Dear Readers, after our trip to the glass exhibition yesterday we went in search of coffee and a sandwich, and en route I looked up at the spire which sits behind the Royal Courts of Justice. And there, just a blob until I put my camera on maximum zoom, was a peregrine falcon. Those of you with long memories might remember when I did a street tree walk around here, and spotted not one but two peregrines who’d been nesting here, plus a fledgling. I even managed to get a shot of a food drop, where a parent bird drops food to teach the youngster how to hunt.
Food drop!
Mother, father and fledgling
I was so pleased to see that at least one peregrine is still here, and hopefully they’ll breed successfully again. Peregrines are increasingly hunting not just pigeons but our little green parakeet friends, and they also hunt at night when buildings are floodlit, as they often are in London. I am always impressed by the adaptability of animals to an urban setting.
Anyhow, we then went for a walk around the London School of Economics – my husband studied here for a year, but there has been a lot of building, and new buildings popping up. First up there was this remarkable….well, I’m not sure what to call it, but it was above the door of the Old Building. It’s made of very fine wire mesh, and is called ‘Final Sale’, so I guess I can see what all the climbing up the shelves is about. The piece is by Russian artists Andrey Blokhin and Georgy Kuznetsov. As this is the School of Economics I guess it’s appropriate.
Above it is the coat of arms of the LSE – the motto, ‘Rerum cognoscere causas’, means ‘to know the causes of things’, and the critter is a beaver, viewed as a hard-working animal. However, in 1922 William Beveridge, then Head of the School, mischievously remarked that this reputation could have been overstated:
“The beaver is also reputed to be industrious, though one writer at least has been found to assert that this reputation is undeserved; ‘that for five long months in winter the beaver does nothing but sleep and eat and keep warm’ that ‘summer-time for him is just one long holiday when the beavers are as jolly as grigs with never a thought of work from morning to night,’ and that in fact, he never works at all except in September and October when his dam must be built and when the Final Examination of the University are held.”
Around the corner from the Old Building there is now an open space (one could almost call it a piazza if it wasn’t for the drizzle), and on the corner of the Clements Building there’s a mural called ‘Spectra’ by Tod Hanson. It’s based on Booth’s Victorian poverty map of the area, with the square that we’re standing in depicted by a red square. Lincoln’s Inn Fields is the green space at the top, and the Thames winds in and out in blue. However, the colours don’t actually reflect the colours of Booth’s map (it was used to designate different areas of London according to their poverty levels, with black being ‘Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal’ and dark blue being ‘Very poor, casual. Chronic want’. I wonder if the artwork has missed a trick? While there probably isn’t ‘chronic want’ in the immediate vicinity amongst those who are homed, there are plenty of homeless people. The design resembles a pie-chart (very appropriate for economists).
And just across the road is ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ by Mark Wallinger. It is indeed just a globe turned upside down. It does enable us to pay more attention to the countries of the global south, but I wonder if it would have been even more interesting if it had used the Peter Projection which shows the actual relative sizes of the countries (though I’m not sure if this would work on a globe as I think this is what causes the distortion of the countries in the first place). (Head explodes).
‘The World Turned Upside Down’ by Mark Wallinger
Now, the whole reason for coming to the LSE was to visit what used to be their splendid bookshop, but it never returned after Covid. However! Right opposite The Old Curiosity Shop is a lovely, bijou bookshop called The Gilded Acorn. It has an astonishing array of books, both new and second-hand, and we both staggered out with some new things to read, even though my bedside book pile resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I got Katherine Rundell’s ‘The Golden Mole’, which I’ve been meaning to get for ages, and which describes a whole host of interesting creatures, and Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’, which is full of things to ponder on. More on this later, I’m sure!
The man who runs the shop is very helpful, and I can only imagine that things are tough. If you value bookshops, this is definitely one to pop into if you’re in the vicinity. There is nothing like actually holding a book in your hand and paging through it, feeling its heft and breathing in that new book (or old book) smell.
https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/TheGildedAcorn
Anyhow, by now the drizzle has turned into proper precipitation so we decide to head towards Charing Cross to get the Northern Line home. But goodness, there’s been some shenanigans going on on The Strand. How lovely that it’s pedestrianised! I daresay that the taxi drivers aren’t as chuffed as all that, but there’s lots of seating, some planting, trees have a bit more room to breathe and you can just wander into Somerset House as the mood takes you. St Mary le Strand church looks very relieved.
