Actually, I like tea

but I like this advert too:

Cheer up!

Smile for the camera, and you too could be one of the Happiest People Ever

Reading matters

On the tube this morning, my neighbours were reading

The Financial Times
The Racing Post
The Koran
A book on Victorian design
A 700-page novel in Lithuanian

I suppose it's a foretaste of the future that medical matters seem to be featuring more and more in my life. What with signing up to the Biobank and taking up the various check-ups the NHS is offering, I've seen more doctors and nurses in the last few months than in as many decades before.

Not that there's anything wrong. The tests and pills and reviews aren't to cure anything serious, but to stop me getting ill in the first place - a proper health service rather than a sickness service.

The latest development is the arrival of the discreet kit of low-tech cardboard and plastic for providing samples (by post) for the now regular bowel cancer screen.

It all makes a useful rehearsal for whenever decrepitude really strikes, getting into the groove, as it were.

You might even say, in the style of Mme Defarge, that I'm going through the motions.

More experiments with my new phone camera, on a bike ride into town, stopping off to have a wander round the Temple and a peek at Temple Church (mercifully free of D*n Br*wn addicts), and later at the quiet garden that was once St Dunstan's. Even allowing for my not quite mastering the brightness/exposure control, it's interesting how much difference there is on how the image renders on different screens. They nearly all needed a bit of adjustment not to look too washed out on a larger computer screen.

And the roses are starting to go over already [sigh].

Temple Church:





St Dunstan's (I've previously written a bit about it here):

Testing, testing

I missed the much blogged about absence of Blogger, being preoccupied with my shiny new toy, an Android smartphone. Having finally got to grips with getting it to do what I'd imagined I could do with it, it's time to see what else it can do.

Hence this post from the teeny-tiny touchpad, and, I hope, this random photo from its camera. It's a laborious procedure, but you have to marvel that it's possible at all, on something that fits into my wallet. And that it can store all my CDs on something smaller than a toenail....

Will it be ready?

Strange how not having to do anything in particular seems to remove any incentive to do the things you'd quite like to do. It's days since I went to have a look at the biggest and most complex project-with-a-deadline you could imagine - the London 2012 Olympic Park.

To get there from here on the bike involves the classic East End journey contrasting the old council estates (looking very workaday despite attempts to brighten them up) with the ever-present towers of Canary Wharf.

The route passes reminders of past upheavals in Poplar:


and, by chance, an ordinary-looking street-corner pub in Bow that you wouldn't think had a romantic legend attached, before turning semi-rural at Three Mills, where eighteenth-century entrepreneurs put the River Lea to work:

From there, it's a short ride up to the Greenway, whose name rather disguises the fact that its elevation depends on the great Victorian sewer underneath. I walked along here when I first came to the area, and then it was surrounded by small workshops, car breakers, scrap metal yards and the like. Now it runs straight through the Olympic building site, and alongside one edge of the park where it will all happen in just over a year.

There's a temporary viewing platform and café, with signboards to tell you what will be where, and how it's all going to work:



From this viewpoint, only some of the main features of this enormous site are visible, but everything seems to be well on track. The stadium has its seats in and the grass laid, the Orbit is rising fast, and in the distance the towers of the Olympic Village are looking reassuringly solid.



Passing along the Greenway, you can see how property developers have been getting in on the act, though these residents won't get much of a view of any action in the park:


And just to reassure the International Olympic Committee, old-established defence measures are still available to help ensure security:

Bluebell time

The bluebell season doesn't last long, so a chance remark about the display at Emmetts Garden was worth a try. Even on the way there, it was clear that local woodland and hedgerows were ideal habitats for some impressive spreads of these ephemeral flowers.

In the garden itself, there are some fine views, but at this time of year, the thing to see is the sweeping slopes of woodland which really are carpeted with bluebells, stretching into the distance till they look like a ground mist. It's hard to stop taking photos in the hope of getting that one perfect and complete image. In the end, only a video seems to give the full impression.

A grand day out

By tradition, a sunny Bank Holiday Monday more or less requires Londoners to go to the seaside - and the closest to hand is Brighton.

You can go for the over-the-top orientalist splendour of the Pavilion, or check out the antiques, arty and alternative shops and cafés in the Lanes, the Regency re-construction of the original fishing village

But for most people, Brighton is for fresh air and fun, preferably as vulgar, saucy and sometimes downright raucous as possible

If it' s still a bit early and breezy for the beach to be getting crowded,

and if strenuous exercise isn't your thing,

then the pier always offers something.

