Pride in London

London has taken a battering in recent months, from terrorism and from fire.  But here are some photos of a happier day.   On Saturday 8th July the Pride in London parade set off from Portland Place to bring some colour to the West End.

Most participants wore T-shirts with slogans for their LGBTQ groups, but some looked more special.

Music for the parade came from Sheboom drummers, London Gay Symphonic Winds, and many soundsystems, but my favourite was “Flashdance…What a Feeling” played by a military band from the Guards Division.

I snapped some photos of Tom Daley on his way to join the Barclays float near the front of the parade. If you’ve won Olympic bronze and Commonwealth gold medals, and been World Champion, on the 10m diving board, then (a) you won’t be nervous on top of a parade float, and (b) you don’t need to wear anything special to stand out.

Tour of Britain: the London stage

Central London hosted the final stage of the Tour of Britain today.   The streets were closed to traffic, creating a 100 kilometre, 16-lap cycling course around Trafalgar Square, the Strand, Whitehall, Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street.   I spent the afternoon watching the race on Regent Street.

The Tour of Britain started last Sunday in Glasgow.  More than 100 cyclists competed in stages in  Cumbria, Cheshire, Wales, Bath,  Devon and Bristol, and then the final stage in London.  An English rider, Steve Cummings, won the race.   I took this photo of him just before the start of today’s stage.

The next photo shows Steve Cummings in the leader’s yellow jersey, alongside two other British riders – Mark Cavendish (in the Dimension Data team jersey) and Bradley Wiggins (easily identifiable in the Team Wiggins jersey).

Today was a lot of fun to watch, with the riders reappearing every few minutes as they completed their laps much quicker than I expected.  But their speed makes them hard to photograph, so my favourite image from today was this photo of Mark Cavendish, standing beside the team bus, and not sprinting away in a blur.

Wonderpass

As winter moves into spring, daffodils are blooming in London.  Here is an image from Regent’s Park, taken on 29th February in this Leap Year.

To reach the park from my home, I need to cross the busy Marylebone Road.  I have a few options, above ground and below ground.  One of the subterranean routes became a little brighter this year.  The underpass near Baker Street station is now “The Wonderpass”.

It’s still just a subway connecting the north side of Marylebone Road with the south side, but it’s cleaner, brighter and safer.  If you’re running for a train at Baker Street station, then a safe crossing is all you need.

But if you have time to “Look Around You” as the signs say, you can get a little bit more from this curious cultural crossing.

A miniature stage-set on one wall reminded me to book tickets for this summer’s plays at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.  Other wall panels give a timeline of Marylebone’s local history.   Did you know that Marylebone was the site of London’s first Indian restaurant, the Hindostanee Coffee House, which opened on George Street in 1810?

The Coffee House is long gone, so if you’re looking for a modern version of Indian vegetarian food, I recommend Woodlands Restaurant on Marylebone Lane.

What else is signposted from the Wonderpass?

Paddington Street Gardens are not as vast as Regent’s Park, but they are still a precious “breathing space” in our densely-packed urban village.

If you want to read more about “The Wonderpass”, click here for the official announcement from the Baker Street Quarter Partnership, and click here for a more sceptical view from The New Statesman.

And wherever you are, Look Around You!

 

Chinese New Year in London

Decorations are up in London again, this time for Chinese New Year.   Although today is the first day of the lunar New Year, the main festivities are scheduled for the weekend.

The next sign is less inviting, with the same “Avoid the Area” message sent out for Christmas events.

If you are in Chinatown this week, what can you see?  Lots and lots of red lanterns.

If you want to combine two February festivals, go to the Chinese supermarket selling these bamboo branches with  heart decorations for Valentine’s Day.

Lanterns are also hanging at the Chinese Embassy (click here to see an earlier photo) and at the Fo Guang Shan Temple in Fitzrovia.

 

Welcome to the Year of the Monkey!

新年快乐

恭喜发财

 

Christmas Eve in Marylebone

It’s Christmas Eve, and London is quieter than normal, as many people leave town for Christmas.  This may actually be the best time of year to be in Marylebone.

All the lights and decoration add to the special atmosphere.  I was very tempted to go in to Opso on Paddington Street for some Greek food after I took this picture.

It’s quiet in the park this week too, with the usual crowds missing from Paddington Street Gardens as offices shut for the holidays.

The lights continue at the Marylebone Hotel on Welbeck Street….

and the  Paul Rothe & Son delicatessen in Marylebone Lane.

