Brutalism and bears

We are staying near the City of London this week, in Sir John Betjemen's London bolthole, 43 Cloth Fair. Betjemen (1906-1984) was England's most popular post-war poet, Poet Laureate from 1972 to 1984 and his bear, Archibald, was the model for Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited. If you would like to know more, you will have to ask my husband, whose nose is buried in A. N. Wilson's biography of Betjemen. He emerges occasionally to tell me bits he thinks might amuse me. E.g. Betjemen wanted to join up during WWII, but he was over age. He appealed to his father-in-law, Field Marshall Chetwode. Chetwode replied in a letter dated 3 October 1939; 

"I don't quite understand what part of the Air Force you want to get into. You are I suppose over age to join the regular Air Force, but perhaps you have heard of some job as Observer where they take men over 30. Do you know of any specific job you are qualified for which they are taking men of your age?" [sic]

Then, three months later;

"I cannot understand what you want me to do. Your letters are so vague. It is no use saying you want a job in a thing. What job are you looking for?"  

Betjemen was an early fan of Barry Humphries. Here is Sir Les Patterson's meeting with "Sir Benjamin":

43 Cloth Fair is another Landmark Trust property. Very shabby chic, none of the properties have televisions or radio but always have a bookcase packed with topical titles; in this case, books about London (some by Betjemen), London based novels (including Dickens, naturally), poetry and reference works. Wallpaper by William Morris, Georgian antiques and one of those odd hand-held showers which take a bit of getting used to. Here are some pics:

Next door is reputedly the oldest house in London, an Elizabethan place that won awards when it was refurbed in 2000. I found this great blog that has a whole article on Cloth Fair, called Medieval London. 

We are very near the Barbican, a huge post-war development that combines an arts centre, two residential tower blocks and numerous smaller, but no less massive, residential buildings. The design is brutalist. When I first heard that term, I thought it very apt to describe the squat, brutal, menacing edifices I have come to associate with the word, such as the Sydney Uni Law School in Phillip Street and UTS on Broadway. The word brutalist actually derives from the French for raw concrete, béton brut; and the idea, to put it very briefly is to expose a structure's architectural elements. Anyway, I have always been mystified by the appeal of much brutalist architecture, believing it to be intellectual wankery. But up close, I am beginning to see the appeal of the Barbican. It would be wonderful to live in it-large windows, lovely private parklands, surrounded by walls like an old-fashioned medieval city. 

An ugly bit of the Barbican 

Pretty bit. Lots of birdsong. 

Cultivated and cultivating

La Ghirlandata, by Dante Gabriel Rosetti

London Guildhall

Saw this painting at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London a couple of days ago. La Ghirlandata's face looked a lot greener in the flesh (so to speak) and I wondered if she had got her hands on some of Lizzie Siddal's laudanum before sitting for the painting. Alternatively, maybe Rosetti made the same mistake as Sir Joshua Reynolds, using pigments that deteriorated, leaving his sitters looking like they are either tubercular or teething. 

The Guildhall Art Gallery contains the remnants of Roman Londinium's amphitheatre, built 2000 years and already redundant by the time the Romans left the early 5th century. It also houses gigantic Victorian epic paintings, some of which are fabulously gruesome and melodramatic, such as Collier's Clytemnestra. 

The Guildhall was built during the first half of the 15th century. Lady Jane Grey and Thomas Cranmer were tried and convicted there, the former for treason, at the age of 16, the latter for heresy. 

The Guildhall is a short walk away from the Bank of England, redesigned by Sir John Soane, the architect son of a bricklayer whose remarkable house in Lincoln's Inn Fields is a national museum. Soane bequeathed the house and contents to the nation in 1833, stipulating that each item should remain where he so carefully placed it. The first two rooms behind the regency facade contain not one or two, but numerous perfectly intact ancient Greek vases. The vases are displayed on top of bookshelves containing his collection of over 7,000 books. Soane was adept at using light, mirrors and other devices to create an illusion of space and his skilful designs have created a fascinating maze in what otherwise could have been a claustrophobic cave. The place is positively stuffed with beautiful objects; ancient and aged architectural remnants, statues, paintings and furniture. You know Hogarth's A Rake's Progress? It's here; along with some of Canaletto's most significant paintings of Venice. 

The most wonderful aspect of the Soane Museum is the seemingly eclectic placement of objects. It reminds me of the old fashioned museums full of dusty oddments you visit in country towns, bereft of the annoying didactic interactive elements that are supposed to enliven an exhibition but tend to do the opposite. Remember the wonderful old museum of technology in Harris Street, Ultimo? Miles better than the Powerhouse. Yesterday I kept getting little frissons when I unexpectedly came across* random stone tudor roses or effigies of Plantagenet kings amongst the other treasures. 

After our tour of the museum (to which we will return-often), we wandered past Lincoln's Inn Old Hall, a banqueting hall and erstwhile Court of Chancery. Dickens described it as the "very heart of the fog" in the opening paragraph of Bleak House. It was the site of the interminable mentions of Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Dickens' great novel. 

Lincoln's Inn Old Hall

*(almost wrote "stumbled upon, but thought better of it. The first stumble and you'd be out. Clumsiness is death in a space like the Soane. I even had to secrete my handbag in a plastic bag lest it unwittingly become a chain and mace). 

The Bush is Boring

I used to think that. When we moved to a house with a national park at the end of the street I made polite noises about how exciting it was, but I didn't care, really. I went for a couple of walks and thought, "Meh, so what. Gum trees. Lizards. Sandstone".

Sydney Red Gum 

For a few years after that the bush was just a grey-green blob at the end of the road. Then, last year, I started to meditate and wandered down to the Park to find a quiet place to sit. I found a creek surmounted by what looked like a round green door, but which was in fact the base of a huge uprooted tree, covered in emerald green moss. The sight was magical and I was drawn back again and again, curious to see the stagnant, orange pools in the creek transform into a waterfall after a downpour; to watch the light and hear the bird sounds change as twilight descended.

As I ventured further and more frequently, what had seemed to me an amorphous, khaki mass resolved into separate elements. It has taken me months to really see the diversity contained in just a few kilometres; treading on spongy ground in dappled groves of lichen covered rocks and lush ferns, towering gums reaching toward the sunlight; then climbing to a ridge covered in grey banksias, sand underfoot, the gums stunted and multi-stemmed. 

Up on the ridge 

Down in the valley

Today we went for a long walk down Lorna Pass and along the river bed, taking a right turn away from the beaten track on the Great North Walk. I felt confident doing this as I had seen a runner attempt it the other day. He said you could get to another part of the track with a bit of "rock-hopping". The walk was spectacular, the river banks rising steeply from a sandstone rock strewn gorge through which the creek meandered. At one stage, after negotiating slippery boulders for about half-an-hour, the banks getting steeper and the rocks larger, we briefly considered turning back. We were tired and the walk was more rigorous than we had bargained for, but we continued on and soon the terrain became more friendly and we found the path. 

During the couple of minutes when we debated turning back, I remembered being lost in the bush for a short time between Middle-Head and Clifton Gardens as a kid and the fluttery feeling of panic in my gut when I thought I'd have to sleep in the bush. That in turn made me think of some of the novels I have read and loved about walking and/or getting lost in the wild. 

Books I love about big walks and being lost

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Cheryl Strayed

I am reading this now, about a woman who walked the Pacific Crest Trail, a gruelling months-long journey from the Mojave Desert in California to Canada. It starts somewhere in the middle, when one of her boots topples down the side of a canyon, never to be seen again. I keep shaking my head at her audacity. A great read so far. 

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson walked a large part the Appalachian Trail, that stretches from Georgia to Maine in the U.S, years ago. The book is his usual mix of personal anecdote and interesting historical fact. His description of what he would do if a bear entered his tent is one of the funniest things I have read in my life. Seriously. 

Hatchet (Brian's Saga #1)

by Gary Paulsen

I read this because I had to teach it to Year Seven students during my brief career as a trainee teacher. It's a wonderful adventure story about a resourceful kid who survives a light plane crash in the remote wilderness only to battle near starvation, wild weather and his own fears as well as myriad other trials. Couldn't put this one down and the students loved it too. 

The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1)

by Suzanne Collins

Another book written for teenagers but just as enjoyable for adults, all about a dystopian world where teenagers are sent into a wilderness to fight to the death. The author loves Roman History and Greek myths, and there are parallels to both. An imaginative and well-written book. There are three in the series and I liked them all. 

Some others that I haven't read (but probably should have):

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

A Fringe of Leaves by Patrick White

I would love to hear from you about your adventures in the wild, or your recommendations about similar good reads. 

