A touch of Hindi culture in. Diwali festival, Trafalgar Square.

China in London. My friend Lisa does the best Chinese cooking I have ever tried!

Now, who would have thought that London was going to be so icy – again! I took this picture from my window just a few weeks ago. The transport chaos that usually follows just a few leaves falling on the ground was…

… Scary! This was taken during the witch night in 2011.

One of the good things about the icy-cold weather was this ice sculpting festival in the Docklands at the end of last year. Funny enough, some of the sculptures were melting a bit, while attendees were freezing by the minute!

Back in town now. This is the sculpture on the fourth plimpton in Trafalgar Square. Before this one, there was the bust of a disabled, pregnant lady who became a bit of a celeb for a while.

Just walking behind main roads, I have come across some really nice little squares with lovely sculptures or works of art. This one is near Piccadilly.

 It is the sun and the moon. The contrast in the sunlight was just amazing.

Strange sculptures appear everywhere. I have found out that animals, and cows, tend to be the most numerous. I will publish some pics I have taken in Camden Town in another entry.

You can also find eggs!! These eggs are part of a street exhibition/ contest which is taking place here ahead of Easter.

Some graffitti for your eyes only. These pics were taken in Brick Lane and in the tunnels near the Old Vic, where cool underground exhibitions take place.

Some little lovely bunnies near Spitalfields market.  

 In the city that is hosting the Olympics this year.

Hurray? The Lord Mayor exhibition ends with some fireworks.

   Hope you have enjoyed. See you soon!

The Big Egg Hunt lasts for 40 days and 40 nights.  Throughout central London, more than 200 30-inch tall individually-crafted fibreglass eggs are on display, created by leaders in the worlds of fashion, art, product design, architecture and jewellry, and I along with others will try to find them all.  For more info go here.

Here is what I’ve found so far:

Christopher Werkowicz playing his fire tuba outside the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square

I’ve never been musically inclined, but like most of you, I always dreamed of being a rock star.  Sadly, my only brush with rock-n-roll came back in 6th grade when I played ‘Beat It’ on the snare drum in the marching band during a parade down 18th street in Pilsen.

Oliver S.

And here is an out take:

What we do have to brighten our days though is urban beauty. It’s the stuff that surrounds us. It’s in the design of buildings, it’s in the creations of street artists. It’s the stuff that lifts your spirits on a grey and rainy Monday, the stuff that makes you smile a wry smile as you go about your day.

So, I ‘m going to start capturing the urban beauty of our surroundings, both to share on mother.wife.me and to serve as a reminder to me that we don’t have it so bad living in the East of this city we call home.

Here’s the first urban beauty shot.

winter flowers - flower sculpture in the garden of The Strand Building, E9

As usual, all photos have been taken with my LG Optimus One and processed using the Retro Camera app.

This is the Western fountain, it looks alright, but I think its missing something.

There were employees trying to clear the snow and ice, so I had to include them in my photos.  I can’t help it, it’s the photojournalist in me.  A photo needs a person to add some flavor.

This is the Eastern fountain, and as was the case with the Western one, it seems to be missing something.

After walking around for a good 10 minutes, I finally found what was missing.  A person, and a person clearing the fountain of ice to top it off.  Now this is a proper photo of the fountain.  IMHO of course

This was the scene outside my window at 8:30am this morning.  I really like how the wires and footsteps make the scene so much more then just snow.

Silver Cowboy at Jubilee Gardens

Golden Michael at Jubilee Gardens

Soap bubbles at Jubilee Gardens

More soap bubbles at Jubilee Gardens

Bursting soap bubbles at Jubilee Gardens

It was a kind of space invader, made of tiles, stuck half way up the wall of a multi-storey building. I went and took a picture of it because I thought it would amuse the children.

The road was a little dead end with the Space Invader wall at the end and some rather lovely Victorian buildings on either side.  I took a picture of this old fire station:

Architecturally I’m a bit of a whore for an arched window. I think it has something to do with growing up watching Playschool, where every day you had to guess which shaped window they would show you a film through. I always hoped it would be the arched window. It seemed so much more exotic.

I once lived in a crumbling old flat in Bayreuth in Bavaria where the living room had one wall made of an enormous arched window. It was really lovely but not what you would call structurally sound.  One night we were woken up by what seemed like armageddon taking place outside.  It turned out to be the mother of all storms, forked lightning zig zagging across a sky already bleached by sheet lightning. In fact at one point two jags of forked lightning collided to make a fire ball which just hung in the sky, sizzling.  It was immense.

So we could get a better look at it, we went into the lounge to watch the show through the arched window (much in the manner of Playschool, actually).  As we padded across the floor we noticed that we had wet feet.  It turned out that the window wasn’t exactly fixed into the wall.  It was more sort of propped, and the rain water, which was falling out of the sky in biblical proportions, was now lapping at our feet.

It was an exciting evening.

Anyway, back to the old fire station.

Standing just to one side of it was an old man.  He was a street sweeper, leaning on his cart, having an early morning roll up to start the day properly.  He saw me taking the photos and gestured to the tiled space invader:

SS: ”ee’s that famous one, ineee?’

Me: ‘Is he?’

SS: sucking lugubriously on his fag, ‘Yeah.  ‘Ee’s always doin’ em, inee? There’s another one round that corner further up the wall.  It’s wot ‘ee’s famous for innit?’

Me: ‘I didn’t know that.’

SS: ‘Well, yeah.  ‘Ee does ‘em all over.  I don’t know ‘ow ‘ee gets up them walls though.’

Me: ‘Do you mean Banksy?’

SS: ‘Yeah, prob’ly.  Sounds about right. I dunno.  Anyway. It’s better than all that bloody grafitti.  Look at that mess eh?’

He points to a wall opposite which has grafitti tags on it.

I make suitably sympathetic noises.

SS: ‘They paints ‘em off every week, and then they come back and spray ‘em on again.  Bloody ugly things.’

SS: ‘Course, it’s a nightclub now, innit?’

Me: ‘Is it? It’s a lovely building.’

SS: ‘Yers. Bloody shame.’

Me: ‘Well, it’s better than being derelict.’

SS: ‘Yers. Corse it used ter be an old omnibus depot dinnit?’

Me: ‘Did it?’

SS: ‘Yers. Corse it did.  In the olden days like. Before they had buses wiv motors.  ‘Them bits there.’ (he gestures to the ground floor). ‘That was where they put the ‘orses wot pulled the buses.’ And them bits there’ (he gestures to the floor above), ‘Thats where they put all the straw and wot not. And the stable boys.’

Me: ‘That’s really interesting. Thank you for telling me that.’

SS: Swells with pride like a male pigeon who’s just espied a particularly drab female and knows he’s in there: ‘Corse, under ‘ere’, (he gestures to the road we’re standing on, ‘it’s all tunnels, innit?’

Me: Getting quite animated. I love a good subterranean tunnel in an urban setting, ‘Is it?’

SS: ‘Yers. They ‘ad a few of ‘em going across the street ‘ere, and a big long one going off over the road there. Corse I’ve never bin down one like.’

We finish our conversation.  He had begun creating another roll up and I felt that I could have been there for the next hour. Not that I would have minded too much.  He was such an interesting bloke.  It’s amazing what you find out when you hang out on street corners with street sweepers.

It was obviously my day for street art.  Later, when I was crossing Shaftesbury Avenue the other way, taking pictures of the faux Greek frieze that adorns the Odeon cinema:

which depicts lots of 1920′s flappers having a roaring time.  Look:

and the Soho Baptist Chapel:

Which now, rather endearingly, caters for the large Chinese population of Chinatown, just down the road:

I spied this down another interesting alleyway:

Not exactly Banksy, but it made me happy.

Chinatown prepares

It was still quite early and the shops and restaurants in Chinatown were receiving their deliveries. It was also preparing for the Chinese New Year (Feb. 14th) and the streets were hung with colourful lanterns.

Giant power socket

After strolling around the Carnaby Street area (these days the whole neighbourhood is referred to as “Carnaby”), we came upon this. Is it the biggest power socket in the world? It’s obviously not real but is strikingly realistic.

St Martin-in-the Fields

We met our friend at Charing Cross station and while there I took the above photo of the recently refurbished church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. I used to like the market stalls in the churchyard but they have now been banished. Here we are looking from the Strand with the station behind us.

Mildred’s, business as usual

On the way to the British Museum we stopped for lunch at Mildred’s vegetarian restaurant in Lexington Street. Despite the works outside, it was business as usual and very busy it was too. We had to wait for a table to become free.

The Great Court, British Museum

The Great Court of the British Museum is very striking, completely roofed in glass as it is. This is where the Lion of Knidos (see my previous post) resides. Here is another resident.

Young Roman Rider

This young Roman from the 1st century AD is riding out, apparently on a mission to find his trousers. The horse is represented in a very lively way.

Venus Surprised

From about the same period comes this sculpture of Venus surprised while at her ablutions. It is thought to be a Roman copy of a Greek original possibly from the 2nd century BC.

We covered quite a lot of ground during the day and it was pleasant to return home and relax with a cup of tea.

On climbing by Mile End station, I found some cool graffiti, set near that most beautiful of things; a kebab shop:

I then wandered into the woods and found two mirrored walls, prompting this photo which I can’t quite get my head around considering that I definitely didn’t do it MySpace style:

My favourite photo of the set up next. I love the way the beauty of the sun shining through with the graffiti tucked behind it:

Finally, a nice boat that I wandered past:

This little exercise has really made me crave a digital SLR camera now, so that I can go out and do this kind of thing more often. If you’d like to view the full set from today, here it is on Flickr.

According to the online Britannica:

“[vapour trails or contrails are] streamers of cloud sometimes observed behind an airplane flying in clear, cold, humid air. It forms upon condensation of the water vapour produced by the combustion of fuel in the airplane engines. When the ambient relative humidity is high, the resulting ice-crystal plume may last for several hours. The trail may be distorted by the winds, and sometimes it spreads outwards to form a layer of cirrus cloud. On rare occasions, when the air is nearly saturated with water vapour, air circulation at the wing tips of an airplane may cause sufficient pressure and temperature reductions to cause cloud streamers to form.”

Right.  That should sort out those who need to know.

Either way, they’re beautiful.

In other news, although some people might be a bit rude about Twitter, it’s proved itself as a place for great romance today.  Ashton Kutcher arranged to have his followers greet his wife Demi Moore with love tweets when she got up in the morning and logged on (she’s away on business).  Over 3600 tweets in the first 7 minutes and they’ve been streaming in all day.  A love wave indeed.

If you were on twitter, my love, I’d send you a love wave.

The River Thames from Hungerford Bridge

The London Eye and City Hall

I am loving London when it’s spring, the sky is blue and despite all the carnage and melt down, there is the  promise of beginnings.

Yay

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