volume 15.
There’s a street in the south west of London that oft is used as a bypass for the journeys of travellers from the South. ‘Tis a road that burns with memory and yet continuously creates its own new…
…Ah whatever. I was fascinated by the doors so here are some doors along King’s Road.
Ta dah.
Of all the photos I took in London, I probably have to rate the above as one of my favourites. I guess it’s partly because you hardly see Covent Garden packed like this at night, and second, I just really like what’s going on in the photo. For starters, a half naked man trying to get the attention of the crowd on a cool summer’s evening, and then those five men holding up his very tall unicycle. It’s just really, quite amusing. However, the third, and most important reason are those blown out highlights that are brought out by the spotlights. Just, beautiful.
To me, London is always a different beast by night. The greyest of days can be transformed when dusk falls, when sodium streetlamps cast ominous shadows over the simplest and unattractive of buildings, and the highlights and contrasts of dark alleys are for anyone’s imagination. It truly is a wonderful thing.
I had a really hard time with the below photos, in terms of whether to leave them in colour, or just convert them to monochrome. The muted mixed with harsh colours are really a joy to behold (see the second, Seven Dials photo) especially just as dusk falls, but ultimately the intense contrasts that the monochrome process brings out were too… for want of a better word, delightful, and to an extent, more real of the true London emotion. Maybe one day, when these photos are forgotten, they will be given the colour treatment.
There are so many things to go through, so I thought I’d post series by series. This first one is just a series of images taken during the day, famous places, mostly. I thought it’d be nice to talk through each photo as well, and why I like each one. One of the annoying things about London is that, well, her landmarks are all rather well known. Tourists from all over the world will take pictures of Big Ben and the London Eye and they all look exactly the same. The same goes for the streets and the squares. The problem with London is that walking through the streets it’s easy to admire the architecture and simply take a shot of the street, but what of it then? I’m not entirely sure if I succeeded in taking a different perspective, as with all things that you are familiar with, it’s hard to take a new one. But anyway, I tried.
[update: tidied up this post, i couldn't take it. It was too messy]
I was hesitant. Cynical. It must’ve been the air. Food is just food. I’ve had plenty of good food in my life. Why this, why here? “It’s two stars!” she argued. Two stars. Wow. Big deal. There are fifty billion million stars in the universe, it’s just two. “Michelin stars!” she adds.
Wasn’t Michelin the tyre company? Big fat Michelin man, white, of course, from eating too much food and giving stars away. Good way of making money, I bet.
Apparently, Mr Michelin man gives out three stars, two, and one. So this one was two. So that makes it, what? Average? Average food. Sky high prices. “Thirty five pounds, for lunch! We have to go!”
Thirty five quid? That’s a hundred and five Sing. I could buy twenty McDonald meals for that for crying out loud. Bloody hell.
In the end, of course, I relented. Two stars. Fiddle sticks.
Deep down, of course I like good food. I can’t say that now though, can I? Okay, so there’s crap food, and there’s good food. But seriously, how good can food get? And is it really worth spending that much more money for? I can count on one hand the number of times I thought paying fifty dollars for food was actually worth it, let alone a hundred and five. Most of the time, I am never satisfied. All these hullaballoo restaurants claiming to be wonderful. It’s all a big joke, really. Two stars? Pish tosh.
We walk down New Bond Street, the shops too distracting, and find this restaurant. The Square, it’s called. I don’t know why. The staff are friendly enough, actually, very friendly, but then they’re paid. I’m not convinced. So we sit down, and yes, I’m getting into the mood. Looking around there’re only a few people sitting there. The place sits about twenty tables, so it’s not huge, and it’s less than half empty.
There are some other fat people sitting at the other tables, wearing power suits and turning red from too much cholestoral I’m guessing. Why isn’t the Michelin man red? Anyone with that many rolls of fat wouldn’t be pasty. Or smiling. But that man there was, so maybe you can be very happy and very very fat. Was the food that good?
The waiter ‘yoor menoo, sir’, plops the menu, la carte, in my hands. Merci. Let’s see.
‘Tasting menu, 95 pounds’ okay, next page, ‘a la carte’ the dishes read 40 pounds, 30, thereabouts. Hmm. Next page. Ah, the back, for those who can’t afford anything. ‘Set Menu, two dishes 30 pounds, three dishes 35 pounds’. Okay so the choice is obvious, two dishes.
“Three!” she objects*. Okay okay, three. I choose the salad, chicken, and chocolate cake. Wow, sounds exotic.
First impressions are not too bad. There are actually two butters sitting in front of us. Salted, and unsalted. We discuss the merits of both. “This one is salty,” she says. And this one isn’t, I add, pointing at the other one, of course. We nod our heads in sophisticated acknowledgement.
And then the aperitif arrives.
I take a crappy photo because I’m too nervous in this high class environment. I laugh while I do it. We’re such tourists, I whisper. Apparently, this is celery gelatin, some jelly and bacon mousse on the top.
