Dog days

We seem at last to have come to the end of the pre-holiday desk-clearing that makes July a bit of a nightmare at work - the rest of the department sneaking up to the metaphorical wall and hurling work over, and buggering off with a cackle and snicker (or so it seems).

But this week, it has been quiet enough to engage in conversation with my colleagues, this morning on the derivation of "Hi de hi!", which one of us has clearly decided is the cheery phrase du jour that we all love to hear of a morning.

As the oldest inhabitant, I managed to trump the lot of them by remembering Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher":

If in doubt, move stuff about..

Not having anything interesting to write about, I've succumbed to the lure of re-arranging the furniture - and adding a couple of whirly widgets to the sidebar. I'm just a child at heart.

If your inner teenager is interested, here's where you can find the tag cloud and the Flickr widget. And no, I don't know if you can get one that'll add glitter.

It fell to earth, I know not where...

Cycling along Narrow Street, I saw something spinning in the air ahead of me, and several metres above the centre of the road. It's too early in the year and too large for a sycamore seed. As I got nearer, it resolved itself into a feather, but not some fluffy piece of down zigzagging its way gently to the ground.

By the size and colour, I'd say it was a wing feather from a cygnet or a goose: and it was spinning more or less about its vertical axis - something I've never seen before. No sign of a wounded bird in the area, no cartoon exploding goose, no child with a bow or a catapult - nothing to explain it that I could see.

It's the little mysteries that keep life interesting, don't you find?

The truth is out there....

All over Paris, you might spot mosaic plaques of space invaders. An oddity that didn't much arouse my curiosity, until on my last visit I happened across an expensively pretentious (and pretentiously expensive) art book all about the "invasion".

The other day I saw evidence of an incursion in London, on a railway bridge in Southwark. Aha, I thought, I've spotted something new: I'm ahead of the trend, I'm no square, I'm alert, I'm awake, I'm aware, keeping abreast, out in front with the rest of elitesville*.

No such luck. It turns out I'm 10 years behind the times (no surprise there, then): guerrilla tiling is simply everywhere - positively vieux chapeau.

*No prizes for identifying the quote (but I might be asking questions later - or not).

I wuz robbed!

The people who won games at our barbecue on Saturday are getting sustificates. I should have had another go at the cream crackers - I was only a couple of seconds short...

Dominoes

I don't think domino-toppling is going to be an Olympic sport any time soon, but one of many (some seemingly rather random) events to raise awareness of the London Olympics in three years' time was a series of domino-toppling runs through the five "Olympic boroughs" of East London. Or in other words, on my doorstep, so I couldn't not go.

In Mile End Park, about 800 breeze blocks were duly lined up to topple their way along the park, across the road, up some steps to go through the Ragged School Museum and down in to a boat on the canal. As this was in the afternoon and the rain was still holding off, a fair crowd gathered. Eventually, as children shouted "It's coming! It's coming!" and a spaniel puppy screamed in even greater excitement, the movement flowed past, accompanied by a decorous stampede of spectators. Even if my camera batteries hadn't failed at the crucial moment, the crowd would have blocked the view.

Later, a run was set up in Island Gardens, to ripple round from the riverside, past the rowing club and the social club into Island Gardens. Another run was set to go down the stairs and through the Foot Tunnel to Greenwich (would it have managed to go upstairs as well?) a couple of hours later, but by then the weather was looking much less promising. I am a fair-weather topple-watcher.

Here's a clip of the run into Island Gardens:

We're lucky, where I live, that the developers of our estate, unlike more recent johnny-come-latelies, didn't feel the need to cram accommodation into every available square inch of land. As a result, we have low-ish buildings grouped around a central square open to the river, which gives us a vaguely collegiate feel, and a space that lends itself to informal socialising, like our annual communal barbecue (there are plenty of individual groups on any fine day, so there's also an elephant's graveyard of abandoned equipment available to be liberated if you look in forgotten corners of the garages).

This year the sun shone, the bunting fluttered, there was not only food, and drink, but music, fun - and games. We started with Bash the Rat and Play Your Cards Right (I was pipped at the post in How Fast Can You Eat Three Cream Crackers - who says the British have a dysfunctional relationship with food?); there was limbo dancing in the twilight, and musical chairs in the dusk - and, as far as I know, no tears before bedtime. Some clearing up to do this morning, though.....

What kind of cheese are you?

Yes, not having done anything at all interesting over the weekend, I turn to one of those internet quiz things for inspiration. Sort of.

Apparently, I'm "a soft, crumbly white blue-streaked cheese... very cool and mellow.... very knowledgeable and wise and people come to you for advice and help."

Which is as might have been last time I looked at it: but the strange thing is, I really don't like blue cheese.

