Enchanted cabs at Seven Dials?

Add caption

There is a poem by Konstanty Ildefons Galczynski about a hansom cab in Krakow. I found a translation by Anna M. Furdyna, check it out clicking this link. It was a great surprise to me when suddenly I heard the sound of horses' hooves come closer. First I wondered if it could be equestrian police officers or riksha, but the sound was different, like the hansom cabs in The Krakow Old Town. And then I saw the first one before my camera was ready:

Seven Dials

Hansom cab, Seven Dials

Where are you going, hansom cab?

Spider, you are not having my breakfast!

An unwelcome guest was hanging above the table when I brought my breakfast in this morning:

Frankly, I found it pretty disturbing to have a spider dangling above my plate. Wouldn't you?
...
Sufi music at the Turkish Cultural Centre sounds interesting. The same night the Gypsy Fever and many other bands are playing in East London! This city is amazing! So much happening all the time!
...

Here Today... Exhibition

My day started with ignoring the alarm. Has it ever happened to you? What were the consequences?
I was late for work and felt terribly stressed, and embarrassed. The more I want to be on time, the harder I find it, imagine that!
Anyway, the day was OK, but in the evening I found an intriguing space in the Old Sorting Office near Tottenham Court Station. On the black wall I read 'HERE TODAY...' and two or three columns of artists' names, one or two Polish sounding included. That intrigued me. I immediately thought of an old English saying: 'Here today, gone tomorrow' and concluded that I need to go and check out what's going on there before it's gone. What I found was an amazing exhibition of thought provoking artworks that marks the 50 years of the Red List of Threatened Species. I took some pictures hastily before closing time. May actually go there again.
  
   

Heading there!

I took this picture yesterday coming out into surface from the Tottenham Road Station and added it this morning on my wayto the same place.

For a few days work is taking me to this part of London. I have an opportunity to meet an extraordinary woman and many other people learning from her:
 

...
On the way back after work I strolled leisurely around the 'university quarter' in Bloomsbury. Having asked permission, I took a picture of the silent protest at The University College London entrance gate:
 
The students stood in silence with a candle in their hand each, mouth sealed with a tape.
...
When I got to the college it was too late to see Jeremy Bentham. He'd already gone to sleep for the night, as the door was locked:


I remember paying him a hasty daytime visit in the 1990s on one of these occasions when my group of tourists were exploring the British Museum or enjoying the shops in and around Oxford Street...
Tonight I met another interesting character, much younger and fitter than the sleepy scholar:


There are a few more pictures from Bloomsbury of tonight:

 
 
   
 
 

Bethlem and art

As you may know or not know, Dear Readers, I am a keen museum and gallery goer, and a type of person who is always curious to find out what is round the next corner. And you know what? There is a museum which I will not have a chance to visit. It's Bethlem, Museum of the Mind. The only day it is open to the public is this Saturday, December 6th. Then it closes to reopen in new premises sometime next year. Hence, I've looked at the museum collection online and you can also do it clicking here. The collection features numerous works by the patients of the most (in)famous mental asylum in the country. Many of them were talented artists: painters or sculptors. It's fascinating to enter the world their created locked away from society.
...
Pictures of today

A special bookshop in Bloomsbury has more than just books:


There is a copy of a famous painting. Who painted it? I don't know and nor do the people and the bookshop... Help welcome, Dear Readers:
 

Next to the bookshop there is an art gallery. I really liked this sculpture:
 

'Joy' was sculpted by Maureen Langley. It's a pity that the artist, who is in her eighties, won't get persuaded to make more works.

Then I looked at an ad in the music shop a few doors down. As I may be in the area, I will happily pop in to listen to some drumming!

Lives lost in the system

 
  

....

Samphire Hoe

When a tunnel or a canal is dug, there is a lot of soil and stones to get rid of. Imagine the amount of stuff dug out from under the sea bed when the Channel Tunnel was built.... This material, chalk marl, was cleverly used to create a new piece of England: 30 hectare coastal country park. Behold:

 
 

....
Today I met a couple from Northern Ireland who are involved in charitable work with the St Vincent de Paul Society, 'an international christian voluntary organisation dedicated to tackling poverty and disadvantage irrespective of race, faith, age or gender' of those in need. The couple have raised their children who moved on to live their lives in different parts of the blog. They came to meet one of their children. I was very happy to learn that they had been to Poland and enjoyed Krakow, Czestochowa and three weeks in The Tatra Mountains, and they want to go there again! I was most impressed when the lady almost perfectly repeated the name of my hometown: Skarzysko-Kamienna. No wonder: she'd been to Poland, knows many Poles and used to teach Gaelic, the original language of the Irish people!:-)