Summer Camp in the museum

It was my lazy day yesterday. I had a coffee and a muffin at the Serpentine Café and then went to the Summer Camp in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It's the greatest museum of applied arts in the world - but I think I've already told you this.

However, the Summer Camp is a two-day celebration of the "virtues of self-reliance and resourcefulness that can come through design and making". In tents in the museum and its garden the visitors get the opportunity to learn about design and crafts.

I went to a workshop on typography, learned how the noise gets onto films, watched an English folk dancing lession, joined a tour on modern architectual objects that are installed all around the museum and listened to folk music and fairy tales in the garden until the museum closed its doors at 10pm.

Back to the year 2000

Stoke Newington Town Hall

Another TV recording, this time in the borough of Hackney, was on my list yesterday. So I went to see Stoke Newington, probably the most appealing part of Hackney.

The town hall of "Stokey" has been refurbished recently and it's listed as a Grade II building mainly because of its camouflage painting which intended to prevent the building to be detected by the German airforce in World War II. It's the first building I've seen in such a decor.

Stokey is also home of another very interesting cemetery. Abney Park Cemetery has its origin in the fact that Christians who weren't members of the Anglican church were denied to live and be buried in the City. Today its so overgrown that it has become a very romantical cemetery - and, strangely enough, a gay cruising area.

Oh no, not again gravestones, you might think now. Okay, I resist publishing any of them today.

I spent the evening in the Hackney Empire, one of the few surviving variety theatres in London built in 1901. The TV show was a comedy-like show hosted by Rufus Hound commemorating the year 2000. Rufus Hound became famous this year when he won a dance competition for Sport Relief 2010, dancing to the song Fight for this love.

The show was funnier than you might think. I especially liked statements of young pupils in the Sixties on how they imagined their life to be in 2000. One boy thought he might command a group of robots. A girl said we'd all own too much stuff that would spoil our life and that there wouldn't be any fun anymore. In parts they were pretty much right.

From the West to the East

Arts and Crafts Debenham House in Kensington

My days in the West of London are numbered. On Sunday, I'm moving again. Alex is going to sell the flat and moves to a new flat in the South of London.

I'm going to stay in a flat that's owned by our friend Barbara's friend Tony. I don't know him yet neither have I seen the flat, but he seems to be very nice, the flat is supposed to be nice as well. It's close to Victoria Park and will be a great location to discover the city center and the East End. I'll post some pictures next week.

As long as I'm still here, I explore the posh West. Yesterday I passed some beautiful houses in Kensington and walked across Brompton Cemetery. This, f.e., is the Arts and Crafts Debenham House built in 1906 for the department-store Debenham family. Sadly enough the house is closed to the public. As is Tower House, a medieval folly designed by William Burges.

Edward Burne-Jones designed this wonderful grave of Frederick Leyland, president of the National Telephone Company, on Brompton Cemetery.
Another family obviously didn't invest much in the grave itself but rather in visits to their deceased family members.

Another great sight in Kensington is the gorgeous Art Deco Michelin House. French artists designed it in 1911 and equipped it with lots of decorative tyres and motoring murals.

One of the city's poorest boroughs

Made a great bargain today. I'm on a mailing list called Groupon and get an offer every day to visit a theatre show for little money, get a complete body hair removal for only 35 percent of its regular price or eat out for 20 Pounds instead of 60, just to name a few.

For tonights event I've bought my very first Groupon voucher and enjoyed the evening very much. For 17 Pounds I received a ticket for a phantastic show from The Loons Circus Theatre Company from New Zealand called The Butler, a two-course meal and two cocktails, one each before the show and in the break. It was one of the best ever shows I've ever seen - quite like Cirque du Soleil, but even better, wittier and extremely naughty.

Explored Islington today. According to my guidebook it's one of the poorest boroughs in London although rich people are constantly moving into the area.

Just read in the newspaper today that the new poor areas are the ones in a belt around the city as rents are far too high for people with badly paid jobs or the unemployed.