And now I've done the test again, I find I'm camembert: " a creamy, delicate tasting cheese. You are refined and graceful and very organized. As a very insightful cheese, you like to ponder the meaning of life."

Hmm. I wonder if they ever come up with anything uncomplimentary, as for example:

"You are Stinking Bishop - you smell of old socks and wet towels. An acquired taste, favoured by those who don't mind a dare."

"You are Mousetrap - old, hard, bitter and cracked. You are supposedly attractive to rodents if to no-one else, but are not surprised to find yourself remaining un-nibbled by even the most desperate mouse."

Barges, baas and bells

It was a dull grey morning, with nothing much to look forward to but some rain, when I heard hooting and sirens from the river, which usually means something at least worth a look. It turned out to be the start of the annual Barge Driving Race, in which teams manhandle (there's no other word for it) lighters from Greenwich to Westminster. Two oarsmen run up a slope to get the angle to heave the lighter forward, while another team of two wait to relieve them - this is a long race and these are both bulky and weighty craft ("lighter" only in the sense that their predecessors were used to make larger ships lighter by taking on their load for onward transport):



Feeling energised, I went to see some sheep on London Bridge. In times past, it was a valuable privilege of "Freemen of the City" to be able to drive livestock over London Bridge free of tolls: for the 800th anniversary of London Bridge this year, the Lord Mayor's charity appeal was combining a re-enacted walk of sheep across the bridge with an "Anniversary Fayre".

My heart had sunk a little at that. A "Fayre" suggests an event with the wrong sorts of pretensions, the "fête worse than death" where the home-made jam (sorry, preserves) comes with a mark-up for the lacy doily tops on the jars, and there is gimlet-eyed pricing on the bric-à-brac and vintage clothing ("This isn't a jumble sale, you know"). The weather was looking like a good excuse to ignore it.

But in the event (and I notice there seems to be some backtracking about the spelling), it turned out to be a collection of stalls and tents displaying mostly the crafts of some of the City's livery companies and various other heritage-related organisations - bricklayers and "tylers", stained-glass makers, painters, calligraphers, playing-card makers, assorted vintage vehicles and demonstrations of blacksmithing by the bus stop. Sundry people in robes of office and other sorts of fancy dress added some colour to the event.

But the sheep were the main attraction: and groups of people were taking occasionally reluctant animals for a short walk before handing them on to the next group (I'm assuming they'd all made a suitable donation to the Lord Mayor's appeal).

And all the while, the bells of the City churches were ringing - because yesterday was also the 150th anniversary of Big Ben.

Recycled

I have a cabinet full of assorted screws, nails, nuts and bolts and bits and pieces that I've saved in the course of DIY over the decades. Since I moved to a modern flat, it's hardly been looked at in its dark cupboard corner.

Recently, I noticed that the endless bumps and potholes must have shaken out the bolt holding in place one of my rear panier's supports. This hasn't had an immediate effect on my ability to get the weekend shopping home on the bike, but it can't be doing any good to have all the load carried on one side. So it was time to try to find a screw of the right thread, thickness and (crucially) length to fit the slot. And sure enough, after much delving and sorting, I found it: I have no idea what it was saved from, but it was a perfect fit.

Thirty years of hoarding to save a pound. My Dad would be proud of me.

Hot enough for India

On a free afternoon this week, it seemed only fitting to the weather to visit a bit of India in London, at the British Museum.

In the courtyard outside, the sun was beating down on a small collection from Kew of Indian plants - some familiar favourites like rhododendrons, some less so (at least I now know what a banyan or a peepul tree looks like). Inside, the Garden and Cosmos exhibition of court paintings from Jodhpur was in a blissfully air-conditioned room.

The display moved from lively paintings of seventeenth century court frolics, via late eighteenth century representations of the universal Ramayana story, to increasingly austere and formalised paintings from a time in the early nineteenth century when the maharaja was under the influence of a particularly abstract brand of yogic cosmology.

You could just lose yourself in the colours; but I couldn't help noticing that while in the earlier paintings the people, not to mention the birds and animals decorating the scene, are shown in many and varied activities, in the last, they are all arranged in strict and formal, even totalitarian, patterns. And at the very end, there's a room of paintings showing three holy men, in the same relationship but with two supported by different animals, on differently coloured "cosmic oceans" - so abstracted that no-one knows what they mean. No wonder the maharaja's nobles finally revolted.

Not wailing but gnashing

My dentist obviously believes in patient involvement. Last time I went to see her, she insisted on showing me digital images of a crack in one tooth (how comforting to see it Grand-Canyon-size on the TV screen). Now she's rigged up a mirror over her inspection light, so that the patient can see exactly what she's up to in there.

