Bibendum

We spent the morning in our neighbourhood, doing some errands and going for a walk through Abney Park Cemetery--our first time since March. The chapel was as impressive and sad as ever, surely deserving a better fate than it's getting,

and when banging noises started coming from what we thought was the back of the chapel, Bob went to investigate. The cyclist that we had seen earlier was gone, so he wasn't the noisemaker, and in fact, Bob returned to where I was standing and told me that we were the only people around, and the noise was coming from somewhere high up inside the chapel! Birds? Making sounds as if they were wielding hammers on pipes? Let's say "Yes." We did see one pretty bird as we continued our walk, and he very kindly sat still while I dug out the camera.
The park is overgrown with lushness, and areas that were sparsely filled with branches back at the beginning of spring are now completely blocked with greenery.
By the time we got home and dropped off some things, it was time for lunch, complete with a bit of Scottish monster for dessert.
There's much more attention here to ensuring that the consumer knows what variety of fruit or vegetable is being purchased (I couldn't tell you what varieties of blackberries are sold in Vancouver, for example) and so I looked up the Loch Ness blackberry and found out that it's the most popular variety grown in the UK and, amazingly, it grows on thornless canes! I can't imagine picking blackberries without the constant, oppressive presence of thorns. Even the berries Bob and I would casually pick in Stanely Park seemed like a level in a video game with many obstacles (thorns, wasps, slipping on the juicy ground coated with squished berries, losing your balance as you teetered on the stairs at one of the best spots above Third Beach, and of course, the dreaded blackberry juice stains on favourite articles of clothing--just-picked berries are so hot and juicy that they certainly live up to the cliché of being "liquid sunshine." After blackberries and some lovely coffee, we went down to South Kensington for another self-guided walk. We walked past a wedding and particularly enjoyed the wedding transportation: two old Routemaster buses with their destination marked as "The Wedding Special." The previous time we saw a rented Routemaster, it drove past full of people, and the destination was marked "Happy 85th Birthday Nana!" Cresswell Place was a charming lane--much wider than a typical mews: Agatha Christie once lived on (or as people say here, "in") Cresswell Place.
This imposing building was just around the corner, standing out for its colour as much as its size.
The entrance to Ensor Mews is typical of a mews in South Kensington, with a lovely archway and a bit of suspense as to what is just around the corner,
which turned out to be a lovely mews, some with original stable doors,
and a bit of a rant just to add some character to the neighbourhood.
It was definitely one of the prettiest mews we've seen, although I'm saving my heart for Kynance Mews.
Another blue plaque, this time for Béla Bartók,
is actually more substantial than it sounds, since Bartók stayed here every time he came to London between 1922 and 1937. This next building is simply gorgeous and may just be one of my new favourites in London. First opened in 1911 as the British headquarters of Michelin Tires, it's a striking building from far away,
but is even more incredible close-up.

The Michelin Man (I had no idea he was called Bibendum--also the name of the Terence Conran restaurant that currently occupies the building) is perhaps the most amazing aspect of the building. The stained-glass mosaics of him that grace all sides of the building are beautiful, dynamic, and slightly ominous, showcasing a rather edgy Bibendum that doesn't look like he would tolerate his current cartoon fluffball self, which the Michelin website states "spoke for the first time" in 2006. (I wonder what he said?) The 1911 Bibendum wears glasses, smokes a cigar, and looks like he could get very cross with you if you got in his way:

Across from the Michelin building, I spotted this sign and car:
(To be fair, there is a driver in the car, snoozing away, so it's not as much of a complete disregard for common courtesy as it may initially seem.) Some sort of religious event was going on in the former Old Brompton Road tube station when we walked past,
and behind the nearby church garden, we wandered down yet another pretty mews.

At the end of the guided walk, we went in search of bathrooms, and in London even the humble need to pee can lead to some interesting sights:

(We used the bathrooms at the Natural History Museum, where we encountered this escalator that resembled a movie set from a science-fiction film.) From South Kensington, we headed over to Embankment tube station, and walked across the Hungerford Bridge, getting a good view of this street artist's works of the day:
We had come for another performance from the Watch This Space series, but after it began to bore us with its representations of the exotic others
and the colonising explorers,
we found we were spending more time people-watching
than watching the performance, so we went next door to the newly opened Hayward Gallery Projects Space to take in the current exhibit. We also discovered the lovely Waterloo Sunset Pavilion, a comfortable place to enjoy views of Waterloo Bridge and, assuming you were there at the right time of day, a Waterloo Bridge sunset!

There are also several video terminals at which you can choose to watch a variety of artist-produced videos as well as conventional cartoons--in fact, the space was conceived (tongue-in-cheek?) as a "drop in centre for children and old people and a space for viewing cartoons"! We did one last bit of wandering before leaving Southbank, over to the first day of the Royal Festival Hall's incredible summer fountains:
Klaus Weber's fountains are striking in colour and form,

with this fountain being the crowd-pleaser,
and this one being the most moving,
especially when you approach it from the vomiting fountain, as the slight drip-drip-drip of the figure's tears are almost drowned out by the gushing torrent of water just opposite.