I've always maintained that a tourist is someone who knows what they're going to see - a traveller is someone who pokes about, looks down blind alleys, follows false trails, and occasionally finds something.
But I found another definition in Malcolm Bradbury's novel 'Doctor Criminale'.
"There are no travellers now, only tourists. A traveller comes to see a reality that is there already. A tourist comes only to see a reality invented for him, in which he conspires."
Tourism is a big industry - and it's an industry which has falsification at its heart. We see what we're meant to see. We see what we're *allowed* to see.
Perhaps that's why the moments when we break through that barrier are so rewarding. When we find another human being we can talk to as chance acquaintances, not as tourist-and-provider - when the relationship stops being economic and becomes friendship.
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
Sunday, 18 February 2007
Spitalfields gutted
I had the opportunity to visit Spitalfields again last week.
When I lived in London I used to love the old market building, and the Sunday morning market that thrived in its innards. There was an organic farm from Suffolk that would sell you a side of meat, or a small steak; old vinyl and 1930s Penguin books overflowed from shops on to the pavement, and there were stalls selling crystals, bread, junk (or antiques, depending on your view), old bikes, Thai spices.
The shell of the building is still there. And some of the places I remember are still there, like the Spitz - great cafe, great venue for acoustic music. But almost all the innards of the market have been ripped out and replaced with smooth-skinned modern blocks.
Lots of trendy shops. Lots of apartments for City boys. And no life at all.
Look at Brick Lane - just a couple of hundred metres away but completely different. Buildings of all ages from the early eighteenth century onwards sit cheek by jowl; the huge bulk of the old Truman brewery, the narrow, thin Georgian houses, odd juts of Victorian neo-Gothic and 1960s brick.
But above all Brick Lane still has life; the Indian restaurants, small shops, the two Beigel shops. It's teeming, busy. That, I'm afraid, is what Spitalfields has lost.
When I lived in London I used to love the old market building, and the Sunday morning market that thrived in its innards. There was an organic farm from Suffolk that would sell you a side of meat, or a small steak; old vinyl and 1930s Penguin books overflowed from shops on to the pavement, and there were stalls selling crystals, bread, junk (or antiques, depending on your view), old bikes, Thai spices.
The shell of the building is still there. And some of the places I remember are still there, like the Spitz - great cafe, great venue for acoustic music. But almost all the innards of the market have been ripped out and replaced with smooth-skinned modern blocks.
Lots of trendy shops. Lots of apartments for City boys. And no life at all.
Look at Brick Lane - just a couple of hundred metres away but completely different. Buildings of all ages from the early eighteenth century onwards sit cheek by jowl; the huge bulk of the old Truman brewery, the narrow, thin Georgian houses, odd juts of Victorian neo-Gothic and 1960s brick.
But above all Brick Lane still has life; the Indian restaurants, small shops, the two Beigel shops. It's teeming, busy. That, I'm afraid, is what Spitalfields has lost.
Statues of strangeness
I saw a neat blog post recently on Gadling about a Serbian village that's put up a statue of
Rocky.
That's strange, but it's not the strangest statue I've ever seen. After all, Vilnius used to have a statue of Frank Zappa opposite the cathedral. (The statue's still in Vilnius, but it's been moved to a less high profile location, which is a pity.)
There's a Subirachs statue of a submarine near the Casa de les Punxes in Barcelona. That's not very strange but it's one of my all time favourites. I find Subirachs a very interesting artist - on one level his art is very approachable, with strong narrative drive, and then on the other he builds into it an incredible complexity of different references.
Barcelona has other statues that are slightly offbeat. There's a huge fat tom-cat in the Rambla near Sant-Pau de Camp, and I have no idea what he's doing there (apart from setting a bad example to those owners who won't get their cats snipped).
Rome has its own brand of strange statuary, the 'talking statues' which used to be covered in political satires. Pasquino, near Piazza Navona, still talks. There's a little man with a barrel near the Via del Corso, 'Madama Lucrezia' in Piazza Venezia (I wonder if she got her name because it rhymed?), and 'Abate Luigi' (probably a Roman emperor!) near Sant'Andrea della Valle.
London, I'm afraid, is a disaster. Nothing weird at all that I know off. Though there is a very nice Elizabeth Frink near Liverpool Street Station, in the Broadgate office complex, and another just off Piccadilly. Most of London's other statues are either boring, or pompous, or both.This might have changed - I've been intrigued and at times impressed by the statues put up on the 'spare' plinth in Trafalgar Square. Marc Quinn's 'Alison Lapper Pregnant' addressed two areas of life we never see in public sculpture - pregnancy and disability - and it had a fine dignity. Rachel Whiteread's abstract monument created a hollow and rather disturbing focus for the square, its white vacancy making a strong statement against the busy, highly figurative work of the rest of the area.
We're shortly to get a new sculpture, Thomas Schutte's 'Hotel for the Birds'. I'm looking forward to seeing its garish red and yellow perspex lattice take on the respectability of the square.
The Fourth Plinth project website notes "What pigeons will do to the material is not quite clear."
Rocky.
That's strange, but it's not the strangest statue I've ever seen. After all, Vilnius used to have a statue of Frank Zappa opposite the cathedral. (The statue's still in Vilnius, but it's been moved to a less high profile location, which is a pity.)
There's a Subirachs statue of a submarine near the Casa de les Punxes in Barcelona. That's not very strange but it's one of my all time favourites. I find Subirachs a very interesting artist - on one level his art is very approachable, with strong narrative drive, and then on the other he builds into it an incredible complexity of different references.
Barcelona has other statues that are slightly offbeat. There's a huge fat tom-cat in the Rambla near Sant-Pau de Camp, and I have no idea what he's doing there (apart from setting a bad example to those owners who won't get their cats snipped).
Rome has its own brand of strange statuary, the 'talking statues' which used to be covered in political satires. Pasquino, near Piazza Navona, still talks. There's a little man with a barrel near the Via del Corso, 'Madama Lucrezia' in Piazza Venezia (I wonder if she got her name because it rhymed?), and 'Abate Luigi' (probably a Roman emperor!) near Sant'Andrea della Valle.
London, I'm afraid, is a disaster. Nothing weird at all that I know off. Though there is a very nice Elizabeth Frink near Liverpool Street Station, in the Broadgate office complex, and another just off Piccadilly. Most of London's other statues are either boring, or pompous, or both.This might have changed - I've been intrigued and at times impressed by the statues put up on the 'spare' plinth in Trafalgar Square. Marc Quinn's 'Alison Lapper Pregnant' addressed two areas of life we never see in public sculpture - pregnancy and disability - and it had a fine dignity. Rachel Whiteread's abstract monument created a hollow and rather disturbing focus for the square, its white vacancy making a strong statement against the busy, highly figurative work of the rest of the area.
We're shortly to get a new sculpture, Thomas Schutte's 'Hotel for the Birds'. I'm looking forward to seeing its garish red and yellow perspex lattice take on the respectability of the square.
The Fourth Plinth project website notes "What pigeons will do to the material is not quite clear."
Thursday, 15 February 2007
One of those moments!
I was in London yesterday. At Fulham Broadway station I passed a girl who was handing outThe London Paper.
The masthead of the paper is purple and all the distributors are dressed up in rather fetching purple outfits.
But what really caught my attention was her purple eyeshadow.
'Matching eyeshadow?' I asked.
She grinned. 'Yes'.
No need to say more -we'd shared one of those moments.
The masthead of the paper is purple and all the distributors are dressed up in rather fetching purple outfits.
But what really caught my attention was her purple eyeshadow.
'Matching eyeshadow?' I asked.
She grinned. 'Yes'.
No need to say more -we'd shared one of those moments.