No doubt there's plenty of clinical evidence that this reduces anxiety, and the good Liberal Democrat in me is all for empowerment: but I'm not that keen on seeing exactly what each pointy, shiny, whirry implement is doing as it prods, chips, scrapes or polishes away.

My teeth aren't something I can view with any degree of detachment: not while they're still attached to me.

New balls

WUH! [plock]

AARGH![plock]

[shoesqueak, shoesqueak]

ERRRFFF! [plick]

OOOHHH! [applause]

AAAIYEEEE! [plock]

ITE!!!! [thud]

I really can't be bothered about Wimbledon. At all.

Festival frolics

You can't move for festivals and events at the moment. Round our way, as well as all sorts of events in and around Canary Wharf, the Spitalfields Festival has just finished, and we now have the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival. Last night, a group of us went to see Fous de Bassin, which is un spectacle in the French sense, as well as a spectacle in the rather more disapproving English sense. I've just come back from a second visit, this time a bit closer to the action.

In the Millwall graving dock, where one of the first new housing developments in the area gave each resident a mooring pontoon (virtually never used), there were some strange sights. As dusk fell on the main dock, the point of them became clear.

To whimsically tinkly music, a street scene such as you might see in a classic French comedy film unfolded: a car slowed down and stopped, enveloped in steam, the passenger (wearing a striped jacket that from a distance looked like pyjamas) got out and was apparently abandoned by the driver, so opened up a folding chair and sat to read a newspaper, a street cleaner with his wheely-bin came past and offered advice (and incidentally magicked up some lamp-posts as he passed), a pregnant lady sauntered past greeting everybody, and returned surprisingly quickly with an apparently occupied pram. An officious looking person (a postie?) on a bicycle pedalled very fast to go nowhere, blowing a whistle the while; and then an oversized bed appeared. Since, by the way, all this was taking place on the water (everyone floating along presumably with their own hidden electric motor), the bed was being rowed along by its occupant. As you do.

A female figure with an eighteenth-century wig and a huge red ball-gown came slowly into view, perched on top of a paddle wheel, five metres above the water, the wheel being powered by a slave caged within like a hamster. The occupant of the bed having for some reason torn it open and thrown around its feather filling, the surface of the water was now strewn with feathers which took on rainbow colours in the lights.

Then, as the darkness became complete, there was thunder. Flames began to appear, and the music became menacing. Two angel-like creatures zipped around jousting with fiery lances, and the wings of one caught fire (as did the hair of the man reading a newspaper). A Viking-esque longboat with a series of flaming flares along its length appeared, bearing an exuberantly priapic demon-king figure gesticulating among his acolytes, along with a Tinguely-like machine with a series of water-scooping wheels: they swooped around as what looked like a battle developed, and fireworks shot up from the water. As the fireworks reached a climax, the longboats and the angels weaved around each other and all the other participants, who were shouting incomprehensibly; the ball-gown woman writhed in artistically-posed agony on top of her paddle wheel. The street-scene had become a nightmare: the postie was now a sinister-looking clown, the mother now had a child and a creepily military mannequin in tow. As the fireworks reached their climax, the car now re-appeared towing a caravan.

There was music; there was fire; there were fireworks; it was on my doorstep; and it was free.

I seem to be even more lackadaisical about planning holidays than I used to be (and that's saying something). I've never been one of those people who sits down on Boxing Day to plan their upcoming summer, nor to stick to the same old place (no "good old Broadstairs!" for me - though I do seem to have been to Paris a lot recently); but this year I really haven't given the matter much thought. Perhaps it's something to do with working on short-term contracts at a job which isn't particularly stressful, but I'm not panting to get away.

I do like reading the travel supplements, if only with relief that I now know enough about more and more places to be sure I don't particularly want to go there. Après-ski (and indeed avant- and pendant-ski)? Pfui! Stretching out in the sun on a tropical beach? Not likely. Adventure camping in South America? Nada y nada. Luxuriating among the glitterati in some achingly up-to-the-minute boutique hotel? Per-leese.

But my eye eas caught by a piece in last weekend's supplement about the joys of Mechelen.

Hmmm... It's easy to get to by train - Belgium's practically next door; and it boasts a high and mighty tower, with an inspiring view. According to the (presumably much esteemed) local scribe Libert Vanderkerken: "Filled with joy, you look around and greet the fields, the woods, the moon and stars. A grandiose sight unfolds and fills your eyes and heart with overwhelming joy, and in this mood you'll find that precious peace of mind."

How can one resist?

And who couldn't be charmed that the aforesaid tower celebrates St Rumbold?

London can be quite surreal at times.

