Walking across bridges

LONDON BRIDGES WALK (LINEAR)

Wednesday, 4 January 2017

Start time: 10:00

Moderate 12 miles / 19.3 km

Group South Bank

At a moderate to fast pace, starting at Tower Bridge on the north bank and walking westwards along the riverside crossing bridges for as long as we feel inclined. Stopping for refreshments along the way. Drop out points.

In my hurry to get to the meeting point in time, I left behind my hat, gloves - and camera. Which restricted photography, as we were walking briskly and navigating to the camera on the phone is a slower business than just whipping out my little Lumix.

Tower Bridge

Heading west and looking across  to the City

My geography of bridges across the Thames was shaky, and still is. A list is here: I don't have photos of all that we crossed, nor did we cross them all (left out Waterloo Bridge and Hungerford Bridge ... and possibly another?).

Southwark Bridge (1921); at low tide you can see pilings of old docks

Sculpture under the north end of Millennium Bridge (2000)
(no time to stop and read about it!)

Along the South Bank - the London Eye

Looking west and hoping the rainclouds are dispersing

Photoshoot on Westminster Bridge (1862)

Obelisk at the north end of Lambeth Bridge (1932)

Restaurant boat left high and dry by the tide

Battersea Power Station under redevelopment

Chelsea Bridge (1937) came under discussion as the location of a book
no-one could remember the title or author of (it wasn't Offshore)

Lunch stop at Battersea Park's Pear Tree cafe, beside the boating lake

Albert Bridge (1873)

Statue of Whistler at the north end of Battersea Bridge - he famously
painted the old bridge (Nocturne in Blue and Gold) in the early 1870s

The walk continued over Battersea Bridge (1890) but I dropped out
and headed for Imperial Wharf overground station

A Whistlerian type of river scene

A jumble of walkways to the houseboats

Along Cheyne Walk, a plethora of blue plaques, among them these -

Artist William Greaves and (prolific) writer Hilaire Belloc

Painter Philip Wilson Steer next door to sculptor John Tweed

Suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst
(her daughter-in-law was my boss in my 1980s library job)

This mirrored contraption -

gives a view of the river through the skylights -

On past Lots Road Power Station, now derelict and being redeveloped -

Much building in the Chelsea Wharf area -

Historic dresses

As I sort out the accumulated souvenirs of my life so far, items large and small come to light. These dresses emerged from a plastic bag, smelling a bit musty - but the washing machine sorted that out. What to do with them now?

This folksy smock is of my own design, and I made quite a few of these either short or long, to wear when I was pregnant. Very 70s, don't you think? 

1976

The sleeve attaches to the yoke in a way that makes the join at the underarm a little tricky - the body doesn't have a side seam, instead the seam follows on from the line of the yoke, and there are pockets in that seam (must have pockets!). Apart from that one point needing attention, it was quick and straightforward to sew. They looked good with a jumper underneath, and a short red version was my favourite, I wore it forever -

5 Dam Head, Holmbridge, W.Yorkshire, 1977

Dress #2 is from Monsoon, at a time when I'd stopped sewing. The thick cotton fabric has floating white threads on a black background; it still looks like new (and doesn't need ironing). I wore red beads with it, and wore it often - first to the job interview at BMJ and thereafter to work. Loved the dress and loved that job.

1987

Happy memories ... but what to do with them now?

Poetry Thursday - My Father's Hair by Deryn Rees-Jones

The best way to encounter this poem is through the ear, and you can hear the poet, Deryn Rees-Jones, reading it at poetryarchive.org/poem/my-fathers-hair.

You'll see immediately that it's based on Christopher Smart's "For my Cat Jeoffrey", and much as I like the Jeoffrey poem, this one takes the emotional cake (so to speak). And it wears its wit lightly:

For it has a grave insouciance,
What they call in Sassoon's "a natural air".

It's from Signs Round a Dead Body (Seren, 1998), which "was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. In a review, Anthony Wilson wrote: "Most admirable about her work is that she goes for it in nearly every poem, truthfully and unashamedly singing. One of her titles, 'What It's Like To Be Alive,' could summarize her whole project." "

The Poetry Archive site also says: "Born in Liverpool in 1968, Rees-Jones spent time back and forth between Liverpool and a family home in Eglwysbach in North Wales. After reading English at the University of Wales, Bangor, she did doctoral research on women poets at Birkbeck College, University of London. Bloodaxe published the highly-praised fruit of this pioneering research Consorting with Angels, along with the anthology Modern Women Poets (2005). Both books bring to light the virtuosity of two centuries of British and American women's poetry."

In case you were wondering about Vitalis ...

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Musical encounters with the Berlin Phil

On New Year's Eve I took myself to the cinema for a "new to me" experience, the live transmission of a concert, the Berlin Philharmonic's new year concert - transmitted simultaneously to cinemas in many parts of the world. It turns out that the orchestra has a resident poet, who introduced the proceedings, recited his new year's poem in German and English, and during the piano-moving entertained us with a great chunk of Edith Sitwell's words to William Walton's Facade, quite amazing but not really translatable into German - though he provided an impression of its nonsensicality. As a sort of linguistic mirror-act, introducing the Dvorak pieces he launched into a Bohemian accent such as Dvorak might have spoken in (I was chuffed that my German was good enough to follow it) AND then did a comparable distortion in English translation, really quite unexpected and amazing,

On his retirement from the horn section, the orchestra made Klaus Wallendorf its "one and only resident poet for life". The ceremonial presentation can be seen here, and at the end of that clip is one of his concoctions, a song that contains the names of 19 Tokyo subway stations, written after an evening of Japanese hospitality. (See the youtube version here.)

