Park Life

It's a walk in the park.
I do like that phrase as a euphemism for something that's as easy as … well … a walk in the park.

This was Monday lunchtime. Regrettably, two weeks of storms had stripped the trees of most of their prettiest leaves but the place is still so gorgeous that even a glimpse of the Parasite House cannot spoil the mood.

I promise I've not tweaked any of the colours or saturation on any of these photos; they're just as they came out of the camera.
This metasequoia glyptostroboides (I love that name) is even more extreme in full sunlight. You can check it in my old Park Life posts from a few Novembers ago. Awesome!
This year I just missed its glory, thanks to the poxy weather.
Hey ho. It's still pretty though.

Down the lake to Horse Guards, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Eye.
Sweet.
Some parts of London have still got it.

Parks are for strolling.
St.James's Park (as you should all know by now) is my favourite lunchtime haunt.
Come stroll with me.

As I said earlier, the storms left us very little to look at, but plane trees make for decent eye candy at any time of the year.

Yowza!
This is what lunchtimes in November are all about.

Beech trees. Yay!
They hang on to their leaves like a miser; even more Scrooge-like than the little oak in the foreground.

And talking of leaves …
The state of my shoes when I got back to the office testifies to the fun I had kicking my way through the drifts in the park.
Mostly horse chestnut and plane, this lot.
The squirrel up near the top left was hassling passers-by for their lunch.

On a day like this only a moron would eat lunch in the office.
I popped up Regent Street to Piccadilly and grabbed teriyaki chicken, then ate it right here on a bench.

Er …
Actually she was halfway to a yoga position.
I think it's "the crab", named after how crabby you bet when you put your back out.

Inevitably …

So … Maybe the storms of November will let me get some good autumn leaves photos next year. They rather spoiled it this time around but at least a walk in the park is always a great way to spend a lunch break.

Toodle Pip!

Where Snowmen Come To Spawn And Die

Yesterday I managed to get in to London at last and witnessed the tragic aftermath of Monday's snowstorm.

Dead snowmen …

Everywhere!

I realised I had stumbled upon the fabled "Snowmans' Graveyard".

This is where snowmen come to spawn and die.

It must have been one helluva party on Monday night. Snowmen from all over swimming up the Thames to Westminster to mate and die, gravid like spawning salmon.

And here, littering Green Park and St.James's Park are the bloated corpses of spent snow-people.

A few died upright, like this one outside the Parasite House. The Parasites are not at home at the moment, otherwise Stavros would have been out here with his shotgun.

There were hundreds of dead snow-folk.

Everywhere I looked were more headless remains.

Their sad bodies lying where they fell, exhausted after their final ecstatic night of icy debauchery.

The Snowmans' Graveyard was quiet and deserted except for Dive and this suspicious character.
Caption, anyone?

Way out in the snowy waste, far from the paths that humans use, one of the snow-people had left a message.
Very poignant.
These creatures are dying out.
With global warming there hasn't been a snowman spawning here since the 1970s.

Elsewhere in the park life goes on.
Here's a perky little chap our Robyn might recognise.

And a pair of moorhens wait for the thaw.

The lake was frozen over for the first time in thirty years. Here's the inevitable Parasite House shot for Lynn.

And the Eye in the distance for all of my lovely Blogville neighbours who have visited and enjoyed a ride on it in warmer times.

And here's one for Katie. The last of the Christmas baubles hung on a plane tree in Green Park.

So … A message to us all. Reduce your carbon footprint and save the snowmen if you want to see these glorious creatures spawn again.

Lunch With Joy

So there I was, minding my own business, on my way to a ceremony at the embassy when the bloody Queen nearly runs me over.

Not a sentence I can genuinely use every day but here are Brenda and Stavros looking as miserable as sin on their way home to the Parasite House after the Queen's Speech to Parliament yesterday.

Anyhoo …
I was wending my merry way across St.James's Park on my way to the Philippines Embassy (off Trafalgar Square) for Joy's dual nationality ceremony and found I couldn't get across The Mall.
A bunch of Horseguards with fixed bayonets and some very cold and glum looking armed police were blocking my route.

