Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens

Commissioned by Queen Victoria, in loving memory of her husband, Albert, who died of typhoid in 1861, the Albert Memorial sits at the southern end of Kensington Gardens, the golden statue of Albert overlooking Royal Albert Hall.

An ornate canopy shelters the golden, seated statue of Albert. It reaches 176 feet, and took over 10 years to complete, the design for the memorial created by Sir George Scott. (No relation to Antipodes...)

Surrounding the statue, is the Frieze of Parnassus, depicting 169 individual poets, composers, architects, painters and sculptors...

It is believed, according to research conducted during the restoration of the memorial in the 1990's , that the statue of Albert had been painted black deliberately  so as not to become a target for bombing raids during the war; it now stands in all its original glory, the statue in glittering gold leaf. Truly amazing, even under a grey sky...

Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens

                                                                                                                      

Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens

Under the gentle sweep of branches, along the banks of Lake Serpentine, and across a path from Hyde Park... the Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens.

Established in 1970, and housed in a 1934 tea pavilion, the gallery perceptibly takes its' name from the nearby lake, which twists its way through the grounds of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. It is undeniably one of London's best loved galleries for modern contemporary art and architecture.

Each year, an international architect of some renown is commissioned to design and create a pavilion on the gallery's lawn.

In 2009, the pavilion was designed by Japanese architect practice SANAA, and is described as 'floating aluminum, drifting freely between the trees like smoke...' Indeed the reflective sculpture appears to float like a cloud or a pool of water... 

Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens

Jeff Koons 'Popeye' series at the Serpentine Gallery.

The influential American artist, born in 1955, is famous for his giant reproductions of rather banal objects. 

In this intimate exhibition, encompassing a handful of rooms in the gallery, and lead by Koons' favorite character 'Popeye' who appears randomly throughout, the artist has painstakingly recreated an array of brightly colored, inflatable children's swimming toys, all combined with ordinary, yet obscure, everyday objects - chairs, rubbish bins, kitchen utensils. But look closer. All these silly playthings are actually made of aluminum - the casts seemingly identical to the original, glaring objects. 'DO NOT TOUCH' signs are mounted on every wall, understandably... though onlookers examine each sculpture with respectful scrutiny...

With all these garish colors, it is hard to remember the content of Koons' signature concerns - consumerism, taste, banality and sexuality.

Critics are divided over Koons' work, its mirror finish surfaces and bright colors: pioneering art-historical or crass, artificial and cheap...?

HOMESICKNESS

Forgive us. Let us remember, let us indulge for just a moment, the reasons why we came...

There is some invisible rope that ties itself to our arms and tugs at our bodies, thrusts us into the air, and propels us - across the street, or to the other side of the world.

In our modern era, it often escapes us, our reasons and purpose for exploring a new continent. Certainly, moving around the world is much simpler than it was one hundred years ago. Board a ship, fly a plane, ride to anywhere. All those places we imagined, that we had created pictures for in our minds, suddenly become real. We reach our destination, we set foot on undiscovered land. Some strange place, which looked different in our dreams.

And the air. The scent of a new city. Breathe it in. Sticky humidity, tropical heat; a midsummer evening after rain, cleansed and crisp; somewhere else, an icy wind blasts from pretty mountains, between a rocky coastline and a raging sea; warm nights fringed with a summer breeze; dirty, grey air, full of fog; damp, heavy clouds crushing us... 

We have reached our destination. Disappointment. Another city, like the one we left behind. Same, same but different. Its nothing like the magical place we had dreamed of... had expected, almost. And now we are stranded, marooned amidst the dull and ordinary. On the other side of the world.

So why do we leave? Why do we seek change? Is it discontent? Challenge? Escape? A drop of them all, perhaps? Is it because we only live once, only have a few brief years to attempt to fulfill some elusive enterprise... and it must be out there, somewhere, in the world. Isn't it..?

But now that disenchantment has gently floated to the surface, and we're swimming in a sea of unchartered waters, we begin to remember home. Our apartment. A house we shared, a room we borrowed. And the air. The comforting smell of home. And if we can just pretend for a moment, that its not so far away... maybe it will be alright. Just another day.

And return to our happy thoughts of exploration, expedition. All the places to see and smell, that we haven't yet visited. The rest of everywhere.

Patience, enjoy the time away. And abandon home long enough to savor the adventure.

Home will always be there, waiting for us to return, with wild stories of our travels. It will be mostly unchanged. Unlike ourselves. And with that marvelous, unmistakable scent of home, of everything we love and hate, we will be welcomed back with open arms.

PEA SOUP

She sat by the window

popping peas,

a pile of empty pods,

discarded,

lonely,

her only company

until he came home

and kissed her... hello...

He lit the gas

and chopped courgettes

her peas naked

in a bowl,

beside a pile of empty pods,

discarded, lonely.

They were each other's 

only company,

eating pea soup

by the window.

BOHEMIA, AFTER THE RAIN

The heavens turned evil and the rain came in giant gallons. It fell in every direction, closely followed by hail, drenching everything in its passage. People crammed under awnings, and leapt onto buses going anywhere. Some resigned themselves to swimming in the street. And all after days of bright blue skies and sunshine. An unexpected downpour.

A storm - the prelude to a tragedy.

After the rain stopped, and the gutters were drained of the their deluge, a girl got off a bus from somewhere, and walked along the sodden grass, the muddy path of a pretty garden, towards music. To Bohemia.

'La Boheme'. The life of the Bohemian; artist, poet, musician, philosopher, lover of life... but is it all merely a drop, a bubble of romantic imagination? Pictures of this magical place drown our minds - young and creative intellectuals flooding the streets of Paris in a revolution. Puccini plays his libretto. 

One may be left wondering if Bohemia even exists - is it simply a place for the imaginative, somewhere to pose as a visionary, to live under the pretense that we are a fragment of some magical, creative movement, unspoken by the masses, but silently understood by a worthy few. ( A few million...? )

Or is it something much darker? A tragedy. Is it the place where Rodolfo arrives only at the end of Puccini's opera, when his love, Mimi, dies? Is it only then, when he is thrust into the pain of loss, the despair of heartbreak, that Rodolfo the poet finally finds the words that have betrayed him for so long? Those divine words that finally gush from his heart, like the rain teeming down from the clouds above.

And after the music has ended, and the actors have left the stage, pulling off their wigs in the wings, a girl retraces her steps, along the sodden grass, the slippery road, wondering if she deserves to live in that pied-a-terre, Bohemia... or if she still awaits her tragic ride to the avant-garde, the place of the free spirited, the unconventional - the place Puccini leads us to so beautifully, in 'La Boheme'.

Chocolate Porridge

Yes. Chocolate porridge...

Berkeley Square

They sat on a bench 

in Berkeley Square

She in a pale yellow dress

caught pretty in the sunshine

He in a shirt and trousers

and a navy jacket in his suitcase

They watched a slow stream of passers by

walking by, strolling by...

While he asked her a question she wasn't expecting

underneath the trees...

"Will you marry me?"

or some other words he uttered, nervously...

So hand in hand, with tears and smiles, they sat

on a bench in Berkeley Square.