A weekend in London
Mar. 7th, 2009 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningI was staying in Euston, near the station. I was in London to go to the Convention on Modern Liberty, which was taking place on Saturday, and to go to a party on Saturday night. On the corner opposite my hotel was a disused tube station – the original entrance to Euston underground station. This was abandoned when the mainline station was redeveloped in the 1960s and the tube station integrated into the new building. (By the way, this is a fascinating website giving the history of some disused tube stations… but not Euston, which is still in use, except for this bit.)
Meeting up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frankie_ecap gain, we walked through Bloomsbury – past Maynard Keynes house – and down through Holborn to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to go to the John Soane Museum. This was a wonderful place, crammed full of paintings, sculpture and architectural remnants, all seemingly random. I can’t imagine why I hadn’t been here before – it was just my kind of place.
It actually reminded me of Dennis Severs’ House, but without the pretension. Soane was an architect – he designed the Bank of England (though I was pleased to learn that his design had been superseded and demolished, since I find the Bank of England ugly and hostile [must be something to do with once being a Scottish banker…]) – and there were rooms full of his designs for real and imaginary buildings. Amongst the paintings and drawings were several Turners and a pile of Piranesi.
Going around every corner was like finding a treasure chest – there was something really exciting to be found wherever one looked. It was a real mixture of stuff - literally stuff; all the wall space was occupied.
I had a great time exploring, and I certainly want to go back.
On Saturday, the convention was busy; I am trying to write about it separately so I won’t say much here, but it was very interesting and more than a little scary.
I was early to the party; and after a day of listening to speeches, I really needed a drink. Just to make sure, I had several. I met lots of interesting people. I was feeling rather driven by the political (though non-party) messages from the day, and I must have seemed proselytising as I banged on about liberty and its erosion in modern society all night long. Since I was being given a steady sequence of drinks, this was fine.
I talked with several people I hadn’t met before – includingclanwilliam (although it was only the next day that I was told she was clanwilliam). One of the people I was proselytising to was trying to convince me that if I really believed that civil liberties, I should vote Tory at the next general election. I doubt I could bring myself to do that, although if I were in a marginal constituency, I might. But I would hate myself for helping to put a Conservative government in power, even if I thought it were best for some aspects of society.
(I later found out that the woman who I had been talking to was a civil servant in, I think, the Treasury; she had kept that one quiet – I’d have loved to have a drunken discussion about banking regulation and the foolishness of politicians trying to manage banks – and bankers!)
I also met a technical guy – who worked with the security forces, on their database systems. He assured me that there was no risk at all of the government linking all their databases together, because they were incapable of doing it. I didn’t want to pry too much into quite what he did with the security services’ databases, but I must admit the thought that the government and their staff were incapable of joining together their databases didn’t actually put my mind at rest. I am much more hopeful that ID cards and new whizzy database are going to cost far too much in the current climate, and will be dumped by whoever manages to form the next government. I was also very pleased that the database guy actively wanted a No2ID badge to wear!
I staggered back to my hotel after about three hours, having eaten lots of food and drunk lots of sparkling wine.
I was very pleasantly surprised not to wake up with a dreadful hangover, and this could lead to me sticking to sparkling wine in the future!
hano wasn’t so lucky; he had a humdinger of a hangover, which made me glad I had left when I did! I was asked to arrive at Foxtrot Rd bringing lots of Tesco’s croissants and bacon, which made for an excellent brunch. I was most amused by the sight of frankie_ecap cleaning the garden in her dressing gown and pink ugg boots. (It has only just occurred to me that I should have taken photographs as evidence… Or future blackmail potential…)
We went down to Covent Garden, where we went to the London Transport Museum. It was a good weekend for museums, because this was just a brilliant place. It is a really well designed space, and as I wandered through it I felt just like a little boy – it is full of trains and buses and things to climb on and buttons to press. It was just great!
I am constantly amazed at how much the Victorians achieved – how they managed to build the underground, all the sewers (on which London still depends), the railways – indeed, so much of the infrastructure which is still in use today.
Still in transport mode, we took a 24 bus (which has a whole post waiting for it sometime) south and met up withcoughingbear, pashazade and liadnan for a drink in Victoria. I think the Cardinal pub must have the cheapest beer in London - £1.88 for a pint. The company was excellent, the surroundings not so great – but at that price, I am sure I shall be going back!
Monday morning was a glorious, sunny day. I sat in Pret a Manger on Euston Rd opposite the British Library. (By the way, the British Library has a great URL - http://www.bl.uk/ - not .org.uk or .co.uk, just .uk; I think someone once told me it was because they started so early on the internet, before URLs were properly agreed.)
I loved the way the bright sunlight cut across the building, creating deep shadows – it looked like a constructivist painting.
I walked along Euston Rd towards King’s Cross. St Pancras station was glorious in the sun – all Victorian gothic and curves against the deep winter-blue sky.
I went inside St Pancras; I had been before, but I wanted to revisit the roof to see if the light outside affected what I saw inside. It did: the early morning shadows were bouncing around the netting hanging down from the struts holding the roof up. It looked fascinating – abstract shapes within the curves of the roof.
Meeting up with
frankie_ecap gain, we walked through Bloomsbury – past Maynard Keynes house – and down through Holborn to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to go to the John Soane Museum. This was a wonderful place, crammed full of paintings, sculpture and architectural remnants, all seemingly random. I can’t imagine why I hadn’t been here before – it was just my kind of place.It actually reminded me of Dennis Severs’ House, but without the pretension. Soane was an architect – he designed the Bank of England (though I was pleased to learn that his design had been superseded and demolished, since I find the Bank of England ugly and hostile [must be something to do with once being a Scottish banker…]) – and there were rooms full of his designs for real and imaginary buildings. Amongst the paintings and drawings were several Turners and a pile of Piranesi.
Going around every corner was like finding a treasure chest – there was something really exciting to be found wherever one looked. It was a real mixture of stuff - literally stuff; all the wall space was occupied.
I had a great time exploring, and I certainly want to go back.
On Saturday, the convention was busy; I am trying to write about it separately so I won’t say much here, but it was very interesting and more than a little scary.
I was early to the party; and after a day of listening to speeches, I really needed a drink. Just to make sure, I had several. I met lots of interesting people. I was feeling rather driven by the political (though non-party) messages from the day, and I must have seemed proselytising as I banged on about liberty and its erosion in modern society all night long. Since I was being given a steady sequence of drinks, this was fine.
I talked with several people I hadn’t met before – including
clanwilliam (although it was only the next day that I was told she was clanwilliam). One of the people I was proselytising to was trying to convince me that if I really believed that civil liberties, I should vote Tory at the next general election. I doubt I could bring myself to do that, although if I were in a marginal constituency, I might. But I would hate myself for helping to put a Conservative government in power, even if I thought it were best for some aspects of society.(I later found out that the woman who I had been talking to was a civil servant in, I think, the Treasury; she had kept that one quiet – I’d have loved to have a drunken discussion about banking regulation and the foolishness of politicians trying to manage banks – and bankers!)
I also met a technical guy – who worked with the security forces, on their database systems. He assured me that there was no risk at all of the government linking all their databases together, because they were incapable of doing it. I didn’t want to pry too much into quite what he did with the security services’ databases, but I must admit the thought that the government and their staff were incapable of joining together their databases didn’t actually put my mind at rest. I am much more hopeful that ID cards and new whizzy database are going to cost far too much in the current climate, and will be dumped by whoever manages to form the next government. I was also very pleased that the database guy actively wanted a No2ID badge to wear!
I staggered back to my hotel after about three hours, having eaten lots of food and drunk lots of sparkling wine.
I was very pleasantly surprised not to wake up with a dreadful hangover, and this could lead to me sticking to sparkling wine in the future!
hano wasn’t so lucky; he had a humdinger of a hangover, which made me glad I had left when I did! I was asked to arrive at Foxtrot Rd bringing lots of Tesco’s croissants and bacon, which made for an excellent brunch. I was most amused by the sight of frankie_ecap cleaning the garden in her dressing gown and pink ugg boots. (It has only just occurred to me that I should have taken photographs as evidence… Or future blackmail potential…)We went down to Covent Garden, where we went to the London Transport Museum. It was a good weekend for museums, because this was just a brilliant place. It is a really well designed space, and as I wandered through it I felt just like a little boy – it is full of trains and buses and things to climb on and buttons to press. It was just great!
I am constantly amazed at how much the Victorians achieved – how they managed to build the underground, all the sewers (on which London still depends), the railways – indeed, so much of the infrastructure which is still in use today.
Still in transport mode, we took a 24 bus (which has a whole post waiting for it sometime) south and met up with
coughingbear, pashazade and liadnan for a drink in Victoria. I think the Cardinal pub must have the cheapest beer in London - £1.88 for a pint. The company was excellent, the surroundings not so great – but at that price, I am sure I shall be going back!Monday morning was a glorious, sunny day. I sat in Pret a Manger on Euston Rd opposite the British Library. (By the way, the British Library has a great URL - http://www.bl.uk/ - not .org.uk or .co.uk, just .uk; I think someone once told me it was because they started so early on the internet, before URLs were properly agreed.)
I loved the way the bright sunlight cut across the building, creating deep shadows – it looked like a constructivist painting.
I walked along Euston Rd towards King’s Cross. St Pancras station was glorious in the sun – all Victorian gothic and curves against the deep winter-blue sky.
I went inside St Pancras; I had been before, but I wanted to revisit the roof to see if the light outside affected what I saw inside. It did: the early morning shadows were bouncing around the netting hanging down from the struts holding the roof up. It looked fascinating – abstract shapes within the curves of the roof.
