Spitalfields |
Soho |
...a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles ...
Time to look through the booklet telling us all about the Mayoralty and the London Assembly, the two page spread each mayoral candidate gets to boost themselves, and the lists of candidates for Assembly seats (no promo spots for them, which seems a biti mean, for candidates and voters alike).
Diamondgeezer's given a concise thumbnail sketch of the mayoral candidates, so all I'll remark on is the number of candidates vying for the "Stop the world, I want to get off" tendency. Apart from the increasingly fissiparous pressure groups within the Conservatives and the ex-UKIP/ex-Brexit/Nigel Farage fanclub ReformUK that the Tories are so afraid of, there are the "I've run a business, so how hard is it to run a city" candidates, the "Social Democratic Party" that looks nothing like the original SDP I joined in - can it have been? - 1981, and the latest incarnation of what we tactfully call the far right. We'll draw a veil over - no, let's not - the actor Laurence Fox, whose name appears in the booklet without any further details, because his team messed up their nomination forms.
What pretty well all of those have in common is opposition to the zone where people are charged to drive cars that emit too much muck, despite the repeated legal judgements against the UK for missing international commitments on reducing air pollution - and more urgently, the death of a child from severe asthma brought on by the traffic pollution where she lived. Oh, and despite a £120 million scrappage fund to help people swap older polluting vehicles for newer, cleaner ones.
For the Assembly (basically a relatively small scrutiny committee), there's also the Heritage Party - yet another split-off from Reform. Elsewhere on the spectrum are the Communist Party ,(yes, there still is one), the Christian People's Alliance, and the perhaps over-hopeful RejoinEU. The Conservative candidate for Brent and Harrow might need to review the chances of his name being on everyone's lips in future, or at least of wear and tear on typesetters' nerves - Stefan Bucovineanul-Voliseniuc.
This must be my week for being prompted by other people's blogs. Way back in January, Urspo referred to the idea floating around the internet about men's thoughts on the Roman Empire. I can't say I have many, although I went to the kind of grammar school that gave you plenty of Latin (and a low tolerance level for bloody Caesar throwing yet another bridge across yet another river), but seeing that the British Museum had an exhibition on life in the Roman army, it would be foolish not to see it.
Another daunting queue to get up to the security check, though having a timed ticket for the special exhibition got me priority (and when I came out - around noon - there was no queue at all, for whatever that tells you). Once inside, though there was plenty of room for everyone, and separate children's activities which kept the visiting primary school party busy away from the rest of us.
There were a few items I have actusally seen before on a visit to Vindolanda - leather shoes and sandals, and some writing tablets (what sounded like the equivalent of the "Colonel's lady" inviting a friend to a birthday party, and a list of supplies to be ordered) but so much more, about recruitment (pretty selective, and it helped to have contacts: also, soldiers had to provide their own arms and armour), training (tough), living conditions (also pretty tough if you were on campaign), health (tricky - disease and poor food were all too common), leisure, and the prospects of survival into retirement rewards (citizenship and pensions). Some of that might not be too different from almost any military, though presumably the Romams were the first that we can see how they systematised it all.
Not the kind of shield the ordinary soldier could afford |
Not Mussolini but a military standard featuring the Emperor Galba - until he met the same fate as Il Duce |
Another standard - the "dragon" which also made what was supposed to be a fearsome sound |
On campaign: constantly pitching and striking camp with tents made of goatskin and wooden tent pegs |
On campaign, poor hygiene and disease were a recurrent problem - here's a portable medicine box |
No qualms about enslaving their prisoners (if they took any), or about glorying in booty |
Leisure time - gambling (of course) but to prevent cheating the black box is designed to randomise the casting of dice |
Opportunities for fun for kids of all ages |
Mr Mago asks, à propos my last, what happened to the organ of Notre Dame in the fire. By coincidence, I've had a good insight into that, from finding a reference to Westminster Abbey hosting a virtual reality exhibition from Paris about cathedral's place in history, the fire and its consequences.
The good news is that the organ escaped the fire, but not the lead-contaminated dust from the collapse of the roof, nor the water. So there's been a complete dismantling, cleaning, re-assembly and re-voicing. So it will resound again.
