Too hot to do much more today than stroll round to the farm for a coffee

The squirrels are used enough to people to scout around any visitor hopefully:

though not as much as this cheeky chappy in Haggerston Park last weekend:

Moving Planet

This is a picture of one of many eye-catching stunts dreamed up around the world last Saturday for Moving Planet. Rehearsals for the "bike" were well under way by the time I got away from my Saturday chores to make my way up to Haggerston Park, but eventually we latecomers made up the numbers, lining up along the banner.

That left me time to wander around taking photos of all the action (and, as is the way of such events, inaction, since the organisers had been efficient enough to get all their photos taken before the press arrived, and everyone had to wait a while before doing it all again).

The end result may not have been as spectacular as Melbourne's; and one has to admit that, actually, bikes do need a bit of oil to keep moving (not to mention the fossil fuels involved in manufacturing them and getting them to market, since so many like mine were made in Asia); but people got to make a bit of noise and a point, of sorts. The odd thing is, there don't seem to be any aerial videos of the "wheels" going round, so you'll have to imagine it from mine.

Oh, and I got a puncture on the way home. Heigh ho.

Serendipity

Or, things that happen by chance. One sunny day last week invited a bike ride, so off I set to the Victoria and Albert Museum (of which more later), through the parks wherever possible - a route that I had quite forgotten goes past the Serpentine Gallery and its pavilion, which had still been building last time I was that way.

A forbidding and closed-looking exterior takes you into a dark and even more depressing corridor, from which there is access to a cloistered garden that might have been there for a thousand, or even two thousand, years (such is its mediaeval, or even Roman, feel), instead of barely few months. This is "Hortus conclusus" by Peter Zumthor. Nothing remarkable about the plants or layout, perhaps, but all the more peaceful a sanctuary for the dramatic contrast of the fact of its enclosure - and of the fact that, like all the previous pavilions, it's purely temporary:



Back to modernity and industry for the visit to the V&A, which was prompted by a news piece about a competition to find a new standard design of electricity pylon. The shortlisted proposals were rather tucked away on a landing upstairs. You might, by the way, think that anything would be better than the great Stalinist robots that currently march across the countryside, but the glumness of the people watching a computer simulation of those that didn't make the shortlist tells you they could be much, much worse. No doubt there are all sorts of technical and cost considerations that outweigh the aesthetic, but I thought the "Y pylon" was a clear winner, for sheer simplicity. You can make your own mind up.


Serendipity might as well be the V&A's alternative title. It was the place to come for surprises on a wet day in the school holidays: you might think you wanted to look at one thing, but it's so easy to take a wrong turning and find yourself moving from stained glass to metalwork to Buddhist sculpture to musical instruments. This time, the pylon competition turned out to be a minor part of the Museum's contribution to London Design Week. On the ground floor is "Power of Making", all about new developments in craft and skill as new technologies and markets develop. Here there were bicycles in mahogany, or nylon, or covered in Swarovski crystals, a surfboard based a cardboard frame, a Polish lace manufacturer's sideline (to its usual Church vestments) in skimpy undies (presumably for a different market), various sorts of wacky furniture and a thought-provoking demonstration of 3D printers. These can create any computer-based design in plastic: as they get cheaper and more sophisticated, how soon will it be before you can have customised designs of whatever you can imagine run up in a local high street printshop?.

After all that, what better than a relaxing new way to contemplate the Raphael Cartoons, courtesy of this installation for Design Week:

Another of life's little embarrassments

What is the world coming to, when you remember the name of your neighbour's dog but not of the neighbour?

What a gent

Mildly narked by the presentational changes to Radio 3 this week, I emailed their Breakfast programme to suggest that reminding us of the news headlines barely fifteen minutes after the half-hourly bulletin was a bit too like the doom-and-gloom of a Radio 4 morning for a predominantly music and arts channel. Within minutes (even before their auto-reply), Petroc Trelawny himself emailed, promising to make sure the producers considered it.

Now, how do we get them to drop the "classical charts" stuff?

Reverse psychology - or trying to have it both ways?

The window of the Water Poet pub in Shoredith.

Detective work

Mumblety years ago, on a brief trip to Munich, I heard in the distance some buskers playing a tune that took me in a Proustian rush back to my childhood: my mother sang it going about the house, as I recalled, and I hadn't heard it since. I had no idea what it was, though it was clearly Irish in origin. The buskers had gone by the time I got near them. There was no internet to track it down: nor were there any words I knew to look up anywhere.

Rather more recently, it suddenly appeared again in an old film from the 1950s on the TV one rainy afternoon, but it was only a fragment, gone too quickly to note down any words. But when I signed up to a DVD library, that was one of the titles that went on the reservation list.

And today the DVD turned up; a few words noted, the internet searched, and bingo: "The Gentle Maiden", a traditional tune to which sentimental words were added in Edwardian times, and an even more soupily sentimental recording made by John McCormack. That's probably where my mother got it from, and no doubt it's well known to those who knew it all along. Since McCormack's style doesn't appeal to everyone these days (and certainly not to me), here's a purely instrumental version:

Doppelgänger

I could have sworn I saw Angela Merkel on the bus the other day.

But then, there was a time when a regular commuter on my bus looked just like one of the prominent leaders of the Lithuanian independence movement (who had seemed to be very visible on the late-night TV news discussions during the great changes of 1989).

It's strange which faces one's memory chooses to carry about and which to forget (well, that's my excuse); it struck me not so long ago (somewhat later than quite a few other people, it would seem) that no-one's likely to have seen Vladimir Putin and Nasser Hussain* in the same room:

*For non-fans: commentator and former England cricket captain. Cricket fans can make up their own jokes about shadowy oligarchs.

If only it were that simple....

What does your Web look like?

I know it's an advertising stunt for the new release of Firefox, but ingenious. Though I have to say I don't really recognise "mine": it looks much more tidy than I'd ever thought myself. And what's with the pincushion and knitting needles?

Useful reminder

Spotted on the deck at the Grapes - just in case anyone might be thinking of diving in for a refreshing swim at high tide one evening:

Floral bicycles and rainbows

It wouldn't naturally occur to me to decorate a bike. Mine's plain (and rather scuffed now) black, with some fairly prominent police markings for security*. So Sunday's Floral Bicycle Parade at the South Bank seemed an interesting photo-opportunity, if not necessarily something to participate in (it looked like rain anyway).
*(A thought: does having your postcode on your bike advertise to burglars that you're not at home? But I suppose it also suggests a skinflint unlikely to have much at home worth nicking anyway).

The space underneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall had attracted a fair number of people to pick up flowers, leaves, balloons and other bits and pieces to prettify all kinds of bikes (a tandem, a Borisbike, even an acrobatic loon on two unicycles), to whatever level of extravagance or restraint people chose.

It has to be said that not everyone there seemed that enthralled: but in the end the final Parade made a reasonable show.

The most striking visual effect of the day came from the weather. The on-off showers gave rise to one of the most vivid rainbows I've ever seen and some dramatic sunset skyscapes:

Carrying on with the "seen through windows" theme, here's a snatched shot of the Olympic Park from a DLR train. You'll see that the observation tower thing is well on its way to completion.

The official name is the ArcelorMittal Orbit. I can't imagine what, if anything, it will actually come to be known as (anything with an orbit like that in space would surely be on the way to a very bumpy re-entry). The Curly-Wurly? The Boriskelter? Sadly, it will only be possible to walk down, rather than slide on a mat: someone missed a trick there (though, come to think of it, the exit velocity from 115m up might be just a little too exhilarating).

Seen from my window

Pleasant though it is to live here, it wouldn't occur to me to see our garage - in the rain - as a particularly picturesque backdrop for a wedding photo.

Clichés

It's a scene that turns up at least once or twice a week in TV drama: a hand guides a cabled scanner across a stomach, a machine bleeps, and soon there's either a coo of joy or a grim-faced nurse conferring in hushed tones with a doctor (cue cliffhanger music..........)

Today, the stomach was mine, but there were neither coos nor grim face. I'd just happened to ask my GP if indigestion in the middle of the night was a known side effect of statins: and he arranged for me to be ultrasounded, or whatever the term is. For obsessive watchers of NHS performance, by the way, my appointment was within three weeks of my seeing the GP, the waiting-room was the usual functional but depressing 1970s-style decor; but I was seen on the dot of the appointed time, and out again with 15 minutes (just as well, as I hadn't been allowed to eat for six hours and I was starving) - and there's a dinky little electrical warmer for the lubricant (that's quite enough of that from the back row, thank you very much).

Don't ask if it's a boy or a girl, please; nor do I have a copy of the snapshots (clichés - geddit?) - those will go to my GP in the usual way. But at least it's not an ulcer. It seems, quite simply, that I have a fatty liver.

Just fancy: do-it-yourself foie gras.

Another day, another ship

The local TV news yesterday featured the arrival of the tall ship Gloria at Canary Wharf, welcomed by an enthusiastic (they would have to be, to turn out at 7am on a rainy morning) group of London-based Colombians. If you ever wondered what the Colombian flag looked like, this is an emphatic reminder: at a pinch, it could probably serve as an extra mizzen sail (there speaks one who is up on all the lingo, having read a couple of Hornblower books forty-odd years ago).

In today's sunshine, they were welcoming visitors on board (well, on the foredeck at least) well after the advertised hours, such were the queues. Just for a few minutes, you could stroll around, ring the bell, have your photo taken in a heroic pose and imagine yourself in one of those romantic sea movies (we'll forget about storms and scurvy, shall we?).

But you couldn't forget the other great military tradition - "If it moves, salute it, if it doesn't polish it". If ever there was a demonstration of "all shipshape and Bristol fashion", it was in the way every possible piece of brass was polished, every rope neatly coiled.

Seasonal sign

This lay on the path in our local park the other day, which seems a little early in the year.

Whether that's the effect of the blight-cum-canker visibly affecting the chestnut trees, or an early sign of autumn (along with the way a lot of blackberries round about seem to have fruited and been picked already) - maybe even a portent of an early or cold winter to come - this is a conker in its prime.

All I need now is a bit of string and a skewer. And maybe some vinegar.

An invitation to a departing neighbour's farewell do gave the baking muscle a rare twitch; not that these demand much effort of either muscle or skill (apart from trying to make sure that forming the shapes doesn't leave more of the mixture on your hands than on the baking sheet - a little oil on the hands helps). Described in the recipe as macaroons, they're basically marzipan cakes with chopped ginger in them. Crisp on the outside, and moist and spicy inside:

Reorganisation

Don't you just love it when the supermarket moves everything around (again)?

Back from the depths: 2

A more cheerful resurgence this time: the Cutty Sark is starting to emerge from its protective covers and scaffolding:

The hull has been lifted on to a cradle so that it no longer rests on its keel, and the museum and exhibition space underneath her is in development; there's a new coat of paint, and a definite air that she's well on the way to recovery and complete restoration.

Here's how impressive she looked on a hot and sultry evening five years ago; this time next year, she should be riding higher still: