked out.

Approaching the O2 in Greenwich, London

Before I took my seat in the front row of level 4 on Thursday, I was offered an upgrade to level 1. (Levels 2 and 3 are hospitality boxes, from which, annoyingly, more party noise than was acceptable sometimes emerged.  The umpire tried his best to reduce it, but of course the culprits were not listening.) I declined the upgrade for the first match, a doubles involving Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares, but was fortunate still to be able to change before the singles match of that first session, as I preferred not to have my nose assailed by the fatty fast-food smell wafting in from the concourse surrounding this level.

From the front row of Level 4, waiting for it all to start

Murray and Soares

Murray has just served

The singles match was between Nishikori and Thiem.  The fact that the latter won meant that Federer only had to win one set in his against Anderson later in the day to qualify for the semi-finals.  Or so I was informed by a neighbour who understood the round robin scoring system much better than I did.

Nishikori  arrives, with young mascot

View from my Level 1 seat.  The ring of lights goes off during play!

Up there, in the front row, was where I had been for the first match

Thiem

Nishikori

Ooh look, directly opposite, there’s Sue Barker, presenting for the BBC

The evening session started with a match involving two Frenchmen, Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut, seeded eighth of eight pairs, but who made it through eventually to the finals. Then came the Federer/Anderson match, the one I had paid all that money for eight matches sessions to be sure of seeing.  I took an awful lot of photos of Federer.  Those here is just a small selection from the match…

Anderson arrives

Federer arrives

The coin toss

Federer is 6ft 1in (1.85m) Anderson 6ft 8in (2.03m)

You could almost hear the sigh of relief round the vast arena as Federer won his first set against Anderson, fairly convincingly. 

Acknowledging the crowd after winning in two sets

Not only was Federer through to the semi-finals, along with Anderson, the scoring system meant that he would be the top-ranked of the two.

Before moving on a brief account of the two Friday sessions, this is what you see, accompanied by a great deal of noise from the amplification system, at various points in the proceedings.

Entertainment between the games

Hawkeye

Measuring crowd noise and egging it on

Also ‘set point’, ‘match point’,  and, in doubles matches, ‘deciding point’ at deuce, all accompanied by a thunder clap.

On Friday I was again able to have an upgrade for the first session, but not for the second.

The doubles match

Alexander ‘Sascha’ Zverev (German, of Russian parents) arrives

Zverev is 6ft 6in (1,98m), John Isner 6ft 10in (2,08m)

I was back up in Level 4 for the evening session.  The singles match was between Marin Cilic and Novak Djokovic

Being on the spot, one is more aware of what else is going on around the court, and I was just full of admiration for the ball kids. (Sorry, that is what they are called these days.)

Spotlights on them as they arrive

I was amused to see this ‘ball kid cam‘ recording on Facebook later.

So I have now achieved my ambition of seeing the GOAT, Roger Federer, in the flesh.  I shan’t book for these world finals again, though we are privileged to have them in London for at least two more years, on top of the ten we have had them already.  But I shall buy myself an annual subscription to Tennis TV to be able to watch them all and many other matches in the comfort of my armchair.  Which is how my host, Mary, and I watched the Federer/Zverev semi-final on the BBC the next day, sadly seeing the 37-year-old Roger go out to the 21-year-old, a win well merited, though it was a narrow thing. Djokovic not surprisingly beat Anderson 6-2,6-2 later in the day, while I was travelling home, and I am expecting, but not wanting, him to beat Zverev later on today in the final.

PS Zverev won, 6-4 6-3!