Talking about Brexit

Patrick Crozier and I have just fixed our next podcast, which we will record early next week. Read about and listen to earlier ones here, and in due course this next one will go there too. And for this next one, we will talk about … Brexit. I knew you’d be excited.

Many claim that they are bored by Brexit, and maybe many are. Although I suspect some are really just pissed off with not getting exactly what they want. (And who is getting exactly what they want?) Either that, or actually only bored with other people’s opinions, but not with their own. Me, I find the whole process rather fascinating, now that I have got over having been so wrong about it. I thought that Brexit would lose the Referendum, but it won. And I thought that once it had won, it would happen without too much fuss, because the Conservative Party leavers would mostly bow to the inevitable. As of now, that hasn’t happened, and doesn’t look like it will happen any time soon.

Brexit is a subject that Patrick has strong opinions about, which is good because although this will not stop me interrupting (I’m afraid I always interrupt), it may at least mean that some of the times when I do interrupt, he’ll interrupt back and shut me up until he’s finished the point he was making before I interrupted.

Here is a Brexit photo I recently photoed, of a bus driving around and around Parliament Square, saying Believe in Britain and LEAVE MEANS LEAVE, but with nobody in the bus apart from the driver:

They all left, I guess.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Wheel etc.

How to photo the Wheel? Well, here is one way:

Last Friday, as darkness approached, from Vincent Square.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Welbeck Street Car Park then and now

Well, well. Look what I just found in the photo-archives. I wasn’t looking for this photo. I just found it, while looking for just anything interesting to stick up here, instead of a proper posting, which I don’t have the energy for:

That photo was photoed on April 20th 2006, according to my computer.

The reason I was so pleased to find the above photo is that I was photoing the very same edifice, this very afternoon. This was a resolution I proclaimed to the world in this posting here, a few days ago.

I can now report that the Welbeck Street Car Park is, as of now, still there. There’s no P on it, like there is in the above photo. There are now, I believe, no cars in it. It awaits demolition. But it has yet to be demolished. It is still all there.

Here is the similar photo I took today, that makes it look like the car park that it is:

No P. Different light. Otherwise little seems to have changed.

Here is this same car park, bounced off the front of a car.

That takes me back. Time was when I was fascinated by what you could see in the shiny bits of cars. But I don’t recall ever doing a car reflection photo as fun as that one. It’s the pattern of the concrete that makes it.

This Welbeck Steet Car Park thing is very interesting I think. I mean, why the fuss about some manky old car park, just because its facade is made of triangular concrete lumps instead of the usual rectangular concrete lumps? I promise nothing, but may even supply the answer to that question, some time.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Hyde Park Corner Horse’s Head looking a bit silly

Yes, about that horse’s head sculpture that I showed a photo of here, a week ago.

I complained about how the way its neck was sliced through was maybe too obtrusive a part of the whole effect.

Well look at this other photo I took of it:

Sorry about the bus, but this is my only photo from anything like the angle I need to make my point. Which is, that the severed neck looks like a face, and the horse’s ears look like little arms pointing upwards.

And the whole thing looks like one of those idiotic Olympic mascots.

Not, surely, the look the sculptor was going for.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Feed the birds!

When GodDaughter2 and I took a walk through Hyde Park last week, we inevitably walked past the Serpentine, and next to the Serpentine, there was a lot of bird feeding going on, and I mean a lot. Great screaming flocks of birds, birds of all sorts all muddled together, were assembling themselves around happy humans, who were chucking stuff at them. It was also noticeable how very insistent birds were about checking out strangers, like me, to see what stuff we might have on our persons to chuck at them.

Here is a particularly fun photo I took of all this avian drama, fun because it turned out so artistic, being mainly monochrome (because photoed into the sun) and monochrome is artistic. Monochrome, that is, apart from the bright red feet of one of the bigger birds (also because photoed into the sun – this time with the sun shining through those feet), which makes the photo even more artistic:

But why was all this bird-on-human excitement happening, so intensely and on such a scale?

The answer lay in a shop next to the water. To my extreme shame, I did not photo the outside of this shop and cannot recall what it looked like. I only snapped interior scenes, of intriguing products on sale inside the shop. One of these products was the answer to this bird-human mystery.

The usual feelings that humans have about feeding birds in parks are (1) Hey! Wouldn’t it be fun to feed the birds? But also (2) Don’t feed the birds! It will give them a stomach ache. It might even kill them. Don’t feed the birds! Often there are signs to this effect.

But at the Serpentine, there is a different and non-contradictory regime in place. Feed the birds … this! And all was explained:

I computer enhanced that to make it less dim and dreary, what with the dim and dreary (at least compared to the bedazzlement outside) interior light.

You can bet that the shop assistants in that shop spent a quite large proportion of their day explaining to customers that yes, we know, you want to have fun feeding the birds! But, no indeed, you must not feed the birds human food! So, feed them this food! Fun for you! Food for the birds! Win win!

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Park Hotel seen from the park

The Park Tower Knightsbridge Hotel is what Wikipedia calls it. Sheraton now calls it the Sheraton Park Hotel. Whatever we call it, this is one of my favourite London buildings from the concrete monstrosity era, partly because nobody who worries about being aesthetically elevated likes the work of its architect Richard Seifert. Such people also do not like One Kemble Street, or Centre Point, also by Seifert, either. Too commercial. Too brash. Too assertive. Too symmetrical. Starchitecture before Starchitecture became chic, and not chic enough.

