When Tim Connell sent round a circular announcing a visit to the Chelsea Physic Garden, I knew immediately that the visit would be a special treat for Janie and guessed that Linda Cook would also be very interested. I was less sure about Michael and Elisabeth; as it turned out Michael was keen.
Janie was very keen and had not yet booked in any patients for that day, so we basically decided to make it a date and took the day off.
A hot date in the Chelsea Physic Garden
There were 25 to 30 of us in the Gresham Society party, I believe. The weather was very kind to us; occasionally the clouds looked a bit iffy, but there was also some sun and certainly no rain.
The Original Sloane Ranger In His Garden
We got split into two groups; our guide was Anne, who seemed very well informed and proved to be good company.
To my mind, the best plant in the garden was Catharanthus roseus (Madagascan or Rosy periwinkle), which yields natural remedies for childhood leukaemia, increasing survival rates by orders of magnitude. Yet the most popular plant amongst our cynical, Gresham Society group seemed to be Veratrum viride (Indian Poke), which induces profuse vomiting and which some native American tribes use to choose their leader; on a “last candidate to throw up” basis. Going back to traditional, natural methods is sometimes a very good idea.
Janie asked Anne zillions of questions, many of which seemed to me to be more about the poisonous, nasty plants, rather than the medicinal, nice ones. Even more worryingly, I thought I heard Janie ask a few of times, “would you be able to taste this if you added it to food?” Perhaps I am mistaken about that. But when we visited the bookshop before leaving, Janie bought a small book on medicinal plants and a larger book on the poisonous ones. I think I’ll eat out for a while.
We enjoyed a spot of lunch/high tea at the Tangerine Dream cafe within the garden, which made for a very convivial conclusion to the outing. We always enjoy spending time with the Gresham Society crowd.
By the time Janie had concluded her book shopping, I thought we might be running a bit late for the movies, but I had sort-of forgotten that the car journey from the Chelsea Physic Garden to the Curzon Chelsea was a very short one.
So we had time to book Janie’s birthday treat (a preview of the new V&A wing) before stepping in to The Other Side Of Hope. We thought this was a great movie – very interesting, at times amusing, at times shocking. It is about a Syrian refugee who lands-up seeking asylum and then working as an illegal in Helsinki.
Now that Daisy is a member of the Royal Academy and the Tate, it is even easier for us to take in a few exhibitions in one outing, even those in which we might only have a passing interest.
Giacometti most certainly does not fall into the “passing interest” category – he is one of my favourite sculptors – Daisy’s too (perhaps to a lesser extent). So we planned our trip around the members’ evening showing of the Giacometti exhibition.
I had fancied seeing the Wolfang Tillmans some weeks/months ago, but perhaps not to the extent of making a special trip for it. So I was really pleased when the Giacometti invite informed us that the Wolfgang Tillmans would also be showing on that members’ evening.
Thus our plan was hatched – take the afternoon off, have a bite of lunch together at the town residence, mosey along to the Royal Academy for America After The Fall, scoot down to the Tate Modern and take in the other two exhibitions, shoot back to the town residence to pick up Dumbo (my Suzuki Jimny), then escape London to the calm of the country residence (W3) with some shawarmas.
The plan worked perfectly.
I think we both enjoyed America After The Fall more than we expected to. I had forgotten how much I like Grant Wood’s work as well as Edward Hopper’s and there were several fine examples from each of them. Plenty of other interesting pieces too, along with some rather grim and ordinary work from that difficult 1930’s period.
With some time on our hands and the members’ bar and garden at our disposal, we took some juice in the garden of the bar. We were lucky to get a garden table and celebrated our good fortune with a double-selfie:
Daisy and Ged RA, RA, RA!
Then we braved the rush hour for three stops of the Jubilee to the Tate Modern, arriving pretty much spot on members’ opening time, 18:45. This precision of time keeping does not come naturally to Daisy and I must admit to a bit more luck than judgement on my part too – I don’t pay my time pieces much heed on an afternoon off.
