The Thames Festival (or most of it)
Spent all day yesterday at the Thames Festival, staying on for the whole thing this year. First of all, having met Lauren, we sat in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, drinking tea and listening to an unidentified early music/jazz group with a lovely counter-tenor. Coming out, we saw a complicated-looking fountain on one of the terraces outside the Royal Festival Hall. This turned out to be a water-maze, or at least a series of square enclosures marked out by rows of water jets that rose and fell. As it was a warm day, there was lots of running in and out and screaming. Apparently it is a sculpture by a Danish artist called Jeppe Hein - the idea is that you can walk through it without getting wet if you are careful, but where would be the fun in that? If anyone is interested in seeing it, it will be there until September 25.
Then we hit the market, and I managed not to buy labradorite jewellery, a bag made from recycled soft drinks cans and many second-hand books, but did succumb to a large indigo-dyed overshirt. The market had given way to an area of food stalls by now, and since it was a festival, we ate some indigestible deep-fried stuff (dosas, spring rolls, samosas). In a large tent, children were making ingenious flowers from old soft drink bottles and waste plastic, which they could then attach to a huge reclining sculpture of a flower goddess, reclining on the grass. She was lit up from inside at night, and looked glorious, but I only got a picture of her in daylight..
The festival went all the way down to Tower Bridge, but we only made it as far as the Tate Modern, admiring the paper fish lanterns hung along the way. Outside the gallery there was mass dancing, and trapeze lessons, a punch and judy show and the insect circus (last seen at Kew). We nipped in (to the Tate Modern, not the insect circus) to use the loos and sit in the comfy chairs, and play with the interactive toys. Apparently I know a lot more about the surrealists than I'd thought I did.
Then we went down onto the foreshore, and fossicked about for rarey bits of old china. A helpful man told us about some elm pipes exposed by the tide, so I had to get to them, narrowly escaping slipping on my arse in the slimy mud in front ot the two hundred or so people leaning over the railing above. The pipes were wonderfully preserved, with the bark still attached at one end. I wonder where they originally drained from, or was someone using them to pump water up from the river? As far as I can find out, elm was used for water pipes from the romans to about the 18th century, so they could be any age. Well probably not Roman, since they didn't settle that side of the river, I think. Interesting anyway.
We also got a good view of the underside of several bridges, including the Millennium Bridge, where you can see the feet of people passing across it through the glass floor-panels.
Then we came up to wash our hands, drink beer and wait for the carnival parade in a handy pub with a roof terrace overlooking the river.
Now I have to go off to the gym, despite having clobbered my knee last night, but I'll post a description of the night carnival and many, many blurred pictures later.
ETA I have no idea why the last picture has come out so much huger than all the others - they should all be the same size, and I've had three goes, but it persists in being large.
Then we hit the market, and I managed not to buy labradorite jewellery, a bag made from recycled soft drinks cans and many second-hand books, but did succumb to a large indigo-dyed overshirt. The market had given way to an area of food stalls by now, and since it was a festival, we ate some indigestible deep-fried stuff (dosas, spring rolls, samosas). In a large tent, children were making ingenious flowers from old soft drink bottles and waste plastic, which they could then attach to a huge reclining sculpture of a flower goddess, reclining on the grass. She was lit up from inside at night, and looked glorious, but I only got a picture of her in daylight..
The festival went all the way down to Tower Bridge, but we only made it as far as the Tate Modern, admiring the paper fish lanterns hung along the way. Outside the gallery there was mass dancing, and trapeze lessons, a punch and judy show and the insect circus (last seen at Kew). We nipped in (to the Tate Modern, not the insect circus) to use the loos and sit in the comfy chairs, and play with the interactive toys. Apparently I know a lot more about the surrealists than I'd thought I did.
Then we went down onto the foreshore, and fossicked about for rarey bits of old china. A helpful man told us about some elm pipes exposed by the tide, so I had to get to them, narrowly escaping slipping on my arse in the slimy mud in front ot the two hundred or so people leaning over the railing above. The pipes were wonderfully preserved, with the bark still attached at one end. I wonder where they originally drained from, or was someone using them to pump water up from the river? As far as I can find out, elm was used for water pipes from the romans to about the 18th century, so they could be any age. Well probably not Roman, since they didn't settle that side of the river, I think. Interesting anyway.
We also got a good view of the underside of several bridges, including the Millennium Bridge, where you can see the feet of people passing across it through the glass floor-panels.
Then we came up to wash our hands, drink beer and wait for the carnival parade in a handy pub with a roof terrace overlooking the river.
Now I have to go off to the gym, despite having clobbered my knee last night, but I'll post a description of the night carnival and many, many blurred pictures later.
ETA I have no idea why the last picture has come out so much huger than all the others - they should all be the same size, and I've had three goes, but it persists in being large.