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Tag Archives: Piccadilly

Central London at Jubilee time

30 Monday May 2022

Posted by Musiewild in History, Photography, Tennis

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Admiralty Arch, Bloomsbury Square Gardens, Buckingham Palace, Caffe Concerto, Diana Fountain, Elizabeth Line, Grenadier Guards, King George VI, marabou stork, Oxford Circus, Paddington Station, Piccadilly, platinum jubilee, Queen Ekizabeth the Queen Mother, Queen Mary's Gardens, Regent Street, Regent's Park, Ride London, The Mall, The Ritz, Trooping the Colour

The purpose of my trip to London was to see the Stonehenge Exhibition at the British Museum, but it would have been impossible not to be aware that a rather significant jubilee was about to be celebrated, that marking 70 years of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Just in time for the festivities, (but five years late) the Elizabeth tube (metro/subway) line had been opened just three days before my trip. The driver of the mainline train bringing me up from the West Country had helpfully said that access was to be found to the side of Platform 1 of Paddington main line station. Just as well, since there was no signage until very near to the entrance.

Movement was among airy, cavernous stations throughout, and what felt like natural daylight everywhere.

The trains are light and airy as well, open end to (very long) end. Like certain sections of the Circle Line.

My goodness did the Elizabeth Line make a difference to my own movements around the capital! Just 3.5 minutes from Paddington main line station to Tottenham Court Road underground station, (which will increase marginally when the the line’s Bond Street platform opens in the autumn. Meanwhile its roundels read alternately, as we whizzed through, ‘Station Closed’ and ‘Opening Soon’).

Once I had arrived at Tottenham Court Road, my saving of time all evaporated. Even though I had the assistance of the sun’s shadows to determine points of the compass, I still managed to set off in the wrong direction, and what should have been a 6-minute walk turned into a 20-minute one. Thank goodness for texts/SMSs. Mary was able to go and have a coffee while she waited for me.

Once I’d made it to the museum

we made use of Mary’s membership of it, and had a coffee in the members’ cafe.

I’ll cover the exhibition itself in my next blog post.

Mary knows London bus routes inside out, and after our visit to the excellent exhibition she confidently had us walking past Bloomsbury Square Gardens,

to the stop we needed for the bus to get to her home in Kentish Town,

where I was invited to join in a Zoom call with Mary and her siblings,

before her eldest, Susan, top left, who lives very near, joined us for a meal.

The following morning, Saturday, was Mary’s regular get-together for tennis in Regent’s Park. It was a little chilly to begin with, but this did not detract from enjoying the wonderful display of roses.

Crossing the Inner Circle, which surrounds the rose garden, a.k.a. Queen Mary’s Gardens, was a risk to life and limb as cyclists whizzed round!

I took many photos of them, of which here are a very few.

At the tennis courts.

Zooming in on the far end of the courts, I could make out a tennis lesson for youngsters.

I had seen a photo of a flag-lined Mall, and had a yen to reproduce it myself. After we had had sociable coffee with the other tennis players, Mary’s unerring knowledge of the routes soon got us to a bus which would take us to Trafalgar Square. Oxford Circus was not very busy (she said).

Regent Street more so. The yellow sign warns of road closures for the following day to enable Ride London to take place.

I hoped to take my photo of the Mall through Admiralty Arch, but this was as near as I could get, as a very polite policeman directed me back round the outside of the Arch. (Ride London also was inconvenienced by the Jubilee preparations as it usually finishes in the Mall, but did so this year at Tower Bridge.)

The Arch from the Mall side.

I post this photo only to show another, very cheery, policeman.

More zooming in, and this was the best I could do for my hoped-for photo. Crowds (and clean-up lorries) prevented me from getting dead centre.

We had alighted on the tail end of a rehearsal, for, as we soon learned, Trooping the Colour, part of next weekend’s Jubilee celebrations. Did the crowd know of the rehearsal, or had they, just like us, stumbled on it by chance? There were absolute hordes there, making photographic opportunity very random.

Two young Grenadier Guards were selling programmes for the ceremony. (I have no idea what is in the mind of the fellow to the right.)

Two Grenadier Guards selling programmes for the forthcoming ceremony

Statues of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother that I’d never seen before.

I was hoping to take a photo of the front of Buckingham Palace, but we were diverted by solid barriers before getting there. We skirted round to the right, and at one point I could see the whole of the roof of the building over the barriers. Two men from a private security firm were standing by, and one of them (the other held back all the time) told me “No photos, security.” “Ridiculous’ I thought, and said, ‘this is the UK!’ I was quite riled, especially as it called to my mind an incident that had occurred to me on my first day in Uganda in 2013, when a corrupt young soldier (again with his companion holding right back) tried to get my camera from me because I had taken a photo of an enormous bird (a Marabou stork if I remember correctly) in a tree next to some kind of military establishment. I was quite sure he was only going to let me have it back on payment of a ransom, so I wasn’t going to let it go. I won. Anyway, I was quite sure that this security man, whether misinformed or just plain bossy, had got it wrong. There were no notices of any sort forbidding photography, nor could there be any possible reason to justify what he said.

In due course I gave up, and a few steps further on was able to take his photo, with, though it does not show up, a corner of Buckingham Palace in the background, and no-one objecting.

And just a few yards further on, I got this corner of the Palace.

We crossed Green Park to get to Piccadilly,

The Diana Fountain, 1952.

decided not to have lunch at the Ritz, (!)

and settled on Caffe Concerto over the road,

where Mary notice the interesting functional ceiling, à la Pompidou Centre,

and we had a very nice meal, chosen from a very wide menu.

Emerging on to Piccadilly, we saw that it had flags too, though not at such frequent intervals as we had seen elsewhere.

Regent Street had lots.

Back in Kentish Town, we called into a cake shop, and bought a celebratory ‘Queen’s Jubilee White Chocolate Chip Cookie’ each, which we had with a cup of coffee, or half a cookie each anyway. It was very sweet and very enormous.

A game of ‘Upwords’, at which Mary, as usual, beat me, and it was time for me to leave. Again the Elizabeth Line helped speed me on my way to Paddington, and this time it was quite crowded. Today the news tells us that in its first five days, a million journeys were made on it. Mine contributed two to that total.

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Sicily 6: Foodissimo

02 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by Musiewild in People, Photography, Travel

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

cannoli, carciofata, citron, Edoné, Francesca Marchese, Geoff Andrews, granita, Graniti, pesto, Piccadilly, Salvatore Romano, Sicilian medlar, Slow food, Tasting Sicily

Sicily 6: Foodissimo. Salvatore Romano, and his wife Karin, opened their first restaurant – in London, just off Piccadilly – last year I believe.  It is called Tasting Sicily Enzo’s Kitchen.  But they live in Graniti, in the centre of the small town in which Edoné is also technically located. They have a smallholding there, receive holiday visitors on their house, sell foodstuffs made from their own produce, and have a thousand further projects in mind. Salvatore was mainly in charge of us today.

We arrived at their house shortly after 10.00 am.P1260451001As we did so he collected the best granita (no etymological link with the town) in Sicily – from the local garage!  Granita was a Sicilian, and now Italian, sweet.

P1260452001

Chocolate, pistacchio, almond and raspberry, and some cream

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Salvatore serves Emma

We could not hang around – it was going to melt quickly.  Here is my portion, and the brioche which went with it.  I tried all the flavours, but not being a great fan of cream, omitted that. P1260455001

P1260456001

Ever a journalist, Francesca finishes a video interview with Salvatore

Then we were shown round the house.P1260461001P1260462001P1260464001P1260465001P1260466001P1260467001Our ‘lesson’ that morning was to be from Geoff, who has written a book on the Slow Food movement, which started in Italy, and the slogan for which is ‘good, clean and fair’.  We were to be the first to use an artistic workshop that Salvatore and Karin had just created from an old house, a short way from their own residence. We passed the town hall to get there.

P1260468001

P1260469001

Salvatore opens up the workshop for us

P1260471001

Geoff, Emma, Alec

Early lunchtime, and Salvatore had prepared us a lovely meal from  his own products, accompanied by the sparkling wine we had first tasted two days previously.P1260474001Some of us bought from him – though we had to ask to be able to do so.  Here is what is left of what I bought.

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I am discovering that, while they are good on bread, they are also wonderful on thin toast. And I’m looking forward to using the voucher Salvatore gave us for his Piccadilly restaurant – where also his products may be bought.

At 4 pm, back at Edoné, we gathered for our cooking lesson in the kitchen with Salvatore and Enzo. (Not the same Enzo of course who runs the restaurant in Piccadilly!)P1260481001P1260484001P1260485001I confess to having been a little half-hearted about this.  I am no cook at the best of times – though adore good food – and the threatening cold, no doubt picked up during travel, was beginning to become evident.  So I kept my distance and limited my direct involvement to halving some delicious small tomatoes.

We starting eating quite early for Sicily. Here are the antipasti.

P1260487001

The empty chair is mine – see below

A full meal for me already!

Enzo then came from the kitchen to the patio with the pasta. The tomato sauce had been simmering for hours.P1260490001I didn’t get a picture of the lamb once cooked, but I was given an enormous portion of it! This was the entire menu.

P1260492001We assembled our cannoli ourselves, at table.

P1260493001and then were offered citrons.  Francesca had already brought us one of these from her parents’ on Easter Day.  While it is a lemon-coloured citrus fruit, it was amazingly sweet, and adding honey takes away any remaining sharpness.P1260495001Finally – and it is my recollection that Francesca brought this – there was an extra sweet.  But in my haste to take a photo, which required my getting up to move around the table, and anxious to protect my ankle, I leant on the back of my chair – which tumbled off the low patio, followed by me, into flower pots and seedlings!  I am not usually accident prone!  Fortunately, other than some bruises – which are now pale yellow, two weeks on – I was not at all hurt, (though I am not too sure about the seedlings) and once helped up I completed what I had set out to do.P1260496001The Paschal lamb was made of a soft icing sugar and marzipan.  (That is a marzipan (Sicilian) medlar at the front.  We ate several of these fruits during the week.)