That got me thinking about a suitable song for Giacometti. Initially I decided that Cézanne was an easier name for parody, but then I had the thought:
Hit the road, Giac,
Ometti come back no more, no more, no more, no more,
Hit the road, Giac,
Ometti come back no more…
So that was it – I had Ray Charles stuck in my head for the rest of the day:
But I digress.
The Giacometti exhibition was everything we wanted it to be. Comprehensive, interesting information about Giacometti’s life and the diversity of his work, lots of our favourite pieces to see and some new favourites to squirrel away in our minds. We particularly enjoyed the documentary film. made late in his life, showing Giacometti paint the interviewer and then talk about the meticulous way he formed his sculpture’s eyes and faces.
The Wolfgang Tillmans was a delicious dessert after the Giacometti. It is a very interesting exhibition. Mostly photographs of course, but some of the rooms were “littered” with articles and papers that interest him, many of them about the brain and how we form impressions from images and ideas. Some of his photographs are simply wonderful and awe-inspiring. He seems to be a very interesting man, too, although the scattering of papers and articles made me want to have a chat with him rather than simply look at his reading pile.
We quite liked the playback room for sound too, although Janie found it too loud (as did I to some extent) but it was interesting to hear recorded sound at studio quality. We’re used to decent quality at home these days, but often forget how much higher quality is possible in recording, which I imagine is the intention of that work.
I’m rambling again. Three exhibitions, all three well worth catching if you can, especially the Giacometti, which is really special. We had a great outing.
The Handmaiden is everything we were told it would be, hence our reservations about it. Beautifully shot with exquisite settings, absolutely no problem with that aspect.
But the film is extremely long for the relatively straightforward thriller plot (just a few twists and turns) and fairly predictable ending.
The female leads are both very beautiful and the soft pornish love scenes between the two of them are all in the best possible taste, as a well-known arbiter of such matters used to put it.
The torture scene towards the end, which we knew to expect, simply had me looking away from the screen for a few minutes.
We both found the whole experience a bit disappointing, but at least we can now tell people that we’ve seen it, which makes them stop lecturing us on how we would definitely love that movie.
On leaving the movie theatre, I checked the cricket score and it looked as though Middlesex had bowled themselves into a position where they were likely to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against Gloucestershire.
So we diverted to Lord’s on the way home and watched the last 90 minutes of the match from the President’s Box (temporary Middlesex Room), witnessing Middlesex then snatch defeat from the jaws of the victory that had early looked like the jaws of defeat.
So that was two cringe-making torture scenes in one afternoon; the second of which panned out far more slowly than the first and it would have been a bit peculiar to have looked away from the field of play for the whole of the last hour.
We ran into Brian and Judy as we were leaving, so at least we had a pleasant chat with friends before departing the day’s second torture scene.
Janie and I were particularly keen to see the movie Letters From Baghdad – click here for IMDb listing – and were motivated to put this Thursday evening aside as there was to be a panel discussion, organised by the producers Bird’s Eye View, after the film’s showing at the Curzon Soho.
18:25 in Soho is a bit early for us mid-week and seemingly was a bit early for everyone else – while we made it on time there seemed to be no rush to start the showing on time.
The film itself was fascinating. Gertrude Bell was a most unusual woman for her era and was hugely influential in early 20th century Arabia as the Ottoman Empire collapsed and The Great War settlement came into play. The movie is basically dramatised letters and archive papers by and about Gertrude Bell.
Each panellist asked a very open question about the film’s topic and the audience were asked to comment or ask supplementary questions of the panellists. I remember very little of what was said, other than the very obvious points about the male-dominated society in which Gertrude Bell operated more or less omitting her from the historical record for decades after she died.
Still, we were pleased to have seen the fascinating film and would have wondered about the panel discussion had we not attended that night. But we won’t be rushing to panel discussions in future unless we know the panellists and/or the nature of the proposed discussion ahead of time.
Janie (no Gertrude Bell), trying to endear herself to the locals in Palmyra, 1997.
When I popped in to Tavola on Westbourne Grove a few days ago, I expected simply to buy a few provisions.
I did not expect Al to exclaim, “ah, here’s someone else we need to tell” and announce to me that they would be shutting up shop and emigrating en famille to Sydney, Australia.
“Oh dear”, I said, “when should I start panic buying?”
