Sunday, March 1, 2009

London This Time

Elsewhere this week was England. We stayed in London at Davina and Dee Dee's place not far from Tower Bridge and where you could see a slice of the Thames. It was especially good at low-tide, half mud. Monday was the Institute for Race Relations and dinner with Davina, Tuesday some work and dinner with Irit, Wed was interviewing quantum-dot solar folks in Bath and dinner with Adrian and Denis, Thursday was Brighton and dinner with Celine and Ines, Friday was Cambridge and packed trains out of Kings Cross and dinner . . . at home! Saturday was Slumdog Millionare with Elizabeth at the Odeon on Shaftsbury, which turns out to be a slightly peaceful extension of Holburn, which I never knew. London doesn't fit together for me at all

London I liked better this time. There's good street life around Bond St Station and less of the Beverly Hills stretches in between the bank-driven mish mash. But after a few days the vanity atriums of the glass palaces don't seem so different for a few curves at the edges. They still have names like Plantation Place. They are still temples to their own power to waste London square footage to glass fishtank interiors 10 stories high. After a few days they are all exactly alike - even the good ones around More London on the south bank near the sliced boiled egg that houses the city govt - in the 1/2 invisible part behind the vanity atrium.

There's a UFO shaped street light, and a lit opening to the underworld. Those are the parts of More London I liked.

And I really like my friends there. pictures later on