Goodbye winter, hello spring

This morning, when I should have been getting ready to go to the dentist, I chose instead to inspect our very small back garden for signs of spring. And signs there were: the mint in its pot is beginning to sprout, the daffodils are growing apace. Our two snowdrops are looking very delicate and pretty and I promise to plant more bulbs in the autumn so they'll have some company next year. And the most exciting thing of all was one tiny purple bloom hiding under a shrub which was later identified as a crocus. This was great because I love to see them blooming in public gardens and churchyards; have always wanted some and now we have one. Since we didn't plant it the most likely way the bulb got into our garden was that it was dropped by a passing bird.

This is a real contrast with two weekends ago when we spent the weekend in Chesunt in Hertfordshire. We stayed in the youth hostel that is a spit and a cough away from the station and itself is right next to the Lea Valley Park. It was cold (for southern England). On the Sunday morning we left the hostel at about 9.30am dressed in all manner of clothing and were greeted with the sight of frost everywhere and the sound of silence. The park has many advertised attractions for walkers, runners, cyclists, anglers and birdwatchers and in good weather it's probably as busy Bluewater shopping centre but for us the attraction was the very lack of activity and the peace and quiet.

During the day we explored all sorts of places with names like Seventy Acres Lake, Fishers Green Lane, Hooks Marsh and Nightingale Wood and often we were entirely on our own. Occasionally we would meet a dog walker or have a chat with an owner of a narrow boat but mostly we spent our time lost in thought or admiring the views. Now and then I would catch the scent of Hawthorn blossom which is intoxicating and surprising because I have just read that it doesn't flower until May. I also spotted some Catkins next to the Hawthorn which was also a delight. But my abiding memory of that day was standing still and watching a duck waddle very carefully across a frozen pond. It wasn't in any hurry and it followed a wobbly course until it reached the bank on the other side and that was a great analogy for our day - we also took our time and followed a wobbly course around the park. This sketch is one I made the day before when we took refuge from the cold and sat in the Bittern Hide and watched the world go by.

Revived drawing project

July 2005 was a demanding month for Londoners. I don't mean it was particularly hot that month although it might have been but I can't remember. I do remember watching the tv at work on 6 July when we all stopped what we were doing to find out which country was going to be awarded the 2012 Olympics. I can remember the astonishment and mild hysteria (in the office) when London was announced the winner and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair said that hosting the games would be 'momentous and tremendous for the capital'. There was major hysteria on the tv. I think the decision was broadcast towards lunchtime because soon after the announcement I left the building in search of food and, as I was wondering how long our elated mood might last, the Red Arrows swooped overhead in a celebratory flypass over the capital.

The elation ended around 9am the following morning on what is now known as 7/7. This was a time of great confusion. As is my wont I set off for work somewhat late. I suppose I got to Mile End tube station at about 9.30am. There were two trains waiting in the station but going nowhere and there were many people milling around the platforms. Before I had too much time to wonder how long it would be before the trains would start moving we were ordered up the stairs and out of the station. This was weird. I hadn't been involved in an evacuation since the IRA bombings and they'd ended some years before. Fortunately there are few steps at Mile End because the tunnel is so shallow at that point but even so progress up the stairs was slow as there were so many of us trying to leave. The mood quickly became silent and sombre and this was before any of us knew that three underground trains and one bus had been blown up by terrorists. So much has been written about that day there is little point adding to it so I won't.

Two weeks later on 21 July there were copy cat explosions on the tube executed by a different group of bombers and the only reason they are serving prison sentences and no-one was killed was because their bombs didn't so much go off but fizzled out. By now an all pervading feeling of anxiety was well established and there were police (some armed) patrolling every single railway station in London. This was just at the point when I was starting a new drawing project.

You might well wonder what terrorism has got to do with me drawing. Well nothing really but this project I had devised meant travelling to railway stations and drawing what I could see. I had decided to award myself a travel grant and my plan was to visit each station on what had been called The North London line but I think is now called Silver Link (this is an overground line not underground). I was to start at North Woolwich in the east and eventually finish at Richmond in the west and take in north London en route. Depending on how interesting or dull each destination proved to be I would either do one or two drawings. The plan was that all the drawings would be in mono (tones of black and grey). I would be able to work in pen and ink, or draw using graphite, or sketch in watercolour so long as there was no colour. The resulting work would fill one sketch book reserved for the purpose and when complete would be a record of a journey.