Yesterday I went to have a look at the "Tudor river pageant" (part of the commemoration of Henry VIII's accession - the bit when he was a Good Thing rather than the monster he became). Nothing too surreal there - we like a bit of re-enactment, even if the dressing-up is just a little ridiculous.

So I hung around on the Millennium Bridge (since it would be easier to run from one side to the other to take photos); eventually the procession appeared, and a burly "King Henry" bade us all a suitable stentorian "Good day" with all the flourishes.

So far, so ho-hum; but running for a bus to catch up the procession nearer Parliament, I passed a Japanese tourist hammering out (more than competently) the tango Por Una Cabeza on one of the street pianos scattered around London this weekend for our general amusement and edification.



And as the bus passed the brick and brutal balconies and walkways at the back of the City of London School, there was someone standing, surveying the street, in a Guy Fawkes mask. No-one else; no sign of any other activity: just standing there blankly as the bus swept past.

I just made it to catch the pageant passing Westminster, to the sound of boat whistles and police sirens (before my return to the normality of a Saturday date with Waitrose):

Some things I won't take lying down..

I've often wondered about trying out a recumbent bike. This morning I saw one crossing Tower Bridge*.

The rider's head was nicely placed at the height of the bumper behind and the exhaust in front, with nothing that might indicate his presence at the eye-level of any driver (or indeed cyclist).

So if I do give it a try one Sunday morning in Dulwich Park, that'll be the end of it.

*Yes, I know this picture shows one at the Arc de Triomphe (and I bet she didn't ride the recumbent round it), but it's the only picture I could find that shows one in relation to a car (now I wonder why that could be?).

Uneventful

Just another Saturday.

But my usual shopping trip to Canary Wharf included a diversion among all the indistinguishable shiny objects in their annual Motor Expo: Land Rovers performing gravity-defying dressage. Quite why people would want to sit in a car doing all this, rather than watch it from outside, I don't know, but they were queueing up:


And then, a gentle bike ride across London, along the river and through the parks coincided not only with a party of Horse Guards ambling back to barracks along the Mall after the Trooping the Colour parade, but also with the first arrival of some fancy-dressed cyclists for the Naked Bike Ride:


No, I didn't join in (the world isn't ready for that, nor am I); actually, nakedness wasn't that much on display at that point. On my way home later, I did see a few crinkly-bottomed old gentleman starkers around the Wellington Arch (why does that sound like a euphemism?); but mostly, there were people with various sorts of fancy dress and decorated bikes (and one young woman promoting a cycling website with the banner "Powered by cake").

I was on my way to see a different sort of decoration, in the the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising, almost hidden down a mews in Notting Hill.

It's a series of packed display cabinets taking you through products, packets, adverts and toys in their (lightly-outlined) social and political context from late Victorian times to the present day. The further away they were in time, the more outlandish they seem: Aspinall's "Neigeline", anyone? Ramsay's Spice Nuts (for eliminating all species of worms), Co-operative Liver Salt (what on earth would the unco-operative sort do?), the Bloomer Polkas. But as you move forward through time, nostalgia creeps in: the place must sometimes echo to "Ooh look, we had one of those" - there was a glove puppet of Sooty that I'm sure I had as a child. And then there are cases devoted to how individual brands have altered their appearance over time, how packaging is made and what the manufacturers (several of whom are sponsors, wouldn't you know) are doing to lessen the environmental impact.

As you might imagine, they're not short of themes for scrapbooks, postcards and souvenirs in the shop: but they also had books on how to achieve the look of different past decades, and, for the scholarly, I noticed a history of Australian apple labels (I am not making this up).

Anorak time

I like to think I'm grown-up and matter-of-fact when it comes to machinery, especially the small stuff, gadgets and the like: it comes from strange bits and pieces my father used to bring home, like the thing that rolled cigarettes, a sort of miniature reverse-churn device for mixing butter and milk to make cream, and the heavy-duty spike and blade on a handle that clamped on to a table so you could peel apples and potatoes without having to hold them (provided of course they were perfectly smooth and regular in shape).

My mother, on the other hand, swore by (and not too often at) the pressure cooker that looked like a weapon of war, and her heavy old sewing machine; so perhaps it's not so odd that big machines still inspire a certain awe. Which is why it's still a bit of a thrill to be stopped on Tower Bridge while the road swings up to let a ship pass through. It's happened twice this week. The first time I didn't have my camera with me, so I can't show you how tenaciously the abandoned newspapers clung to the railings as the road swung towards the vertical, and the wind made a tissue scramble up. By Thursday, someone had swept the road; but you can see the mad dash of pedestrians who can't wait three or four minutes:

I watch too much television: