Poshville part I

Hellooooooo! How are you? I’m still recovering from walking 40 672 steps in three days, and now that I’m officially a few years into middle age, that sort of thing takes it out of you. I’m not quite in napping territory yet, but I can see how it’ll happen eventually. It was basically three walks, which together ended up being a whole lot of steps, making me a whole lot of tired for the rest of the week.

Anyway, on Sunday morning I found myself in Holland Park with a couple of hours to kill, so I decided to go for an architecture walk, which has become one of my favourite lockdown activities. It’s outdoors, free and something you can do anywhere. Holland Park, for those of you who don’t know, is one of the wealthiest areas in London, neighbouring Notting Hill and Kensington. I lived here for a few months in a dark and small basement flat in the early 1990’s when I just moved to London, and I wasn’t particularly enamoured with it then either. But horses for courses. Anyway, this is the house I first took a picture of on my walk. Cute isn’t it? But it also looks like a section to the left somehow got chopped off. Do you see what I mean?

Repeating myself I will say that the architecture in London is so varied, and things can change immensely on just one street. This mid-century house was on the opposite side of the street of the chopped-off house. Crazy, huh? And then that old green lamp post! Great fun when you’re out and about looking at stuff.

Walking a bit further up and around the corner I found this Art Deco house that Dusty Springfield used to live in. I thought it was a building of flats, but it turns out it’s just one home and it’s for sale now for a cool £9.5 million if you fancy it.

Due to 2020 being such a shit show of a year, I’ve seen Christmas decorations being put up earlier than ever. Makes sense. We’re sticking to first of Advent here at home though.

It’s great how windows have become more than just windows this year too. What do we reckon? A birthday, an anniversary, a discount at the balloon shop?

This is about as scruffy as it gets in Holland Park. I think I’d go with F. What do you think?

Nice colours next to each other like that.

This church was a couple of hundred metres further down the same street as Dusty Springfield’s Art Deco house, and built in 1864 in the Eclectic Gothic style, which is slightly different from Victorian Gothic. I’m currently reading this book about different English architectural styles, but I haven’t gotten further than the building styles between 1625 and 1710, so I can’t tell you anything more about it, haha.

After a while I started heading towards the park called Holland Park (confusing I know) because middle-aged ladies need access to public toilets innit. Walked past this large building on the way there and I love that sort of tiling. So pretty.

This house was painted an amazing mint green, but it just refused to be photographed that colour, even as I kept switching the white balance.

Spotted some winter blossoms, which felt early

as autumn isn’t quite over yet.

Ahhhh, finally, in the park itself. But this is an architectural walk, so the two previous pics is all the park you’re getting. Instead here are some of the remaining parts of Holland House, which was an early Jacobean house built in 1604. This far side of the building definitely looks very Dutch with those gables. It formed a part of Cope Castle, later renamed Holland House, but most of the building got destroyed in the WW2 bombings, something I didn't know until just now when I googled it. The reason the architecture in London is so higgledy piggledy (apart from obviously being built over a very long time) is exactly for that reason, as so many buildings were lost during the Blitz. Now excuse me while I go find that loo. I’ll be back.

Chasing autumn colours part II

The waterlilies in Waterlily House were really impressive, even more than usual for some reason. I guess some things seem even more special or exotic in Covid times.

I like how in the corners things aren’t as perfect, so climbers just get to do their thing.

I watched the gardeners plant bulbs for the early spring display, and just last week I planted some hyacinths, daffodils and tulips for the first time in our garden. I watched a YouTube clip that suggested grating soap onto the soil on top of the tulip bulbs would deter squirrels, and it seems to have worked so far. It just looks really weird, like someone has spilt loads of parmesan in the border… I’m excited to see what pops up in the spring, if anything. It’ll be a surprise!

I’ve never seen a tree with mustard coloured leaves before.

Walking around Kew is a lot like walking around the V&A; it doesn’t matter how many times I go, as there always seems to be something I’ve never seen before. I’ve somehow missed this section before, where the plants are planted by family.

This pergola has 26 rose varieties growing on it in early summer. Must make sure to seek it out next summer. And look at these two… They’ve been close friends since Reception when they were 5, and I loves it.

I’m seriously crushing on grasses at the moment. My Pinterest garden folder is full of them. I’m going to have a go at planting them in the spring. Something else to look forward to.

Also found this little bonsai garden display for the first time. Aren’t they wonderful? I remember when they were popular in the 80’s, but I was too young to appreciate the madness of pruning actual trees this small. My uncle had some back then, but I’m pretty sure he hasn’t kept them going since.

Some of these on the other hand were 50 years old.

Crazy, right?

And stunning they are too.

