Of Kings, of Ice, of Faces, of Costly Little Items

To Lon­don — turned left out of King’s Cross up York Way — no longer the haunt of drug push­ers and whores and small dubious-looking shops you’d want your granny to go in with you for pro­tec­tion. Mostly a build­ing site — the haunt of men in hi-vis jack­ets.  King’s Place, on the edge of the Regent’s Canal is new, is going to house the Grauniad, and has two con­cert halls in the base­ment (well below the level of the canal incid­ent­ally). Lovely loc­a­tion. All very nice inside but a bit new and char­ac­ter­less as yet.  Beware the gap between about 11 and 12 when the food out­lets have fin­ished break­fast and haven’t star­ted lunch yet — espe­cially if you had break­fast early.  So hungry, off round the other side of the basin to the Lon­don Canal museum (which likes you to have the right money).  One of those small, under­fun­ded, endear­ingly ama­teur­ish museums which non­ethe­less shed lots of light on their spe­cial­ist sub­ject — and it was pretty inter­est­ing.  The build­ing itself used to be an ice-warehouse.  Nat­ural ice impor­ted from Nor­way, tran­shipped to canal barge at Lime­house docks and then brought up the Regents canal to Bat­tle­bridge basin where the ice was unloaded into two huge pits beneath the build­ing — as well below the level of the canal as the new con­cert halls oppos­ite.  On what is now the ground level and the first floor the ice was loaded onto horse-drawn drays for deliv­ery all round Lon­don — and the horses went up a ramp to the first floor overnight.

By bus to Tra­fal­gar Square — top deck all the way — not as fast as the tube but much more fun. though the final crawl down the Strand got a bit tedi­ous.  National Gal­lery for the Medi­eval Face exhib­i­tion (CORRECTION THE RENAISSANCE PORTRAIT EXHIBITION — a few hun­dred years out, there) — well dis­played and quite fas­cin­at­ing — the devel­op­ment and pur­pose of por­trait­ure.  Some quite touch­ing pic­tures — kids smil­ing (no-one else does at this period) — old folks without teeth — grand­father and child.

To the Ori­gins craft fair in the court­yard of Somer­set House where our friend Uschi from Nurem­berg was exhib­it­ing her bead jew­ellery.  Lots of other small beau­ti­ful items there at the fair too — with prices like a bankers bonus. A good place to see people dressed exot­ic­ally — some to dis­play their craft wares, of course. There was also an install­a­tion which showed a con­tinu­ous loop film of a teapot fall­ing to the floor and smash­ing and then being recon­sti­t­uted — all at 3000 frames per minute. Reminded me of a film in the Art Barn in Sel­jord, Nor­way, where a very cross young woman smashed bottles unend­ingly at her feet.

Din­ner in an Indian res­taur­ant near Cov­ent garden — food good but waiters London-pushy.  There’s some­thing about cap­ital cit­ies which allows waiters to give them­selves airs.