Churches are quite creative to support the disadvantaged among their members. I like the ad I saw at St Mary that is pictured above, especially the machine dipping men into a huge pint of beer before they're going to meet their partner.

But I wonder if any knifes are thrown into the knife bin pictured below or if there is any demand for the AllINeed bags another church in Islington offers for free.
There's a very serious background to this knife bin. Loosing your life in a knife attack is quite likely in London when you're involved in so-called turf wars.

Food for free

On my way back from Nottinghamshire today, I visited the British Museum for the second time. I'd read about the biggest ever discovered hoard of Roman coins in Britain that are on display until the mid of August.

I was a little disappointed as only 0,4 percent of the 53,500 coins are to be seen in the museum's showcase. However, I used the remaining time to stroll through the rooms I didn't see when I first visited the museum and took some pictures of the South Africa garden laid out in front of the building.

On my way to the museum a long queue in front of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London caught my eye. The people queued for a free vegetarian Indian meal out of big cool boxes placed on a bike that was provided by the Hare Krishna followers of London's King's Cross branch.

As I was hungry I donated some pounds and received a very big helping of rice, vegetables and two pieces of Indian bread. By the way, I've never seen someone handing out meals faster and more efficiently than this man.

Unfortunately, what you can't see on the picture is his unusual hairstyle - a curly blonde tail on the back of his shaven head - and his orange trousers. And you have to believe me when I tell you that the meal was delicious.

All For The Best

Four topiary unicorns in front of Doddington Hall represent the crest of the Jarvis family that own the estate. Part of their family crest is the slogan All For The Best.

On Sunday, we drove to the house to visit the gardens and the hall. The house was built in 1600 and the interior was redecorated in Georgian style in 1760.

Doddington Hall has never been sold, but the owners' family name has changed five times because the house has often passed through the female line.

Again it was a great day out and time well-spent in the many gardens surrounding the house and in the house itself. One of the rooms is decorated with an Egyptian tent.

White Peak - second take

On Saturday, Bridget and I did another hiking tour in the White Peak. This time we passed three dales - Bradford Dale, Long Dale (pictured), and Gratton Dale.

For lunch we stopped at Caudwell's Mill, a historic water mill where Bridget gets the flour for baking bread.

By the way, both are excellent cooks and prove everybody wrong who says that there isn't any cooking culture in Britain.

White Peak

This funny looking limestone hill is Thorpe Cloud. It lies in the lower, southern part of the Peak District National Park called White Peak.

Bridget, Robert and I had a wonderful walk through Dove Dale on Friday, my first day as their guest in Gotham in Nottinghamshire. The valleys of the White Peak look simular to the Frankonian Switzerland, but there are by far more sheeps and cattle grazing and stone walls give the landscape its typical British look.

Gotham is a small village famous for the stories of the Wise Men of Gotham. When King John intended to built a road through the village, its inhabitants pretended to be mad. Madness was believed to be highly contagious and when the King's knights saw the villagers behaving as if insane, they withdrew and the road was re-routed.

One of the mad actions was fencing off a small tree in order to prevent a cuckoo from flying away.

Out of town for a while

With this miniature London in mind I leave the city for a few days as I've been invited by Bridget and Robert to their home in Nottinghamshire.

Project Morrinho is social project that takes the form of a miniature city built by young people in Rio de Janeiro in collaboration with young people in London. The landscape fuses places from the tower blocks of Lambeth to the backstreets of Rio de Janeiro.

Where the intelligentsia lives

In the eighteenth century Hampstead village developed into a fashionable spa. Until today the area is a trendy place that has retained its reputation as a domicile of the intelligentsia and quite a lot of stars.

My mistake was to walk all the way to Hampstead yesterday so I was tired by the time I arrived. I had a picnic in Hampstead Heath, an amasing park or I should rather say landscape as it's huge and doesn't look like a looked-after park.

From Parliament Hill, a famous weekend spot for kite flying, you can enjoy a phantastic view onto London, mainly onto the City's and Docklands' skyscrapers.