I was happy with this self-imposed structure and did begin the project on 1 August 2005. I travelled to North Woolwich and produced two sketches. The one shown here is of the Woolwich ferry which ferries people and lorries and cars back and forth across the river Thames and I was fascinated just watching the ferries come and go. What I wasn't too thrilled with was seeing so many of Her Majesty's police force prowling around every station I passed through. So I stopped this project almost as soon as I had begun it for this reason.

However for the moment things have calmed down and I'm ready to pick up my pen again and make my way to the next station on the line which is Silvertown. If anything interesting crops up during this visit I'll be sure to let you know.

Foot tapping to Stan at the Barbican

I've just noticed that it's been nearly two months since I posted a blog and that seems such a long time ago but in fact wasn't much before Christmas. I have to admit that I've been busy like everyone else I know and I also haven't been inspired to write about anything 'arty' .

That changed just last week when we went to a Stan Tracey concert at the Barbican. Stan is a famous jazz pianist. He was born in Denmark Hill in London in 1926 and raised in Tooting in south London. My Dad also lived in Tooting in the dying days of WWII and it was where I lived when I first moved to London in 1979 so I feel Stan is a kindred spirit for that reason alone. By the way, Tooting has nothing whatsoever to recommend it. It is part of the sprawling mass which is south London but does boast a good selection of south Indian restaurants so if you find yourself in the vicinity enjoy a meal at one of them.

My husband sold the idea to me of going to a Stan Tracey concert a few years ago saying 'He's ever so good and we don't know how much longer he'll be with us' meaning he might peg out at any moment. So we went to see him perform and I became a Stan Tracey fan. Just like that. When he's playing the piano he looks to me like an old fashioned journalist thumping a news story out on an old manual typewriter but the sounds you hear are magical - it's quite amazing. Fortunately Stan's health has remained vibrant enough for him to keep performing so we've been able to see him twice at The Bull's Head in Barnes which is a great old pub right near the Thames but a pain to get home from once the trains have stopped running in the evening, and once at the Vortex jazz club in Dalston which I prefer because we can get there on the bus and it's small so you're practically sitting in the musicians' laps. The sketch shown above clearly is not of Stan, because I find he plays too quickly for me to draw him in action, but one of his fellow musicians playing the sax at The Bull's Head and is dated 28 February 2004.

The setting at the Barbican was a complete contrast to the intimate venues we've been to before. The Barbican is a rather grand concert hall with large, comfortable leather seats where people speak in hushed voices and, from where we were in the circle, the stage looked to be a long way away. It crossed my mind that this might be detrimental to the experience of listening to the music but the acoustics were so good the distance didn't matter. The evening began briskly with Stan playing with an octet of musicians. What I like about jazz is that every musician gets a chance to do a solo and at the end of their set they all took their bows, bobbing up and down to the audience, while Stan read out their names.

This was followed by a two-piano duet with Keith Tippett which was completely improvised and this was the first time they had performed together for 15 years. They didn't do any preparation for it and the result was remarkable. Here we had to have a break because I for one was emotionally drained and we came back refreshed for the second half. This was Stan with his Big Band and it was the first time I've seen a big band live and it was a complete contrast to the first half of the evening. It was big, noisy and vibrant. Stan closed the evening by playing a solo on the piano after everyone else had left the stage; just him and us - it was great.

Gestures and actions

It's dusk and the sky is a lovely purple colour. I drop my gaze to just above the roof tops and the purple has drained away and I can see the remaining vestige of daylight. It is a yellowy turquoise and is rapidly turning to dark blue. The sky is clear so we might see some stars tonight. It is 4.46pm and in 10 days it will be the shortest day of the year, otherwise known as the Midwinter Solstice.

A number of traditions associated with the solstice have been incorporated into that other great festival which follows hard on its heels. The yule log and yule wreaths made from holly and ivy makes for a traditional Christmas and the pagan festival is now nothing more than a background note to the main event. Just the other day I was confusing the pagan with the Christian when I was browsing around Mysteries, a new-age shop in Covent Garden, looking for a Christmas present for a friend who's an atheist. Are you confused because I think I am.

