I walked through the back streets of Chelsea (does Chelsea have back streets, really?) to Cheyne Walk and over Albert Bridge, which was looking very pink in the afternoon sunlight.
From Battersea Park, Chelsea Embankment looks Dutch – something about the gables and the barges.
I walked through the park, past the pagoda,
then back over Chelsea Bridge.
Along Chelsea Embankment then up Swan Walk to see the Chelsea Physic Garden. Closed for the winter, it looks very Secret Garden-ish.
I will be back next week with lots of photos and tales of my adventures. Quite possibly touched with nostalgia depending on how much I start to miss my old life in London.
If I can, I’ll post on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, but it will depend on accessibility of wifi.
Happy Saturday-to-Monday! (I didn’t learn everything in life from Nancy Mitford, but I learned a LOT – including the fact that the term ‘weekend’ was considered very nouveau well into the 1930s.)
PS When I took these photos, I think I was pretending to be Whistler. Or I hadn’t worked out how to focus my camera. One or the other.
This week’s film of the week is Precious. (Before we saw it, I kept wanting to call it Precioussssss, Gollum-style.)
The film is about a young girl called Precious growing up in Harlem. She’s suffered horrific abuse from both parents and, when the film opens, is pregnant with her second child by her father. She barely communicates with other people, but in her head escapes into stories where she’s a star – a thinner, blonder, happier, loved version of herself. The film describes what happens after she enrolls in an alternative education programme and learns to read and write.
When the film started, I whispered to my partner in crime, ‘at least it’ll be better than Avatar.’ It was in a totally different league. The acting is superb. Even Mariah Carey looks like a normal human being and is good as a sympathetic social worker who can’t quite grasp the realities of Precious’s life.
The film doesn’t exactly laud social workers. One is shown having the wool pulled completely over her eyes by Precious’s abusive mother, the other as being out of her depth. But, thinking about it in the car on the way home (in the company of two social workers), it made me want to celebrate them. I don’t know how you listen to these kinds of stories and know that there is a responsibility on you to try to help. I don’t know how you do your job every day. But I’m glad you do.
Isn’t there some way we can show our appreciation? The best I can come up with is that there should be a special check-out lane in the supermarket for social workers. Like the express lane, but for public workers. It seems to me that there should be some perks for people who do this kind of work day in and day out.
What do you think? Who should be eligible? How would it work? I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
I’m clearly in a loving mood this week – well, I guess Sunday was Valentine’s Day. Anyway, along with Dublin bikes and Winter light, something else I love is (are?) the Olympics.
I will watch any sport, provided there’s a promise of a podium, a national anthem and some crying at the end of it. It's the mystique of the Olympics, I suppose; the fact that the Olympic gold is the one everybody wants to win.
My new-found favourite sport is snowboard cross. Four riders (see, I'm picking up the lingo) at a time shoot down a course, ducking and jumping over obstacles (and each other). The first two across the line proceed to the next round until only four are left in the final. This is a sport for insane people, but when you see them whooping and bouncing along the bumps you start to think, ‘hey, maybe I should take up snowboard cross.’
I’ve also been picking up skiing tips from the men’s downhill … I need to jump up in the air more, I think.
I’m watching coverage even as I type. Coming up: curling (meh), luge (more exciting), pairs figure skating (love it when they’re really good, love it when they fall – can’t lose!) and women’s snowboard cross. Good times.
We met at Mountjoy Square, but then ended up walking over to Parnell Square because I couldn’t register for a three day pass at the first location. But this is a small quibble. We got our bikes, and the first photographs (I managed to drop my bike when I took this one, but luckily not the camera.)
We cycled along Bolton St, crossed Church St and passed Smithfield. A bit of a dog leg by Collins Barracks and back along the quays to cross over the river at Usher’s Island.
Then along by Guinness and Heuston Station and up Military Rd. A good workout for the leg muscles up the hill into the Royal Hospital Kilmainham and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
We parked our bikes, then sought refreshment (the bike sheds were FAR from the museum entrance).
Excellent cake at the Itsa café (1 x cupcake, 1 x flourless almond and orange cake). Then we crossed to the new galleries and the exhibition from MOMA New York – Picturing New York.
The exhibition contained a fabulous selection of images of the city. One of the most stunning was a kind of time lapse piece, wherein the photographer had taken a picture of MOMA from a building across the street by opening the camera’s shutter in one year, and closing it two years later. Streaks of light appear on the photo, traces of the sun’s progress across the sky over the year.
(Sadly, dogs and bicycles were banned from the Museum.)
We started off at the north edge of the city and worked our way south. We walked past the Chinese shops on Parnell St, stopping briefly so I could record these for posterity:
Following my trip last week to Arbour Hill, we concluded we should pay our respects in the Garden of Remembrance, mostly notable for its peculiar line in Republican symbolism. Crosses, horns, shields and whatever you’re having yourself.
(And Coco Pops.)
Then into the Hugh Lane Gallery – aka Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, which doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.
No photographs allowed, I’m afraid. But we ambled through the permanent collection, stopping first in the Harry Clarke room. Some of the pictures have a nostalgia almost like photographs in a family album since they’re part of my childhood memories, familiar to me from Sunday-morning visits to the gallery. A quick tour of the Francis Bacon exhibition and then we left to find coffee.
We went to 3rd Floor Espresso on Middle Abbey St. It’s not on a third floor and the sign above the door reads ‘The Twisted Pepper’ but, those confusions aside, it’s well worth the visit. The coffee is excellent and they make their filter coffee with individual filters, which I love. There was a sharp intake of breath from the barista when I requested milk – but though this usually annoys me, I will concede that the coffee didn’t need it.
Lunch from Wok in a Box (wouldn’t recommend it, really), eaten in Merrion Square, to the sounds of a lone trumpeter practising the National Anthem. Quite surreal. A tame robin came to see us and I fed him some rice.
After lunch (it was a busy schedule) we went to the Science Gallery in Trinity. A triumph of style over substance. It looks slick, with nice graphics, and the idea of participative experiments is good, but there’s nothing to hold it all together.
We finished up in Temple Bar (it wouldn’t be a true tourist day otherwise) at the Palace Bar, one of my favourite pubs in Dublin. Donald had a pint, but I stuck to coffee because I had to drive afterwards.
Obviously being a tourist is more about attitude than knowledge, because we were asked several times if we needed help or directions. I recommend to anyone to take a day off to be a tourist in your own city.