Luckily I'd left the office half an hour early so I could wander and take some photos but in the end I only just made it in time.
I got to hear the Band of the Horse Guards having a good old blast, though.
Which was nice.
These are the guys who were playing Elgar's Nimrod in that Remembrance Sunday video I posted.
Bloody good they were, too.

So … Next thing I know, clattering up The Mall comes the jolly Household Cavalry, which can only mean one of two things:
(a) It was the annual Queen's Speech to Parliament and the mad German bint was on her way back to the Parasite House, or
(b) Her Maj had cottoned on to the fact that it was Joy's ceremony today and laid on a parade in her honour.

It turned out to be the latter, as you'll see in a minute.

Here's one for the laydees. Check out these chaps' chaps. All very splendid and jangly.

After a few phalanxes of Household Cavalry cantered past along came a couple of old duffers dressed for hunting.
Nice horses, though. Very handsome.

And here comes Queenie! Here you go, Lynn. Some Queenie-porn just for you.
I do hope you're standing up while you look at this … OW!

Brenda and Stavros, sharing a cab. Brenda's looking as grumpy and frumpy as she does on banknotes and stamps. But then she has just had to sit and look at the government for the past hour so it's little wonder she's none too giggly.

"Mai husband and aye … are bloody cold. I say! One of you horsy cheps run orn ahead and put the kettle orn."

No Chazza today, but the only royal I have any respect for did put in an appearance. Here's Princess Anne (of Blue Peter fame) wearing a rather fetching silly hat.

And looky! There's our Joy chatting away to her. How spiffing!

There were many other carriages full of glum-looking people but I'm not posting them all so this one will have to suffice.

Once they'd gone I managed to grab a policeman and tell him I was due at the Philippines Embassy in fifteen minutes so he kindly let me across the road between yet more clattering groups of cavalry.

And I just made it. That's my rickshaw parked outside (I wish)!

Princess Anne had kindly dropped Joy off at the front door so she was already in there. The ceremony was lovely and the Philippines consul lady very polite and helpful.
Joy is so lucky to have dual nationality at last. She has her full British passport and can now apply for a full Philippines one too, so when she flies to Manila for Christmas she can go through London customs using her British passport (and avoid all the queues) and go through Manila customs on her Philippines one (again, avoiding all the queues).
Cool, huh?
There are all sorts of other advantages, like property, pension and residence rights in both countries and visa exemptions for EU countries and Asian ones.

One disadvantage is that Joy had to be thumb-printed. Icky!

We celebrated with (of course) lunch in Green Park.
Joy had promised me she'd bring some sunshine to London and she is a woman of her word. It was glorious in the park and we enjoyed lots of sushi and miso soup and green tea from Yoshino.
We also got mugged by Stumpy the tail-less squirrel but I was too busy fighting it off to take a photo.

So there you have it. A typical lunch hour for Old Dive.

Katie And Dive Do London Pt.4

We left Katie at Big Ben about to cross Parliament Square where she would encounter someone wonderful …

A great man needs a great gal and this is a pretty good combination.
Abe Lincoln in the distance behind Katie's shoulder nods his approval.

Here's the great man himself at the unveiling of his statue last August and here's a link to my photo post of the event should anyone need a reminder why racism is not welcome on my planet.

So … The sun is out, the sky is blue, let's hit the parks and enjoy the fresh, crisp October air.

Regular blogpals will be all too familiar with this backdrop.
The bridge across the lake in St.James's Park takes me from my office to the heart of St.James and Piccadilly, regular lunchtime haunts so I walk across here rather a lot.

The view one side takes in the Parasite House … but who cares what's in the background when Katie's in the foreground?

… while the other side leads to Horseguards Parade, Downing Street and the Eye just across the river.

For anyone who may not know, If you amble from Parliament Square into St.James's Park you can walk the length of the park and cross at the top of The Mall into Green Park, then walk across that and enter Hyde Park … miles and miles of lush greenery with lakes and trees and flowers and beautiful places to wander and sit. And all right in the heart of the West End.
It's where I often come to de-stress.

And now Katie has come to visit and has brought us this glorious sunshine! Yay!

We take a stroll along Piccadilly to pick up lunch and stop at Fortnums to admire the hampers (Lynn, stop drooling) and to pop in and buy some of their glorious tea (Katie now has a swish Fortnums bag to match yours, Mme).

Something else regular readers will be familiar with (and indeed Mme and MB) is sushi and sashimi bought from Yoshino and eaten in the beautiful surroundings of Green Park.

Why sit in some dingy basement restaurant or in a crowded sushi bar when you can breathe the fresh air and enjoy a view like this with your lunch?
It is the perfect day for al fresco and we sigh at the beauty of it all as we demolish our yummy food in the dappled sunshine under the spectacular plane trees of Green Park.

Then we head back across the grass toward The Ritz and Piccadilly, refreshed, replete and now hungry for more culture!

Halfway along Piccadilly is the arched entrance to the courtyard that conceals the Royal Academy.
And tucked away on the top floor (again, regrettably with no photography allowed) is the delightfully light-hearted and very French exhibition we are heading for.

In what must have been a lifetime of pure pleasure, Parisian art dealer M. Aimé Maeght befriended the greatest artists of his generation and built up the marvellous collection housed in the Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght in Saint Paul, some of the gems from which we are about to enjoy ourselves.

Greeting us as we enter is a wall-sized Matisse, followed by a roomful of beautiful Bonnards but the main exhibition concentrates on Joan Miró's bright and gloriously exuberant paintings, contrasted with George Braque's dark late cubism, while filling the gallery space between the walls (and over our heads) are slender and elegant Giacometti figures and the wild and wonderful mobiles and sculptures of Alexander Calder.

The overriding sensation in these wonderful rooms is of pure joy and a playfulness that would never be guessed at from simply looking at pictures of these works in art history books.

A lot of the exhibits are from the personal collection of the Maeght family and include outrageously light-hearted paintings and sculptures I have never seen in any book and the sheer fun of it all is almost shocking!

In amongst the displays are videos of the family's home movies including film of the artists working and chatting and eating and a lovely little vignette of Mme. Maeght and Alberto Giacometti dancing around the studio to an old gramophone.
Marvellous!

Neither of us have ever seen a Calder painting before - only being familiar with his giant mobiles - but here are a veritable feast of them and they are real eye-openers; together with tiny mobiles, sculptures and light-hearted sketches.

There is a strangely disturbing book by Braque featuring on its cover what appears to be a false breast and - lo and behold - on reading the accompanying notes we discover that Braque purchased a box of seventy of these breasts from the United States military where they had been used (get this) to boost soldiers' morale during wartime.
Next time you meet a WWII Veteran, ask 'em about the boobs.
The world can be a wonderful place if you peer into the odder nooks and corners.

Close to my own heart, Aimé Maeght published a myriad of limited edition small press books featuring works by his favourite poets and artists, carefully chosen and beautifully executed. Many examples are on display here and I'm afraid my rare book lust gets the better of me and I go into hyperactive two-year-old mode.

We leave the exhibition with faces wreathed in smiles. This really is a feel-good show and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to see a side of modern art that is often hidden (as well as a stunning display of pieces from post-war Europe's very best artists).

And so, with a song in our hearts and a spring in our step, Katie and Dive head off down Haymarket, turning left at the bottom to find … well, we shall discover that tomorrow!

On the way, Katie goes "Oooh!" and dashes into a shop, emerging with something that is not apparently available in the States; a chunky Yorkie Bar with "It's Not For Girls" written on the side.
Which she promptly demolishes beside what has to be the pinkest sari I've seen in many a moon.

Check back tomorrow, Katie fans. We crammed so much into two days that I still have enough photos for three more posts!