Mystery with a cherry on top

Not for the first time, a cycle ride home was interrupted by something going on in Trafalgar Square. The new commission for the Fourth Plinth has been installed, but until the unveiling the wrapping invites some speculation. Until you bother to look it up, in which case all is explained here.

To save the bother of clicking:

This sculpture attempts to address the specific physical context of the square, whilst considering a broader ideological one. How do we negotiate congregation, the intimacy of personal experience, broadcast and surveillance in one space? THE END represents exuberance and unease. Topped with a giant, unstable load, the plinth becomes a monument to hubris and impending collapse. The surrounding architecture and its population are participants in a mis-scaled landscape, one that magnifies the banal, and our cohabitation with other lifeforms, to apocalyptic proportions.

Well. if you say so.

And what will be revealed when all that fabric is removed? 

More daring adventures

Another Saturday visit to central London, only this time.... on public transport! On a boat, on a train, on a bus, for the first time in nearly four months. It almost felt like being a tourist in a strange city. I hadn't quite forgotten how it all works, fortunately: and there were few people on board, which left plenty of re-assuring distance between us.

A poor thing, but mine own

And, as required, I had a mask, home-made in an idle morning (there have been few others recently) from the leftovers of a home-made window blind some mumblety-odd years ago. 

The stripes give it a rather cheerful sea-sidey air, but to put it politely, I suspect using it is more performative than preventive. Still, it shows willing, and every little helps, I suppose.

Now it can be told

This was wobbling about mong the many and varied odds and ends blown down the steps to our communal garage in the weekend's high winds.

Perhaps I'm behind the times, but the news hadn't reached me that balloons for funerals are now A Thing - and a lot else besides.

Hair today

..and gone today as well. It really was getting to be a nuisance trying to keep it all tidy (and that bald spot was a bit of a surprise).

It all felt rather adventurous to be going back to the mundane habits of months ago: a bike ride up to central London, a haircut, coffee and a bun sitting down at a café and lunch sitting down in another, and reading the paper over a pint in a pub. All suitably distanced, of course: waiting to be seated in solitary state, ordering up via a phone app, and registering the location (just in case someone else who was there bothered both to do likewise and to report symptoms of You Know What). And just to underline the occasion, there were a fair few reporters and cameramen recording reactions as some streets were pedestrianised to allow the restaurants to take over the roadway as well as the pavement.

But it wasn't all self-indulgence. Biking into a headwind that wasn't tempered to this shorn lamb must have worked off a few calories,