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Loxit in London

March 2020 - March 2022
A very different sort of trip, limited to London for the time being Read more
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  • TravelerLoxit in London
    Day 39

    Lockdown or lockup?

    April 14, 2020 in England ⋅ ☀️ 10 °C

    Lockin or lockout? While many people through choice or health are not going out at all, for me it feels like lockout since when lockdown was announced, all but essential businesses are closed. For me, as bad a phase as any was the week preceding lockdown with the uncertainty of how to cope with the restrictions. Fear of the disease is a virus itself.

    The story begins on 7th March, the evening of my return from Mexico. Much has changed since I left these shores just over a month ago; several pages in the national press are devoted to the new emergency. In my absence the virus has taken hold in Britain and has gained a toehold in Latin America, starting with Brazil and continuing with Mexico. This is a journey like no other, largely fixed in one place and with an uncertain end.

    By the 23rd March when it fully takes effect, I've become somewhat reconciled to the position. Domestic tasks are no longer a chore; a spring clean is in order, and it's good exercise. During a clear-out I find a file of old negatives which had slipped behind the bookcase, and recover images from a long trip in Europe and beyond from 1976. Iran and Afghanistan were on the route; either they were safer to visit then or we were gloriously unaware of the hazards. It's still possible to travel virtually and the TV programmes have been uplifting. Around early April the "Race across the World" covers Latin America from Mexico City to Ushuaia. It's followed by a re-enactment of the Klondike gold rush, which makes lockdown look easy!

    I've attached images of my room with a view, front and back (I did clean the rear window afterwards, honest). But even at the beginning I've made a point of getting outside for at least half an hour per day. The streets have been so quiet that I've been anxious about venturing out with anything valuable but as the weather starts to improve, more people are out and by mid-April it feels safe to carry a camera. At first the park benches are taped off but it's nice to note the small details that would usually be overlooked: some guerrilla gardening outside my second home, the Camera Club (closed) and a tantalising view of some allotments. And in Doorstep Green, a local outdoor space, the plane trees are in leaf. We are in for a cloudless April and May.    Read more

  • TravelerLoxit in London
    Day 57

    Break for the border: Southwark

    May 2, 2020 in England ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C

    Once April is out, the number of new corona cases in the UK has peaked for now and in London, a week or two earlier. Face to face contact is still limited to 2-minute doorstep conversations with neighbours but we now have a new friend---Zoom. One of the groups I am in is a Saturday quiz. When the picture round comes on---identify 20 brands of chocolate bars, would you believe---it's a bloodbath. Never mind; the Thornbridge Jaipur IPA is an effective tranquilliser to dispel any hard feelings. As a friend says, the good times are wonderful but the bad times help us build character.

    The beautiful weather continues and I tiptoe over the border into Southwark. The Shard is visible almost everywhere, showing all its glory near London Bridge station or poking out from spring foliage in Leathermarket Gardens. There's some industrial grit near Borough Market and street sculpture towards Bermondsey. Small gardens are too numerous to include here apart from the exquisite Red Cross Gardens, a mere 50 yards square and bordered by houses founded by the 19th century reformer Octavia Hill.    Read more

  • TravelerLoxit in London
    Day 80

    Bright light, big city

    May 25, 2020 in England ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    Confinement of course mines a rich seam in films and literature. "The Birdman of Alcatraz" was on TV recently, also "The Martian" featuring Matt Damon's unscheduled solitude on the Red Planet. And in Ayn Rand's book "We the Living" set in Stalinist Russia, there's a tragic scene in which a pair of lovers say a final farewell before their train divides into two on the way to their respective labour camps.

    BUT.....by late May there are some green shoots of revival. The coffee stallholder in Kennington Cross has opened after over 2 months and because so many people are WFH (working from home) in this residential area, he's doing a roaring trade. Some pubs are starting to sell takeaway drinks and one of my locals, the Black Prince, is doing Portobello IPA to lubricate the Saturday Zoom quiz. Another bloodbath of course!

    The month of May continues to be cloudless and with two bank holidays, it's instructive to find out how central London is shaping up. So I cross another frontier, the Thames, to visit Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. The answer is that because entertainment is shut down and tourism is almost zero, they are still like ghost towns. Many people have migrated to the South Coast beaches with pictures of lemming-like behaviour ignoring social distancing. Nice to have the West End pavements to myself but it's quite uncanny.

    Apart from the faithful bus services, the City is also deserted. Just away from it, there are more small gardens and the final image in Postman's Park is the work of the painter G.F. Watts' Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice.    Read more

  • TravelerLoxit in London
    Day 120

    Drink out to help out

    July 4, 2020 in England ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

    Today is a landmark in which restaurants and pubs are to re-open---for the moment; there are warnings of a possible trade-off later to allow the schools to open fully at the expense of hospitality. My regular barber's has a 10-man queue outside but I squeeze into a local shop to remove the 3-month thatch before they start taking telephone bookings. This "new normal" is complicated; the better pubs have someone at the door to escort people to a table and take orders there. And breweries are plainly struggling to restore supplies. But with pubs being less crowded than usual, this set-up has a good side.

