The Attendant – London

Posted on September 29, 2014 by The Belugas are Watching

We took a trip recently to the UK capital city to meet some book editors and meet up with dear friends and Irish cousins. London is a really great place for wasting time. I stumbled on this little place when on one of my “Michael walks” while Mel was visiting her editor. My walks tend to go in anything but a straight line. I criss cross the back streets, poking my nose down as many trendy mews and brick alleyways as I can.

The Attendant is on a side street in London’s peaceful Fitzrovia area, not far from the roar of Oxford street. It’s an old Victorian underground urinal that has been converted to a coffee shop. The original wrought iron entrance is still there. You must walk down steep steps to get to the small counter and a couple mini seats, so it’s not exactly handicap accessible. But it’s a better place for warm weather anyway, when you can balance your espresso and cake as you negotiate the narrow stairs back up the street. And luckily it was particularly nice weather in London on our visit. Below, the original white porcelain urinals are still there, (looking immaculate I must say) converted now to individual mini counters with green metal stools. The coffee and eats were beyond excellent. If they weren’t I would have not gone back three times… What illustrator can resist a wall of graffiti at the bottom of the stairs? Here I am stooping to the challenge. Not much on the way of fine art here I must say. Here is my masterpiece on the only available space, right above the astroturf carpet. This is a kind of affirmation that I can take the pressure drawing in permanent ink in a public place. A few years ago I had the chance to draw on the unfinished wall in the lobby of Knopf publishers in NYC. It was so bad, I drew another one right away, much better, but the only space left was way up high and only seven foot visitors or authors on stilts will ever see it. They’ll just see the horrible, Michael-who-can’t-draw one, at eye level. Sigh. Ta Da! A comfortable looking “Gatto” sipping his latte on a stool. Not bad. Now if I had only drawn this one in New York… I was able to do a little work outside. on the laptop, when I eventually figured out London Wi-fi through BT. It was terrible.

Random Writers

Posted on September 23, 2014 by The Belugas are Watching

London is so saturated in connections to writers and literature you can just walk around and see what the streets throw up at you. We did two trips this year and as well as multiple ads in the underground for The Miniaturist and books by David Levithan (Every Day) we gathered a nice haul of Random Writers. At the Pollock Toy Museum we spotted these toy soldiers belonging to E.M. Forster (Howards End, Room With a View).

Near our hotel we took a short cut through a cemetery – Bunhill Fields – without realising it is the burial place of many famous folk, including Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan, and William Blake. Mind you, they are a little vague about the exact whereabouts of Blake…

William Blake is somewhere near…

Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe)

John Bunyan (Pilgrim’s Progress)

Baker Street is so full of nods to Sherlock Holmes I’m surprised they haven’t turned it into a theme park!

Even the dry cleaners is getting in on the act…

Look for the image behind the words…

This is from 2011

And this plaque to Beatrix Potter is one we stumbled over in 2011, it’s in Bolton Gardens, Kensington. The house was destroyed in the Blitz.

On our way to a pottery suppliers with our (pottering) friend Ann, we passed a house in Fitzroy Square where both George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf once lived, though not at the same time. While searching for a specialist paper shop near Victoria Station we spotted a former abode of Joseph Conrad.

George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf both lived here

Joseph Conrad – (Lord Jim)

Karen Blixen -fantasy writer best known for Babette’s Feast and her autobiography, Out of Africa

Gatwick Airport threw up one last random writer – Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen). She was staring from the tail of a plane. I seem to remember from reading Out of Africa that she loved to fly so I’m sure she’d approve of this tribute from the Norwegian Airliner.

Inside the Pollock Toy Museum, Part 4 – War Toys

Posted on September 19, 2014 by The Belugas are Watching

For the last Toy Museum post here are some images of toys from the two World Wars, a mixture of comical and poignant.

How insane is this articulated Tommy doll?

Warships and war dolls

That sideways glance…

Jack and Jill go to war

And a couple of Cold War remnants – who can name all the USSR leaders? Note that the tiniest doll is…death!

http://www.pollockstoys.com/

Inside the Pollock Museum, Part 3 – miniature worlds

Posted on September 16, 2014 by The Belugas are Watching

Isn’t this a fab lav?

The miniature worlds in the toy museum were enchanting. Ann and myself fell heavily for the tiny grocer’s shop. We cooed over it for about ten minutes.

Michael and Eddie were more interested in the details of a large doll’s house. Below you’ll find images of a silversmith’s shop – remember those are not plastic pieces – a school room, a Noah’s ark, and furniture made from wishbones!!

As always, click on any photo to scroll through larger images. And if you’d like to share/comment the buttons are below. Next blog – War Toys

http://www.pollockstoys.com/

Inside the Pollock Museum, Part 2, the Dolls….

Posted on September 12, 2014 by The Belugas are Watching

Visit The Pollock Toy Museum hereDolls. Thousands of ’em. When we stepped from the room at the top of the Victorian house (where Sooty and Sweep are) through the hole in the wall that leads into the Georgian house, we met some seriously scary dolls.

But we’ll start with the lovely/lovable/loved. And there are lots of those, many dolls with really sweet expressions. My absolute favourite was the Japanese doll with the beautiful face, several gorgeous outfits and her own furniture. One of her dressers is real lacquer.