“I wouldn’t leave it any later than Wednesday,” said Al, “Friday will be our last day”.
Given my timetable the following week, Tuesday was my only slot for panic buying so Tuesday it had to be for the final few purchases (a bit of freezer stocking) and fond goodbyes.
I shall miss the place of course. It must be…sorry, it must have been one of the finest delicatessen’s ever anywhere. It is very rare for a top, top chef (in this case, Alastair Little) to decide to run a deli rather than a restaurant. Here is a scratch or three from the now defunct Tavola website:
But more, I shall miss the Tavola people. Al and I became friends. We’d chat about food and cuisine. Al’s great strength is Italian cuisine and I found that, strangely, he could pick my brains for a tip or two on Chinese and South-East Asian cuisine. We also share a love for cricket, so we’d often chat about that too.
Alastair (in the guise of Big Al DeLarge) became one of the people/characters I write about in my occasional pieces for King Cricket. Much of the story of Al, me and cricket can be traced through the King Cricket pieces that mention him:
Last but most certainly not least, is King Cricket’s own wonderful match report from 2016, in which Alastair finally did get to Lord’s with me and got to meet King Cricket himself and got to try The Lord’s Throdkin.
But returning to Tavola, I shall miss the whole Tavola team. Sharon (Al’s lovely wife), Sue (the perennial member of staff) and the friendly young folk who served in the shop from time to time. Also I shall miss the sense of community in that shop; the regular customers and that local vibe.
Of course, it is becoming nigh-on impossible for a place like Tavola to exist commercially in a street like Westbourne Grove any more. I understand it but I don’t like what that means for our community. I also realise that Alastair and Sharon’s reasons for taking their young family to Australia go beyond commerce; I wish them all well and respect the decision…
…although why anyone would go half way round the world to be a stone’s throw from the Sydney Cricket Ground when they are already merely a stone’s throw from Lord’s is a mystery to me.
We’d provisionally planned to go and see The Sense Of An Ending movie the following weekend, but on Tuesday I received an e-mail from The Tricycle promoting this film and discussion Sunday afternoon event.
“What do you think?”, I texted Daisy. “Go for it”, she texted back.
I had read The Sense Of An Ending soon after it came out – my signed hardcover merely boasting that it had been shortlisted for the Man Booker. Indeed Janie recalls me reading it on holiday in Vietnam – February 2012.
I thought I owed it to myself and to Julian to read the book again before Sunday. Indeed, I found it such an easy read second time around I was done by Wednesday morning.
Available in all good bookshops as well as clicking through to Amazon on the above image
Come Sunday, after tennis and a quick snack lunch, off we went to Kilburn to the Tricycle.
Both of us really liked the film. I’d heard so much about the film being different from the book, I was actually surprised at how close the film stuck to the main story. Yes, there were some film-specific subplots such as the Webster daughter having a baby and some business around Tony Webster having a little camera shop like a 20-teenies version of my dad’s emporium:
Dad’s shop – a bit bigger, a bit more old-fashioned
Anyway, after the film there was a short break to set up for the discussion. Daisy and I popped to the bar to get a glass-of to share and ran into Julian Barnes himself chatting with the interviewer. It all felt rather local/folksy/book-festivalish.
The audience seemed a well-informed bunch on the whole and most of the questions were pretty sensible. I got mine in early – about the significance of the Severn Bore imagery in the book and how Julian felt about its absence from the film. He answered both parts of the question masterfully.
One rather silly woman said she didn’t think she’d read the book but on seeing the film thought the book ought to be titled The Sense Of A Beginning instead of The Sense Of An Ending. Julian Barnes patiently explained one or two of the differences between the film and the book, then gently stated that he thought the title of the book was ideal.
Janie and I both felt that Julian Barnes came across very nicely, speaking with great eloquence and insight about the book/film. It was a great opportunity for us to see a movie and hear Julian Barnes talk about it at such a convenient time and location.
How lucky we are to be able to take advantage of such opportunities.
