THE RAMBLINGS OF A STRUGGLING ARTIST ON LIFE WITH TWO TERRIERS, A PONY WITH ISSUES AND OTHER WILDLIFE AND BIRDS THAT CROSS OUR PATH

22 August 2012

STEAMING LONDON


I haven’t felt heat like we had in London since 1976; it was unbelievable. We left Dartmoor on the Thursday where it was tipping down with rain with a chill in the air and arrived in Leytonstone five hours later to temperatures in the late twenties centigrade. That evening we had our first takeaway for some time and a walk on the fringes of Epping Forest. The heat was starting to build even in the evening sun. Snippet and his Border Terrier friend Oscar had a great time, Oscar diving into a lake after swans to no avail (thank goodness!) and Snippet chasing the numerous rats out and about in broad daylight – rather disturbing to be honest. I remember seeing them in the twilight walking home from school on winter nights but not in the day in such a brazen fashion.


Swan deflecting Oscar

Snippet ended up sleeping with me in our friend’s box room while Origami boy and partner shared the other room. I had to have the door closed to prevent Snip wandering around in the night and, with the window closed against road noise, it was like a furnace in there. Not much sleep as a result but the next morning we set out with our oyster cards for the London Eye. Clearly, we had no idea how to use the cards as they started malfunctioning pretty quickly! One amazing innovation since we left London over a decade ago, is that Children go free on public transport. I wish that had been the case when I was a child. 


Origami boy and I really enjoyed the Eye; it was a very strange sensation: almost unreal. I have a certain level of fear of heights but found it totally gone in the capsule. I almost felt like I was watching the view on television we were so insulated from reality. More staggering was the high level swing thing pictured at the beginning of this post. Those people must have been completely crazy fifty feet up in the air. Apologies for the strange spot which has started appearing on many pictures which is apparently a speck of dust within the camera which I can only get rid of in PhotoShop. I just haven’t had time I’m afraid. The structure of the Eye is quite staggering and I spent more time staring at the mechanism than the view. I had also nudged the camera into the wrong setting in my bag, so most of the pictures were completely blown out until I noticed having alighted half an hour later. I’m surprised Fuji aren’t knocking down my door with sponsorship deals!


And then, thanks to my mum’s generosity, a quick cab ride to the Imperial War Museum. Origami boy is doing WW2 for his project next term, so we thought it would tie in well. I haven’t been for thirty years at least so it was lovely to be back. What a beautiful building it is.


I had forgotten how stunning the main hall is and we all had a great time exploring and staring up at the planes. Seeing ‘Little Boy’ was a sobering experience. It was so much smaller than I expected given the hideous damage it did and the legacy of horrific consequences. 


'Little Boy'






An Italian  'Human Torpedo' with a beautiful brass propeller 


Almost as affecting as ‘Little Boy’, was this counter which expressed the number of deaths through conflict since the beginning of the twentieth century. It reached one hundred million at midnight on the 31st December 1999 and has been counting ever since. If the rate were to continue as it did last century, two people would be dying every minute. Each rotation of the clock represents one death and a light fades in and out as it does so. 


My favourite exhibit was this embroidery piece. Something beautiful and creative to come out of  struggle and turmoil.


As a child, the only restaurant we ever went to was Marine Ices in Chalk Farm and, in the 1970’s, it was so exciting having such a range of ice cream flavours and incredibly exotic food when mince and boiled potatoes was the staple in our household. We took Origami boy there after the IWM on a tube train so hot that most people’s hair was plastered to their faces and no amount of anti-perspirant could deal with such temperatures. Discreet wiping of faces with arms and then having nowhere to wipe the arm was a popular move. He was singularly unimpressed with my childhood home of treats and we left to get an over-ground AIR-CONDITIONED train to Stratford for more exciting fayre.

At this point I need to mention that I spent eight years, from 1989 to 1997, working in Stratford at the Theatre Royal, of Joan Littlewood fame. I was the stage manager there for some years and came back after a break having thought I needed to work somewhere else, as so many of us did, to what felt like home and family. Stratford was unbelievably run down in those days but had a charm that kept us there. What I saw when the train pulled into Stratford station last Friday was utterly shocking. I was too overcome to take pictures I’m afraid but it was like landing on Mars. The ‘Westfield Shopping Centre’, which leads up to the Olympic park is immense and full of shops that I can’t believe will survive much beyond Olympic fever. The closest Stratford came to fine dining when I worked there was Greggs the bakers and to high fashion, River Island. There is now a branch of Prada, Tag Heur, Liberty and many, many others. The place was very full but, looking into the shops, they were remarkably empty. I predict a massive white elephant in a couple of years but hope I’m wrong for the sake of local residents, if such people even exist any more. It was all very depressing to be honest. At no point did we get a decent view of the Olympic park as it was closed for preparations for the Paralympics.

