August 08, London: Zoo, museum, and theatre

The London zoo is a very good zoo!   But you know it is not as if the animals hang around awaiting your visit, especially on a rainy day.  None the less, some were available for viewing.

Here, well, yes, but native to Indonesia, is a komodo dragon, the largest lizard in the world.  Adults can kill prey as large as water buffalo, which can weigh up to five times their body weight.  Should a water buffalo not be available for dinner, a deer or wild pig will do:

Sumatran tiger taking a nap.  Like the fellow above, it also dines on deer and wild pig, but also enjoys monkeys, birds, and sometimes tapir.

Not only were the tigers napping, so were the lions:

This African red river hog was not snoozing, it was rooting around for fruit roots eggs, insects, or nuts, anything it could get its snout on:

To see its face and some of its friends, look here.

What is a zoo without some monkeys?

Though not all have a butterfly house:

or a display of locusts:

or a big Brazilian hairy spider:

 Apres zoo, the Courtauld Museum. There, in a prominent position at the top of a staircase, hangs a huge painting (only a fragment shown here) by Cecily Brown, who, in the realm of predominantly male artists gazing at he female nude, decided to make the male body the central theme.  Not surprisingly, it is called Naked Men: 

Modigliani was content to stay with the naked female:

Naked bodies were not the only subjects. There were also lilies in a jar by Matthew Smith (1914):

 

And a lot of paintings that I was not terribly interested in. All in all, not my favorite museum.

However, Witness for the Prosecution was a brilliant theatrical performance at the County Hall:

Where, perhaps Counsel may have been a bit tipsy:

Though maybe just the audience indulged.

I was foreperson of the jury:

And actually got to speak for the jury and announce the verdict to "His Lordship!"  This was very exciting, very exciting indeed!

On the walk back to the Air B&B, I saw the Big Eye all lit up:

The next day, it was time to fly home.

The scarlet ibis stayed at the zoo.

August 7, London: Kew Gardens

Headed off to Kew Gardens on a route not along the Thames, otherwise it would have been a walk of way way way over nine miles. I am getting to see a number of neighborhoods in this  big city.

The first part of the walk went through St James Park and Hyde Park.  And it was not so early that, ahem, one should still be sleeping:

Most of the walk was through busy commercial streets.  Whatever they are building here, they are employing more cranes than the four or five—considered a lot at one site— used in the building of the two new colleges at Yale:

When you get right down to it, Botanical Gardens are different from gardens like Hidcote.  The latter are beautiful, decorative places, whereas botanical gardens' primary purpose is to collect species, study plants, and do research, therefore most of the flowers are grouped  taxonomically.  My self-appointed editor—you know who you are—correct me if I am wrong!

There were some pretty beds, but I don't have any good photos to support that claim.  The greenhouses were fabulous!

Note the appendage with the red pod-like thing emerging from the clump of bananas:

This is a palm that flowers and fruits underground (or maybe this is not that exact palm, but there is a palm that does that).  Most palms are pollinated by insects, but regarding this one, researchers have observed seeds being dispersed by foraging pigs.

A flower:

Water lilies:

So spectacular they merit two pictures:

Those saucer-like plants remind me of the poem about Wynkin, Blynkin and Nod who sailed off in a wooden shoe.  They could have used these and had a more comfortable journey! 

Now here is a factoid:

These are the fruit of the sago palm:

Very appealing looking, but ¡ojo!, beware!

                                                             

                                                           A dangerous delicacy

The common name sago palm refers to the edible starch derived from the spongy centre of this species stems, roots and seeds. Cycads contain a toxic compound called beta- methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA), so it must be processed before being eaten.

BMAA is linked to a neurological disease known almost exclusively from the tiny island of Guam where sago is a staple food. One theory points to fruit bats as the trigger for this disease. The bats eat large quantities of cycad seeds and so accumulate the toxin; humans then eat the bats and accidently consume the poison. A decline in bat population has been found to correlate with fewer cases of the disease. Less bats - less humans with BMAA.

                                                                            Killer bread?

People make the stems, roots, and seeds of sago palm into a spongy type of bread. It is a long process that removes poisonous chemicals found in the plant. If you don't do it right, these chemicals can cause a deadly disease that affects the nervous system.

There is so much to learn about in the world of growing things!