That same evening I was part of a group celebrating the end of the autumn academic term. There was a festive air in the Palm Tree pub while we enjoyed eating, drinking and chatting about our holiday plans. Then we were busy pulling on our coats, hats and scarves and grabbing our bags to walk the short distance to the Chisenhale Dance Space. There was a sense of anticipation after we'd hiked up three flights of stairs and queued quietly and respectfully before piling into the performance space. There may have been an audience of about 100 sitting on the raised benches and I was tapping my feet impatiently wondering when the 'evening of new work and exploration' would begin as there wasn't much to look at.

Evidently the Chisenhale Dance Space has been a 'seedbed for research and development in movement arts and independent dance' for over 25 years. We were to watch the work of four artists and then answer questions put to us by them about the performances. Helga Stromberger's Body and Light was fascinating. She was exploring the potential of projecting video images onto dancers and she tried various combinations of movement and images including sound. This performance was most interesting and some of it was quite hypnotic. Like Helga's Body and Light, Rachel Oxley's Dilate employed a number of women dancers who remained isolated from each other but in this case the focus was on gesture, speech and movement and sometimes it was very amusing, but sometimes frustrating when, for example, we had to watch the dancers sitting on chairs which were lying on the floor and they couldn't get up. The performance by SOFt was a complete contrast. SOFt are a collective of five dancers who work regularly together exploring improvisation and their work was wonderfully physical and some of the arm gestures reminded me of Martha Graham's work from the 1920s.

It was the second performer of the evening who bored me silly at the time but paradoxically has given me more pause for thought in the few days since than any of the other dancers. His performance wasn't a dance in the accepted sense at all. It was a series of actions of locking and unlocking his imaginary bike lock and we, the audience, were supposed to be able to follow everything he was doing. He said he less interested in demonstrating gestures than in actions. I didn't realise there was much difference between the two but consulting the dictionary I read that gestures are 'postures or movements expressive of sentiment or passion' whereas actions are movements without the emotional component.

While the imaginary bike lock was being opened and shut I mentally returned to my visit to Mysteries earlier in the day. I'd entered the shop hoping to enjoy a few minutes of mindless browsing at the gifts and books I would never buy before I went in search of food. I often do this and occasionally buy a card or candle on my way out. The shop girls were busy chatting to each other very animatedly and weren't much interested in the customers. I began my journey around the shop by peering at the crystal jewellery on display in the glass case which never has any prices on show. Then I turned round and saw some china mugs. I was amused by the decoration and the message painted inside them. I wondered about buying one of them then decided against it. Then my attention was diverted by a massage glove hanging on a hook above my head and I reached up to take it down and inspect it more closely. There were more of the mugs hanging next to the glove and before I could get to the glove I managed to smash one of the mugs on the floor. This shocked me but didn't bother the shop girls who simply cleared the broken bits away and continued their conversation. On reflection I don't know whether I was using actions or gestures during this episode but the accident was certainly mindless.

The First Emperor

It's Sunday evening and I'm sitting on the sofa writing this blog and watching 'Cranford' on television at the same time so I reckon that means I'm multi-tasking. I'm also surrounded by a sea of paper that's drifted into the house via the letterbox: some of it needs shredding, some needs filing and yet more of it simply needs recycling, but there is one piece of paper I won't be throwing out immediately. It is the brochure describing the exhibition that's pulling in the crowds at the British Museum and that's 'The First Emperor, China's Terracotta Army'.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be part of a focus group at the British Museum. This group spent most of the day, guided by facilitators, visiting exhibitions at the museum and discussing them afterwards. The results of these discussions will provide the museum staff with our opinions on what we thought worked well and what didn't. One of the threads that found its way into our conversations during the day was 'Isn't it great that we're getting to see the Terracotta Army as well!' The tickets for this exhibition are selling like hot cakes and rumour has it that visitors are queuing outside the museum every day from around 5.30 in the morning to snap up the 500 tickets that are released every day for sale. All our group had to do was turn up at the main gate at 9.15 am and be shown where to go and this made us feel very priviledged.

We congregated in the Great Court which is covered by a vast glass, domed roof which was installed in 2000 and is wonderfully light and shows off the sculptures to great effect but is very drafty to stand around in for too long. (Note for the future: wear more layers.) Once we had all arrived we were herded by our facilitators, gripping our notebooks and pencils in our hands, towards the entrance to the 'Terracotta Army' exhibition and encouraged to push aside the patiently waiting queue (remember they'd been waiting for hours) to arrive at the beginning of our journey 20 minutes before the paying public could go in.

Here we enjoyed, or endured, a nice piece of theatre. We had to navigate our way through a dark, narrow corridor with the only clue as to where we were going being the view of rows of books above us in the reading room to guide our way. Then we emerged into a lit area and had to ascend a flight of steps to reach the start of the exhibition which reminded me of climbing a pyramid. This served to create the atmosphere that we were entering a sacred space which was enhanced by the silence that surrounded us. There was the expected explanatory detail about the First Emperor who was born Ying Zheng in 259 BC and lived until he was 49 until 210 BC. He became the King of Qin when he was very young at the age of 13. The state of Qin was one of seven main states competing for power. Under his leadership Qin conquered the other states using highly developed weapons technology and military strategy. After his first campaign the King of Qin declared himself Qin Shihuangdi: First August Divine Emperor of the Qin. What a modest man he was!

As we proceeded around the exhibits we learned that the Emperor introduced reforms and enforced strict laws in order to govern his empire. Many of us were genuinely impressed that he established a standard weights and measures, a single currency and a universal script across the empire: all of this happened thousands of years ago. We were also surprised to discover that one of their measures for liquid is almost identical to our litre and that 'Qin' is pronounced 'Chin' which may be the origin for the name China. So we moved on past weapons, arrowheads and decorative glass vases but I was becoming impatient to see the warriors themselves. I skipped some of the exhibits so I could rush through the doorway that marked the division from life to the afterlife and finally gazed on the terracotta warriors.

There were about 14 in total - not the 7000 that the Emperor was buried with - but that didn't detract from the spectacle. The sculptures are life sized and originally would have been painted in bright colours. Every figure has individual features and their own personal clothing. One of them is a fat strongman which amused a number of us because he looked like a sumo wrestler. Another one had slouching shoulders and a concave chest. There was also an acrobat whose limbs were partially missing and there were life size horses pulling a wooden wagon. Archaeologists have also excavated civil officials and musicians, bronze chariots and birds in an area 56 km square. The tomb was more than 30 years in the making and once the Emperor had been buried the whole complex was concealed and seen by no-one until a farmer digging nearby found a terracotta head back in 1974. This exhibition deserves a second visit so next time I'll just have to go and join the queue and wait patiently like everyone else.

Please watch your step

Thames Water Authority have been spending the last few months digging up our roads and pavements and replacing the decrepit Victorian water mains that provide our drinking water with nice, new, blue plastic pipes. We know they are blue because we can see them stacked up ready for use everywhere we go. As the engineers finish one section of road they move onto another, or they might start again on the same section of road they just completed. This work is likely to continue for months to come so every time we leave the house we have to watch where we step since the surface we're walking on might have changed overnight!

Last weekend we had a guest to stay who was keen to visit Tate Modern and we were happy to oblige. This entailed skirting the red metal fencing surrounding the various excavations in the roads and walking on heavy plastic covers laid over holes in the pavements to get to the bus stop for the 388 bus. I always find this bus route an interesting ride because it takes you through Hackney to Bethnal Green and then through the City of London and on to St Paul's Cathedral which is where we got off.

Tate Modern is on the opposite side of the Thames to St Paul's and the quickest and most scenic route to cross is to go via the Millennium footbridge. This is an elegant, steel suspension bridge described as a 'blade of light' and is the first bridge to be built across the Thames since Tower Bridge in 1894. However it's got the nickname of the 'Wobbly Bridge' because of an unexpected swaying as a result of the numbers of people walking across it in the first two days it was opened. Consequently the bridge had to be closed to the public in June 2000 and modified to eliminate the wobble and reopened in February 2002. So now it is safe to cross and you can enjoy the view while you walk. It only takes a couple of minutes to make the crossing and you'll notice to the left hand side of the Tate the Globe Theatre which is a reconstruction of the theatre where Shakespeare's plays were performed during his lifetime. Since the theatre is open to the elements, having no roof, it has a short season which ends in the autumn.

As we approached the Tate we could clearly see Louise Bourgeois' sculpture of an enormous spider. I have seen this piece on display inside the gallery where it seemed dwarfed by the size of the Turbine Hall but outside it seemed to have more impact because it is clearly larger than anything else near it and made the humans walking around it look a lot like ants milling around.

So finally we had reached our goal which was the installation in the Turbine Hall that has been causing so many comments in the last few weeks. It has become known as the 'crack in the floor' and several visitors managed to fall into it in the first few days it was open to the public, so presumably they weren't looking where they were going! It is the work of a Colombian artist called Doris Salcedo and is called 'Shibboleth'. A shibboleth, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is 'a word used as a test for detecting people from another district or country by their pronunciation, a word or sound very difficult for foreigners to pronounce correctly.' It is, therefore, a way of separating one people from another. I've been quoting from the text written by Martin Herbert published in the accompanying leaflet and he continues: 'For Salcedo, the crack reveals a 'colonial and imperial history [that] has been disregarded, marginalised or simply obliterated...'

I was obviously too shallow to understand any of this while I traced the length of the crack from one end of the hall to the other. I didn't get at all the 'untold dark side of the history of racism' while I examined the crack. I happily crossed from one side of the crack to the other in my short journey. I admired the skill it must have taken to create it and wondered how she managed to embed the chain-link fence into the crack that is clearly visible, but I didn't feel I was being encouraged to 'confront discomforting truths about our world and about ourselves'. However I did think it was time for lunch once our visit was over.

Off to Avebury

So yesterday, Sunday, saw us travelling to Avebury. We were spending the weekend with friends of ours in Swindon and this trip was our Sunday outing. Avebury is in Wiltshire, nearer to Marlborough than Swindon but still only a short drive away through rolling countryside. I enjoyed being a passenger in the back of the car having the leisure to look at the leaves on the trees, which are turning to red and gold, in the clear, autumn light while our friend drove and navigated diversions on the road.

Avebury is a World Heritage Site and is one of Europe's largest stone circles and some of the stones are impressively colossal. Unlike Stonehenge which is two miles west of Amesbury (also in Wiltshire) and is on a small, contained site, Avebury extends in a large straggling sort of way across a number of fields. It accommodates a pretty little village and some roads run round some of the larger stones. Apparently the stone circles were constructed 4000 years ago and originally comprised more than 180 stones. Where the stones are missing pointed stone markers have been put in their place so you can see the shape the circles would have made.

I have to confess that I'm not that interested in speculating what the original purpose of the Avebury stones might have been since the circles were created so long ago, but I do find the maps of earth energies you can buy in the village shop that some people have taken the trouble to dowse, and map, entertaining. What I do enjoy about the place is the atmosphere of tranquility and peace inspite of the numbers of people, and grazing sheep, you meet along the way traversing the various paths. At one point I was passed by a large party, who may have been one family, complete with young and older people and at least one dog. They were so close to me that as they walked I could clearly hear their conversation. Within a few minutes I saw them in the distance walking in a line from right to left, up and down a small hill and they suddenly looked more like pilgrims en route to a destination known only to them and their conversation was completely private. We finished our stroll to the site with a visit to a stand of old, knarled beech trees that have roots that extend so far from the base of the trunks that they have formed an interlacing pattern. It was like standing under a tent and every so often some people would leave the protection of the trees and others would join them.

It seemed natural at this point to visit the Red Lion pub and I quote "it is the only Inn the world positioned within an ancient stone circle and is said to be one of the top ten most haunted locations in the world". They apparently have a resident ghost called Florrie who "is said to have had her throat slit by her husband after he caught her with another man and threw her down the well with a boulder thrown on top of her". The said well is in the bar and is safely covered with a glass lid. Frankly it looked to be a tight fit for any but the slimmest adulteress to end her days in but no-one seemed to care one way or the other since eating lunch was the chief activity going on.