All the photos you see on the internet of this Park Hotel tend to look like this …:

… i.e. photoed from nearby, so that you can’t see the magnificence of the Roof Clutter on the top.

So now I will correct this regrettable imbalance, by inserting these views of the Park Hotel photoed by me last Friday from way off in the middle of Hyde Park, into the vast ocean of internet imagery, in the hope that public attention will be drawn to this wonderful and spontaneous assemblage of roof sculpture:

I especially like that last one. Trees, mist, and then Park Hotel, in soft focus. Or, out of focus, as we digital snappers say.

Norman castles were evil stone monstrosities when first inflicted upon this green and pleasant land. But as that style retreated, they turned into picturesque ruins. The Concrete Monstrosity style is already in headlong retreat, and I like it more and more.

Memo to self: check out this car park, before they destroy it, which they have now decided that they will.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

When Elvis met Tommy in Bermondsey

This afternoon I was in Bermondsey, seeing a man about a blog, and without doubt, the oddest photo I took in my Bermondsey wanderings today was this one, of a garage door:

Here is a closer up view of the writing at the bottom:

Right click to get that a lot more legible.

Do you care about this? It made me smile, but I really do not care if it is true. If you do, and haven’t already acquainted yourself with this tale and made up your mind about it, then read this, which merely reports on the claim (made in 2008 by a mate of Tommy Steele’s), or this, which is more scornful, or this, which is very scornful indeed. Elvis did fleetingly visit Scotland, apparently, but was stuck at the airport. The most scornful of these reports is Scottish, assuming that I am correct in believing “Shields” to be in Scotland. Can’t have the damn Sassenachs steeling their thunder. Ho, ho.

Rather surprisingly, I only found one other photo featuring what I photoed today, here. But that could just reflect my inadequacy as an internet searcher.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Early views of the Optic Cloak

Last Thursday afternoon, I emerged from North Greenwich tube/DLR station, and started getting my bearings. Dome right here, there, so that’s north, so south is the other way, and somewhere around there ought to be the Big Thing itself, called (it has to be called something) The Optic Cloak. (If it has a local nickname, I am unaware of it.) Because it’s a Big Thing vaguely shaped like a domino, and because it takes itself very seriously and because it’s not for people to live it, it reminds me of the Big Thing at the beginning of 2001 A Space Odyssey, despite its ziggy zaggy surface.

And very quickly, after hardly any walking south at all, I got my first sightings of the OC.

Here are nine of the first lot of photos I took of the OC:

All of these photos have something else in them besides the Optic Cloak itself, and this is deliberate.

Real Photographers are very clever at screening out all irrelevancies, when they photo a Thing like this. They go for the special effects that the Thing itself contrives, with no lampposts or surveillance cameras or cars or general crap inserting themselves into the final photo. The results often (a) are very beautiful (provided the Thing itself has something beautiful going for it), but (b) in no way prepare you for how the Thing actually looks, in its actual setting, when you actually get there. Real Photographers, to generalise, are better at lying with their cameras than snappers like me are, which means that snapper-photos are often superior, as actual guides to what Things really look like.

I especially like the trees, through which Things may now, at this time of the year, be seen, unlike in the boring old summer.

And I especially like all that blue sky.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Two beautiful days

On Thursday, perfet weather was perfectly prophesied by our brilliant short-term weather forecasters, and I journeyed to the Dome and places south, to take a closer look at The Optic Cloak:

And then yesterday afternoon, following a similarly prescient forecast, forecasting similarly perfect weather, GodDaughter2 and I, as recounted yesterday, walked through Hyde Park:

That being one of the accompanying sculptural collections next to the Albert Memorial, which at the moment I think I prefer to the Memorial itself.

I basically spent today recovering from all this self-propelled travel. You, like me, are not getting any younger, no matter how young you may now be. But this expression is only used by people of my kind of age to describe how I felt after two such days of exertion.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A horse’s head at Hyde Park Corner

This afternoon, GodDaughter2 and I walked from the Royal College of Music, up past the Albert Memorial, then through Hyde Park to Hyde Park Corner, and then on to Soho Square.

At Hyde Park Corner, GD2 directed me to this sculpture, which I never knew about until today:

GD2 likes this, especially at night when it’s lit up.

This guy also likes it. This guy, on the other hand, hates it.

Me, I’m not sure. It’s very striking, was my first reaction. But now, I’m troubled by the way that, because the head is pointing downwards, the cut through the neck of the horse seems like a real cut, rather than just a sculptural convention. It made me think of that famously gruesome horse’s head in the bed scene in The Godfather. Perhaps more seriously, I feel that the way the neck is cut like that makes the shape of the object as seen from a distance excessively determined by the cut, rather than by the fact that it’s a horse’s head.

The problem is that, what with this sculpture being called Still Water, the horse’s head has to be pointing downwards, because the horse is presumably drinking that water. So if you want only the horse’s head, that head has to be cut off, one way or another, and any way that happens is liable to count for more than it should.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog