That’s this post, really. We’ve been away all week, discovering Shropshire with friends who’ve moved there. Getting to know this county and its landscapes, its industrial history, its towns and villages is a work in progress for us. But it’s left me only with time to throw together a quick response to Ann-Christine’s Lens Artists Challenge: Work in Progress.
We’re all Works in Progress – all our lives. But children especially so. Fierce concentration here, and enjoyment too …
Hard at work with bucket and spade.
Slightly older children can hold their own with adults when it comes to demonstrating proficiency – in this case sheep-handling at Masham Sheep Fair.
Sheep-handlers young and old at Masham Sheep Fair
Over in the city, street art out-numbers sheep. Here are two works in progress: the first in Valencia, Spain, the second near Brick Lane, London.
And finally, two shots from India that I remember well: the house opposite my hotel in Puducherry, whose construction was a work-in-progress from about six, till late… it’s up there as my featured photo … and a metalworker hard at work producing figures inspired by the nearby temple at Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu.
I was in London last week. And the highlight – apart from being with family of course – was a day mooching round Spitalfields with fellow blogger Sarah of Travel with Me fame. We’d planned to meet, and I’d appointed Sarah as Tour Guide. Good plan. She knows Brick Lane and the area well.
We started in Spitalfields Market, and immediately spotted Morph, well known to all British children and their parents of a certain age (1970s) through the TV series Take Hart. He and his acolytes are making guest appearances throughout central London this summer for the charity Whizz-Kidz.
Coffee next. You’ll never be short of a refreshment stop round here, though the one shown here wasn’t ours. We chose somewhere cosier.
Spitalfields was once the heart of the Huguenot community in London – Protestant refugees from persecution in 17th and 18th century Catholic France. They brought their skills as weavers with them, and formed a community here, which still has the houses from that era at its heart. For many, these houses have now become a desirable address.
We chanced upon the Town House Gallery here, and rather wished we’d stopped here for our coffee and cake. Another time.
Spitalfields has gone on being an area welcoming those seeking a fresh life away from persecution and poverty, more recently Bangaldeshi citizens who’ve now made their own mark on the area.
All the same, it was street art we’d come for, and that meant Brick Lane, and the streets round and about. Sarah’s already posted about our walk, and as so many of you already read her (and if you don’t already, you should – link above) I’ve tried to choose different images from those she shows: click on any one to enlarge.
You don’t even need a spare bit of wall:
We didn’t just have street art to keep us amused. There was filming going on. A documentary? A drama? We don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out one day.
Then under a railway bridge …
… a promising back street – a couple of street artists preparing the ground for a new work. I’m just going to show you the preparations in action. We popped back a couple of hours later to inspect progress, but were underwhelmed.
A lunch stop, then we retraced our steps. Don’t forget to look up! We were intrigued by the lines of broccoli we kept on coming across, above eye level, but they remained a mystery.
Should we instead have stopped here for lunch? We’d both have settled for Italian food. Or Korean. But that particular fusion?
Just a couple more images, of passers by oblivious to their surroundings. Which we certainly weren’t. A day full of interest. A day well spent. Thanks Sarah!
Oh, hang on. This bit’s for Jo. We found the all-important cake shop, but it wasn’t a coffee-stop too. We contented ourselves with gazing through the window, and I got an oddly surreal image of us both, with Sarah having another woman’s head superimposed on her own.
Walk along any street, anywhere, and it won’t be long before you come across a message. Maybe light-hearted, like this one spotted in Liverpool …
… maybe political. You can’t go far in Catalonia, Spain without coming across messages and slogans demanding independence. These shots were all taken in Berga, where the mood of virtually the entire population there was not in doubt.
The next shots were all taken when thousands of us took to the streets, again and again, in 2018 and 2019 voicing our misgivings about the prospect of Brexit. It gives us no satisfaction whatever to see that our fears were entirely justified.
In India, I saw messages that were more like public service announcements ..
And in Edinburgh, in the National Museum of Scotland, this …
Inuksuk, by Peter Irniq, 1998, uses a traditional technique used by the Inuit to convey messages about good fishing grounds etc.
Let’s end though, as we began, with a message, this time in Thessaloniki, simply intended to bring good cheer …
When I was five, and shortly after Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, my family moved from the rural North Riding of Yorkshire to London, where my Polish father had found work. What a grubby, shabby place it was. The war was long over, but still streets had jagged gaps in them, with piles of rubble on which hardy buddleia plants gamely tried to put on a floral show. It was a grimy and often unlovely experience.
Many years later, long since moved away from London, my visits there revealed a city that had thoroughly re-invented itself, while leaving plenty of traces of its history behind. And there’s no better place to inspect it than from a boat on the Thames, or by walking one of the many paths alongside the river. Come and visit twenty first century London with me for Sofia’s Lens-Artists Challenge – Urban Environments. I’ve shown quite a few of these photos in the past, but for me, they bring memories with them.
Thames Barrier, Woolwich.
‘Redoubt’ tugs cargo-laden barges down the Thames. The Thames is as much a busy highway as it ever was.
The Tower of London, with the now almost equally famous Gherkin behind.
The header photo is taken – not from the banks of the Thames – but from next to the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the Prime Meridian Line.
Staying with the London Branch of the family – in this case in the role of Childminder Extraordinaire – has inevitably meant a visit to the Horniman Museum. And here we came across a small, but quirky exhibition: Cult Hair, which ‘celebrates hair unrestrained by modern beauty standards’. William, 7; Zoë, 4 and I each chose our favourite. Who chose which, do you think?
I’m posting from my phone, and it seems to be taking charge of my photos in a way I wouldn’t choose. This may not end well …
My favourite station in the UK is Saint Pancras International. It’s a masterpiece of Victorian Gothic architecture and must be England’s most elegant place from which to start a journey. It was opened in 1862, and one of its glories is its immense single span iron roof , designed by William Barlow. That wonderful facade, which includes the Midland Hotel, was designed by Gilbert Scott, and this is what you’ll see as you approach, and then wander among all the fairly up-market shops which line the concourse these days. It’s such a treat just to wander round admiring the structure, listening to travellers chatting in French as they accustom themselves to their English surroundings. Here’s a little gallery to give you as taste of the handsome brickwork, the charming attention to detail.
What a shock, then, to find yourself suddenly facing this statue, The Meeting Place. some 9 metres high. Designed by Paul Day and unveiled in 2007, it’s intended to encapsulate the romance of travel.
This weekend’s Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge invites us to use a photo of this work as a prompt for a piece of Ekphrastic Poetry (if this is a new one on you, as it was to me, you’ll find out what it is if if you follow the link). For the challenge, it has to be in syllabic form, so I chose Prime Verse. And I think my feelings about this work may be clear…
For this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, Ann-Christine asks us to think about curves. What a big subject! Flicking through my photos, almost every one has a curve in it somewhere or another. How to limit it? In the end, I decided to go with curves-as-frames.
There are deliberate curves as framing devices, as here in Studley Royal, where the estate gates are placed to emphasise the view straight down towards Ripon Cathedral.
Or here where the band on a bookshop barge on the Regent’s Canal in London has organised an arch above the musicians.
Or here, where a metal arch has provided an impromptu frame, so long as you choose your point-of-view. This is Harlow Carr Gardens, Harrogate ….
… or here, where a handy metal arch can be encouraged to frame the Maritime Museum in Barcelona.
Bridges may be arched, and garden entrances, even if not curved themselves, are often softened by climbing plants.
Leeds-Liverpool Canal near GargraveWalled garden with clematis.
Let’s go to more serendipitous framing in the natural world. Here’s my grandson at Brimham Rocks.
And finally, we’ll go to Fountains Abbey, where I spend so much time. I’ve chosen two different views of the Abbey, one taken in high summer, then the other, shown as the featured image, in autumn. In each case, Huby Tower has been framed by leaves cascading in gentle curves.
The Lens Artists Challenge this week asks for Memorable Moments. I was all set to embark on a virtual journey to Moorish Spain, or Seoul, or Pondicherry. But then on Monday, I wrote a post about fog, and I found myself making comparisons between the smog-bound, dirty, industrial and horribly polluted Thames that I knew as a child, with the vibrant highway that has become the face of modern London.
I have no photos of 1950’s London. I’ll give you instead, with sincere apologies to John Masefield’s Cargoes, a word-picture of the working craft on that busy river – traffic which still exists today.
The Tyne coal was then. The tonnes of waste are now.
The header photo combines old and new: one of those barges, still busily doing what Thames barges have done for several centuries: with a twenty first century backdrop. The gallery below shows recent photos which contain memories of the rusty workaday river I once knew.
Any minute now, I’m going to get marks deducted for not answering the question. But I am, in my own way. Those early memories are etched into my head, and on my visits to the Big City now, every trip along the Thames in a Thames Clipper – always a treat – adds fresh memorable moments, as I savour the clash and contrast between old and new which brings piquancy and added flavour to my long held recollections.
The Tower of London, founded 1066, meets the City of London, largely re-invented after WWII, and especially in the last twenty years.
The building on the right is London’s County Hall. As a teacher, my mother had access to its wonderful library, and it’s where we often went on Saturday to choose books. Nowadays, it’s a hotel, and utterly dwarfed by The London Eye.
The Thames at Greenwich. Not much changed.Further out still, beyond Woolwich: the flood defence of the Thames Barrier, which formed no part of my childhood.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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