Now, I know some people vomit when they eat celery, so what’s up with the gelatin? And isn’t that a ‘Frazzle’ on top? Like, as in some pork rind snack. Well, okay. At least this is free.
I dip my spoon to taste the top later, the bacon mousse and gently place the spoon on my tongue.
What happens next I’m not entirely sure, but I remember looking up and we both struggle to contain the superlatives.
It’s mousse, but it’s bacon, it’s salty, and it melts, it’s absolutely, undoubtedly, wonderful. I dip my spoon to the bottom of the glass and take out the celery gelatin. Celery and bacon. The combinations are odd, but in your mouth, none of this really makes a difference. The celery jelly isn’t really as strong as you expect, it’s subtle, and cool, and it combines with the salty bacon so well. Unbelievable.
I actually say, at that point, that the 35 pounds is worth it. I must be mad. For a glass of mousse and jelly?
What follows are an array of dishes that honestly, have too many flavours for me to find adjectives for. The salad has duck eggs, some bacon, spinach, the main has chicken, some kind of puree and a lone cauliflower. And the dessert, chocolate cake at its best. Delicious, I keep saying. Superb. Wonderful. Mmm. It gets a bit repetitive.
Two stars? I wonder. Maybe the Michelin man isn’t so fat for no reason. He must know what two stars truly means. I wonder what three stars tastes like. I would pay for that.
It’s the end of the meal. And I’m full. I’m actually full. Fine dining leaves you full? Reality somewhat dwells lightly on my head as the waiter comes back. “Cafe, sir?”
What? At a two star restaurant? How good can coffee be? And despite my meal, I decline. I’ll grab something at Starbucks on the way out.
Old habits.
* In reality, I desired three dishes as well. However, for the purposes of this blog, slight indiscrepancies are present. Apologies for any inconvenience and misunderstanding caused.
It’s not that I’m obsessed with the Eye, admittedly I took rather a lot of pictures of it during the various days walking to and from Waterloo. But I suppose it’s just one of the more interesting and modern London features. Big Ben is overly antique and clichéd, while St Paul’s, despite being distinct, is just too far away and inaccessible. And besides, you never really know what you’re going to get with the Eye from the perspective of pigmentation, and there’s only one day a year when you’ll see such an array of colours in the still, cool night, glowing amidst the dark behemoth and facets that are the city of London.
Any takers?
Going home.
Where the sun don’t shine.
Where the tube don’t work
But it’s not ‘mine! mine! mine!’
In response to:
(and yes, that’s meant to be an Olympic logo with the numbers ‘2012′ hidden somewhere - I couldn’t tell the first time) please go here (to tell the world how crap it is)
Seriously, why spend 400K when the initial candidate running logo was so much better?
Another wonderful example of how committees really do nothing but screw things up.
…and after pausing for another five minutes, I still can’t believe that’s the chosen logo. It really looks like something a five year old came up with…what were they thinking?? Seriously…
I am unsure as to whether this is ridiculously stupid, or incredibly smart. You’d have be either/or to make statements like this.
The situation: On the tube, two guys talking about the recent controversy regarding Celebrity Big Brother’s Jade Goody & Co.’s supposedly ‘racist’ comments against Shilpa, the Bollywood starlet.
Guy A: So do you think it’s racist?
Guy B: Well, it’s subjective, innit?
Guy A: Well if you look at the definition of racist in the dictionary…
Guy B: The dictionary is a load of crap, man(this is the point where i turn my head and actually look at who the guy saying this is)
Guy A: Well, it’s a definition innit?
Guy B: Yeh, but by some guys up at Oxford
Guy A: It’s the most accepted viewpoint though
Guy B: Yeh but it’s just the opinion of some academics though…
Unfortunately this is where I alight from the tube. Though I dare say that I would have enjoyed listening to the rest of it. I worry, sometimes, about the intelligence of people in general. But I suppose, in a way, it is all subject to interpretation, innit. The blokes who wrote the dictionary might just be telling their own opinion after all, and really, if you think the word racist means ‘pink elephant jumping over the River Euphrates’ then by all means, it damn well means that.
West Kensington, High Street Kensington, Hyde Park, Green Park, St James Park, Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall, Westminster Bridge, South Bank.
A route taken in the bleak winter months, and often in the warm summers. Familiarity that once was, becomes now a flavour distinct. A nostalgia that is brimful of has beens and what ifs. Smiles all the way, for sure, though nevertheless an understanding that the ground underneath would be taken away in time. The freedom, the sights, the never changing consistency of these streets, and of course, the gentle whirr of those 80mm wheels below me.
You and I said
theroo, happyjz
theroo, jb, theroo, bao, jo
theroo, happyjz, theroo, happyjz, theroo, jo
theroo, , , theroo, giraffe
jo
theroo, Ber, Ber