Not doing touristy things that often around London, I was a bit surprised by the long queues to enter the Abbey, and by how crowded it felt inside. But then, the last time I was there I was a child, so of course it all felt smaller and - dare I say it - somewhat cluttered.
In fact, they've made room in the roof spaces for more clutter, in the Diamond Jubilee Gallery of incidental artefacts - among them the funeral effigies of a number of monarchs (probably the nearest we'll get to an unprettified portrait of some of them).
As for the Notre Dame display - ingenious (well, it's French, after all): a tablet computer that picks up the code for a particular display and presents you with relevant images and 3D animations from various points in the Cathedral. So you're not all crowding round the same display case, or tied to a particular route or speed through the exhibition.
And I don't need to make a trip to Paris to see it!
Apparently...
https://www.rco.org.uk/internationalorganday2024.php
so to mark the occasion, here's a very grand organ - and the Toccata from Widor's 5th Organ Symphony
Click to see the what, when and where - and what one must and mustn't do |
My trainspotting days are long gone, but they were in the age of steam, and something remains of the appeal of the steam engine which quiet, efficient electric trains just don't seem to have. Our group had a strong contingent of serious anoraks, who knew a great deal about all that sort of thing and enthusiastically took up the option to explore as much as possible of the Harz network, with the rest of us tagging along for a couple of rides with the better views. (It wasn't just the engines that were old - the carriages were, I suspect, old third-class stock from East German railways - wooden seats and not much in the way of suspension, while the toilet facilities were the old-style trap that simply opened on to the track beneath).
The high point (literally) of the trip was to go up the Brocken mountain. Old legend has it that on Walpurgisnacht, witches would gather on the mountain for a "witches' sabbath" (sort of a springtime Halloween, but no doubt used in its time for the periodic persecution of supposed witches, as elsewhere). More recently, being such a handy high point so close to the border between East and West Germany, it became a listening post for surveillance and spying on Western transmissions, but also housed (as it still does) a TV transmission tower.
The train winds its way up through forests (sadly depleted since a blight struck much of it a few years ago, as did some wildfires) to the - frankly rather bleak - plateau on top. Perhaps not surprisingly, the views from the top were almost entirely of enclosing clouds, so nobody wanted to linger.
Another day, we had more sunshine and a gentle ride through a river valley, to a quiet spa town and back.
And it looked and felt like this:
After our brief stop to ride the Schwebebahn, the trains took us to our base for the week, in Wernigerod: in the heart of the Harz, so to speak.
It's picturesque and traditional-looking, with plenty of half-timbered houses and flowers (it even has a floral clock, just as one used to see in the posher British seaside holiday resorts).
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's outside the library, at least |
And there's a castle (of course). The local aristocrats had a long history, but their castle reflects a rebuild in the ponderous taste of the late 19th century - all dark wood and stuffed hunting trophies outside, and touches of pseudo-mediaeval fairytale outside:
The castle courtyard |
One thing I couldn't help noticing was that in at least one place they had retained the old East German Ampelmann for the pedestrian crossing lights. Somehow he looks rather jollier than one would expect from a Communist dictatorship, which is no doubt why he was held in such affection:
But they also maintain a nod to the area's association with legends of witches and the like:
Just recently, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I found a commercial I saw just the once decades ago, but which really stuck in the memory. It turns out that it dates from 1989, and it's been judged worthy enough for the British Film Institute to archive it.
And today's the day for it:
Over lethargy, lassitude and can't-be-botheredness, that is. A couple of cupboard doors coming off their hinges (and built into a corner where each makes the other only approachable at an awkward angle), and a collection of old pillows and other things to take to the recycling centre: classic "round tuit" jobs louring in the background of whatever else has been on my mind. For months, I must admit.
But finally grasping the nettle, I find that those cupboard doors weren't that much of a problem - less flimsy screws fixed them firm again in half an hour. And a rare sunny day today was just right for getting out the bike to take those pillows and other things to their next destination.
Quite why such things created such a fantigue - well, that's another question.
Now, about that bathroom...