    Other non-essential but therapeutic businesses are opening up so I make a pilgrimage to my favourite shop of all time, Stanford's in Covent Garden and buy "The Immeasurable World". It's based on trips to deserts around the world, including a former nuclear testing site in South Australia. The Nullarbor looks a very different desert to the Sonora in Mexico which I visited in February. Also on my retail therapy list is a CD of Cuban music. The singer Dayme Arocena featured on BBC4 recently with her attractive jazzy flavour.

    This picture of the Royal Festival Hall was taken in the depth of lockdown but by now, people are starting to return to "my" South Bank although the concert hall itself must remain closed. Not far away is the garden outside St. Thomas's Hospital and since many of those relaxing are staff members, it feels as safe a place as any. The Shard, featuring in the next two images, at 1,000 feet is the tallest building in the U.K. and casts its eye over almost everywhere in London. Street art is not as creative in Britain as in some other countries but here's a painting of the fine Greek Revival Trinity Church in the square of the same name. Finally, thanks to the NHS whose staff on the front line have been by all accounts exceptional (which is perhaps more can be said for how the crisis has been managed at the top).    Read more

  • TravelerLoxit in London
    Day 148

    The Deep South

    August 1, 2020 in England ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    For the first time since lockdown, a morning fry-up at the Portuguese cafe near Kennington Cross. Baked beans with tinned tomatoes are not everyone's thing but they are mine. And the hash browns of course! There's just enough space for a couple of tables on the pavement: eating out literally. My morning paper gives tantalising glimpses of daylight with more efficient Covid testing and progress in the development of a vaccine, only for the clouds to roll in again. This is not a sprint but a marathon.

    But walks this time away from the river, reveal some hidden glories. Another south London Greek Revival church, St. Peter's, lies just off the Walworth Road while a row of boarded-up houses comes with a vision of how the area may become one day. Going down the Brixton Road shows some parkland where for better or worse, change has already happened with a park laid out like a parade ground and new flats behind it.

    Meanwhile off the Clapham Road lies an exquisite little square or should one say, circle, Lansdowne Gardens. It's not big enough to do much and there are no seats but a hidden beauty all the same. Nearby is the better-known Albert Square which has nothing to do with East Enders and looks more Kensington than Stockwell, let alone Walford.    Read more

  • TravelerLoxit in London
    1
    Day 170

    Eastern promise

    August 23, 2020 in England ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    It's the height of the holiday season and millions of people are hoping to get abroad. The rules on "air bridges" are specific to each country and while some places (Thailand for example) are doing significantly well in their fight against the pandemic, their authorities very understandably regard outsiders as "dirty", hence access to them is virtually impossible. Meanwhile within Europe, the lights come on briefly (France, Spain) and rapidly go out as they are deemed by our authorities to be "dirty". My plans are limited to possible staycations or taking the opportunity to appreciate what London has.

    A walk down river and over the magnificent Tower Bridge leads into St. Katharine's Dock and beyond that, Wapping. Away from the main roads, it's a secret place little troubled by traffic. But from the 17th century to the mid-20th it was a bustling commercial dock area. It also saw wave upon wave of immigrants starting with the Huguenots fleeing France in the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish escaping the potato famine of the 1840s and Jewish refugees from the Russian pogroms in the late 19th century. Wapping is associated with the profane (Judge Jeffries of Bloody Assizes notoriety) and the sacred (John Newton, who renounced the slave trade to become a writer of hymns). And further into Whitechapel, there are memories of Jack the Ripper (19th century mass murderer), Peter the Painter (activist at the Siege of Sydney Street in 1911) and General Booth (founder of the Salvation Army). And the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 when the largely Jewish community resisted a fascist rally with the cry "They shall not pass".

    The fading stock brick of the 19th century warehouses, now converted into upmarket apartments, could tell many a story but today all is quiet apart from the chatter of other sightseers. But not such good news for the Old Rose (4) which was once popular with journalists before their office moved away. Image 5 is a detail of the impressive St. George in the East church, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil of Christopher Wren, while the final image shows quiet contemplation in an enclave walled in by former docks.    Read more

  • TravelerLoxit in London
    12
    Day 197

    Downstream South Bank

    September 19, 2020 in England ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C

    South Bank refers to the lively area around the Royal Festival Hall in Waterloo but it could just as well apply to another vibrant area downstream on the Greenwich Peninsula. It used to be, and in some places still is, an industrial district until the redundant activities were swept away in the 1980s and gradually redeveloped. First to arrive by 2000 was an exhibition centre was the Millennium Dome (now called the O2 Arena) followed by an excrescence of flashy apartments with glorious views of the Thames. And what a mighty river it is! Quite apart from being the raison d'etre of London since Roman times, its snakelike trajectory offers unexpected geography and views. Hence various places south of the river lie actually north of those on the "wrong" side and why the original South Bank, rather than being banished to a B & T (bridges and tunnels) existence, forms a significant quarter of the central London map.