Purple Borders and Pink Frocks

Some of you will remember frocks like this:

I certainly do, from countless 21st birthday parties in the late eighties and early nineties. I saw this blast from the past at the Fashion Museum in Bath, which was great. Here is another:

Looks a bit like a dressing gown, I think. I would have described the colour as shocking pink or fuchsia, but the internet tells me it's more of a cerise. Love the dress below:

I think the colour is dusty pink? I couldn't picture an Elizabethan or medieval lady wearing the colour in the middle picture and so I started to do a search of colours used in clothing before aniline dyes were invented in the nineteenth century. I discovered this fantastic website  which contains links to numerous websites concerned with Tudor costumes and portraiture. I determined, after many seconds of research, that in the olden days, popular colours for aristocratic women's clothing were red (in different hues), black, green and brown. Pastels weren't a big thing and I say "aristocratic women" specifically because portraits were usually of very wealthy women wearing their Court attire, which could cost more than a house. Sumptuary Laws  dictated that only those in the upper tiers of the aristocracy could wear certain fabrics, colours and styles. This was to curb extravagance (apparently) and ensure you didn't mistake the cook for the Queen. Incidentally, during my researches I discovered that Queen Mary I and Dennis Waterman are actually twins:

 

Maybe women in ages past did wear bright pink hues and they faded over time so that existing portraits are not representative. A few years ago I read a book about colours by Victoria Finlay called Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox and she explained that J.M.W Turner refused to listen to advice and insisted using a carmine pigment in his paintings, which faded really quickly. In Waves Breaking Against the Clouds, below, there once was a "ruby slick of oil paint where the sun's last colours were supposed to hit the clouds". Turners paintings are all quite a different colour than they were originally, which might explain the odd sulphur yellow that appears in some of his paintings.

Much red dye, incidentally, is made from crushed cochineal bugs found on prickly pears plants in Mexico. I learned from Ms Finlay's book that Buddhist monks won't used dyes made from cochineal because there is "too much death in it". You might reflect on that when next dabbing on red lipstick, which probably contain lots and lots of cochineal bug juice. Yum.

I have always been ambivalent about purple flowers in the garden, because the effect can be dull and lifeless. The Purple Border at Sissinghurst, though, was stunning. The yellow rose-hips, purply-pink dahlias and dark leaves on the stone wall made a perfect, jewel-like combination.

Everglades and Proust

View from the Wisteria Walk at Everglades. The Wisteria hasn't bloomed yet.

Today we visited Everglades, a garden Paul Sorensen designed in Leura in the 1930s for Henri Van De Velde. Van De Velde died in 1947 and evidently interest in the garden died with him. The property was sold soon after his death and by the time the National Trust got their hands on it in 1952, it was wildly overgrown. It has since been restored and the garden and house are open throughout the year. 

The garden perches at the top of the Jamison Valley and was designed as a series of formal terraces on one side and a sweeping glade and bush garden on the valley side containing a cool grotto and magnificent lookout terrace. 

View from top terrace

Dry stone walls atop a steep precipice 

The Art Deco house contains a tea-room but is otherwise largely unfurnished. The downstairs bathroom is fiery, a bit too evocative in such a bush-fire prone area, but so unusual: 

I didn't take a photo of the exterior of the house, being averse to Art Deco domestic architecture. It always seems too intrusive and bulky in a garden landscape. 

Carmine azaleas, primulas and bluebells 

Well worth visiting. The garden will look stunning in a couple of weeks when the rhododendrons and wisteria are blooming.

I finished the first volume of Proust's Remembrance of Thing Past, Swann's Way,  this morning. Doesn't he have a wonderful moustache and dreamy expression? Reading is totally a mood thing (for me, at least) and you have to be in the right mood to read Proust, otherwise it could well be tiresome, boring and/or infuriating. Here is a LOL review that examines exactly those qualities and another, by Germaine Greer. The advent of e-readers has meant you can cart around a whole library of books with you wherever you go, which means that you don't miss out on that perfect read for that particular mood. On our recent holiday, when I needed a rest, I immersed myself in Proust's prose and luxuriated in his descriptions. Gradually I found myself carried away with the story. I will leave you with a passage that I hope will leave you feeling refreshed.

He describes a stream after a storm:

"I have seen in its depths a clear crude blue verging on violet, suggesting a floor of Japanese cloisonne. Here and there on the surface, blushing like a strawberry, floated a water-lily flower with a scarlet centre and white edges. Further on, the flowers were more numerous, paler, less glossy, more thickly seeded, more tightly folded, and disposed, by accident, in festoons so graceful that I would fancy I saw floating upon the stream, as after the sad dismantling of some fete galante, moss roses in loosened garlands"

Japan, The Great Gatsby and The Cuckoo's Calling

The one downside of travelling to and from Europe is the painful contortion of time required when catapulting yourself from one hemisphere to another at sub-sonic speed. Not to mention the painful contortions of body, trying to get comfortable in the horrible seats in an A380. On the journey from Frankfurt to Japan, I started watching The Great Gatsby until I determined it was all style over substance, which is entirely apt as the novel was also SOS. All the characters are shallow and ghastly, which is the whole point I suppose. I couldn't help seeing the film as a long ad for Moet and Tiffany & Co.

I started reading The Cuckoos Calling and marvelled once again at JK Rowling's (writing as Robert Galbraith) amazing story-telling ability. I haven't finished it yet, I am saving the rest of it for the flight tonight from Tokyo to Sydney. The main characters are an Afghanistan war veteran, Cormoran Strike (typically perfect name, Rowling is second only to Dickens with names**) now a private investigator, whose life is a shambles and a new to London, newly engaged temp. Strike is hired to investigate the death of a model after a fall from a balcony in Mayfair.

Rowling has emulated some traits of Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin* and Patricia Cornwall's novels, such as describing the music Strike listens to in order to humanise him (Tom Waits, so far). Strike is likeable, he has a sense of humour and both main characters have enough believably dysfunctional relationships for a long series of novels. It's all very exciting.

Anyway, I was so tired by the time we arrived in Narita, I was barely able to muster a grin at the musical toilets and quirky mistranslations that make normally would make me snort with laughter ("Drinks Rist", "Aroma oil massage: Refreshing your internal organs and mental!"). We spent yesterday afternoon wandering up and down the streets of Narita and inspecting the Naritasan Buddhist Temple Complex. 

The gardens around the temple complex contain sculpted azaleas and trees trimmed to look like clouds.

It is raining today, so I will write libellous reviews on Trip Advisor under a pseudonym until it is time to leave for the airport for the journey home.

*You can listen to the Rebus playlist here and here is a Bosch playlist.

**Actually, I am debating with myself about that. "Severus Snape" and "Draco Malfoy" are so brilliantly evocative, arguably better than anything Dickens came up with. Incidentally, some helpful soul has complied an alphabetical list of Dickens characters on Wikipedia.

London SW1- where to eat

Anxiety about flights-catching the flight, not incurring an excess baggage fee, vague disappointment that the holiday is ending, invariably combine to make the day before flying home a restless one. Today we wandered out late with a sketchy plan to make an enquiry at the Queen's Gallery for a friend and then amble on to Belgravia for lunch. Our Queen's Gallery task accomplished, we started wandering and promptly found ourselves away from this:

Greenery around King William III in St James Square

and in the middle of this:

which was very hot and tedious. However, after consulting roadside maps we ended up at the Tate, which is not Belgravia but always a pleasure. After bagging the food at Simpsons in my last post, I feel I must temper my criticism by commenting on the generally excellent fare we have had on this trip, evidence of which you will see clearly when you see me in the (abundant) flesh. 

If you have not been to London and are planning a trip, I have some tips that may be useful. We are not epicureans in the modern sense, but we do try and follow the advice of Epicurus in seeking out wholesome and yummy food and a tranquil life.  The cafes and restaurants in museums and art galleries are very, very good, often with an emphasis on good, in-season produce, modern takes on old-fashioned favourites or simply old favourites done properly. Today, for example, we ate at the Millbank Cafe and Bar at the Tate Britain. We both had Scottish Salmon Salad, made with baby potatoes, watercress and dill. It was simple and delicious. 

I can also recommend the National Dining Room at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. We had a cheese platter and pot of tea. The Cafe at the Gallery is also very good with piles of English cakes, scones and other goodies. The Restaurant at the Royal Academy of Arts, in Piccadilly, is excellent. Other recommendations:

The Balconies Restaurant, Paul Hamlyn Hall, Royal Opera House

• The Balconies in Paul Hamlyn Hall at the Royal Opera House.
• The V & A cafe. The rooms were decorated by William Morris et al and are a magic environment in which to scoff scones and/or jaffa cake. 
• The Orangery, Kensington Palace. 
• The Fountain at Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly.
• The Ritz Restaurant, Piccadilly. 

The Orangery, Kensington Palace

London now also abounds in good take-away food shops, such as Pret-A-Manger, EAT. and Le Pain Quotidien. The latter, in Covent Garden, serves good coffee. Decent coffee was a bit hard to find, unfortunately. Tips on good coffee shops are welcome!