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The horn players got quite a look in - another, Sarah Willis, interviewed the pianist (Daniil Trifonov) before the concert. It being new year, and Berlin, they ended the interview by having a glass of champagne and eating ... doughnuts!


Was it Sarah Willis, then, who organised and encouraged the Gartenschlauchorchester that we saw at the Berlin Phil's open day in June 2015? By gum, it was - she's on the left -

If you'd like to watch the live transmissions of the orchestra's concerts in the comfort of your own home, a year's subscription to the digital concert hall costs 149 Euros - a saving not only in ticket prices, but in the tedium of having to travel to the concert venue. That covers more than 40 live concerts (in HD) every season. Bargain! And if it's inconvenient to watch live, you can watch from the archive. (My father would have loved this - he had a huge collection of music DVDs and Blue Ray disks - and that, rather than tv, was the entertainment of an evening. My mother, less so ... she did a lot of knitting...)

The orchestra's website is worth a visit, eg for the (short) trailers of the movies,  for the many (longer) interviews with musicians, and for the history of the concert hall.

And if horns are right up your street, the "Ho, Ho, Horn" Christmas concert can be seen online, free - https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/23819

While at that open day in June 2015, we were lucky enough to hear the orchestra, for free - though getting a seat was a bit of a scrum, ganz unordentlich, rather un-German. We sat in the balcony on the right... happy memories ...

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Drawing Tuesday - extra session at V&A

Though we officially took time off between xmas and new year, several showed up for drawing and/or lunch.

I was inspired by last week's session to go to the furniture gallery, but it was closed, so I settled down in Sculpture: Materials and Methods. Which is a bit of a thoroughfare, especially for dawdlers who are more interested in the "performing monkeys" (ie, people sitting drawing) than in the actual exhibits. (I got a bit grumpy about that.) And it was quite cold - the warders wore padded jackets. 

The "other" cast court is under renovation, and the view from the balcony is mostly shut off. The glimpse, and large photo, is of the Pórtico da Gloria of the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela -

Views of scaffolding through the little windows -

My drawings picked up on the shadows and tones of the crossbars, and I looked carefully at the clamps(?) (no, they're called couplers) used to join them - and then vented a bit of spleen in the notes -

Moving to somewhere with my back to the wall, I found myself drawing Adam and Eve from behind-

Wooden models used for teaching drawing, with arms and hands that could be moved into various positions -

 As only three of us were drawing, this post can show two pictures apiece.

 Sue's porcelain from Beijing, made in 2000 by Lin Jing

 and dating from 720-50, a Tang dynasty woman, painted earthenware -

 Najlaa's coffee service is from England, designed in 1998 by Peter Ting -

 She found another coffee service designed by Peter Ting earlier, with hand-cut enamel transfers -

 Tool of the week - a pencil sharpener, found in Janet B's Christmas stocking! -

"English Graphic"

English Graphic, by art critic and illustrator Tom Lubbock, is a collection of essays about "works on paper" - prints and drawings. I'm delighted with it, but rather than bore you with reasons why, will show some of the works that the short, lucid chapters discuss. If it's artspeak you're after, don't bother with this book!

Concrete poetry by Dom Sylvester Houedard, and the importance of the typewriter -

 One of my favourite artists when I first came to England, Samuel Palmer - the intensity of ink and immanence always grabs me -

Early Morning, 1825

Another favourite, Thomas Bewick - it was reading the piece about Bewick's vignettes that led me to buy the book -

 These images made me sad, for different reasons -

Stowage of the British Slave Ship 'Brookes' under the Regulated Slave Trade Act of 1788

Nicholas Hilliard, Portrait of an Unknown Man Clasping a Hand from a Cloud, 1588

These were astonishing, for different reasons -

The Damned are Swallowed by Hellmouth
from the Winchester Psalter, c.1121-41

Portrait of its immanence the absolute.
Instructions for Use. - Turn the eye of faith, fondly but firmly,
on the cente of the page, wink the other, and gaze fixedly until
you see It.

The rest is miscellany - 

"This bubble's man: hope, fear, false joy and trouble,
Are those four winds which daily toss this bubble."
Francis Quarles, frontispiece to Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man, c.1637

Henry Mayo Bateman, The New Word in Gold, c.1925

George Cruikshank, A Fantasy: The Fairy Ring, c.1850

John Russell, The Face of the Moon, 1793-7

Thomas Carwitham, Fantasy of Flight, c.1713-33

Tom Lubbock's journalism is gathered here; his first book, Great Works: 50 Paintings Explained was published in 2011.

Best wishes for the new year

Some neighborhood fireworks, amid all sorts of darkness, to say goodbye to 2016 -

And on we go, into a new year -