Tea and Novels

Almost three weeks ago, at the Nina Nastasia show, we met the nicest couple who eerily have almost exactly the same taste in music as us. We ended up chatting a lot before Nina came on stage and they bought us a few rounds of drinks (we had both forgotten our wallets that night--a highly suspicious story, I realize, but utterly true!) and recommended a few bands that we'd not heard of. After having a listen to one of their recommendations, My Latest Novel, we decided to go to hear this new-to-us Scottish band live, see our new friends again, and with wallets in hand this time, return the favour of a few drinks. The show was very close to home and we got to the venue a bit early, so we wandered around a bit and came across this fancy-looking teahouse, unfortunately closed for the day, which I've earmarked for a return visit:

The venue for the show was right in Spitalfields Market, a place that I've only ever been during market days, and like the market, Spitz was a great, multi-purpose space where we look forward to returning in the future.
My Latest Novel were great fun, cranking out their textured, frantic sounds to the appreciative crowd.

One odd thing to us was that there wasn't a backstage area for the band; after they played their "last song," they left the stage and just kind of stood there in a huddle, talking amongst themselves, while the crowd clapped and whistled for an encore. After a minute or two, they took two steps back onto the stage to perform a few more songs, but the fact that we could see them between the end of their set and the encore was a bit uncomfortable--I'm not really sure why, but it just seemed wrong!

Vouchers

Today's after-school activity consisted of meeting at Peckham Rye rail station (I texted Bob the train I was on and he joined me and we went a few more stops together) and making our way to the Dulwich Picture Gallery--an old-timey name for a most definitely old-timey place.

England's first public, purpose-built art gallery, founded in1811, it's a magnificent place filled with a stunning collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings. Armed with our 2-for-1 coupons, er, um, I should say "vouchers," as they're called here, courtesy of South West Rail, we also thoroughly enjoyed the current temporary exhibit, Canaletto in England. After we left the gallery at closing, we decided to treat ourselves to our first dinner out together in London that didn't involve self-service, communal tables, or take-away: a real sit-down, restaurant meal. Of course, at London prices, you've probably already guessed that there's another voucher involved! We went to YumYum, a Thai restaurant in our neighbourhood, just off of Stoke Newington Church Street. Stylish, expensive by Vancouver standards (but then, what isn't in London?), and a bit hit-and-miss (incredible lamb and pumpkin curry but so-so pad thai), it was worth the price with the 50%-off voucher. Not the best review, I suppose, but we still wandered home, full and happy. Along the way, a strange poster on Church Street caught my eye
and after some Googling, I learned a bit about the series of posters that has been put up in the London area. Although the poster we saw is kind of simple, it's still eye-catching, and I guess that's the point.

Checkerboard City

Bob and I met at London Bridge station and slowly made our way to the Tate Britain, walking across the Vauxhall Bridge on our way. The sun was absolutely ablaze in the late-afternoon sky and looking west from the bridge, the old Battersea Power Station was beautifully silhouetted. I had no idea if a photo would turn out, as the LCD display on the camera was completely obscured, but the photo turned out to be a nice representation of what we saw:

After spending some time at the Tate's Hogarth exhibition, we wandered toward Victoria Station, through an area of London where we'd not yet been--very quiet, very strangely removed from the rush and crowds near the station. This building almost blinded us with its checkerboard pattern, even more so, considering that there were two such buildings on either side of the street with exactly the same motif. Very odd. In many ways, London is itself a checkerboard city, with neighbourhoods changing within the space of blocks, even single buildings: turn left and you may find what you expect; turn right and something entirely different may greet you. In that way, it's a great city to explore, because you never really know what you're going to find!

The Humble Living Room

After our transportation frustrations yesterday, we decided to stick close to home and vowed to avoid descending onto a single tube platform today. As usual when a day in our neighbourhood is what we're after, we walked up to Clissold Park to see the deer

and the birds.
The park was filled with neighbourhood folk and their canines, enjoying their Sunday afternoons.
We started to walk through Abney Cemetery on our way to the high street,
but it was a bit too mucky from the rain, so we cut that part of the walk short and took the bus down to the Geffrye Museum to have a proper wander through its galleries, something we didn't have time for the last time we were there. They have a lovely sitting room overlooking the back garden:
and their displays of period English living rooms are lovely and informative (and much, much more interesting than that may sound, I promise). Here's their representation of a middle-class English living room from 1800-1830:
Their temporary exhibit (which, like the rest of the museum, is free) of paintings of (primarily London) domestic spaces from 1914-1960 was well worth seeing. Most striking for me, though, was the fact that I knew where most of these streets and neighbourhoods were--somehow that made the already intimate images of home and family seem even more so. All those images of taking afternoon tea meant that we had to have some of our own, and the wonderful restaurant in the Geffrye was the perfect spot to do just that.
We sat at the window having our afternoon snacks (tea and carrot cake for Bob and espresso and lemon cake for me--don't worry Dianne, it wasn't as addictive as your lemon cake!), looking out at the garden and the urban landscape beyond, before heading out to the high street to do a few errands and then settling in for a night at home, with me watching my first whole show on our new TV and Bob listening to a hockey game on the computer . . . enacting our own Hackney living room of 2007 London!

Breakfast Is the Most Important Meal of the Day (24 February)

This Saturday morning, Bob made my favourite breakfast of his repertoire: scrambled eggs with feta cheese, bacon, dried cranberries, and apple. Yummy!

After a leisurely morning, we decided to head to Kensington Gardens to check out the Serpentine Gallery's newest exhibit--something that made for a good excuse to wander through the various green spaces that would get us there. Along the way, we saw a crossing signal that made us look twice at the figure being outlined:
Signs of spring were everywhere

and Bob wanted to feed a young swan, but didn't have anything to give.
Dogs filled the parks and this Norfolk terrier, named Alfie, entertained us for quite a while with his disobedience. He ate the crisp on the ground just after I took this photo, much to his owner's disgust:
This Shar Pei puppy win's today's prize for cuteness though:
Finally at the gallery after our leisurely walk, we didn't end up caring much for the exhibit (even though the description sounds so good), but since the day wasn't necessarily about art as a destination, we were still glad we had wandered that way. What we weren't glad about were the terrible crowds on the tube and bus as we slowly made our way home.
Bob and I spent our tube journey crammed into one corner by the doors before getting on a bus where we spent our time crammed into another corner by the doors! Bob muttered as we got off the bus with a gasp for air that "Vancouver will never seem crowded ever again."

Telly

So we finally broke down (okay, I finally gave in to Bob's whinging) and bought a TV. Actually, *we* didn't buy the TV; we used Christmas/ housewarming money from my parents to buy it, so we have them to thank! (And it's a Samsung, so that should do their little Korean hearts proud.) Tomorrow we're going to get a DVD player and assorted cords to make the TV complete and then a vast range of five "free" (but you have to pay for them via an annual TV licence) channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4, and Five) as well as DVDs will be at our disposal. In an odd coincidence, I also picked up a few books from my beloved 59-pence-books thriftstore today, and after we set up the TV, I noticed the back of one of my new-to-me books mocking our purchase
in a nice reminder not to make our newest acquisition change our London existence into a completely remote-control one!

Painter/ Tap Dancer

Bob and I met at Oxford Circus and walked to Selfridges to see Brian Eno's Luminous exhibit this afternoon. A computer randomly selects several of Eno's 300 paintings and overlaps them to create unique works that change over time; there are apparently 77 million possible combinations that can result. With Eno's music playing alongside his paintings, it's quite easy to spend too long in the darkened lounge, safely removed from the Selfridges shopping frenzy just steps away. Here's a mere sampling of the 77 million:






From Selfridges, we headed to the Timothy Taylor gallery for a look at their exhibit of early Andy Warhol. It was nice stuff--very different from all the pop art for which he became famous. The gallery was set up beautifully, and my favourite Warhol quote can be seen at the top of the pink wall in this photo:
We made a quick stop at another nearby gallery, easily with the oddest gallery name I've ever heard, named for the street on which it's situated. Their Simon Patterson exhibit was great and the gallery's interior is gorgeous; Bob remarked that it would make a great house for us, if we were ka-zillion-aires!

Country Bird, City Train (21 February)

Bob taught at a school in southeast London, so we met at the nearby rail station and made our way to the Horniman Museum, which has a beautiful garden



and a small animal enclosure with some very cute birds and goats.

The museum buildings themselves are lovely too, including a glass conservatory that immediately brought to mind the ill-fated glass church in Oscar and Lucinda.



As for the museum itself, we didn't have much time to look at the exhibits, but walked through the Great White Bear exhibit and the small aquarium (the starfish made me miss our frequent walks on the Stanley Park seawall, where we'd always see starfish at low tide on the back side of the park) before exiting right at closing time.





On our way out of the garden, the most exquisite birdsong came from directly beside the path.
After our tranquil visit to the Horniman, we were quickly snapped out of our country state of mind and reminded that we're still in big city, as evidenced by the very crowded tube platform that greeted us on our journey home: