London can show you the world in an afternoon

Intrigued by a fellow blogger's recent account - over at City Views, Country Dreams - of the Weiwei Zodiac Heads in New York, I was inspired to go along and see the same exhibition in London last week.

As in New York, where the imposing Plaza hotel and its fountains were the backdrop, the setting here was equally spectacular - Somerset House on the Victoria Embankment ...

Our iffy June weather was evident  - umbrellas were up (you can see some rain drops on my lens!), but there were little bursts of sunshine in between the drizzle ...

The heads have been placed in a semi-circle around the fountains in the courtyard (which in winter becomes an ice-skating rink).

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, as Frances at City Views mentioned, was detained in China shortly after launching the tour of his animal head sculptures to New York and London. Before this, he had made news in London for a remarkable exhibition at the Tate Modern of 100 million individually-created porcelain sunflower seeds! He remains imprisoned, for reasons to do with political dissent.

Some people didn't mind getting wet at all ...!

The Zodiac heads represent the twelve Chinese astrological signs and are a recreation of the heads that once decorated an 18th century fountain clock at Beijing's summer palace. The originals were looted when the palace garden was destroyed by the British and French.

Some looked fierce and imposing ...

others cute and even cartoon-like ...

I had another reason for coming here, though. The Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House opened an exhibition this week of Toulouse Lautrec's portraits of Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge.

The Courtauld is one of my favourite galleries in London (though I might have said that about the Saatchi?). Small and cosy, it has a fabulous little collection of impressionists and post-impressionists in a setting, in a wing of Somerset House, as beautiful as the paintings ...

Toulouse Lautrec helped make Jane Avril famous through his posters of her dancing at the Moulin Rouge ...

But the exhibition aims to go beyond that by exploring their private relationship off-stage. Nicknamed 'La Mélinite' (a form of explosive), she came from a harsh background of poverty and abuse, and suffered from a neurological disorder - St Vitus Dance or chorea.

portrait of Jane Avril

'La Goulue' (the Glutton), dancer Louise Weber, Avril's rival

Mlle Marcelle Lender    

I think I liked the lithographs best of all  ... I love the life and movement in these drawings ...

Walking back along the Embankment after leaving the exhibition I had a choice of the Victoria gardens on one side, where a ping-pong table had been set up, below. My mind still half on China, it reminded me of Boris Johnson's oafishly funny speech at the Beijing Olympics hand-over ceremony about 'ping-pong coming home' (watch here) ...

... or the Thames on the other ...

I liked this view of the London Eye apparently on the back of a smiling Sphinx (and a tiny aeroplane serendipitously overhead)

Behind the sphinx I could also spy Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament further down the river ...

Two faux (Victorian) sphinxes flank the Egyptian obelisk, below (an original, dating from 1450 BC).  It is one of a pair - the other is in New York's Central Park. An interesting coincidence I thought, given the twin exhibitions of Weiwei's sculptures in these two cities, the history of China's original Zodiac heads, and Weiwei's intention "to toy with ideas of real and fake, looting and national symbolism".

While pondering all this I snapped a more conventional view of the London Eye 

... and, taken just before I hopped on the tube, this view from under the Jubilee Bridge of St Paul's against a grey blue sky.

Quelle mélange this post has turned out to be - it seems a couple of hours meander along the Embankment can make the world connect in strange ways!

London's Heart

I count myself really lucky to work in London and have on my doorstep a global, world-in-a-city that also happens to be two millennia old - a city where a little walkabout can have you tripping over history at every turn.

These pictures were taken in what is technically the only part of London that can be called the City, the square mile that today is the financial centre of London but also its historic heart -  in medieval times it was the full extent of London.

Old meets new wherever you look ...

The spire of St Margaret Pattens church (above), dating from 1067, holds its own amidst buildings reflecting layers of history all the way up to a 21st century skyscraper and passenger jet on take-off from City Airport.

Below, the bullet-shaped 'Gherkin' (Swiss Re building) rears up on the site of the medieval parish of St Mary Axe.

What I was searching for here earlier this week was not that easy to find ... a little hidden gem I'd heard about but never been to. 

But looking up I found my clue ...

I love how the steeple from this angle looks like it's growing out of the modern building below it. 


This is the church of St Dunstan in the East - or rather, what remains of it ...

Built originally in 1100, St Dunstan was partly destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, taken down and rebuilt again in the 1800s after some structural problems emerged, only to be severely bombed during the Blitz a century later. At this point, enough was enough, evidently, and rather than rebuild it yet again, the ruins were turned into a garden ...

Climbers were planted to weave through the arched windows ... 

... and a lawn and a fountain were laid out exactly in the place where the nave had been.

At lunch hour on this sunny day the benches were taken up by office workers who'd come to eat their sandwiches in this little oasis of peace. Rather like in a church, there were no loud voices. People chatted quietly or just sat and meditated.

If you click on the photo below to enlarge, you'll see a pin-striped suited man taking advantage of a private cloister to do some texting on his mobile phone ...

It's hard to believe when you're here that this is not a country church but in the heart of the City ..

St Dunstans is in a pocket of London, near the river and the Tower, that has seen some turbulent events in its long history. Some of these were recorded by diarist Samuel Pepys, who lived through some interesting times.

Pepys lived in Seething Lane, and during the Great Fire of London in 1666 he struggled for five days to save his house, the nearby church and the Navy Offices where he worked. He mobilized the building of fire-breaks, had his possessions carried away and dug a hole in his garden to "put our wine in ... and my parmazan cheese". (There was a man who had his priorities straight!)

Below is the entrance to the pretty graveyard of Pepys's 'own church' of St Olave's, off Seething Lane. St Olave's has survived nine centuries, the Great Fire and bombing during World War II. The inscription below the three skulls reads Christus vivere, mors mihi lucrum, 11th April 1658 ("to live is Christ/Christ is life, death my reward" - more or less). 

It's a reminder of the horrors of the Great Plague. Pepys wrote, shortly after the plague had subsided, "It frighted me indeed to go through [St Olave's] church ... to see so many graves lie so high upon the churchyard, where many people have been buried of the plague."

For light relief, apparently, Pepys also attended the odd public execution ...

hmm ... how cheerful could that possibly be, do you think?

Before heading back to work I ventured a little way along London Bridge to get a view of Tower Bridge where Pepys walked on the night of September 2nd 1666 "and there got up upon one of the high places [and did see] ... an infinite great fire ... most horrid malicious flame [that] made me weep to see churches, houses ... all on fire and flaming at once". 

The English summer: a cat's view

The English summer is an elusive thing.

Grey skies and chill give way to days, or maybe only moments, of sunshine before reverting unpredictably to downpours of rain.

Suddenly it's September and you're blinking in disbelief: 'that was it? that was really summer?'

There's only one thing you can rely on: around April/May every year without fail there will be confident predictions of a 'bumper, barbecue summer ahead!!' and we'll be bombarded with bright displays of garden paraphernalia, sun-loungers, picnic fare ...

Five years down the line I've come to rather admire this peculiarly British brand of optimism as a kind of triumph of hope over experience.

This was my garden in a sunny window of a couple of hours last weekend.

Even Toby, who's gone through his own complex adjustment to his adoptive homeland (in which the discovery of heated floors has registered prominently on his personal Feline Joy scale) appeared to understand the wisdom of seizing the moment. He ventured forth, in a rare spurt of energy, for a sortie to the Great Outdoors ...

... truly a model for Hills' Science 'Senior Light' cat food! 

Five years of 24/7 heated-floor sprawling ...

(no, he's not a normal cat really)


alternating with armchair-lounging will tend to pile on the pounds around one's middle ...

But oh dear, only moments later this was the view from the window ...

(spot the spider-web glistening with rain on the olive tree ...)

Toby knew there was only one sensible thing to do in the circumstances ...

Hope your weather is better! Me, I'm planning my hols in warmer climes ...