Tag: London

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mock-mock

I went to an event at City Hall today, the details of which shall be revealed on Sunday. City Hall is right next to Tower Bridge, and I was thinking what a strange thing it is: a Gothic mechanised bridge. Particularly since the Victorians didn’t obviously erect such things in a spirit of fun or irony. I guess they just didn’t see anything odd about it.

The bridge has a peculiar relationship with the Tower of London. They stand there together, both in the same coloured stone and a similar style, and invite you to think of them as a matched pair. The Tower, of course, is genuinely medieval, but depending what mood you’re in, either the influence of the bridge lends the Tower a false, Disney quality, or the Tower gives the bridge a spurious air of ancientness. It’s hard to believe that 800 years separates the two of them.

There aren’t many medieval buildings left in London, mainly because of the Great Fire, and curiously enough another of them has a very similar dynamic going on – Westminster Abbey, which sits next to the rampant gothicity of the Houses of Parliament. If the Abbey was surrounded by glistening glass and steel office blocks, it would seem more genuine.

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Ken suspended

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, has been suspended from the job for four weeks because ‘The Adjudication Panel for England’ decided that he has brought the job into disrepute by making insensitive remarks to a Jewish reporter. The exact rights and wrongs of the original remark can be argued over, but as a Londoner, I’m outraged that some unelected panel I’ve never heard of can suspend my mayor like a naughty schoolboy over something which isn’t illegal, wasn’t for personal gain, isn’t directly to do with his job, and basically isn’t any of their fucking business. If we want to get rid of Ken, we can use our votes. That’s what democracy is about. Isn’t it?

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Remind me to go and live on a hill

Watch London flood!

From the very cool DDE. Not good news for those of us south of the river.

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Chihuly at Kew

I went to see the Dale Chihuly glass at Kew Gardens today. Which was pretty fab. This Flickr slideshow gives you some idea. It finishes 15th January, so if you haven’t seen it and you’re in London, go and have a look.

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Magnum photo-essays

Magnum in motion has photo essays with audio commentary. The only one I’ve watched is the ‘Inner-City Youth, London’ one – which I would certainly recommend. I found it via GRIMETIME. I’ve downloaded a few grime tracks recently; it was PopText that started me in that direction by posting a few tracks from the brilliant Lady Sovereign. Starting from her and clicking on Amazon’s ‘people who bought this also bought’ links helped me find Kano, Roll Deep, Wiley, Lethal Bizzle and of course Dizzee Rascal. All of whom are worth checking out if you like hard, fast hip-hop.

And even if you don’t give a fuck about the music, check out the Magnum photos.I expect the other photo-essays are good too, I just haven’t looked at them yet.

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The Matt Groening theory of architecture

I was on a train going over the river the other day, and saw the Houses of Parliament silhouetted against the winter sky. And I thought to myself – it may be a ludicrous bit of Victorian pastiche, and the decision to make the parliament Gothic may have been hideously backward-looking and a touch Disney, but it sure looks striking in silhouette.

This has encouraged me to develop the Matt Groening Theory Of Architecture.

Apparently, the speed with which the London Eye and the Gherkin have been absorbed into the tourist souvenir industry – i.e incorporated into snowglobes and so on – is very unusual for new buildings. But in a Groening interview I once read, he explained his theory of cartoon character design – that they should be instantly identifiable in silhouette. Just cast your mind over the characters in the Simpsons, and you’ll see what he means. Well, one thing the Wheel and the Gherkin have in common is that they have completely distinctive silhouettes.

He also said he made the Simpsons yellow so that they’d immediately stand out when people were channel-hopping, but I don’t think that would be such a good idea applied to buildings.