I went to bed very, very full indeed, even though I had not partaken of the liqueurs on offer.

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An orgy of exhibitions 1

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by Musiewild in Photography, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Becket Casket, Clare Chasuble, Hyde Park Corner, Ismaili Centre, Jesse Cope, Joseph Nash, Knightsbridge, Lockwood Kipling, Mayo School of Art, No 14 bus, Opus Anglicanum, Piccadilly, Piccadilly Circus, Prosper Lafaye, PSPO, rhododendron, Rudolf Swoboda, Rudyard Kipling, Shaftesbury Avenue, Steeple Aston Cope, Suzuki Masaya, Syon Cope, Transport for London, V and A, Victoria and Albert Museum

Mediaeval embroidery and John Lockwood Kipling. Earlier this week I spent a couple of days in London, staying with my friend Mary, to catch three exhibitions before they closed, this Sunday.  But the first astonishing exhibit was in Mary’s garden:  a rhododendron bush in full bloom!

01-p1250479001My father’s favourite bus route when my parents lived in London was the number 14, because it passed so many places of interest. Over all the years since, it has remained the same, as far as I know.  Certainly the small part we did, on the way to the Victoria and Albert Museum, gave me plenty of photo opps from the upstairs front seat, through the tinted window.

02-p1250480001

Shaftesbury Avenue

03-001

Piccadilly Circus

04-p1250482001

Piccadilly

05-p1250484001

Hyde Park Corner

06-p1250486001

Knightsbridge.  Better hoarding or the naked building works?

 

As for this, seen several times along Knightsbridge, we wondered if it was OK to drive anti-socially elsewhere.07-p1250488001We considered this building  virtually opposite the V and A, not particularly beautiful in the context of South Kensington, though when I went over later to see what it was – the Ismaili Centre – I could see that close up it had merit in many smaller architectural details.

08-001The desire for coffee obliged us to walk across the central square of the museum.09-p1250492001

Our principal target of the day was the exhibition, ‘Opus Anglicanum’, a style of English mediaeval embroidery which spread far into continental Europe.  We were astounded by the intricacy of the work, and although we were able to discover who these embroiderers were, we could gain no insight as to just how long it took to create these masterpieces, especially as those commissioned e.g. for visits of foreign rulers, and for funerals will have had tight deadlines.  The stitching was tiny in the extreme, and will have needed excellent light to execute. It was interesting to catch snatches of conversations of other visitors, some of whom clearly  had specialist knowledge.

Photos were not allowed, so the following are scanned from postcards. Sadly it is not possible to see the individual stitching in them.

10-the-clare-chasuble001

The Clare Chasuble

11-the-syon-cope001

The Syon Cope

12-detail-from-the-jesse-cope001

Detail from The Jesse Cope

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Detail from The Steeple Aston Cope

 

Exhibits were not only of embroidery:

14-the-becket-casket001

The Becket Casket

 

Having spent a good long time at this wonderful exhibition, we crossed the central square once more,

15-p1250498001and over lunch decided to visit another special exhibition in the Museum, (not in our original plan), that of work by, or inspired by, John Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard (whom his parents named after the village in Staffordshire where they had met.) Lockwood was a designer, illustrator (including of his son’s books) teacher, journalist and curator.  Among other things he was an architectural sculptor to the South Kensington Museum, (now the V and A). He moved with his wife to become Director of the Mayo School of Art in Lahore. ‘His contribution to the impact of the British Empire on India’s artistic heritage is still recognised and debated today’.

These photos are mine.

17-edmund-walker-queen-victoria-001

Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and three of their children at the Indian Pavilion of the Great Exhibition, by Prosper Lafaye

19-joseph-nash001

The Great Exhibition: India No 4, by Joseph Nash

21-pearlware-jug-decorated-by-j-l-kipling001

Pearlware jug, decorated by Lockwood Kipling

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These nineteenth century saddle cloths had embroidery every bit as rich and intricate as we had seen in the morning

26-rudolf-swoboda001

Student at the Mayo School, by Rudolf Swoboda

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Rudyard Kipling illustrating his own stories

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Lockwood Kipling for his grandchildren

 

This next picture was I think my favourite exhibit.  I just loved how the reflected harsh Indian light had enabled the colourful details on the near, shaded, side to be picked out.

31-rudolf-swoboda001

A Peep at the Train by Rudolf Swoboda

Then as we returned again to the tearoom for final refreshment before making the journey back to Mary’s place, I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this in the Japanese section as we went through it.

 

33-susuki-masaya-1978-sprouting-box001

Sprouting Box, by Suzuki Masaya, 1978, in acrylic

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Teatime

Two concluding exhibitions the next day…

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