Taste of London – Winter
Posted: Sat 21 November, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Food, London, Travel Leave a comment »Earlier this year, I went to the London Taste festival in Regent’s Park, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
When that finished they started also talking about a Winter festival, I got a ticket for it ages back, and went up to it today.
The Winter one was at Tobacco Dock (same place as Meatopia, earlier in the year) but on a larger scale than Meatopia. I’d never realised that Meatopia uses less than half the space available in the Dock, which meant that on occasion it was a bit disorienting, to be in places I thought I knew, but turned out to be on the other side of the building. Most confusing.
Taste is interesting – it’s less focused than the other ones I go to, there’s more varieties of food to try, and it’s driven a lot more by restaurants showing off what they do. For that, it’s really good – nice to have variety, and ranges of food from curried stuff through to meringues, as well as a big range of street-food type stuff, tacos, sliders, burgers and the like. It’ss a lot smaller than Summer Taste (which is fine) and a lot of fun. I got to have a fine range of foods, and had a great day.
Another London Run
Posted: Mon 19 October, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, London, M1, M25, Parking, Reviews(ish), Travel Leave a comment »Yesterday was yet another day spent in London. Thankfully, it was also a different area (again) which helps to keep things fresh.
This time, it was Hammersmith, primarily to see an American comedian called Gabriel Iglesias at the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo with a friend (who was the one who knew of Iglesias first) who was doing a one-off, rare (and sold out) London gig
It’s a long time since I’ve been to the Apollo – December 2008, from the look of it – and Hammersmith has changed a bit since last time. The places I’d used to use for parking had – unsurprisingly – changed, and disappeared, so it was time for a bit of a new explore.
Because it was an evening thing, we aimed to have food before. So mid-afternoon we went into London via a circuitous-ish route that allowed us to avoid the vagaries of the peak-time weekend M25, and simply blat straight into Hammersmith. Into the parking area I’d chosen, and job-done.
Had a decent meal, a couple of drinks, and then to the Apollo for what turned out to be a brilliant show – thoroughly enjoyed. (Although lots of people doing American-ised whoops at lots of things, which isn’t really my thing at all) Paid a small fortune for parking – which is taking the piss, as that parking wasn’t being used for anything else – and a pretty simple escape. Certainly nothing like as bad as getting out of Wembley…
And then a straight motorway blat home, dropping off friends at houses along the way (we’d met another couple of people at the gig) so I got home at about 1am, and didn’t get to sleep ’til gone 2.
It’s fair to say I am not fully awake today…
Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy
Posted: Thu 15 October, 2015 Filed under: Art, Creativity, Day Trips, Domestic, London, Media, People, Reviews(ish), Travel Leave a comment »Following on from yesterday’s post about my most recent day trip to London, this one focuses on the Ai Weiwei exhibition at the RA.
It’s a great exhibition, and shows a wide range of Weiwei’s works, including his massive (and understandable) loathing of China.
The first thing you see, as you enter the RA’s courtyard, are the trees, made of assorted pieces of wood
Hidden in there as well is what looks like a knackered leather armchair. Only it turns out to be made from black marble…
In the exhibition itself, there are just so many different things. Tables that have been melded with timbers from 14th century temples, and/or bent to rest with legs against walls, epic cubes (including one that is a ton of compressed tea leaves), video installations, 3000 porcelain crabs, and many others.
The cubes are fantastic, and a particular favourite of mine was the wooden epic-scale puzzle box (that needs two people to get it to work) which was just beautiful, and so tactile…
There’s also a work called ‘Straight’, which is entirely constructed from steel reinforcing rods, and is a thing of beauty. (Although you do wonder just how long it took to get it all to work!)
On the walls in that room there are also two panels, listing every single identified body from the 2008 earthquake. Just the scale, the number of names, is gob-smacking, and upsetting in a strange way.
There’s also a lot of humour in the exhibition – surprisingly so, and in contradiction to what I’d imagined and understood of Weiwei’s work. My personal favourites of the entire exhibition are the two wallpaper designs. (Yes, wallpaper) The first is this, whole patterns created from a stencil of a man’s torso and arm, ending in a fist with a raised middle finger.
I think it’s the first ever wallpaper I’ve seen and gone “Yeah, I could live with that”. Although at nearly £500 per roll, I won’t be able to do so…
The second wallpaper, “Golden Age” is even more clever. Surveillance cameras and Twitter birds predominate
And then you look closer, and realise that in every Twitter bird, there’s Ai Weiwei’s face. And that’s really clever.
