I think that, however indistinct they may seem, that life is chock full of little miracles if you look hard enough. One of them is my finding a single moment of peace or quiet in which to write this blog post considering the chaos by which I have been otherwise surrounded in the form of tracksuit-ed men loudly dismantling our boiler all afternoon, doors slamming, furniture shifted to the extent that the task of heating up some soup for lunch was soon transformed into an absurd assault course that involved my having to clamber across a sofa, saucepan in hand. Phew.
Another of these miracles, or so it seemed at the time, was my surviving the last couple of weeks working in an unfamiliar shop in an unfamiliar part of town, namely Fulham Road. Of course, knowing my luck, it would be the week of the tube strike that I would be commuting from Hackney to Chelsea & alongside the distinct lack of a spirit of solidarity amongst my fellow nine to six-ers, I discovered myself to be an East London-er through & through. Doubtless beautiful in their uniformity, the grand, old terraces of West Brompton & Kensington are amongst my favourites to peer through the windows of on my weekend walks, but sitting in their shadows on my lunch break every day for two weeks, I began to think them quite monstrous, empty facades, reminiscent of their inhabitants who seek to detach themselves from any sense of neighbourhood. Aside from a soft spot for West Brompton Cemetery whose towering entrance reminds me of Paris' Pere Lachaise, I found myself yearning for the patchwork of colours & cultures, of council flats & Victorian semis that makes Hackney such a diverse & characterful place to live.
So, it was at the end of this West London lieu sharing my afternoon coffee with the idle chatter of housewives bemoaning having to put their shoes in storage while their houses were refurbished that I felt so relieved & in need of a lovely day off, such as was promptly planned with Andrew in tow on Saturday afternoon when we headed towards the Thames.
Drawn by its many artistic manifestations from the Barbican to the National Theatre to its second-hand booksale, the Southbank is a patch of London I've always been attached to & enjoyed wandering the length of, come rain or shine. This particular quip was especially apt on that weekend since, within twenty minutes of emerging from the noisy smog of London Bridge station, we had already experienced both, the skies turning from blue to grey to black in a matter of moments, seemingly unable to decide on one & settling instead for soggy sunshine. Londoners are hardy & weather-weary creatures &, as such, Andrew & I were buttoned up in sheepskin coats & woollen hats, soon wringing out the latter in the muggy heat of the lunchtime crowds of Borough Market, beneath the railway bridge & among the clatter of huge paella pans, clouds of smoke from sizzling frankfurters on hot coals & the hum of tourists & locals alike jostling in line for mulled wine (none for me past New Year, puritan as I am) & wedges of cheesecake. Markets are always one of the first things that I seek out to draw a ring around in guidebooks of foreign cities, be it Berlin's Mauerpark or the Blumenmarkt of Amsterdam, the people & goods on offer represent a microcosm of the culture & character of the area & usually the chance to try something new.
Alas, when you're lucky enough to call the capital your home, you easily develop habits & the two of us got our usual vegan burger & box of mixed salad from 'The Veggie Table', brimming with quinoa, pearl barley, beetroot, carrot, new potatoes & cauliflower, plenty to fuel our riverbank walk (we'll save the pad thai for next time..!)
In accordance with these habits of ours, it was to worship at the temple of all coffee lovers, 'Monmouth' that we wound our way having licked our lips, past impossible wheels of parmesan & mountains of mushrooms, to eagerly wait in a queue that snaked around the building's corner, the Shard looming above our heads.
Supplier to some of my favourite cafes & firm believers in the importance of an intimate relationship with the origins of our food & drink, 'Monmouth' roast their hand-picked range of coffee just down the road in Bermondsey & have been doing so since 1978, creating a reputation as a company whose cheerful staff successfully communicate their knowledge of & passion for their coffee. Other than the two deliciously frothy, rich cappuccinos that we were duly handed at the end of the line, the earthy aesthetic of 'Monmouth' has always appealed to me - communal wooden benches, low hanging enamel lamps above the counters, baristas in heavy duty aprons & jars of strawberry jam on offer alongside hunks of bread.
Tearing ourselves away from the shop's welcoming warmth, Andrew & I set our sights on the afternoon's central destination, that of the Tate Modern for my second (& Andrew's first) visit to the exhibit on Bauhaus artist Paul Klee. It was on the recommendation of a friend I met through Oxfam that originally brought me to the collection &, though confident in my attraction to the inter-war years & the art that came out of that period of intense change, I hadn't known what to expect.
Of course, Tate never disappoints in their curation of artists' work but Klee's own minute cataloguing of his own work lent them a helping hand, enabling the gallery to accurately chart the artist's progress, be it personal, philosophical or aesthetic, through the course of the rooms & the German-Swiss' career. Reading of Klee's preference for watercolours & my association of the medium with the serene paintings of Turner, I hadn't anticipated being so struck by his bold command of colour & shape, combining unexpected shades & hues to striking effect & decisively dividing canvases with repetitive imagery of stars & moons & trees. Klee's production of small scale works running into the hundreds of thousands only increased their precision & ability to draw the viewer in with a single detail, canvases often etched with subtle patterns suggestive of something hidden, the replicated shape of a fish evoking its shimmering fin.
Among my favourite pieces were those that were full of such playfulness & joy in spite of the often oppressive context in which they were produced, considering many members of the Bauhaus & Klee's own dealer were amongst those actively persecuted by the Nazis. In spite of Klee's own descent into illness in his fifties, his productivity & the clarity of his canvases only increased at this late stage, surely testament to his artistic genius & its resilience in times of adversity. Do go & see the collection before its packed away after Sunday, 9th March. it is the perfect respite from these cloudy afternoons of late.
It is looking increasingly unlikely that I'll be able to find any respite from today's building works with the butternut squash risotto I had planned but ho hum, perhaps a sneaky pizza & a film it is then. I'll be back soon, hopefully less headache-y, with a Valentines Day write up featuring Mr. Bailey & more pictures of my own mug.
Speak soon - O.
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