Sigmund Freund is just one out of many former famous inhabitants of Hampstead. He lived in this beautiful house during the last year of his life.

I have to come back when the museum is open as all his belongings, including the psychiatrist's couch, have been brought here from Vienna in 1938.

Do go South

North Londoners will always warn you to go South of the river Thames. You just stay where you've been born. The area you live in is a strong and untouchable part of your identity.

But the South has quite a lot to offer, not only for tourists.

I walked through Lambeth yesterday as I was going to attend the live broadcasting of the 5 O'Clock Show with Fern Britton in the London Television Centre at the Southbank.

A very popular attration of the area is the Imperial War Museum with the country's only exhibition devoted to the Holocaust which is not recommended for under-14s. I didn't go into the museum but took this picture of a part the Berlin wall.

As Fürth, Lambeth once was an industrial area famous for the production of mirrors and glas, but also artificial stone called cast stone. People working there 100 years ago had to share small houses with a couple of other families and bare the smoky air and noises of the trains running through the area.

Today these former workers' homes are strongly sought-after and you easily forget how tough life must have been here once.

Triple-shelled and stowed away

Kensal Green Cemetery, opened in 1833, is the first of the city's commercial graveyards, still owned by the founding company and a functioning cemetery. It lies at the Grand Union Canal, opposite of the gasworks and the railway tracks. The cemetery has been bombed in World War II but has also suffered under the air pollution and vandalism.

The Friends of Kensal Green look after the place and, among other Friends, Claire leads interested people into the catacombs and shows them around the cemetery.

In the catacombs all deceased lie in triple-shell, lead-sealed coffins. It's a strange athmosphere down there as you know that the bodies are still in their coffins. Claire didn't want to tell us in detail what state they're in.

Above ground Claire pointed out some amazing mausolea and gravestones. Among them the graves of the three-year-old daughter of Sir Winston Churchill, Erich Fried, the Brunel family and Sir Carl William Siemens who brought electric lighting to London.

Claire knew a lot of interesting stories about the lives of the deceased. This, e.g., is the gravestone of Herbert William Allingham and his wife. She died after he'd infected her with a disease he brought home from work as he was a surgeon and medical scientist. After her death his children convinced him to go on a cruise. But he couldn't bare the alleged gazes of the other passengers who knew about his responsibility for his wife's death and killed himself.

As the British have their famous black humour, Claire offered us tea and morbid gingerbread men after the tour.

After having spend more than three hours on the grounds of the cemetery, I rushed off to meet Rose, a wonderful girl I've met at the LSJ course. She showed me the beautiful Secret Garden and we chatted along sitting in the shade. The Secret Garden isn't even mentioned in my guide book and so I'll keep it as a secret myself.

Picnic at the Proms

When I last visited Harrods, the huge department store in Knightsbridge, Lady Diana was still alive and many years were to come until she started her last relationship with Dodi Al Fayed.

Today, after they both died in a car crash in Paris, his father, the owner of Harrods, has added some quite cheesy rooms and memorials to the building. There is an Egyptian Hall and an Egytian Escalator. At its base there is the Di and Dodi fountain shrine. In an acrylic pyramid the visitors can see a used wine-glas from the couple's last evening and the engagement ring Dodi allegedly bought for Di the previous day.

Harrods is crowded with tourists and - adding the horrendous prices - it isn't fun to shop or eat there at all. But I guess the Food Hall with its Arts and Crafts tiling is still a must-see in London.

I very much liked the opera singer singing on a balcony of the Egyptian Escalator and a singing pizza chef. The main reason for me being there was the afternoon performance of Wagner's The Mastersingers of Nuremberg in the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Proms 2010.

By chance I got to know that the 4pm performance was supposed to end at 10.15pm. So I got myself a picnic from Harrods and was pretty right to do so. In the so called dinner break everybody headed outside to sit on the steps of the Albert Memorial and the lawn to have a picnic.