We had arranged to stay on for a couple of days after Scott and Amy’s wedding. The Egypt Mill and Nailsworth generally sounded like a good place. Neither of us had spent much (or in Janie’s case, any) time in that south-western corner of the Cotswolds, so it seemed like a good idea to check out the area and walk off the wedding.
We didn’t need to walk far to see interesting flora and fauna; the gardens of The Egypt Mill were lovely. Only problem was, the gardens were guarded by a badling of ducks.
The weather forecast for the Monday was less than special, so we thought we’d better get most of our outdoor walking activities done on Sunday. After saying goodbye to everyone, we took some advice from the Egypt Mill folk and from Mr Google. Coaley Peak and Woodchester sounded like a very pleasant walk. Almost everyone recommended the Westonbirt Arboretum. We’d aim to visit both of those.
Coaley Peak was very windy and chilly when we got there. Also, the promised “superb views on a clear day” were not forthcoming as it wasn’t clear. The forecast suggested it might be a bit clearer later, so we left the car at Coaley Point and walked to the entrance to Woodchester Park.
There are several walks of various lengths recommended for Woodchester. We planned to walk more than the shortest circuit but less than the medium-sized circuit, making sure we got to see the start of the lakes and see the mansion, but not walk the extensive lakes.
Easily distracted…
The early part of the walk has some man-made paraphernalia designed to keep the easily distracted amused.
Easily amused.
Still, it was a beautiful walk in the main and the weather did seem to be holding up for us. Also, lower down in the park it felt warmer and far more pleasant than it had felt up on Coaley Peak.
…as we approached the mansion, we encountered strange beasts…
The mansion was guarded by wild beasts, the like of which we had not seen for many moons. Fortunately, I was able to emulate their sound (more “maaaaa” than “baaaaa” in reality) to keep the beasts honest. Unfortunately Daisy’s attempts to emulate the sound initially seemed to have no effect and then seemed to make these beasts nervous, so we stopped doing that.
Never really used
The old Woodchester Mansion, which was never really used, looks rather Gothic and splendid. The National Trust does open it up for tea house and mini tour purposes, but not as early in the year as March.
So we wandered back to Coaley Point in the hope of a better view; but up there the view had deteriorated since our arrival and the chilly wind had got chillier.
We took sanctuary in Dumbo (my Suzuki Jimny) and drove to Westonbirt, arriving there before 16:00. We realised that we didn’t have time to do both spring trails and opted to do the Spring Wood one.
The start of the trail was a bit “school-tripsy”; a walkway explaining what wood is and stuff. But once we got onto the trail itself we were in our element. Or more precisely, in Daisy’s element.
I can get all this at home
Lots of Japanese trees with varieties of cherry blossom just starting to show. Of course, as residents of Noddyland, we’re rather spoilt for Japanese cherry blossom trees and felt that “we can get all this and more besides at home”. Except for the number of varieties and the beautiful country trail setting of course.
Daisy got to see her chosen flora.
Not fully sated, we decided we had time to take on the start of the Old Arboretum trail, which promised camellias, rhododendrons, magnolias and (Daisy assured me) pterodactyls.
Daisy got to see her chosen flora…
Daisy got to see all the things she was looking for on the first four stages of the Old Arboretum trail, but we ran out of energy before spotting any of my pterosaurs. No matter.
…maybe behind that tree?…
That evening we had dinner with Tony and Liz, who ventured once again from their glamorous caravan site and dogs (it’s extraordinary how the other half live) to the relatively austere surroundings of The Egypt Mill. We had a very enjoyable evening.
20 March 2017
As promised it rained. Proper, wet rain. We enjoyed our breakfast. I spent some time mucking about with the blog and the pictures we had taken and my baritone ukulele. Daisy read and mucked about with her iPad (other brands of tablet are available).
But later, again as promised, the rain cleared and we were able to plan the local walk for late afternoon; Nailsworth to Stroud.
Perhaps 10-15 minutes out of Nailsworth along the walking/cycle track…
The first part of the walk was lovely, following the Nailsworth stream pretty much. Very pleasant scenery.
Soon enough, we reached a tunnel under the road (A46 I should imagine) which has loads of graffiti art, which we rather liked. Very colourful and some rather good.
