The London Traveler

I’ve always been fascinated by glassblowing. The way that molten glass flows and oozes, the way a piece slowly takes shape.  All this beauty and delicacy created out of what starts as a misshapen lump.
That’s why I was excited to find out that you can go and watch glassblowing in Southwark. The workshop at London Glassblowing is open every day in the week from 10 to 5 – though there’s no blowing from 1 till 2 in the afternoon, when the craftspeople knock off for lunch. There’s no charge,  though it’s suggested you might want to make a donation to …read more

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The East End seems to have an attraction for strange houses. First there was the Rachel Whiteread ‘House’ in Mile End – a cast of the inside of a complete terraced house. You could see the fireplaces, the windows, the bookshelves – but all turned inside out, as it were.
Now Sumer Erek is building a house out of recycled newspapers in Gillett Square, Dalston (close to Dalston Kinsland railway station). It’s a comment on the menace all of us know – the abandoned free papers that flap across our streets and rustle in the gutters like slightly sinister pigeons, and …read more

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I’ve always hated the self-righteousness of people who ‘give up things for Lent’ – alcohol, chocolate, going to the theatre, whatever.
It’s as if they want to punish themselves. And I notice they very rarely give the money they’ve saved to charity  – nor does their abstinence make them any easier to live with, in fact usually the reverse!
If you want to experience a different side to Lent, St James’s Piccadilly is offering lunchtime ‘time out’ sessions at 1230 on  March 4, 11 and 18.  You’re promised ‘music and very few words’ for about half an hour – there’s a communion …read more

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Pantomime is a Christmas thing, surely. But you have one last chance to see a panto – Brick Lane Music Hall, out in North Woolwich, is running Dick Whittington till the first of March.
Sorry – that should be “Big Dick Whittington.” And if you thought panto was kid’s stuff, this one is billed as “suitable for adults of all ages”.
Brick Lane Music Hall retains its name from its original location in the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane – but rising rents forced it out. Now, it’s housed in a Victorian church – not necessarily the most appropriate home for …read more

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I quite often end up using Eurostar and it usually leaves me a bit frazzled, often with an hour or so between trains.
But I’ve discovered a secret. Just follow the street that goes along the right hand side of the station (looking down the tracks), and you’ll find Camley Street Natural Park- a lovely little hideout just ten minutes’ walk from the station.
You’d think there’s not much you can do with two acres on an ex-industrial site. But by creating little mounds and hills, ponds and thickets, the London Wildlife Trust has made a semi-wilderness where you can wander, …read more

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Tucked away just off Bartholomew Lane in the City is one of London’s oddest museums – the Bank of England museum.
It’s got all kinds of intriguing things. A wonderful Heath-Robinson-like sovereign weighing machine for instance – which both speeded up the process of weighing the gold coins, and greatly improved accuracy. I looked at it for a good five minutes but I still couldn’t figure out quite how it worked.
Then there’s a “Be a foreign exchange trader” computer game you can play. I made a million very quickly – then lost two.
Another display shows all the different security features incorporated …read more

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The ‘Harry Beck’ tube map is well known and loved by many for the way it reduces the chaotic London Underground system to a semblance of order. It’s not geographically accurate – the central ‘rectangle’ of the District and Circle Lines actually looks more like a doughnut that went badly wrong, and the Central Line to the east and District Line to the west aren’t anything like the straight lines that are shown on the map.
If you want a completely different idea of how the tube lines work, take a look at this amazing new map by Max Roberts. …read more

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I remember the first time I saw a Derek Jarman film. I’d been brought up on Disney and westerns – here was something brave, rough, colourful and violent, and it opened my eyes to modern film-making.
So I was naturally interested in the Serpentine Gallery’s Derek Jarman exhibition, which includes a new film about Derek by Isaac Julien as well as rare Super-8 footage from Jarman’s private archive. There are also lightboxes showing views of Jarman’s seaside cottage at Dungeness – out of a a remote shack on a shingle beach, Jarman created an eclectic and weird kingdom of his own, …read more

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If you want to see a typical piece of Olde England, you don’t have to go far from London to soak yourself in half timber houses and little lanes. Just take a train twenty minutes from King’s Cross to St Albans, ignore the suburban commuter belt, and make your way to the historic centre of the city – you’ve stepped back into an England you might see on the front of a jigsaw puzzle or a box of chocolates.
St Albans goes back to the Romans, and you can still visit the Roman theatre – not as impressive as the Colosseum, …read more

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The Geffrye Museum doesn’t sound like a major draw. A museum about furniture. How interesting is that?
Actually, it’s a lot more fun than it sounds. First of all, the setting is lovely. Just a few minutes by bus from Liverpool Street, the museum is set back from the road, with a fine garden in front. Mature trees provide shade, and a herb garden scatters its scent.
The museum is housed in a fine set of eighteenth century brick almshouses. Go inside (entrance is free), and you’ll find a set of rooms, each one designed in the style of a …read more

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