    Today it's a glorious Saturday September morning which feels like July. I'm with a small group (limited to 6 by the current Covid ruling) from my photographic society, simply called The Camera Club. Photographers being photographers, we never stay in one group throughout anyway until a final sandwich and coffee at the finish. We start near the O2 Arena, noting current sanitary precautions at every public space from cafe to 5-star hotel.

    A short walk down river takes us past some luxury flats where a couple of well-meaning security men warn us about photographing private places. What they're concerned about is respecting the privacy of the local residents---following the spirit of the law---although there's nothing in the letter of the law forbidding photography if you're standing in a public place. Turns out that our feet are standing in a private enclave. We part as friends and continue to the cable car service connecting both banks of the river, running nearly a mile. and opened in time for the London Olympics in 2012. It isn't a commercial success but the photo-opportunities are pretty.

    Continuing down river, the meandering of the Thames offers views of an earlier development, Canary Wharf, London's second financial centre. With the obligatory grit of "sarf" London in the foreground. The final shot shows a long-abandoned passenger ferry; thankfully the Woolwich free ferry slightly downstream of here hasn't met a similar fate. In the words of the late illustrator Geoffrey Fletcher, "wonderfully depressing" if you like!    Read more

  • TravelerLoxit in London
    Day 201

    Amy and David

    September 23, 2020 in England ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    The good weather is having a final fling as I head on a 59 bus to Euston and north to Camden Town. This was the home of Amy Winehouse---with her best looking-for-trouble face here---who died in 2011. To me she was the best singer of her time and although she cut only two studio albums, she lives on in memory as do those of others in the infamous 27 Club---Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison.

    Someone who has survived to the age of 90 is David Gentleman, whose book "My Town" was a present from one of my sisters and inspired me to visit the stately terraces dating from the 1840s. Gloucester Crescent. where he lives, featured in the film "The Lady in the Van" with Maggie Smith in the eccentric title role. Chalcot Crescent, pictured here, is a rare example of a double crescent. Oakley Square, a near-namesake of Oakley Gardens in Chelsea, could just as easily be sited there.

    Due to social distancing I give a wide berth to Camden Market, but the canal above Camden Lock has a dreamy appearance at odds with the bustle downstream. The final two images complete the theme of London greenery: St. Martin's Gardens with some dilapidated tombstones leaning this way and that.    Read more

  • TravelerLoxit in London
    Day 234

    My South Bank

    October 26, 2020 in England ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    Living as I do, close to London's South Bank, I've become quite possessive about it. The arc between Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges is the most familiar, with the Royal Festival Hall and other centres for the arts (sadly closed for now). For countless years it has hosted a second-hand bookstall, ice cream vans, a skateboard park and numerous street entertainers and musicians. If Amy Winehouse had been a south London girl, she might have started out here. Since 2000 the South Bank has been the home of the London Eye and a varying cast of aquariums, Disney attractions and who knows what else.

    The stretch between Westminster and Lambeth Bridges (images 1 to 4) is scenic too. It's favoured by TV channels interviewing politicians in front of their workplace the other side of the river. Image 4 shows some graffiti aimed at our country's leader!

    Downstream is scenic too, with a golden-hour view of St. Paul's at low water while the final image, while not strictly on the South Bank, also catches the last rays of the autumn sun.    Read more

  • TravelerLoxit in London
    Day 251

    Autumn colours

    November 12, 2020 in England ⋅ ☀️ 11 °C

    Lockdown 2.0 is upon us, provisionally for 4 weeks until early December. With the rising infection rate over September and October, it's not exactly surprising. Restaurants, pubs and coffee shops are closed---a huge hardship to both businesses and customers---but it's somewhat looser than the spring lockdown at its depth, with schools and essential businesses still open.

    None of this can take away the beauty of the autumn colours. Doorstep Green, the irregular space on my own doorstep, is becoming Doorstep Yellow, while the pattern of fallen leaves, is psychedelic. Into Southwark, Red Cross Garden allows a view of the Shard poking through the diminishing foliage.

    Crossing the river, I find some deserted tennis courts at Lincoln's Inn Fields in the heart of London's legal quarter. And further east, I rediscover this magical enclosure near St. John's Wapping.    Read more

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