We rather liked the graffiti tunnel
Daisy is the thinker…
I knocked up a quick portrait of Daisy (wink).
We continued to follow the track most of the way to Stroud, but then the track seemed to take us to the A46 itself, unless we wanted to loop. So we took to the road, but soon saw a sign which read “public footpath” leading down some steps and back to a rather attractive looking trail by the side of a garden. So we then took that.
A rather attractive looking trail…
…by the side of a garden
The trail continued past this garden…
…which Daisy admired, as the trail led back to the road again.
Just as we were about to emerge back onto the road, a rather strange-looking, frumpy woman accosted us and asked us what we were doing in her garden. I explained that we had followed the “public footpath” sign and stuck to the trail, but she was adamant that we had encroached on her garden.
I pointed in the direction of the sign we had followed and suggested that she report its ambiguity (or indeed its manifest error) to the council, as there was really no choice other than the trail path after following that sign, apart from really walking through the garden. The woman didn’t seem to like my idea of alerting the authorities, she told us that she was in a hurry as she had to rescue her cats. She merely wanted us to know that:
“there’s a cycle and walking track up the top there for people like you”.
I wondered what category of people the weird woman had put “people like us” into. Gentle folk out for an afternoon stroll? Anarcho-ramblers? Pikeys? People whose in-laws stay on caravan sites?
Janie was quite peeved by this woman. We followed a later sign back to the cycle/walking track, but it soon became clear that we would do a big loop round to Stroud that way, so we returned to the A46 and did the last mile/mile-and-a-half by road. Not the most salubrious surroundings for a ramble. Nor is Stroud a particularly interesting or pleasing town to visit, it transpires.
With the benefit of hindsight, we’d have done better to have walked half way from Nailsworth to Stroud and then back again, perhaps a slightly different way.
We had booked the evening out for Hockney members’ evening ages ago; we decided to book out the whole day once our holiday plans had been fixed.
Thus the idea of going to see Revolution before the Hockney was hatched.
Still, events conspired against us earlier in the day and it ended up a bit of a rush to get in to see Revolution before closing time.
We got to the RA about 17:15. The young lady on the door warned us that they start closing about 17:55 (five minutes before actual closing time). I explained that the revolution wouldn’t take us all that long as we are seasoned revolutionaries. That seemed to convince her – at least she let us through without further ado.
In truth, we didn’t need all that long to see that exhibition. There were a few really good works of art, but the rest was interesting from an historical point of view rather than jaw-dropping art that you want to look at for ages.
I expected to like the Chagalls and the Kandinsky. More surprising was that I liked some of the Kazimir Malevich and the Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin (in the latter case, not the one depicted on the resource link above, but I did like several others).
Janie commented that, in many ways, reading the leaflet was more interesting than much of the art itself.
We then took a welcome break at the RA bar, where a Lenin-lookalike barman took an age to serve our wine as he was busy making up cocktails for a little group of barflies who were knocking them back.
Then on to Tate Britain for the Hockney. We had seen many of the works before, not least the more recent iPad work, the colourful East Riding of Yorkshire works and (some years ago) the sixties and seventies portrait stuff around pools in California and the like.
The art critics tend to favour the earlier stuff over the later stuff, whereas Janie and I are both fans of the later work. Seeing this retrospective on his whole oeuvre, our feelings were reconfirmed.
As it was a members evening, the exhibition was actually rather busy at the start. We chose to go round it backwards, starting with the later work and ending with the earlier. This seemed to work well enough for us, as we are familiar with much of his work. Perhaps not such a good idea for an artist with whom you are less familiar.
Then home (i.e. the flat) via the Ranoush shawarma bar in Kensington High Street.
If you are trying to get maximum publicity for your charity, it’s probably not a good idea to name your charity in Latin.
But if your charity’s main objective is to prevent and stop human rights abuses through gathering visual evidence with which to influence the powers that be, then maximum publicity is not top of your agenda.
The term “videre est credere”, as even a Latin scollop like myself knows, means “seeing is believing”, which does encompass much of the ethos of the charity.
Brian Eno is the charity’s patron and it was through him that I was invited to this function, held at Brian’s studio. I had been to a previous function there for Videre, a few years ago when the organisation was still much smaller and even more “early stage” than it is now.
The function was mostly party; far more low key than Brian’s free-form parties, but still a most enjoyable mingling with interesting people, many of whom from arty walks of life I encounter rarely these days.
Brian said a few thoughtful words on how increasingly important it is to have credible, video evidence to expose abuses of power. A couple of the Videre people also spoke and showed some sample video.
Naturally, given the nature of the work Videre does, there is an element of caution around discussing exactly who does Videre’s work and where they are doing it. As the organisation gets a bit older (it is now 8 or 9 years old) there will be more of an historic trail of case studies, I suspect. Much (but not all) of the work is in Africa and you wouldn’t need a PhD in international relations to guess the identity of some of the countries.
I wish there was more that I could do for this organisation. I guess they’ve reached the stage where raising funds is a key constraint but charity fundraising of this kind is a specialist field; not mine. The skills they need for their actual operations are also quite specialised. The areas where my expertise might help (governance, strategy, risk etc.) seem well covered; I chatted with some very interesting people from the charity’s board and its network of helpers.
Still, I know what Brian is like, so I suspect there might come a time when I get tapped up for something I might do to help Videre and for sure I’ll be a willing tapee.
Anyway, all sorts of weird and wonderful people read Ogblog. Many of you are people with the astonishingly powerful attention span to read 500 word blog pieces. Some of you are also people with the resources, skills and/or influence to help Videre. If so, do contact them through the website – here’s that website link again.
London Aquatics Centre Photo by Bert Seghers – Own work – Creative Commons CC0
Unusually, it was me who spotted this exhibition, in The Week, suggesting to Janie (who loves Zaha Hadid’s designs) that we should find time to see this exhibition before it comes off.
As we’d arranged to meet Lavender (Charlie) and Escamillo Escapillo (Chris) for dinner in Marylebone on the Friday, it seemed sensible for us to finish a bit early and take in the exhibition ahead of dinner.
The plan worked brilliantly. We arranged for Janie to get to mine at 16:00, which meant that she actually arrived just before 17:00, which in truth still gave us bags of time to see the small exhibition at leisure, wend our way gently to Marylebone on foot and still be a bit early for dinner.
Janie was originally a bit reluctant to walk all the way from the Serpentine to Marylebone, as it was a chilly evening, but once we got walking, she realised that it is a pleasing walk through Bayswater and Marylebone; worth it.
We had bags of time, so took in some shop windows and even open shops along the way. Neals Yard for some posh smellies and a bizarre tea shop with fancy tea pots, where Janie was finally able to replace a little glass pot in the style she likes to serve to her clients…jees she spoils them.
I’m pretty sure he was spouting some very large numbers, but through the buzz of the downstairs bar I couldn’t tell if he was saying, “twelve billion” or “twelve trillion”. Nor could I tell whether that was pounds, dollars, euros or Indonesian Rupiah. Nor did I hear what the massive number referred to. Still, it’s always good to have heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Janie and I were grateful to be shown straight to our table upstairs, which was a large one and upstairs was much quieter at that hour. Soon enough the other two arrived.
Janie started with foie gras, I started with tuna three ways and the youngsters started with scallops. Janie and I both had the signature 100 layers lasagne, while Lavender had the lobster tagliolini and Escamillo Escapillo the sea bass. The food was all very good indeed.
Neither of the youngsters were drinking much; Lavender not at all (tut-tut; dry January hadn’t been invented when we were her age) and Escamillo Escapillo just one glass ahead of driving home from the station. Janie and I felt like lushes by downing a couple of glasses each over the evening.
Everyone was on good form, so we had a good chat about life, the universe and everything without letting much family-sh*t enter the conversation. Quite right on a Friday evening out too.
Kindly, the young couple absolutely insisted on picking up the bill, citing the “our turn” protocol, despite torrents of protest, in particular from Janie, who knows how to dole out generosity far better than she knows how to receive it. At one point I thought we might need the Governor of the Bank of England to arbitrate, but Janie eventually caved in and in any case Mark Carney had probably long-since left the place.
It was a very enjoyable late afternoon and evening all round.
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