Whereas I had bought the second last seat for the performance, some 600 people got themselves a so called day ticket and had to stand for nearly five hours in the Arena - just after having had queued some hours in front of the hall.

Valuable insights and a lot of practice

Just after the final exam there's a big smile on the faces of Lorenzo, Richard, Paolo, Will, Adam, Rose, Luke, Judit, Denis, Lauren, Sabine and Bettina

We did it! Three months of learning about journalism, a lot of research and writing and 48 assignments lie behind us.

In April, twelve post-graduates aged 22 to 44 became students again. At the LSJ we learned how to develop ideas, do the research and writing of news stories, features, reviews and blogs. We were taught how the British government is set up and which legal dangers are waiting for careless journalists.

And we gained a lot of insights into journalism as all our teachers were working journalists.

There were ups and downs. In the live assignment we managed to get hold of a story on the streets of Maida Vale and wrote a 200-words report within two hours. We produced a three-minute radio news. And we got some "A"s for some well done articles.

But we also put a lot of effort into a piece and received a "B-". We went back into the classroom after lunch while the sun was shining brightly and we'd rather stay outside. And during the last weeks we had to hand in one assignment after the other without knowing when to do all the research.

Relieved the exam is over, we had a great evening out yesterday. We started in The Skiddaw, went on to The Elgin and some of us even went to see a concert of an "unknown Brit Pop band" near Angels.

I hope to see some of them again soon and that we'll keep each other informed about what's going to happen in our lives. Some of us might even enter Andrew's hall of fame.

It won't be easy to get the foot into the door, but each of us has learned a lot and knows much better now what to expect in journalism and what we're good at.

Everyday heroes and ordinary people

"Heroes of everyday life" have their own curious memorial in London. You find it in Postman's Park and it's a patchwork of majolica tiles inscribed with the names of "those who have heroically lost their lives trying to save another".

The "Memorial to heroic self sacrifice" was erected in 1900 by the Victorian painter and sculptor George Frederick Watts. Among the macabre incriptions are "Drowned in attempting to save his brother after he himself had just been rescued", "Saved a lunatic woman from suicide but was himself run over by the train" or the one for a pantomime artist that reads: "Died of terrible injuries received when attempting in her inflammable dress to extinguish the flames which had enveloped her companion" (see above).

By the way, yesterday night I took the online Big Personality Test. It's related to the excellent documentary Child of Our Time where the BBC follows 25 children from across the UK who where born in 2000 over a time span of 25 years.

The test takes 20 minutes only and reveals the five traits openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. As a good German, I scored highest in conscientiousness (What a word! Probably the longest I learned so far). In the video presentation of my results I was told I were "every employer's dream". Hope it's not a nightmare.

Long queues for crepes

Yesterday, 11 July, the French community in London celebrated Bastille Day at the banks of the river Thames in Battersea Park. That's La Fête Nationale, the French national holiday, commemorating the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789.

It was difficult to spot the cultural bits amid all the food booths. There was a strong demand for crepes, baguettes, sandwiches, cheese, French cakes but also non-French food. Typical for the British, they queued patiently to get some food. I couldn't bother to stand in the hot sun and went for a sandwich with chicken and pig paté for which you hadn't got to queue.

On my way home I walked all the way back through Battersea on the South of the Thames and Chelsea on the opposite side. Chelsea's King's Road was a hotspot for punks when I last went there as a teenager. Today it's one of the poshest and most expensive areas of London. At no. 430 fashion designer Vivienne Westwood has her shop with its landmark, a very fast backward-running clock.

I stopped at the Serpentine Bar in Hyde Park for a coffee and a muffin. It's one of my favourite places in London and even the nearby Hyde Park Barracks in their hideous design look quite beautiful reflecting the beams of the sinking sun.

Turn again

Speaking about the Mayor of London who joined the Pride London parade, today it's time to introduce you to the most famous Lord Mayor, Dick Whittington (1350-1423).

It is said that he came to London after hearing the streets are paved with gold. When he saw this was not so, he left the city with his knapsack and cat when he heard the bells of St-Mary-le-Bow ringing out "Turn again, Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London."

So he stayed, became mayor in fact four times and did many good things.

You can see him and his cat in a stained-glass window in St Michael Paternoster Royal, home to the Mission to Seafarers. The cat, though, might just be a reference to him making a fortune in the coal trade as cat was a common name for a coal barge at the time.

By the way, I saw another celebrity tonight. Emma Thompson sat in the first row of a BBC Radio recording of the National Theatre of Brent, a comedy double-act in the form of a mock two-man theatre troupe. Not just my kind of humour, but the audience loved them a lot.

The topic was fun, though. They performed the making (or better, the not-making) of the bed of artist Tracey Emin.

Pride London

Pride London is the UK's biggest festival of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people) community. Each year, it attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors.

I went to Oxford Street yesterday, to watch the parade. The sun was shining and the atmosphere was - as expected - great. It amazed me how many groups took part, representing nearly each part of society. Old and young gay and lesbian people; people with different religions, e.g. Muslims and Catholics; professions, e.g. armed forces, police, banks, supermarkets; political beliefs, e.g. members of the Tories, Labour Party, Liberals; people with different hobbies, e.g. hockey, swimming, football, choir singing; people active in the fight against HIV, discrimination or even domestic violence; and people with different sexual needs and favours (did you know what a 'bear' is?).

Here are some impressions I caught with my camera yesterday. Even pictured Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, who's said to have changed his opinion about gays and lesbians (encircled on the last picture).

"Shakespeare would have loved this"

Despite all the course work I couldn't resist to see Romeo and Juliet performed in the churchyard of St Paul's Church in Covent Garden yesterday. "Shakespeare would have loved this," was a reviewer's comment.

"It was the nightingale, and not the lark"

It was a great performance by Iris Theatre during which the audience followed the actors to different places in the churchyard, to the famous balcony scene below a window of one of the neighbouring houses and towards the church steps.

Conciliation of the Capulet and Montague patriarchs

The performance ended with Romeo, Juliet and Paris lying dead infront of the church's altar, surrounded by candles and a big illuminated cross.

In contrast, Canada Day in London was a disappointment for me. When I arrived at Trafalgar Square, DJ Richie Hawtin was on stage. I didn't know him and I don't value the work of DJ's enough, I guess.

When I looked him up on the internet I learned to my surprise that the English-Canadian now lives in Berlin.

After having lived in New York, he's quoted on Wikipedia: I’d always wanted to move to Europe. I needed somewhere that was inspiring and where there were like-minded musicians and artists, somewhere you could still experiment with music and with life. Berlin is so liberal in so many different ways; there’s an amazing club scene, there’s a great development software tech scene, there are so many resources here."
Richie Hawtin surrounded by Bison Burgers, Beer and Bombardier

For DJ's, Berlin is obviously even more attractive than London or New York.

Canada's birthday

Canada Memorial in Green Park

On 1 July 1867, Canada was born. Two British colonies and a province of the British Empire were united into a singly country called Canada.

On Trafalgar Square there is a big party going on all day long. I might pass the party later today, but I'm not sure what to do first as there are quite a few of assignments to do, an interesting Romeo & Juliet play in the churchyard and church of the actors' church St Paul's in Covent Garden going on, and other things to do on my "day-off" today.

My picture today shows the Canada Memorial in Green Park, close to Buckinham Palace. It commemorates the nearly one million Canadians who served in the UK during the two World Wars and the more than 100,000 who lost their lifes.

It's made of red granite and is divided into two parts, representing Canadian and British participation in the wars. Bronze maple leaves are arranged in a windswept pattern. Together with the leaves of the surrounding maple trees that fall down on the monument and the water flowing over the monument, this creates the beautiful impresion of maple leaves floating down a stream.

By the way, saw a very sweet film yesterday. You might like to watch it too. It's called Please Give and is all about a couple of people in New York, their good intentions and morals.