From the simple pleasure of getting yourself photographed in a comical pose or topical situation


you can stroll along the pier, taking in the views and peering between the decking, which is carefully spaced to let you experience the thrill of seeing the sea beneath your feet without any of the inconveniences of being on a boat.

And, of course, among the opportunities to relieve yourself of your money, there are food stalls and a fortune-teller (if you believe the signboard, even the biggest financial firms in London consult the tarot reader, which may explain a lot).

You can't come to the seaside without visiting the rock shop.

Your tooth-threatening souvenirs are available in all shapes and sizes, not just the familiar stick with name of the resort lettered all through, but also versions for your football team or for the recipient:

Amaze your loved ones with a novelty meal:


or amuse your more disreputable friends with something saucier:


With treats and souvenirs bought, there's still the amusement arcade and its "penny falls" machines, cranes that never pick up the cuddly toy, and shoot 'em up video games:

and right at the end of the pier, the funfair offers all the waltzers, dodgems, coconut shies, racing games, horror shows and thrill rides you could want:





But don't just take my word for it. Here's another view of a day out in Brighton:

Old friends

This venerable houseplant has just come into flower. It's one of a pair that have been around for decades, and that I brought home from my parents' flat after they died. The other is a Christmas cactus, which produces a winter display of flamboyantly frilly flowers in an improbable neon shade of purple. This one flowers in spring, and, today of all days, deserves to be called an Easter cactus.

According to my equally ancient reference book on houseplants, they've both been called a Schlumbergera, which doesn't sound very attractive. The book implies they're rather sensitive, but they get no special treatment from me, and yet they quietly flower on time, year after year.

Time for a tonic

This retirement lark is rather strange. With all the time in the world to do whatever takes my fancy, somehow it takes more effort to get started. I have got as far as catching up on a few household tasks I'd been putting off, but mostly I've been in holiday mode.

I've read more books in a couple of weeks than in as many months before, but somehow that holiday feel hasn't extended to much getting out and about, despite waking earlier and earlier in the mornings. It's no surprise I've started feeling the impulse to nap in the afternoon as well as slope off early to bed. In the present glorious weather that seems like a terrible waste (as well as a certain recipe for encouraging ever-earlier wakefulness, and so it goes on).

But the season of Big Events is well under way, and not to be ignored. A novelty this year is the South Bank celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain on the site. This in turn marked the anniversary of the Great Exhibition (the first of its kind) in 1851 and was set up as a "tonic for the nation". After ten years of austerity and deprivation, this rundown and war-damaged area of London was to be - in today's parlance - regenerated by a combination of cultural investment and crowd-drawing fun, with exhibitions of the latest technological and industrial developments, arts and design, funfairs, bands and outdoor dancing.

Like its predecessor, it was derided in advance as a waste of money and a vanity project for its promoters, but turned out to be a great success. The celebration of a supposedly reinvigorated and innovative British technology and manufacturing looks a bit hollow from today's perspective, but the area's new identity as an arts and entertainment centre has underlined the Festival's lasting reputation as a kick-start for new thinking, particularly in arts and design.

So what are they offering us this year? Well, to add to the living statues, buskers, skateboarders and trick-cyclists, bookstalls, theatre, cinema, galleries and concert halls, and an inflatable temporary theatre for a comedy festival, we have a temporary "seaside". A rather small beach (well, a giant sand-pit really, Paris Plage style), a line of gaily-painted beach huts offering various art works, and a rather over-romantic/nostalgic depiction of Southend-on-Sea, deckchairs on the artificial lawn outside the bookshop, and massive queues building up for the ice-cream stalls.










Not all the art displays were fully functional, but one eye-catcher is this display of poems written by refugee groups in London, recalling something similar in the 1951 Festival:

The weather had drawn out the crowds, and the permanent "Appearing Rooms" fountains were particularly attractive to lots of delightedly-screaming children (I'm also posting here a video taken some years ago, to show how they work as a puzzle, as well as just soaking people):


A good time was being had by all, but it's all a bit small-scale by the standards of 60 years ago. These days, fun for its own sake is so much more available, it would be hard to achieve the impact of the original: