Category: London

How could anyone underestimate the resolve of this Spurs side?

Last night: Manchester United 0 Paris St-Germain 2.

This evening: Tottenham Hotspur 3 Borussia Dortmund 0.

From a BBC report on tonight’s game: How could anyone underestimate the resolve of this Spurs side after the manner in which they have kept pace with Premier League pace-setters Manchester City and Liverpool without any squad strengthening and recent injuries to key figures Kane and Alli?

But: Oh dear. Because this makes it that bit more likely that Man U will sack Solskjaer and buy in The Poch. Which it would seem they can do and Spurs are powerless to prevent, unless The Poch decides for Spurs. As he well might.

I really, really hope Man U contrive some kind of miracle revival in their away leg in Paris. As to what Spurs manage in their away leg, well, I just hope they get through, and that nobody else important gets injured.

And that the way Spurs are now playing says to Poch: You can’t walk away from this.

PLUS (later): This.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Quota sunset from 2015

I left it too late and I am now too tired to do anything here today, so here’s a random quota photo:

Taken in May 2015, from the South Bank, looking north across the River. I’m pretty sure that’s the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. But feel free to disagree.

I hope – although I promise nothing – to do better tomorrow.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Now they’re planning a Frank Gehry concert hall in Wimbledon

The Guardian quips:

You wait decades for a city …

The city in question being London.

… to get a world-class concert hall and two come along at once.

GodDaughter2’s family used to live in Wimbledon, back in the last century. Something tells me I will be back there quite a lot in the next few years.

The first of these two halls is, I should say, this one.

How about another superb state-of-the-art concert hall somewhere in the Thames Estuary, out East. That would be very cool. Something like this. Maybe later, eh?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Optic Cloak

Yes, that’s what this Thing is called:

And, as I think you will probably deduce from the number of photos I took of it, I rather like it.

It is to be found just south of The Dome, and I got a look at it from across the river when I visited Docklands, on Thursday January 17th of this year, where I also took other photos, like this one, and these ones, and these ones.

I don’t really know why I like this thing so much, but I surmise that part of it may be that it contrasts itself with the surrounding banal architectural rectangularities not by being completely different, but by being more subtly different. Sculpture often seeks separation from its urban surroundings by going totally curvey. No straight lines at all, except maybe in the form of a flat plinth. This Thing stands out too, but in a more dignified and respectful way.

Plus. It’s a lot of fun how different it looks depending on the exact direction of any sunlight coming towards it. I only got about two versions of this, but there are surely many more to be enjoyed.

Plus, it’s bigger than your usual Art. I like that.

Soon, I will return to that part of London but an extra Tube stop away, and I will take a closer and more 360 degree look at this very pleasing Thing.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Three birds and a clock

When I was a kid, “Air Forces Memorial” meant this building which looks out over Runnymede, and which was only a walk away from where we lived.

But there are, of course, several RAF Memorials in London, and here is a photo I often try to take but seldom do very well with, of the eagle which perches on this memorial:

This eagle usually comes out blurry, with only the trees behind coming out well. All that reflected light off the gold of the eagle seems to frazzle the brain of my camera. But not on the Monday before last.

The above photo was taken from the other side of the river, with maximum zoom. Swivel to the left a bit and you see this even more famous item, which is now, as already noted, smothered in scaffolding:

I especially like the pile of staircases on the left of the scaffolding.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A nearly invisible new bridge from Battersea to Pimlico

There’s a bridge right near where I live that is wending its way through politics to the point where geography and physics and civil engineering will take over, and they will actually start building it.

I refer to the biking-and-walking-only bridge that will eventually join Battersea to Pimlico:

The bridge is at the stage where they are trying to pacify objectors to it. Hence this Canaletto-like pseudo-photo, in which the actual bridge itself is hardly to be seen at all! How could anyone possibly object to this wraith-like presence, scarcely visible through the mist rising from the river and bathing everything in obscurity? The steel struts that will eventually to be seen holding up the actual bridge are invisible in this pseudo-photo, so it’s just as well that the bridge itself, as (just about) seen here, is made by laser-beams projecting into the mist and weighs nothing at all! If you want to protest, protest about those big lumpy old boats clogging up the river and making such a rumpus, not the ghost bridge.

That’s the trouble with infrastructure. Those who will be disrupted by it know exactly who they are, or they think they do. But the far greater number of people who will have their lives somewhat improved by by this or that item of infrastructure only find out about this after it comes on stream. On in this case, on river.

My guess is: I will like this bridge, and will quite often walk across it, if only to avoid a there-and-back-the-same-way walk to and from Battersea. (Now, to avoid this, I often take the train from Battersea to Victoria, and then walk home from there, past my local supermarkets.) But that’s only a guess. Meanwhile, those who now live in the peace and quiet of Georgian Pimlico just know that their sleep will from now on be ruined by noisy bike gangs at 4am, making their way from Notting Hill (after a spot of carnival rioting) to Brixton, and if not by that then by something else equally unwelcome, perhaps originating in Battersea and walking across the river, while probably being drunk. Why take the chance? So, if they can stop the bridge, they’ll stop it, just to make sure.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Michelin Man stained glass window

Last night I dined at Chateau Samizdata, which is in the Fulham Road. I always get there early, but like to be exactly on time in order not to disrupt the preparations. So, I typically walk about a bit, looking for photo-ops.

Last night I walked east along the Fulham Road towards the centre of London, and came upon Michelin House, which I knew was somewhere around there, but had never clocked before as being so very near to Chateau Samizdata. This building occurs at the point where the Fulham Road is turning into Brompton Road.

It has a wonderfully eccentric stained glass window, at the front, at the top …:

… which had been thoughtfully lit from behind.

I image-googled this building, and I could not find this particular view of it. There are one or two views to be seen of this window from inside the building, but none that home in on the window, in the dark, from the outside, with that all-important internal lighting.

I think that this window deserves to be viewable in as many ways as possible, from inside, and from outside. As does the whole building.

I considered cropping my photo, but the photo exactly as taken supplies just that little bit of architectural context, so I left it as was.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Smartphone photoers on Westminster Bridge

Last Sunday, I was again photoing photoers, among other favourite photoer spots, on Westminster Bridge:

All four photos were chosen for their artistic effect rather than to make any point, but despite that, the point makes itself. All smartphones. I especially like the one with the Eiffel Tower on it.

The world is starting to speculate that the Age of the Smartphone may, like the Age of the Personal Computer before it, be drawing to a close. But what this means is merely that the age of selling millions upon millions of new smartphones may be ending. Smartphones will still go on being used, because people like them and have got used to them, and see no cause to jack them in for an only slightly better but hideously expensive replacement. Similarly, I periodically upgrade the personal computer that I am typing this on, with new appendages which are now priced like the generic commodities that they are, but I have no plans to stop using this contraption.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

One Park Drive

Recently I paid a visit to Docklands. The Big Things there add up to a quite impressive cluster, but are, on the whole, individually, unlike quite a few of those in The City, rather characterless and bland.

There is, however, an exception. This:

It’s One Park Drive, now nearing completion.

Here are a few more photos of it that I photoed:

Circular in plan. Its surface changes from one effect to another as you move up or down. Next to a stretch of water. I’m guessing they were thinking of these two towers in Chicago.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Westminster lighting effect

Last Sunday was the second near-as-makes-no-difference cloudless day of 2019, and I love it when sunlight bounces around London, in the way that it did in, for instance, this photo:

That’s the scaffolding covering, at the bottom of Big Ben, and those reflections are from the windows of the building across Westminster Bridge Road, with the big towers on the top, the one where the MPs have their offices. The one on top of Westminster Tube Station. Portcullis House, that’s the one.

This next photo shows rather better what’s going on:

As you can see, and as all Londoners will already know, Big Ben is smothered in scaffolding, while it gets a makeover. The sunlight, as you can now see more clearly, is coming from over Parliament, bouncing back off the windows of Portcullis House on the right, and hitting that white surface at the bottom of Big Ben.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog