London
Tags: photos, London, Brockley, British Museum
Date: 24 March 2009 21:10:22
So, to London on Sunday for a flying visit. I was staying with friends in Brockley, it was really great to be back there again. I just took a couple of pictures there, around the station, as they are doing a lot of work to tart it up since I lived there. The first two are of the little garden that's been planted on a patch of grass by the station - apparently it's not owned by either the council or Network Rail so was just left there, but is now looked after by community-minded locals. 
I remember when stuff was first planted here, with a Soul Survivor (Soul in the City?) team, I think the summer before I left so that would have been 2005, but might have been the year before. The ground was so impacted I think the poor guys doing the work were practically killing themselves digging it over. I think since then they've also had landscape gardeners in, and now a few years later this is how it looks - a million times better than how it was before. The next photo is of a mural opposite the station, which again I think went up before I left but which mercifully seems to have been left alone by the graffiti taggers:
I got to my friends' place and had a wonderful time - they'd invited a number of friends round and we had an amazing lunch and generally caught up with news. S and R are friends from university as well as from madchurch, and rather embarrassingly they dug out some old college photos. I had quite the mullet hairdo in those days!!
In the evening I went out to a local bar for a drink, and caught up with a few other friends (including another wiblogger) - I'm just so pleased I was able to see so many cool people who I just don't get to see very often.
Yesterday I also bumped into one of madchurch's leaders on my way to the station, so we had a little chat too, it was good to see him, and then I had to face the joys of the London commute. The queue at Brockley station was much better than I expected, but the train was absolutely as expected and I spent the journey to London Bridge at very very very very close quarters with my fellow travellers! (fortunately for me the ones near me all seem to have showered!). However at London Bridge there were problems on the tube, and I couldn't get onto the Northern Line. No problem I thought I'll get a bus, I know my way round London. So I did, but it turned out to be the slowest bus in the world, and having expected to arrive at the British Library with half an hour to spare to get a cup of tea or somesuch I only made it on time by the skin of my teeth. And gave thanks for my usually pretty trouble-free 40 minute seat-all-the-way-and-no-changes bus journey in Glasgow!
So, the British Library. How have I never been there before? It was the most amazing place of learning - I felt more intelligent as I walked in, it's like learning and enquiry and research and finding out amazing STUFF is just infused in the walls! The morning was taken up with a presentation by the Head of the Russian section, and then I had a one-to-one session with the southern Europe curator to discuss the services and subject-specific resources of the library and how to go about accessing them. The best thing though was that he had also got out a number of amazing historical and very rare books and I was able to hold them and leaf through them - the oldest was a Romanian Orthodox prayer book dating from 1560. Leafing through those pages of history in Old Church Slavonic was just amazing, what a privilege that was. I didn't want to let go of it!
After lunch we got a tour of the library with a very entertaining front-of-house guy who was clearly passionate about the library. I especially enjoyed learning about the book retrieval system they have - they have miles and miles of a conveyor system with something like 22,000 possible permutations to get the book from its shelf to the appropriate reading room, it was just amazing.
Over lunch and after the tour was finished I wandered round and took some pictures mainly from the courtyard outside but one or two inside as well. These first few are of a sculpture outside by a sculptor called Eduardo Paolozzi. I was really surprised by it - I have seen a few Paolozzi sculptures (there's one at Glasgow University as well) and he has a really distinctive style, but this is nothing like the ones I know. I liked it though - it's called "Newton":
Next up are some pictures from the courtyard, looking back towards the library.
The building with the pointy spires is the St Pancras Hotel, next door. I liked the patterns of the squares in the courtyard, which continued into the actual library itself.
Finally for outside, a couple of photos closer to the entrance - I was hoping the right hand flag, which shows the library's motto "The World's Knowledge" would be unfurled but unfortunately it wouldn't oblige me. 
And also one of two interesting tree sculptures at the entrance.
Moving inside, my final three photos are all from the entrance hall. The first one is part of the current Charles Darwin exhibition, and are his musings, found in his notebook, on the Pros and Cons of Marriage. I thought he came across as rather of-his-time, this is quite amusing:
These final two show a sculpture (I guess you'd call it) which is above part of the exhibition space, like a boat sail, and then a mural on the wall inside that I liked.
All in all a great couple of days. It was great to see people and spend time in such a great place of learning. I am glad to be back home though - London is just too big and busy for me these days!