Monday, 12 February 2007
Regeneration glitz
Regeneration efforts have changed Brityain's cityscape indelibly.
Perhaps, as yet, the adventurous design of retail and office space hasn't been echoed in any greater ambition from housebuilders, who still seem to be putting up the 'little boxes made of ticky-tacky' that Malvina Reynolds complained about.
But none the less they have raised the bar from the anonymous concrete blocks of the 60s and 70s.
I was reminded of this when I received a catalogue from Merrell Publishers in the post. They publish some splendid books on architecture - and the modern architecture of Britain is a speciality.
I just wish the people putting up little brick houses (just like the ones I drew when I was at primary school with a door in the middle and two windows each side, but now without chimneypots) would take a look at these books and exercise their imagination!
Perhaps, as yet, the adventurous design of retail and office space hasn't been echoed in any greater ambition from housebuilders, who still seem to be putting up the 'little boxes made of ticky-tacky' that Malvina Reynolds complained about.
But none the less they have raised the bar from the anonymous concrete blocks of the 60s and 70s.
I was reminded of this when I received a catalogue from Merrell Publishers in the post. They publish some splendid books on architecture - and the modern architecture of Britain is a speciality.
I just wish the people putting up little brick houses (just like the ones I drew when I was at primary school with a door in the middle and two windows each side, but now without chimneypots) would take a look at these books and exercise their imagination!
Put a cork in it
The cork oak dominates the countryside in Extramadura. Huge, twisted old trees stamp their character on the landscape.
This isn't a forest like the marching pines of the Lake District. It's open grassland scattered with huge trees. Fine hunting for the eagles and rare Iberian lynx, two of the species which depend on this open landscape.
Sometimes you'll pass a dark pond half hidden behind a hedge. Even if you can't see it you can hear the frogs - not one at a time, but huge colonies of them keeping up a continuous sonorous croak.
This apparently wild landscape, though, depends on human intervention. The cork oaks are stripped of their bark periodically for cork, and that's what sustains the agriculture of the region.
Unfortunately wine producers are increasing their use of plastic stoppers. Not only are these non-biodegradable - whereas cork, of course, degrades naturally in a few years; without demand for cork, farmers will have to turn to other crops, and most are looking at eucalyptus - an ecological disaster.
Besides, the cork oak plantations need to be managed sustainably. Currently, planting of young trees is way below what's required to ensure the future health of this unique landscape.
Intrigued? Concerned? Want to do something about it? Realcork tells you more.
This isn't a forest like the marching pines of the Lake District. It's open grassland scattered with huge trees. Fine hunting for the eagles and rare Iberian lynx, two of the species which depend on this open landscape.
Sometimes you'll pass a dark pond half hidden behind a hedge. Even if you can't see it you can hear the frogs - not one at a time, but huge colonies of them keeping up a continuous sonorous croak.
This apparently wild landscape, though, depends on human intervention. The cork oaks are stripped of their bark periodically for cork, and that's what sustains the agriculture of the region.
Unfortunately wine producers are increasing their use of plastic stoppers. Not only are these non-biodegradable - whereas cork, of course, degrades naturally in a few years; without demand for cork, farmers will have to turn to other crops, and most are looking at eucalyptus - an ecological disaster.
Besides, the cork oak plantations need to be managed sustainably. Currently, planting of young trees is way below what's required to ensure the future health of this unique landscape.
Intrigued? Concerned? Want to do something about it? Realcork tells you more.
Sunday, 11 February 2007
Epitaphs - window on the world
You go into a church. A little village church, anywhere in England. It's not full of art works, it's architecturally undistinguished - a mishmash of styles added over the ages, from the norman door to the Victorian vestry with its quirky chimney pot. It's any little church, not interesting at all, really.
Until you start reading the walls. Because I can almost guarantee that the walls will be covered in monuments. And while the tombstones in the pavement often just carry a name and a date, those on the walls tell a story.
Sometimes it's the story that the dead man wanted to tell about himself. In high flown language, with an oratorical flourish. Sometimes the contrast between the reality and the poetic words is so great it makes you smile. One tomb which praises the sunny temperament and charitable tendencies of the deceased is topped by the bust of a grim, tight-faced miser.
Then there's the clever epitaph. Christopher Wren, I think, has the best, in St Paul's, the cathedral he built; Si monumentum requiris, circumspice - if you need a monument, look around you.
Other epitaphs make us laugh with their bluntly unvarnished approach to life and death. You'd expect a witty poet to come up with a good one, and John Gay, buried in Westminster Abbey, doesn't disappoint:
Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once and now I know it.
My favourite was always old As-I-Am in Norwich cathedral, a friendly skeleton who poetically announced:
All you that do this place pass by
Remember death for you must dye.
As you are now even so was I.
And as I am so that you be.
Thomas Gooding here do staye
Waiting for Gods judgement daye.
But sometimes, epitaphs open up our eyes to a lost world. I remember visiting a little church in Herefordshire. Down a tree-lined avenue past the church you could just see the manor house; many of the tombs in the church belonged to the family who had lived there.
Then I realised how many of them dated from the early nineteenth century. I did a little drawing out the family tree in the back of my notebook, and four or five of them were brothers. None of them had died in England. One had died at sea, in the Navy; one in India, where he was a colonial administrator; one I think in Egypt.
Imagine England of that time. A country that had just come out of the Napoleonic war, that had begun to thrive on seafaring trade, that sponsored exploration, that had discovered a new world in India and the East. This family, for me, was a window into that world; a world that my history education had skipped (we went straight from Charles II to Hitler). You could almost write a novel about these brothers - how from this little village, a stereotype English village with its squires living in the mansion and a little church at their gates, they found their destinies in far flung regions of the earth.
Until you start reading the walls. Because I can almost guarantee that the walls will be covered in monuments. And while the tombstones in the pavement often just carry a name and a date, those on the walls tell a story.
Sometimes it's the story that the dead man wanted to tell about himself. In high flown language, with an oratorical flourish. Sometimes the contrast between the reality and the poetic words is so great it makes you smile. One tomb which praises the sunny temperament and charitable tendencies of the deceased is topped by the bust of a grim, tight-faced miser.
Then there's the clever epitaph. Christopher Wren, I think, has the best, in St Paul's, the cathedral he built; Si monumentum requiris, circumspice - if you need a monument, look around you.
Other epitaphs make us laugh with their bluntly unvarnished approach to life and death. You'd expect a witty poet to come up with a good one, and John Gay, buried in Westminster Abbey, doesn't disappoint:
Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once and now I know it.
My favourite was always old As-I-Am in Norwich cathedral, a friendly skeleton who poetically announced:
All you that do this place pass by
Remember death for you must dye.
As you are now even so was I.
And as I am so that you be.
Thomas Gooding here do staye
Waiting for Gods judgement daye.
But sometimes, epitaphs open up our eyes to a lost world. I remember visiting a little church in Herefordshire. Down a tree-lined avenue past the church you could just see the manor house; many of the tombs in the church belonged to the family who had lived there.
Then I realised how many of them dated from the early nineteenth century. I did a little drawing out the family tree in the back of my notebook, and four or five of them were brothers. None of them had died in England. One had died at sea, in the Navy; one in India, where he was a colonial administrator; one I think in Egypt.
Imagine England of that time. A country that had just come out of the Napoleonic war, that had begun to thrive on seafaring trade, that sponsored exploration, that had discovered a new world in India and the East. This family, for me, was a window into that world; a world that my history education had skipped (we went straight from Charles II to Hitler). You could almost write a novel about these brothers - how from this little village, a stereotype English village with its squires living in the mansion and a little church at their gates, they found their destinies in far flung regions of the earth.
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