Some of the dolls of old were slightly strange. I remember being fascinated by upside-down dolls when I was a kid, but not wanting to own one. My child’s mind couldn’t fathom playing with a doll with two heads and no legs, because I would always know that there was another half-doll hidden under the skirts. Googling the origins of this particular biracial ‘Topsy-Turvy’ doll made for interesting reading (link). It suggests the earliest versions where home-made ragdolls for black slave children, allowing the child to quickly switch to the white doll in front of the slave-master, who ‘didn’t want the slave children to have dolls that looked like themselves, which would give them a sense of empowerment.’

The Billiken doll was some sort of good luck charm. And then there is the cabbage baby (a sort of jack-in-the-box doll), the vaguely weird squeaky dolls (they look as if they’ve just been told off), and the Fräulein with the come hither pose…click on any photo to see the entire image.

And then.

Then there are the downright frightening. These two share a cabinet. We couldn’t help thinking the smug-faced doll had smashed cracked-faced doll’s head against the glass and now she is forever smiling at the damage done.

Perhaps the wax dolls once had sweet faces but I still can’t help thinking there must have been some traumatized little girls on Christmas days of yore! And what’s going on with the doll in the box? Is she an Ophelia doll??

And this one. Ahhhhh. The eyes. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Next up, miniature worlds.

Visit The Pollock Toy Museum here

Inside The Pollock Toy Museum, Part 1

Posted on September 9, 2014 by The Belugas are Watching

So on our recent trip to London we finally got inside the Pollock Toy Museum. Eddie, being my cousin Sarah’s boyfriend, was kind enough to offer us a personal tour – an offer he lived to regret as we (Michael, our friend Ann, and myself) were so fascinated by everything it took us a full three and a half hours to travel through the museum. Eddie thinks that may be a record, broken only by a guy some years back who was loitering with criminal intent.

Eddie’s granny put the collection together and it’s housed inside two buildings, one Victorian, one Georgian. The two houses are crammed to the rafters with all sorts of toys from across the world, so many treasures that it will need four blogs to just give you a taste of it! First up a group of photos from across the collection. Click on an image if you’d like to scroll/get more details…have a guess at what those lovely shadow puppets might be made from before you do!

There are hundreds of model trains, cars, trucks from various decades

Robots!

Sarah with Haggis, the museum dog.

Michael, Ann and Eddie in front of the most beautiful rocking horse

Early Meccano, a toy I wanted to ask for as a kid but thought I couldn’t. Because it was a ‘boy’ toy.

The oldest teddy bear

These shadow puppets are very beautiful but definitely lose something when you learn what they are made from. Donkey skin!

Of course we came across toys from our own childhoods. I had a mini meltdown at the case containing Sooty and Sweep. And Soo. For a moment I could see our old black and white telly and my toddler legs in white ankle socks and Jumping Jack shoes sticking out in front of me as I sat on one of the armchairs, watching. In the sixties themed glass case there was a game called Coppit – I remembered the box immediately, and my disappointment on opening it to find that the playing pieces were just cones, not hats with little people attached. And there was Dougal and the Magic Roundabout. I had to explain all the above to Michael and Ann as these were not part of their American childhoods.

Sooty and Sweep and Soo!

No, really! SOOTY. SWEEP. And SOO!

Coppit, originally created in 1927, but this is the 1960s version

Floernce Kate Upton’s Gollys and Dutch dolls, and some of the books she wrote and illustrated.

The Magic Roundabout. Here comes Florence, here comes Zebedee…originally French, narrated by Emma Thompson’s dad, research tells me. Time for Bed.

The Gollywogs – I’m turning pink just typing that- took a bit more explaining. It seems so astonishing now that these toys were a ‘normal’ part of an Irish/UK sixties childhood, as was watching The Black and White Minstrel Show – white women singing and dancing with white men wearing blackface. Some of the many things we didn’t think twice about, just accepted as life as we knew it. Makes me wonder what we do now which will strike us as alien and unacceptable in twenty/thirty years time. Our childhood Gollys were knitted by our mam from patterns in the Woman’s Weekly. Here is Wikipedia’s info on Florence Kate Upton and the history of Golly Dolls.

On Friday, Dolls! The museum is packed with them, the too-beautiful-to-play-with, the much-loved, and the down-right weird.
http://www.pollockstoys.com/

London Street Art

Posted on September 2, 2014 by The Belugas are Watching

‘That’s a Bansky,’ I said.

‘Nah’ said Ann and Michael. ‘Can’t be…’

‘I think it is,’ I said.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Dunno. Looks familiar. Maybe it isn’t.’

Then we noticed there was perspex protecting the piece. Which is kinda ironic, given the message – ‘IF GRAFFITI CHANGED ANYTHING -IT WOULD BE ILLEGAL’. The image – which apparently appeared in Fitzrovia in 2011– has attracted further graffiti, including the badly placed ‘VERY.’ and a sarcastic exchange about said perspex.

The selection of spectacular street art below is stuff we came across in Spitalfields, well worth clicking on to get bigger images.