After the Gardens, I walked two miles to a bus stop, where I took a bus, yes, to the neighborhood, more or less, where Selfridges is, OK so a mile plus change distant.  I just had to see their food halls so that I could compare them to those of Harrods.  Harrods wins thumbs down, but I did buy a good lamb kebab that came with a container of tomato and feta salad and some delicious hummus. I also bought some weird candied popcorn destined to end its life in the trash, and two bottles of a carbonated lemon drink.

I wonder, should I have purchased one of these?

Whether or not that is a rhetorical question, I am not sure!

August 06, London: three parks and two museums

The drama of the day was that I lost my key.  How I do not know as I always put the key in my pants pocket.  The real problem was the Air B&B nightmare: host does not reply to message and the "people at Air&B and B who are always here to help," don't. It got straightened out...after five hours of frustration.  I didn't have to sit around and wait the whole time because I had a ticket to Macbeth at the Globe.  I left just before intermission, that is how painful the performance was.  There was good mood music all eerie and stuff and drums, but the costumes or rather lack thereof, acting, staging, the props, all of it really bad.  I expected more from the Brits!  I looked up some Reviews to see if I was alone in thinking that this was just about the worst Shakespeare I had ever seen, but although the reviewers are more restrained than I am, most did not exactly love it either.  And tonight, as I was texting my host, I mentioned the play, which, he, too, had seen.  In that quintessentially British way he summed it up:  Pure rubbish! 

The Globe Theatre, though, worth the price of admission.  

On the way to Hyde Park, one passes Buckingham Palace and the guards must have gone down with Alice because they were not in their little houses:

There were a couple of hard-working security guards on duty:

Hyde Park Rose Garden:

where roses grow up the trees.  Would you expect anything less?

And ducks swimming in the lake:

and where everyone is busy getting all preened up for the day (or else they are very itchy):

and where there is a sad story about a bridge.

            FIERY END TO THE PARTY IN THE PARK

If you were standing here on August 1st 1814 you would have seen a Chinese bridge with a spectacular pagoda on top.  It was built for a great national party held in the park that night to celebrate British successes in the war against France.  The pagoda was seven floors high and lit by gas lamps so that it blazed in the dark. It was covered in fireworks that would be let off at the end of the party.  

The Pagoda on Fire:

 

                                THE BLAZING TOWER

Large crowds packed the park to watch. But before the fireworks began, the gas lamps set fire to the pagoda. The audience thought this as part of the display and cheered loudly as the top half toppled into the lake. Most were unaware that two people died trying to put out the flames.

The pagoda was destroyed but the Chinese bridge survived until 1825. An iron suspension bridge was built across the lake in 1857 and this lasted 100 years until it was replaced by the bridge you see today:

On to Kensington Gardens where a bride and groom were having photos taken:

and then the Holland Gardens where I especially wanted to see the Kyoto Garden renamed the Fukushima Gardens.  They were small but lovely;

 "I own this place," says the egret:

Kensington is a pretty neighborhood where several streets are lined with houses look like this:

The Victoria and Albert Museum has treasures everywhere you look.

Is this a framed mirror or a frame that needed something in the middle?

This is a curfew (The Netherlands)!

                                Curfew About 1685

The fireplace was the focal point of a room. It was the primary source of heat and also helped to light rooms after the sun had set. Curfews were used to cover the embers of a fire at the end of the day to keep them smouldering overnight. This enabled the servant or housewife to rekindle the fire easily the following morning with a puff of the bellows.

I was shocked to see this Torah cover (from the Netherlands, c 1695):

When is there ever a Jewish ritual object in a non-Jewish museum ? I never saw a Torah mantle that flares out, though.  Maybe they did that to show the artwork or maybe it is a Sefardi style.  

Western suit of armour:

Chinese warrior dressed up for an occasion:

Speaking of war:

 

Then a stop at Harrods Food Halls.  There are many halls Ain't never seen anything like this!  The amount of space devoted to one item, chocolate say, is vast!  Very high-end.

For about $100.00 this cake could be yours.  Granted, it is big.  For less, I could bake one for you , but it would not look so pretty:

This is what you DON'T do in the Food Halls:

You buy and skedaddle, thank you very much.

On to the Wallace Collection, which would be better named the Wallace Collections because it is floor to ceiling and cabinets and cases full of collections.  Into weapons:  you will find more than you imagined, same with helmets and coats of mail, and porcelain, and what not.  It is a place for the expert or the aficionado, not so much for me.

But guess-who was there?

