St Paul’s  http://www.stpauls.co.uk/

John says no photos allowed inside so if you want to see that you’ll have to look at the website.  We’ll visit it one day.

Great place for lunch!

Even chopsticks on the patio.  Lots of pigeons too though there’s only one in this photo.

We selected our picnic from Marks & Spencer fast food, just across the way; was quite good : there were at least 100 people in there selecting their choices and then going through one of the many pay lines.  I unfortunately picked one of the self-check-out lines and had no clue.  Luckily there was a helper who picked out the correct coins and showed me how to feed them to the machine.

After lunch.  You could probably do some kind of survey as to what are the most popular takeaway places near St. Paul’s.

Not a fake horse, which arrived with a second mounted police just as we were leaving.

Along the way there was lots to see  of London life.

Will have to try this sometime!

http://gourmet-girl.tumblr.com/post/11944554560/hardys-original-sweet-shop

London Street Scene

I liked the sign and the woman READING.  I think she’s wearing the same shoes as the woman having lunch at St. Pauls.  http://www.leonrestaurants.co.uk/ is this interesting restaurant’s website.

http://www.theguardian.com/ is a review of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn which this woman is reading.  She seems engrossed in it so maybe that’s a recommendation.

A frequent scene, Randal and John trying to figure out how to get where we’re going; but we’re close!

Samuel Johnson’s House…very tall

“most quoted Englishman after Shakespeare..”

You have to ring the bell to get in.

My first stop as defined by Samuel Johnson

“In 1737, Johnson moved to London where he struggled to support himself through journalism, writing on a huge variety of subjects. He gradually acquired a literary reputation and in 1747 a syndicate of printers commissioned him to compile his ‘Dictionary of the English Language’. The task took eight years, and Johnson employed six assistants, all of them working in his house off Fleet Street.

The dictionary was published on 15 April 1755. It was not the first such dictionary, but was certainly the most important at that time. In Johnson’s lifetime five further editions were published, and a sixth came out when he died.”  http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/johnson_samuel.shtml

Randal was fascinated by these moveable walls that could turn the space in the middle of the two rooms into 3 rooms.  Reminded me of Thomas Jefferson’s innovations.

Facsimile copies of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary

Leave it to me to find where the books had been bound incorrectly….

There I am

Looking out the window and back down the stairs

Court year outside the home; statue to Johnson’s cat with a £ sitting there too in the mussel shell.

Not sure why the £ is there as it doesn’t look part of the sculpture.

Walking home where we will pass by St Paul’s again

Blue trees and Red Hat

http://www.kondimopoulos.com/2011/11/blue-trees/

This environmental art installation was commissioned by Trees for Cities and sponsored by Bloomberg.

As a sculptor, performance and installation artist, I create artworks that are grounded in my sociological and humanist philosophies.

In my environmental installation, The Blue Trees,  the colour and the Tree come together to transform and affect each other; the colour changing the Tree into something surreal, something out of this world. While the Tree, rooted in this earth reflects what we may lose.

This change is important not only as a means to highlight ecological issues, such as the ecocide of our forests, but also that it may effect a transformation in the psyche of people by raising our social consciousness.

With The Blue Trees, the colour and the Tree become a sculptural work referencing people’s lives, their daily existence and how individually and collectively we shape the world we inhabit.

I have always known that art is and has always has been an extended part of nature and that art can effect social change.

For that to happen one has to move out of the art institutions and galleries and move outside among nature and human beings in their living spaces.

I think of the Blue Trees as a project that has a strong regenerative aspect to it, an organic artwork that is continually changing and evolving from site to site. From season to season the trees grow through the cycles of nature and the colors also begin to change and disappear. There is a sense of time as a part of the concept. Time that determines our own existence is measured through these trees.”

The City of London offers on one square mile

history, feudal governance and global finance

By Andrew Stevens

24 June 2013: The landmarks of the area covered by the historic City of London Corporation are known to many – St Paul’s Cathedral, the Old Bailey, the ‘Gherkin’ and soon the ‘Walkie-Talkie’ and the ‘Cheesegrater’, to name but few – but less is known about the Corporation itself. The City of London is often confused with Greater London (the area covered by the Greater London Authority), but the two concepts are indeed very distinct and separate.

The City of London relates to the historic ‘square mile’ at the geographic centre of the region of Greater London. It is only one of 33 local authorities in Greater London, the other 32 being known as London Boroughs. For this, and several other reasons, local government structures in London (both the city and region – often referred to as “the capital”, though this term is technically meaningless) are very anomalous.  http://www.citymayors.com/government/london_corp.html

http://www.iwm.org.uk/  is the site for the Imperial War Museum also on our list to visit.

Our Street  by Gilda O’Neill

“This book focuses on the lives of Londoners in the East End during the Second World War. Showing the concerns, hopes and fears of these so-called ‘ordinary people’ it illustrates these times by looking at the every day rituals which marked the patterns of daily life during WWII. It is an important book and also an affectionate record of an often fondly remembered, more communal, way of life that has all but disappeared.”  recommended by the Imperial War Museum is one I’ll add to my list.

Depression London

Newspaper article explaining the Chinese custom of visiting the dead.

Jewish history is more associated with the East End and  the Museum of London Docklands which we’ll visit one day. 

Victorian Mudlarks

   The mudlarks generally consist of boys and girls, varying in age from eight to fourteen or fifteen. For the most part they are ragged, and in a very filthy state, and are a peculiar class, confined to the river. As soon as the tide is out they make their appearance, and remain till it comes in. These mudlarks are generally strong and healthy, though their clothes are in rags. Their fathers are robust men. By going too often to the public house they keep their families in destitution, and the mothers of the poor children are glad to get a few pence in whatever way they can.  http://spitalfieldslife.com/2010/09/29/the-life-of-a-mudlark-1861/

By noon we were ready to move on for lunch and then a visit to Dr. Johnson’s Home…..

London Wall

  “Built c. AD 200, the Roman wall not only provided defence and security to the citizens of London, but also represented the status of the city itself.

Once around 4km long and enclosing an area of about 134 hectares, over time it was modified, adapted and added to, before finally being obscured and partially destroyed as new buildings were constructed around it. Today however, many of the buildings which had formerly hidden it have been cleared away, and visitors to the site can enjoy a clear view of the monument that defined both the size and shape of the city for over a millennium.”  http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/london-wall/

Randal and John looking at the map finding the way to Dr. Johnson’s House

Everyday Londoner at work

Police Phone

The wooden police call boxes familiar from Doctor Who have disappeared from our streets but there are still a few examples of the sturdier phones on posts. Made of cast iron, painted blue, they were for the use of both the police and the public in the days before police radios or mobile phones.

Their most common use was for members of the public to call for help with pregnancy or ‘sudden illness. The first UK boxes appeared in 1891 and went out of use after the introduction of the 999 system in the late 1930s.  http://www.secret-london.co.uk/Phone_boxes.html

Images of the Lost Metropolitan Police Boxes

PoliceBoxes.co.uk is a project to collate photographs of  Metropolitan Police Boxes in their original location. The ‘Doctor Who’ type design by Gilbert MacKenzie Trench featured mainly in London from 1929. By 1953 there were 685 police boxes on the streets of London. If you have a photograph of a real TARDIS-type Police Box before it was removed, please let us know. Click on a map icon to see information.

http://www.policeboxes.co.uk/

Sculpture in front of Starbucks reminds me of Av