There are many, many other pieces – in a variety of sizes, materials, and styles. (I also loved the chandelier built from bicycle wheels) It’s an impressive body of work, and I suspect a number of pieces will stick with me for quite a while.
All told, I loved the exhibition. It’s so much better than I’d expected/assumed, and is so worth going to see.
Even better, the RA are actively encouraging people to take photos of the exhibits, to promote it themselves, and to touch most of the items. It’s very tactile, very open – and so nice to see that kind of understanding. (Although they did still tell off the German who slammed his camera and bag onto one of the bent tables, impervious to the fact it was an exhibit – but you can’t do much about idiots, in fairness)
The only (small) downside is that for the price you’re paying to see the exhibit, and the fact it’s only ticketed admission, it was still crowded. I would rather that there were fewer people allowed in at once, and thus those people can see the exhibits better, without being being constantly blocked, wandered into, and having others drifting into one’s eyeline. But then, I’m an antisocial git.
All told though, it’s great. I’m actually considering going again before it finishes…
A(nother) Day In London
Posted: Wed 14 October, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Food, London, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »On Saturday, I had another London day – they seem to be becoming more common for me currently, and there’s a few more in the near future – which was thoroughly enjoyable, in sometimes unexpected ways.
The primary reason for going was that another friend had bought tickets for a matinee performance of the National Theatre’s “Three Days in the Country“, which I knew absolutely nothing about, but was happy to go and see. (In fact, that was pretty much the theme for the day, as it worked out)
However, me being me, I decided to make a day of it, and went in dead early. I went in by train, for once (it being an easy walk from Euston down to Waterloo and the South Bank for the NT) and had a basic outline ‘plan’ of “Get in to London, walk down to somewhere central, do something, meet up, see the play”. It really was that basic.
So, for the random thing to do, I ended up going to the Royal Academy and seeing their exhibition of works by Ai Weiwei. I’d been in two minds about seeing this – mainly through not knowing much more about Weiwei than the general media gubbins, and not being overly taken with the stuff of his that I knew of.
As it turned out, the exhibition was brilliant – I really enjoyed it, far more than I’d expected to. As with the Hepworth one I saw a while back, it still had too many people dithering around being fuckwits (which rankles a lot when you’re paying to go in, on allegedly limited numbers) but was still great.
I’ll write more about the exhibition in a different post (because it requires more detail than this one) but if you do get the chance to see it, it’s well worth doing so.
From the RA, I crossed the road and visited Fortnum and Mason, which I hadn’t been in for years. You can be sure I’ll go back there soon for some naughty treat-like things that you don’t see anywhere else. While there, I had a brunch of eggs hollandaise, which was ace. It was just that kind of day.
And then a continued walk down to the South Bank, meeting up with friends, having lunch, seeing the play (also excellent) and eventually walking back up to Euston and heading home.
A really enjoyable and utterly relaxed day, with 20km walked as a side benefit.
London – Parking and Walking
Posted: Tue 22 September, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, London, Travel Leave a comment »I’ve written before about my discovery that London’s Barbican Centre is bloody great for visiting London on a weekend – and the weekend just gone reinforced that for me.
Again, I drove in early-ish on both days (I was at Barbican by 9.30 on both occasions) and the run in was easy.
Parking was worse on the Saturday than I’d seen it before – but I still found plenty of spaces, albeit on the next level up, rather than the one I usually use. (It turned out that Barbican was hosting a graduation ceremony thing for the Open University, which explained why it was so busy) Still not a problem though.
In this case, I was walking down to Tobacco Dock – roughly 5km away – as the weather was great, and I had plenty of time to do it. (The venue doors didn’t open ’til 11.30 on both days – so I knew I was OK, regardless) So I got time to explore a bit, wander around, see stuff, and generally enjoy early-ish mornings in City of London.
The best (for me) was wandering down, turning a corner, and unexpectedly seeing the Tower of London, with the Shard behind it…
All told, it meant I got to explore some bits I didn’t know all that well, cover a decent amount of kilometres, and still do everything I wanted to at Meatopia – so just a win all round, really.
Even better, once I got home yesterday I filled up the car with what’d been used over the weekend. £30 of fuel, £18 for parking (Barbican put up their prices at the start of September by a whole pound – shocking!) – so it cost me less to do things that way than one day’s train and Underground fares would’ve been. Not bad, not bad at all.