 

And there was a small (rather pathetic) exhibit of Queen Elizabeth and her Corgies.  Here she is in 2002 during her 20th trip to Canada meeting members of the Manitoba Corgi Association:

Qohelet says the eye is not satisfied with seeing, and a good thing,
but after a place like the Wallace Collections, my two eyes were supersaturated.  The neighborhood, Marylebone, was quite lovely.

P.S. Apple from Borough Market kind of mealy. Bummer.

August 05, London: Bridge and museums

 Off to the Tower....Bridge that is. In yesterday's post there was a picture of the bridge taken from the boat going under it.  This is the view through the glass floor in that span that runs way above:

What did I learn about the bridge? Inter alia that it took six years to build, that the men who did the digging worked very hard, that Queen Victoria did not like the design, the bridge has been painted seven times since in completion in 1894, that we have to put some women into the project so they trotted out the maid and later the cook, the daughter of a single mother who grew up in a work house, the daughter that is, about the mother we don't know except for her marital status, but likely she was in the workhouse, too.  Yes, it is a good thing that women can cook and clean to further the aims of the Tower Bridge Project. BTW, do not confuse the Tower Bridge with London Bridge.  London Bridge is the one that is falling down,

The engine room is full of big machines:

And, of course, there is DANGER.  But before going to the Tower, I strolled over to Buckingham Palace:

where there is a park:

That would be Saint James park.

And on my way to the Bridge, I passed THE Tower and also St Tomas's Tower, which, today, is part of THE Tower:

Remember to click on a photo to enlarge.  But in case you cannot read the blurb below, what it says, in essence, is that Edward got the money to build the tower from taxing the Jews heavily, after which he expelled the entire Jewish community from England in 1290.

For a change of pace, I went to the Tate Modern with a stop at Borough Markets where I bought three kinds of nuts and three apples.  I did not linger at the Tate because not only was it beyond crowded but the art I saw was whacky and way too political for my taste, and the one exhibit that required a ticket was sold out.  

Here is one piece (it is one of six in a series) I found visually and conceptually interesting:

                                                                    GERHARD RICHTER

The six paintings in this room were conceived by Gerhard Richter as a coherent group, named after the American experimental composer John Cage.

Since the early 1980s, Richter has frequently made abstract works by applying layers of paint, and then wiping a squeegee across the surface. As the upper layers of paint are dragged across the canvas, earlier moments from the painting's creation are allowed to resurface.

The Cage paintings are the outcome of several layers of painting and erasure. Their surfaces are animated by lines where the squeegee has paused, by brushstrokes, other scrapings, and areas where the skin of oil paint has dried and rippled. The paint seems delicate and fluid in some areas, coarser and more solid in others.

Richter was listening to the music of John Cage while he worked on these paintings and titled them after the composer. There are no direct links between any particular work in this series and any piece of music by Cage. However, Richter has long been interested in Cage's ideas about ambient sound and silence, as well as his controlled use f chance procedures in musical composition.

After the Tate, I walked to the Sir John Soane Museum, which is actually a house. When dozens and dozens of people queue in the pouring rain, waiting a good half hour to get in, you know it has to be good and it was! 

Here is a sample:

How I felt about the place:

The feature that impressed me most was, as the wikipedia article refers to it, top lighting.  The skylights were stunning and architecturally so creative.  They reminded me a little of Gaudí's windows in the Bishop's Palace in Astorga. Both make use of lightly tinted glass, though to somewhat different effect. Here it is used to cast a warm light into the rooms below, whereas Gaudí's glass seems more essentially decorative.

The people who work/volunteer as, you know, those people who sit in a corner in museums to make sure you don't transgress, were delightfully knowledgable and engaging.  5***** all around.

As a finale, a stop at the National Gallery, where you also had to queue in the pouring rain but for not as long.  The NG is free except for rooms 1-8, which was all I wanted to see.  Exorbitant fee, but other than absolutely terrible, over-interpretive curation, the collection, had some exciting pieces.  All the big names were there!

Here are just a few:

Van Gogh, Woman from Arles:

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer ii, but not the one stolen by the Nazis and, after a protracted court case, and a movie made about it, eventually returned to her heirs.

Are you thinking Matisse?  

Well, you would be correct and not correct. It is Madame Matisse in a kimono painted by Andre Derain.

So, if you ever visit the National Gallery in London, hand over the pounds and go visit rooms 1-8.