Secret London Part Four (Blog Post 100)

A few places to visit had accumulated on my Secret London list and I chose a couple more from my book plus a couple from my own knowledge that I thought it would be good to have a look at. To start off mum and I met at Waterloo and after a trip on the Jubilee line arrived at St. John's Wood.

  

After a walk down 'the made famous by the Beatles' Abbey Road we came to The Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate

I've been wanting to visit this impressive housing estate for a few years. It's used a lot in films, as it is so unusual and eye-catching. Mum and I walked all the way through it admiring the symmetrical concrete forms and intricate well-designed shapes; taking photos of the striking angular houses and apartments.

We then took two short train rides from Swiss Cottage to Hoxton for The Geffrye Museum.

The museum is a bit like a real life version of the BBC 'Back in Time' series of programmes. It starts with displays of drawing rooms from the 1600s, moves on to rooms in the 18th and 19th centuries and then in the modern extension you can see displays of 20th century lounges. I definitely recognise some of this furniture from the decades I have lived through in my own life. I have visited this museum a number of times and it is definitely one of my favourites.

 

The main purpose of our trip was to try out the Geffrye Museum Cafe. It was very pleasant with elegant surroundings. I had a substantial ploughman's lunch and mum had a very tasty looking vegetarian hash.

From the Geffrye Museum we then took a bus down to the river to visit The Twinings Tea Museum.

I am a big tea fan and Twinings make fine tea, so I think I was expecting more from this experience than I actually received. There is not much to the museum, it is mostly a shop and is very narrow. The tea and what there is of its history were interesting but it was all a bit brief, so we quickly moved on.

The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting more popular sights in London, the Thames, Hungerford Bridge and the Royal Festival Hall. Over a coffee mum and I compiled a Secret London Top Ten list and I am now mulling over a follow up to our four Secret London day trips.

Secret London Part Two



In my short story 'The Assertiveness Group', the heroine, Madeleine, and her lover, Dorian, visit three unusual London museums: Leighton House Museum, John Soane's Museum and the Hunterian Museum. On 25th March 2015 I visited the three of them with my mum.

I'm not sure what I was expecting in the Leighton House Museum apart from the Arab Hall, however what I received was an unexpected treasure. Beautiful, sumptuous and amazing are just three of the adjectives I would use to describe Leighton House. The museum is an exquisitely kept artist's house, full of rich colours, deep reds and vivid blues, polished tiles, Arabian rugs, stained glass and heavy wood. Our visit coincided with an exhibition of Victorian romantic art; the pre-Raphaelites, Edward Burne Jones and John Waterhouse. We were also fortunate enough to have a very informative guide who was telling us how important the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition was to artist's reputations, careers and fortunes. It was all very illuminating.

 

John Soane's House is the London residence of a well known nineteenth century architect. As well as his architectural plans and drawings; it is stuffed full of 'things' he collected throughout his life, including sculptures, plaster casts and cork models. My favourite part of the exhibition was the guide's explanation of the Hogarth series of pictures 'The Rake's Progress', which follows the antics of a rich young man from inheritance to madhouse; a sobering tale indeed.

The Hunterian Museum is the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. It has a large collection of specimens in preserving jars from the insect, animal and human worlds. The two aspects of the museum that meant the most to me were first the art collection and the view that medicine and art were once not considered to be the poles apart occupations they appear today, but once doctors and artist worked together particularly in the field of anatomy. The other part of the museum that moved me most was the part devoted to the pioneers of plastic surgery in the first world war; the surgeons who worked at putting injured soldiers' faces back together. It was marvellous and humbling to see how the doctors helped the wounded soldiers get back some semblance of normality. The overall feeling I got from the museum was the ides of how fragile human beings really are.

In the cafe

Amy and I discovered the fun of animation after a visit to the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green in 2007 and having a go on the magic lantern, creating a mermaid swimming and a girl eating soup. I translated these moving images onto the computer using GIF animator and then put the images together using movie maker, adding my songs in the soundtrack. The mermaid swimming formed the basis of 'Gone Swimming' featuring 'River Child' and Amy's 'girl eating soup' features in the above short film 'In the Cafe' which is set to my song 'Island of Happiness'.