Close to Home

In our explorations of London, we often find that we ignore what's right on our doorstep in favour of further-flung adventures. Well, today we decided to remedy that somewhat and spent the day relatively close to home. We started by heading over to Canonbury Square, which looked beautiful in spring bloom:

Our destination wasn't the square itself, but rather a gallery on the square, the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, whose collection and lovely setting are well worth a visit. Several rooms on three levels showcase the art:
The current exhibition, A Slap in the Face! Futurists in Russia, made for a good hour's wandering. I especially liked Lyubov Popova's Portrait,
Marc Chagall's The Welcome,
Mario Sironi's Urban Landscape,
and this series by El Lissitzky,
especially The Troublemaker.
The Estorick's wonderfully serene garden café is on our list for a return visit,
since we didn't have time to linger in the garden today--instead, we walked to a nearby chapel for a 12:30 show that was part of the chapel's free Daylight Music Festival. Today's performer was The Sleeping Years: Before the show, we stopped at a charity shop near the chapel and bought a few heavy items (a huge Pyrex bowl and a stack of books), so we decided to head back home to drop them off, but popped into our beloved Belle Époque for coffees in their back garden first. Coffee definitely fit in with our theme for the day, as Belle Époque is so close to home that we often talk about going there, but then end up having coffee at home instead. Now that their back garden is open, we may have to go more often to sip their excellent coffee and linger over the weekend Guardian! By now it was well past lunchtime and we zipped over to Broadway Market to browse
and have lunch. We sat and enjoyed our spicy vegetarian stews with flavourful ricein London Fields before returning to the market for more browsing in the market stalls as well as in the permanent shops on the street (including the excellent Broadway Bookshop). On our way to Spitalfields Market, we walked along the Regent's Canal and even saw a canalboat go through a lock:






Bob talked with the man, who told him that they had started out in Warwickshire, northwest of London, ten days ago and had gone through 148 locks so far, with 19 today alone! When we reached Spitalfields, we soon found our destination in the market, the Kinetica Museum, a space dedicated to all things moving, which opened in October. Their current exhibition, Cabaret Mechanical Theatre & The Ride of Life, is a fun and very funny collection of "automata." Although the exhibit was free, some of the automata required 20-pence or 50-pence coins to run them, which added to the carnival atmosphere. Chiropodist was a wee bit scary (read the instructions) and we didn't try it! Many of the displays involved pushing a button to start the movement. Thinking Chair made me laugh out loud, as the chair pensively paced around in circles on its rock:
Teacher Rules involved a lot of finger-shaking by the teacher and a lot of head-shaking by the students, something that rang a few bells with Bob: Pushing the button at Invisible and Alone started the spoon stirring the coffee, guided by the eponymous hand:

One of the best automata was The Dream, which required a 50-pence piece to work, but was worth it as the woman slept and various monsters appeared from her window, wardrobe, and bedside to fill her dreams:
Many of the displays were silly, including Auto Bag Searcher, which predictably involved a lot of thrashing around inside the bag:
As a finale to our day close to home, we spent some time at Clissold Park, whose café had more tables, chairs, and ice-cream sculptures than the last time we were there!
The park was filled with people enjoying the early-evening sun, and the nearby castle, which has a very surprising interior, made for a nice silhouette in the distance.
The air cooled off very quickly after the sun went down and we were a bit tired after the day's wanderings, so we decided to call it a day and headed home for dinner and some intense sofa-sitting in front of the TV!