I’ve spent three weeks photographing London’s shop windows, and it turns out that my favourite was the local hardware shop.  If I was bringing young children into central London to see the Christmas lights, I would forget about Hamleys and Selfridges and head for Websters Ironmongers on Chiltern Street.

I wonder if I’ve got time to go out and buy that snowy owl before everything shuts this afternoon?

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Nativity

At the heart of the Christmas celebrations is the Christian story of the birth of Jesus.  In looking at London’s Christmas decorations, I saw very few religious scenes, so for this post I visited a church.

All Saints, Margaret Street is located north of Oxford Circus, in Fitzrovia.  Turning off the street into the courtyard takes you one step away from the everyday world of central London, but doesn’t quite prepare you for the beautiful interior of the church.  The building was designed by William Butterfield, completed in 1859, and is full of ornate paintings and carvings.

The north wall was originally tiled with geometric patterns, but in 1873 they were replaced by new tiles depicting scenes from the Bible and the Early Church.  Here is a detail from the nativity scene.

At the east end of the north aisle is the Lady Chapel, with this statue of Jesus with his mother Mary.

All Saints Margaret Street has services on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It is an English-speaking Church of England congregation, with an Anglo-Catholic style of worship, but if you are looking for a different type of church, I’m confident you can find what you need in London.  Here are just a few of the churches I have walked past this year.

If you don’t want to go to church, you can still see a Christian nativity scene.  Out in the middle of Trafalgar Square is “Christmas Crib”, a sculpture designed by Tomoaki Suzuki and Jessica Ogden and commissioned by the church of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields.  There are carved representations of Jesus, his parents, the Shepherds, the Magi and an angel – but I focused on the donkey.

 

 

 

 

 

Light on the Shortest Day

Today is the shortest day of the year in London, so I’m posting my shiniest, brightest photos.  Here’s a golden bauble from the tree at the Grosvenor House Hotel to act as a substitute for the sun.

The North Pole is tilted furthest away from the sun today, giving the people of the northern hemisphere the fewest hours of sunlight.  Until this year I thought that the shortest day of the year was always 21st December. More often than not, that is true, but it can actually be on 20th, 21st, 22nd or 23rd, because the modern calendar does not correspond exactly to the solar year of 365.2422 days.  This year it falls on 22nd December.

Back to Grosvenor House, and its golden balls, stacked up outside the hotel on Park Lane.  You can just about see the trees of Hyde Park in the reflections.

The shortest day of the year is known as the winter solstice, from the Latin word “solstitium”, meaning “Sun standing still”.   Tomorrow, days will start to get longer, leading up to the summer solstice in June.  But the days don’t lengthen in a straightforward way.  You may notice that the earliest sunsets come in the first half of December.  And we have to put up with later sunrises for a few weeks after the winter solstice, with the sun rising latest in early January.

Round the corner from the Grosvenor House, on Mount Street, the Dior shop has even more baubles in their window.  This time the reflections only show the buildings on the other side of the street (and they don’t even catch the Damien Hirst tree at the Connaught).

I hope this blog is cheering you up in the dark days of winter.  But if you need more sunlight, why not take off on a flight to the southern hemisphere, where they are enjoying the longest day of the year?

This tree, in Terminal 5 of Heathrow, is one of many identical trees in the airport.

I got my information about the winter solstice from an article in the Daily Telegraph.

Christmas Soldiers

Yesterday I shared pictures of London’s festive wreaths.  Today I have photos of another quirky Christmas decoration.   Isn’t it odd that a festival of joy, peace, light and family should have a tradition of using toy soldiers as decorations?

We can blame Ernst Hoffmann for writing a novella called “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” in 1816, which inspired a ballet first performed in 1892, with music composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Both the novella and the ballet are set at Christmas.  They tell the story of a nutcracker shaped like a soldier coming to life and taking a child on an adventure.  In displaying the large-scale soldiers in these photos as Christmas decorations, Claridges Hotel is tapping into the romance and excitement of the ballet, and the idea that staying in a Mayfair hotel could be a magical adventure.

The  same idea has occurred to the people who run the Langham Hotel.  This soldier is standing guard outside the Palm Court restaurant.

If you want to see a more British style of toy soldier, go to the Burberry clothes shops on Regent Street or Bond Street.  The Guards have put down their guns and picked up scarves.

At least the Burberry soldiers are working under the direction of Santa Claus.

If you’re interested in the Nutcracker ballet, click on this link to read more on my friend Fran Pickering’s blog “Sequins and Cherry Blossom”:   the Festive Season starts with The Nutcracker.

And for more on the background to nutcrackers as a kitchen tool, or a collectable, or a Christmas decoration, click here for an interesting article on Slate.com.