Katie And Dive Do London Pt.5

Yay! We're still at it, pounding the streets of London, mile after mile.
Never try to walk the feet off a swim team girl; it just can't be done. Katie is as fresh at the end of the second evening as she was when she stepped off the train the morning of the day before.

Having left the Miró exhibition and wandered across Piccadilly Circus we reach the bottom of Haymarket and turn aside into Waterloo Place, where Katie photographs a statue of someone (there are so many statues there that I can't remember who it was) with whom she shares a birthday.

The statue behind her celebrates a famous episode where a woman dressed in some sheets defeated some soldiers in silly hats by throwing quoits over their rifles … or something.

Anyhoo; it's mosaics we are hunting now and the next one on the list is just behind this chap standing on his column.
Oh, looky! Trafalgar Square! We can play tourists!

The mosaic we are looking for is located on the third landing inside the entrance hall of this building: The National Gallery.
It is "The Awakening of the Muses", a marble mosaic by Russian artist Boris Anrep, installed in 1933.
This mosaic has a link to where Katie is staying in her chic little Bloomsbury hotel as Anrep was chummy with the Bloomsbury Group and used his friends as models in this mosaic.
Melpomene is - oddly - Greta Garbo, but the others are Bloomsbury folk, including Virginia Woolf as Clio and Clive Bell as Bacchus.

Unfortunately, as we enter, a uniformed security flunkey is bellowing "NO PHOTOGRAPHY" at some hapless and quivering tourists so we shrug our shoulders and go look at the mosaic anyway.

Never one to willingly obey authority - especially when it's shouty - I sneak off a shot from behind a column but it is too blurry and turns out to show mostly legs.
Well; nothing ventured, nothing gained: I approach the friendliest-looking security guard, a nice middle-aged lady who shakes her head and tells me that nobody is allowed to take photographs.
Hoorah for nice middle-aged ladies, as she follows this by dropping her voice and telling me "If there's no-one looking I can't see it will do any harm … Be quick!"

So Katie and I take sneaky photos from opposite ends of the landing, the nice security lady watching out for the shouty guard. Hopefully both photos will give a decent account of the mosaic.

This is the view from the front door of The National Gallery, looking across Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall toward Parliament (you can make out Big Ben in the distance).
We'll be heading back that way in a few minutes, but first let us enjoy the square in the sunshine.

As we walk down the gallery steps Wren's church of Saint Martin greets us on the left and it appears we are not the only ones revelling in this wonderful weather.

One sign that it is indeed October is the fact that the fountains are not full of drunken tourists.

I do like this shot. The fountain looks good backlit … and Katie looks good in any light.

I still can't believe all this glorious sunshine! Woohoo!

Looks like that statue is destined to appear on Katie's blog before much longer.

Yet another gratuitously touristy photograph. Katie with Nelson's Column … and a particularly filthy London bus.

Old Horatio's been given a wash and brush-up lately; usually he's covered in pigeon poop.

Hokay … Some back-story: Earlier, Katie stops to photograph a Murphy's builders' lorry (her surname shows her part-Irish ancestry) and I regale her with the history of Irish navvies (navigators) who came over to build the canals, stayed to build the railways and who now run our building industry in a charming manner not unlike that of Tony Soprano.
So everywhere we look there are Murphy's builders.
This one is on Whitehall at the entrance to Horseguards.

And this is the entrance to Downing Street. After decades of trying to blow it up, the Irish are now renovating it.
Ah, the dividends of peace …

In tomorrow's post we shall gaze in awe at the astonishing mosaics inside St.Paul's Westminster, London's Roman Catholic Cathedral.
Normally we would not be allowed to take photographs in there but they are currently undergoing some major building works and the place is filled with scaffolding and … you guessed it … Murphy's builders.

See you there.