This excellent picture - taken by Stefan Finnis - was printed in the most recent edition of our local newspaper, Lambeth Life (15 April). It shows someone riding his pennyfarthing through the BMX and skate park on Stockwell Road. I love it! Somehow it sums up the quirkiness of London and perhaps of Lambeth in particular - or the little part of it that I live in anyway. That meeting of respected cultural icon with the realism of the modern world - and a meeting which is not a clash, but a perfectly happy adaptation of one to the other.----------------------------------------------------------
Today has been a glorious spring day - and I have spent it indoors, at the computer, finally making a start on the joyless task of preparing the portfolio I need to submit in 10 days' time in support of my promotion. At least I have made a start, which makes me feel ever so slightly better about the whole thing.
I have had a 3-day weekend - I needed to use up my leave or lose it, so I am taking the last 3 Fridays off this month, which means that with the two Easter bank holidays, this will have been a month of 4-day weeks. All very well, but I always find that you are busier and more stressed, since there is the same amount of work to squeeze into less time.
But I went and sat in Brockwell Park on Friday afternoon, and read my book with a cup of tea from the rather rundown café that occupies Brockwell Hall. I know it's a complete pain for people not being able to travel by air because of the ash cloud spewing out of the volcano in Iceland... but I have to say, it is delightfully quiet without the constant flyover of aeroplanes. We are on the flight path out of Heathrow (I suppose) and there is usually a plane flying through the sky at least once a minute. We don't actually hear them very loudly, but it is amazing what a difference it makes not having them at all.
I have been getting bulletins from friends stranded in various places and trying to find alternative ways of travelling back. A couple in separate parts of the US on different business trips - they've now found a way to get together, and are waiting for flights to London to resume. Another couple who flew to Istanbul for their first holiday without the kids, about to embark on a 2-day bus journey across Europe to Berlin, from where they hoped to get a train to London - sounded epic and quite fun actually. (My parents did something similar when I was about 6 weeks old, except going in the other direction - they drove in a camper van from London to Istanbul. Perhaps that's where my wanderlust comes from?)
Then people stranded here - there has been a big archaeology conference in London, and a big art history conference in Glasgow, and the delegates can't get home!
My sister was sent home early from the Smokehouse on Friday - no planes from the mainland meant no postal service, so no point packing perishable goods like smoked fish as there was no way to send them out! And there are reports in the papers about food shortages in the supermarkets for the same reason...
Amazing how occasionally nature reasserts itself so unequivocally over man. With all our modern technology and communications, there is just no way to safely fly through a cloud of volcanic ash. I heard one commentator mention that the last time this volcano had erupted to this extent was in the early 19th century - and it lasted for two years!! Are we going to have to completely rethink long distance travel?
The photographs have been amazing - this satellite image of the ash cloud was in the Guardian's picture gallery, courtesy of Getty Images:
I went to Eyjafjallajökull once - though I think at the time I didn't realise it was a volcano. Once upon a time, when I was doing Geography A-level, we had a fantastically memorable 2-week field trip to Iceland, led by our inspirational teacher, Mr Job. He looked like a pixie. We camped - it was in July, and it took a while to get used to the fact that it never got dark outside the walls of our tent - and trekked from one end of the small country to the other. Absolutely brilliant. And the first time I had really travelled, since neither I nor my parents had ever been able to afford it, but I worked a Saturday job at The General Trading Company in Sloane Square, which was not much fun but that was not the point. I earnt my way, and enjoyed the trip all the more.
We climbed Hekla - the biggest volcano in Iceland, not far from Eyjafjallajökull - only a few months after it had erupted. The slopes of the mountain and all the surrounding landscape were carpeted in black rocky ash - as I imagine the environs of the current eruption are looking at the moment. At Eyjafjallajökull, we climbed over the glacier and even went down inside it - I remember that it was amazingly blue, and that the view of the glacier from our campsite as the sun didn't really set was one of the most beautiful experiences of the trip. Incredibly, I find I still have a mental image of it in my mind's eye. There are photographs somewhere, and a diary - the first time that I coherently wrote down my observations and experiences - stranded at my parents' somewhere I think.
All these happy memories are coming back as I read about the volcano. Still, I hope it gets sorted out soon as I want to go to Tunisia in 3 weeks!
I have had a 3-day weekend - I needed to use up my leave or lose it, so I am taking the last 3 Fridays off this month, which means that with the two Easter bank holidays, this will have been a month of 4-day weeks. All very well, but I always find that you are busier and more stressed, since there is the same amount of work to squeeze into less time.
But I went and sat in Brockwell Park on Friday afternoon, and read my book with a cup of tea from the rather rundown café that occupies Brockwell Hall. I know it's a complete pain for people not being able to travel by air because of the ash cloud spewing out of the volcano in Iceland... but I have to say, it is delightfully quiet without the constant flyover of aeroplanes. We are on the flight path out of Heathrow (I suppose) and there is usually a plane flying through the sky at least once a minute. We don't actually hear them very loudly, but it is amazing what a difference it makes not having them at all.
I have been getting bulletins from friends stranded in various places and trying to find alternative ways of travelling back. A couple in separate parts of the US on different business trips - they've now found a way to get together, and are waiting for flights to London to resume. Another couple who flew to Istanbul for their first holiday without the kids, about to embark on a 2-day bus journey across Europe to Berlin, from where they hoped to get a train to London - sounded epic and quite fun actually. (My parents did something similar when I was about 6 weeks old, except going in the other direction - they drove in a camper van from London to Istanbul. Perhaps that's where my wanderlust comes from?)
Then people stranded here - there has been a big archaeology conference in London, and a big art history conference in Glasgow, and the delegates can't get home!
My sister was sent home early from the Smokehouse on Friday - no planes from the mainland meant no postal service, so no point packing perishable goods like smoked fish as there was no way to send them out! And there are reports in the papers about food shortages in the supermarkets for the same reason...
Amazing how occasionally nature reasserts itself so unequivocally over man. With all our modern technology and communications, there is just no way to safely fly through a cloud of volcanic ash. I heard one commentator mention that the last time this volcano had erupted to this extent was in the early 19th century - and it lasted for two years!! Are we going to have to completely rethink long distance travel?
The photographs have been amazing - this satellite image of the ash cloud was in the Guardian's picture gallery, courtesy of Getty Images:
I went to Eyjafjallajökull once - though I think at the time I didn't realise it was a volcano. Once upon a time, when I was doing Geography A-level, we had a fantastically memorable 2-week field trip to Iceland, led by our inspirational teacher, Mr Job. He looked like a pixie. We camped - it was in July, and it took a while to get used to the fact that it never got dark outside the walls of our tent - and trekked from one end of the small country to the other. Absolutely brilliant. And the first time I had really travelled, since neither I nor my parents had ever been able to afford it, but I worked a Saturday job at The General Trading Company in Sloane Square, which was not much fun but that was not the point. I earnt my way, and enjoyed the trip all the more.
We climbed Hekla - the biggest volcano in Iceland, not far from Eyjafjallajökull - only a few months after it had erupted. The slopes of the mountain and all the surrounding landscape were carpeted in black rocky ash - as I imagine the environs of the current eruption are looking at the moment. At Eyjafjallajökull, we climbed over the glacier and even went down inside it - I remember that it was amazingly blue, and that the view of the glacier from our campsite as the sun didn't really set was one of the most beautiful experiences of the trip. Incredibly, I find I still have a mental image of it in my mind's eye. There are photographs somewhere, and a diary - the first time that I coherently wrote down my observations and experiences - stranded at my parents' somewhere I think.
All these happy memories are coming back as I read about the volcano. Still, I hope it gets sorted out soon as I want to go to Tunisia in 3 weeks!
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