Fellow photographer snapping away. She patiently waited for people to walk out of shot and for the light to be right, only to have her memory card be full. I felt for her.

We’d never seen this little building before either. It’s full of little alpine plants.

And a plant that L was matching.

A few minutes later I heard some awful screeching and immediately looked up to see these geese flying in formation.

And finally, standing under the Hive is always worthy of a picture. Hope to see you again soon Kew!

Chasing autumn colours part I

Went to Kew Gardens a few weeks ago to look at the autumn colours, but we were about a week too late. You’ve got to hit that sweet spot before it gets too wet and windy, and we missed the peak, but it was still an amazing day, as any day is in my favourite London place. It was so great to be back as we missed the spring and summer there, and I couldn’t help but smile watching this crow enjoying an autumnal walk too.

Quite soon after entering we sat down on a bench for our picnic and enjoyed the view of the lake. Still some good colour there.

I always always always end up taking a picture of this pine tree every time we go. It’s just so damn majestic! And it has such a serious lean. Hope it doesn’t completely collapse one day.

Ahhhh, excellent choice of bench, lady.

Still haven’t been inside the Great Pagoda; it was recently refurbished and in normal times you can go up it, but alas not currently. I look forward to exploring it properly one day.

There was still some autumn colours to be seen, like this tree…

… and this one. I’d love a big print of this… I say that every now and again about a picture, and then I never do it. I’ll just blame it on the fact that there isn’t an empty wall anywhere in our house - which is true.

We brought Oomoo’s classmate L for the day, and not long after I took this a Kew employee sped up in a golf cart telling us off. No tree climbing here kids!

Good thing you can still cartwheel though, eh? Have you tried cartwheeling recently? It frickin’ hurts. For me it feels like my back is about to snap in half and my legs are about pop out of my hip sockets.

On the ground on the way into the Palm House. Looks like Gill Sans to me.

I’ve never experienced the Palm House as empty as it was that day. It can easily feel claustrophobic with the heat and all the people, but on this visit we could spend a bit more time in there and look a bit more carefully at the plants.

And pay attention to the smaller ground creeping plants like this one. Beaut!

Tina Turner anyone? Ha. Ha.

As usual I took quite a lot of pics, so I’ve had to break the visit into two parts, so you don’t OD, and besides, let’s prolong all this pretty for a bit, yeah? Ok ok, I realise as I write this that this particular picture isn’t 🙃. Kew is still open during this lockdown, but all of the buildings are closed to visitors. I quite fancy going back there again soon. A December walk could be good?! Let’s do it.

A trip to the Arctic - kind of

So, we managed one cultural outing during half term a couple of weeks ago when we went to see that Arctic: Culture and Climate exhibition at the British Museum. It was fascinating to learn about how the four million people who live there live and have lived for thousands of years. It’s also depressing to see how their surroundings are changing beyond recognition due to climate change. Their and all of our lives will look very different in the coming decades, but I guess ultimately everything is constantly changing on our planet, and always has done, but the difference now is that we’re to blame. Sigh. Stupid humans! It’s crazy how we can be so clever but also so incredibly ignorant. Anyway… it was quite dark and busy in exhibition (no social distancing but lots of face masks) so I didn’t manage to take many pictures. This map made out of seal skin was amazing. The indigenous people of the Arctic Circle made/make use of every part of animals that they hunted for food, so a seal skin could end up being a map or waterproofs among other things.

It was one of those exhibitions where there was quite a bit to read about every piece, which of course was very good and informative, but I find that if I read too much I then don’t end up looking properly. I should always remember to look first and then read. I have no memory of what this little dude was, but all I know is that he’s very cool.

The bead work on this apron made up of some sort of skin (reindeer? caribou?) was mind-blowing. I wonder how many months it would’ve taken to make.

This jacket made out of caribou fur was also pretty amazing. Love the design. All hand sewn.

There were prints made by artists scattered through the exhibition.

And sculptures out of soap stone.

As well as engravings done on walrus tusks.

I went through the exhibition slower than Oomoo and Mr Famapa, so they were finishing up as I was half-way through. They asked me to guess what Oomoo’s choice was if he could take one thing home with him, and as soon as I saw these masks I knew straight away that these were it.

My take-home would’ve been this soapstone printing block, such a beautiful object, don’t you think? Even with the cracks.

And this is how the print looked from the above block. So cool! If you want find out a bit more you can read more about the Artic here on the British Museum blog. Once a year the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics takes place, where people from the circumpolar areas in the world compete in sporting categories that are designed to preserve cultural practices and traditional survival skills. I found a little clip on youTube from one of them here. Some categories look really painful, others really fun, and some seriously impressive. It was such an interesting exhibition and I’m so grateful we got the chance to go before everything closed up again.