Apologies for my negativity but ten years away from London has had a profound effect I think. On a more positive note, the following day we had a lovely, if extremely hot, walk in Epping Forest with the dogs and visited Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge, a stunning surviving timber-framed hunting lodge built for Henry VIII in 1543. Originally the upper floor would have been an open gallery for the royal parties to shoot deer with crossbows. Lovely to see the external structural timbers painted white as they should have been, rather than the black favoured by the neighbouring pub!




When we left Epping that afternoon, the car’s thermometer was reading 34 degrees centigrade and we had to have the windows open all the way round the M25 and halfway down the M4 on our way home. By the time we reached Dartmoor at 12.30am it was reading 14 degrees……home sweet home! Till next time….Snippet on the beach. Enough of this city stuff. 


Snippet and his very good friend Oscar

15 comments:

  1. That's my favourite kind of London tour- from my armchair :-)
    For years we lived within an hour of the capital and I never visited once (apart from attending college).
    My Aunt lives in Woodford, so I have many pleasant memories of Epping Forest.
    Lovely to see Snip and Oscar, what darling dogs they are.

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    1. I quite agree....It was tiring, hot and intimidating, and this from someone who grew up there, went to school on the tube every day and used to walk home from clubs at 2.00 in the morning in the late '70's! We would like to clone Oscar and take him home.

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  2. Oh that hot, hot summer of 1976 in London! That was the July we got married, in a church in Sussex Gardens. The year after, we left London for good after spending our student years there. Day trips are quite enough now.

    Your few days in London sound interesting, even if you were soon glad to escape westwards again. I can imagine the shock of seeing Stratford now if you knew it in former days.

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    1. We had a flea infestation from a neighbour's visiting cat in that '76 summer. We were all covered in bites and had to run between high level perches where they couldn't get us!

      I'm VERY glad to be home...

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  3. It is amazing how we survive the Cities while living in them, however ever so grateful to not having to live in them once we have moved away ... or this is how I feel on the topic when revisiting.

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    1. You're right - I used to love London but it now seems like a different world that feels totally alien.

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  4. Last time I was in London it was the height of the buildings - and I mean just ordinary buildings not the REALLY big ones - which overwhelmed me. I'm just not used to anything taller than our house these days! I loved looking at your photos, but that's probably as near as I want to be. Having said that, our eldest daughter is talking about us going to the Tate and the British Museum in November . . .

    BTW, a HUGE Thank You for the photo which arrived today and is right beside me on the wall, as is the beautiful card you used, which now has a new incarnation! I would love to make a crazy patchwork quilt like that.

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    1. You're very welcome. My sympathies for you in November. It's been really interesting hearing everyone's BAD London experiences! I'm so relieved to be home in the rain!

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  5. We occasionally 'do' London, but I find it terrifying, and probably would have become panic-stricken in the tube at that heat. Many, many years ago would ride out to Epping Forest on my pony Sue, one time, I had just got off her to eat when a horse-fly sent her into such a panic she dived into the nearest tangle of blackberry bush and I had difficulty in extracting her...
    Your photos are so good, what sort of camera do you use please?

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    1. It's been a very old (at least 10 years)Fuji Finepix 6900Zoom for the last few months since I inherited it from my partner, coupled with my smaller Finepix F20 that has a lesser zoom but a better macro lens I think. That was a lot cheaper and I think it has a better depth of field. I'd love a better zoom lens but can't afford it. Perhaps Fuji would give me one if I get more followers!

      I laughed a lot at your Epping Forest story. I used to ride at a strange riding school,on Hertfordshire when I was a child where they used to use us as cheap labour with no free riding as payment sadly!

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  6. I have found also that trips home can be so depressing. But on a brighter note I loved looking at all your photos of London!

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    1. I quite enjoy looking at them now I'm home. Absence certainly makes the heart grow fonder in London's case. I also think that, with unlimited funds, it would be a far less stressful experience. The five minute cab ride was fantastic whereas the hour on the sweaty tube wasn't so good!

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  7. Nice pics-Again! I've only been to London 3 times-most recently in 2006! It scares me (Yet I grew up in Manchester!)L wants to go-May try at half term. Bet F enjoyed the Museum x

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    1. Enjoy would be a slight overstatement to be honest. A curate's egg as far as he was concerned. I'll be happy not to go back for quite some time!

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    2. oh dear! i really like the embroidery! x

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