It was a strange week of contrasts in London weather wise and hopefully this will be the last weather report for
a while as we’ve all got a bit more obsessed by it than usual! On Tuesday/Wednesday we had loads of snow, more than before, and here’s a picture of my garden to give you an idea of how it looked and how dark it was! Sadly my photography course in the London Wetland Centre of all places (!)was cancelled due to the snow but hopefully will be rearranged soon. By the weekend we were submerged by rain and then on Sunday at last, the sun came out. Perhaps more snow to come this week – enough! Today is grey and officially the gloomiest day of the year and we are all supposed to be at our lowest ebb, so I hope you are all feeling ok!
So, what to do to cheer ourselves up? I took an art tour in the east of London with a company called Artfeelers run by the wonderfully enthusiastic and knowledgeable Claire Flannery. A group of 8 of us set off with Claire to see some of the less well known galleries showing contemporary art around Bethnal Green and Claire introduced us to the artists. We went at our own pace and we had the chance to talk about the art as well as have great input from Claire. Here are a few photos to give you a flavour of our walk: a fabulous squirrel on the wall (and a one with Claire!) Then we have a wonderful bookshop and gallery called Kaleid where beautiful artists’ books are lovingly displayed along with large pieces as you can see on the wall behind the table. We went to A Foundation which had an interesting range of work, including this fabulous gold helmet, displayed in this wonderful airy white space. Finally onto Caveman Bob, a video piece of a cave where a man lives with a narration of his world in the cave. The whole thing is set in a container and the interior is cave like – amazing…. (Also visited but not photographed was Martin Sexton’s gallery)
The whole tour takes a couple of hours and I recommend going along to see new stuff in good company. http://www.artfeelers.com/ for more info.
Restaurants to let you know about include Langtry’s where the history of the place was the key feature. Lily Langtry has an amazing story which saw her rise from an educated vicar’s daughter from Jersey to London socialite, to Prince of Wales’s mistress and an actress who took America by storm. She lived at 21 Pont Street from 1892-1897 in the Cadogan Hotel which now houses Langtry’s restaurant. As if that wasn’t enough for one hotel, Oscar Wilde was arrested in room 118 in 1895 meaning that he may have been arrested when she was staying there – what a night!
Back to the current times, we also popped into one of the many Persian restaurants in around Paddington. This one, Sadaf on Westbourne Grove, serves the typical stews and kebabs and has the tough task of taking over from one of my favourite restaurants (a Lebanese called El Fairuz) and sadly is not quite as good.