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Another Open House Weekend is coming soon! An opportunity to get behind the otherwise closed doors of many places! Are you planning to visit any this year? The choice is immense, check out the website.
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As it is Friday, the place to be was Wauxhall Heritage Centre at St Peter's Church!
Tempted as I was to cycle part of the route, I chose to leave the bike at home and descended into the Tube. (You go down the stairs at Ealing Broadway Station, but the trains do not enter the tunnels until after a few stops, mind you.)
Going to Vauxhall you change trains at Oxford Circus, which means you walk through the tunnels and up or down the escalators for a good while before you get to the other platform. Then you position yourself strategically awaiting the tube vehicle. If it's not the rush hour, you are guaranteed a place on the train. You may even be in your luck to find a seat! Today I was! I won the race or (to be truthful) I was more eligible than my competitor, a very young lad who offered me the seat. Bless him! I did need to sit down.After all, I needed the energy for the JOS session!
Finally I emerged on the Earth surface and dashed towards the venue.
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This elephant you will meet when you come out of Vauxhall Station. (S)he has a twin brother! I took the picture just before going down the underground on the way back:
It may well be the next James Bond mastering equestrian skills at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. After all, it's just a minutes' walk from his headquarters!
While outdoors the horse riding is in full swing, the Joy of Sound people (me including) are being turned into bees during the afternoon session at the church... Magic is happening... We are slowly transforming into the hard-working insects... It is a process... And it's happening...
Dear Reader, unfortunately, I couldn't take more pictures of the actual transformation because I was busy working in the beehive, guarding the entrance and gathering pollen to the instructions of a lovely girl from Edinburgh. What I liked very much was singing an African song that the Aboriginal people in that hot land sing when they get the honey from the bees in the jungle. I wish I had asked Darla to give me the lyrics in this completely unknown to me language.
Everybody enjoyed being a bee!
When the session was over, I reached for my camera again to capture this week's mandala getting finishing touches from Ana and Darla before 'the artwork' got treated with 'hair spray' to prevent smudges. How resourceful!
My blue butterfly (an imaginary cousin of papilio hornimani, you know, the one named in honour of Frederic Horniman, an impressive 19th century collector who accumulated over sixteen thousand insects, apart from many other much larger objects in his house; and thus he had to get a bigger dwelling built; now you is even bigger and you can visit it!) was joined by a few bees and wasps and on finding company immediately stopped feeling blue!
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I have been to St Peter's Church in Vauxhall many times, but only today it struck me that each and every capital of the many columns was different. That reminded me of the chapter house at the Romanesque Cistersian Abbey in Wachock, Poland. Not so long ago, in June I sat there on a stone bench with my English friend waiting for a befriended Cistersian Brother Julian who is always happy to see people, show them around the historic building, always there to listen to you if his monastic duties allow him. Moreover, he is involved in many charitable projects that serve the local community, the teachers and also the Polish people in Ukraine.
St Peter's Church capitals also made me think the capitals at The Old Cloth Hall in Krakow Old Town Square. My favourite ones depict the Polish kings and queens. And at the Vauxhall church I noticed little figures on two of the capitals. It must have happened when I was turned into a worker bee, flying high looking for flowers, when I spotted them! I wanted to give them a closer look and take pictures (of course). Maybe another time...
Good night!
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