Graffiti

The other day, after slipping and hitting my hip and arm on some hard ice, I saw this in one of my stairs. I thought it was rather lovely, and wouldn´t it be nice to decorate the entire wall with a pattern like this? Cheered me up considerably.

Sir John Soane´s Museum

Our last day in London we finally managed to make it to a museum that has been at the top of my list for years, but we have not been in London those few days during the week when it is open. I am talking about Sir John Soane´s Museum at Lincoln´s Inn Fields. I first read about it in an article about Swedish actor Peter Harryson and his annual trip to London. (I imagine it was a travel magazine.) He made it sound like a treasure palace of odd, wondrous things.

From the look of it, it was more office and exhibition space than a proper home. Soane was an architect and built the house himself. To me, it had the feel of a tomb more than a palace, not unlike Swedish doctor Axel Munthe´s villa San Michele on Capri, which we visited some fifteen years ago. It all those collections of mummies and gravegoods, tombstones and such, I think. Makes me cold all over, I can´t help it; it´s not conscious at all, more of a physical reaction. It´s so very Victorian to collect things like that; every man with means seems to have been an amateur antiquarian.

Soane - and his home - was quite famous even in his lifetime. He came from modest beginnings as the son of a bricklayer, trained at the Royal Academy where he distinguished himself as a very gifted student, got a scholarship to make his Grand Tour and was even knighted in 1831 after a fairly successful career. I got the impression that Soane was never at the forefront of architectural fashions, but rather a representative of the traditional, classic styles.

Soane had a very happy marriage, but was tragically disappointed in his two sons, one of whom was ill and died young, while the other was a rake, living with two women, gambling, and ending up in prison for fraud. When the younger son anonymously wrote an article slandering his father, Soane´s wife was so upset she died just a few months later. His final hope was for his grandson to be an architect, but the young man was rejected by the architect with whom he was studing, on account of being homosexual.

Interesting fact: the tomb Soane designed for his wife was the inspiration for the red telephone box that is such a classic British symbol.

Unfortunately it is not allowed to take photographs inside the museum, so I can´t share anything from the interior. There isn´t much in way of photo galleries at the website either, so for the Sir John Soane´s Museum experience, I guess you have to go there.

We had never been in this part of town before, and Lincoln´s Inn Fields turned out to be a nice little park, with a densly populated lawn. There was a television crew there and the husband was approached to take part, something about asking questions to politicians. This happens to us often, that we are taken for natives, asked for directions and what not. He declined to go on British television.

After this we walked along Oxford Street and don´t ask me how, but we found our way to the roof of the department store John Lewis, where we found a slightly plastic garden; there we had a drink and looked at the bustling shopping street below. A great place to relax!

And the day after, we went home. Not very many weeks later, we booked tickets to Heathrow for the summer of 2015. We still haven´t decided how to fill those two weeks, but I am beginning to think about it now. I guess it helps to have something to look forward to.

Natural History Museum

After Scarborough, we went to London, and one of the sights on my list has long been the Natural History Museum. It is one of several museums along Exhibition Road, among them the Victoria and Albert Museum that we went to some years ago to see an exhibition of historical fashion. The Natural History Museum was built by Alfred Waterhouse, who was part of the Victorian Gothic Revival and the building itself is reason enough to take time out to go there. It´s a cathedral dedicated to ecology. You have probably seen it it a film or two. I remember an episode of "Spooks" a few years ago, with spies walking and talking around the dinosaur in the main hall - that scene specifically put it on my list of places to go.

Of course, there were even more dinosaurs further inside the museum, and they seemed to be the main attraction for the many visitors, many of whom were children - perhaps the free entrance adds to the attraction for families. They have a lot of special programs for school children - we saw hoards of little girls in white coats, carrying clipboards, being Dino-scientists! Unfortunately, this option was not available for adults...

If you ever have a rainy day in London, I can really recommend this place.

The details are charming.

All individually fantastic pieces of art, used to decorate the ceiling.

From one of the side galleries.

View from the top floor; the statue of Charles Darwin throned on the stair opposite.

The top jewel, a slice of a Redwood Tree.

The modern extensions have a completely different design,
but works well with Waterhouse´s original style.

The SOE, special operations executive, which supported resistance
in occupied territory during World War II, had offices in
the building where agents were trained in using "specialised military equipment".

(Gasp!)

They have so many skeletons that they display them on two floors in a single room, leading the visitors through on up-hoisted gangways.

This fleshed out specimen had sound effects. Very Jurassic Park.

Boy pondering a dino nursery.

Some theories as to why they died out. I sympathise with this, though I doubt it...

... and this, I want to believe!

Kurbits

As I was reading Carl Larsson´s books (well, more looking at the pictures than reading) I came across this interior with Dala paintings, the kind called kurbits. Dalarna is a Swedish region known for its particular kind of peasantry decoration style, or allmoge, of which kurbits painting is a part. It is used for furniture, wooden boxes, tapestries, grandfather clocks, and so on. It has its roots in the baroque styles of decoration and the word originally means cucumber or pumpkin plant.

I lived for most of my childhood in Dalarna and my mother-in-law lived there for almost twenty years (raising her first batch of children). Some traces of this has survived in our home. We have a kitchen cupboard inherited from the mum-in-law, originally painted in a colour called dalablå. It more like verdigris now, and when I decided to vamp up the dining table by painting it the same colour, the one most like it that I could buy was called Mint Green.

When I was a child, there was a printed hanging in the hallway leading into the kitchen with a kurbits painting of The Queen of Sheba. Or, as it was called, "The Queen of Rich Arabia visits King Solomon with gifts". These biblical motifs were very popular, and the bible story characters were depicted as if they were inhabitants of 18th or 19th century Dalarna. Very charming. I now have that hanging in my kitchen, one of a few reminders of childhood that I cherish.

Aging Gracefully

We had a big party on January 27, when the mum-in-law celebrated her 95th birthday. She has not been well since about a week before Christmas, but luckily, she held herself up, and with style too. My brother & sister-in-law came up and helped her fix everything and the husband and I could relax a little and feel like guests. Friends and family gathered for birthday fika in the afternoon, and then my sister-in-law made a great dinner for the closest family.

The mum-in-law was a professional seamstress for most of her working life, and her closets are brimming with beautiful clothes, most of which, unfortunately, she has shrunk to much to fill out. That´s what happens, even one´s feet become smaller, apparently. But this dress, a black lace number with a Spanish vibe (I think she made it after she started going to Spain with her partner Ove, in the late 90´s), fit perfectly. The sister-in-law helped her fix her hair, and you know, as long as she sat, you wouldn´t have guessed her age within fifteen years. She was - no competition, and I´m not exaggerating one little bit - by far the best dressed, most elegant and beautiful woman in the room. She may be old and a bit wrinkly (but don´t tell her, she is nearly blind and claims to be wrinkle-free) but that bone structure doesn´t age one bit.

I had to make this sketch of her from a photo my other sister-in-law took, just to show you an impression of what I have to hold up as a model for myself every day. I know she looks like she is facebooking, but that´s her asthma medication she is about to take, before the guests arrive. She had a surprise guest: the former mayor, who recently read and wrote about her memoir in the local paper, came to pay his respects, and I understand he made a very nice speech for her (but that was before we got there, being still young enough to have to work on a weekday...).

Read about Bill Nighy!

"He has a thing for Berkeley Square. “I love studying the plane trees. They overwhelm me. As you get older you feel you need to pay more attention to what is around you and relish it. I’m greedy for beauty.” He concedes that his perfect day is really “wandering about London on my own. I built my life around not being in a hurry.”"Bill Nighy

... who says this in a great interview in the Guardian. I love him, a great actor and he seems like a wise and nice guy, too! 

A Boat Ride

Our last day in Scarborough we decided to take a trip on the North Sea and take in the first view of Skardaborg that the Vikings would have had. We were lucky enough to be taken out by "Regal Lady", a lovely little boat that actually took part in the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, which impressed me much. It´s captain was very proud of her, you could really tell. Seemed like it needed some TLC, though, and they were selling bits and bobs, aside from having a pub/café service, to scrape together some money to do maintainance work. I bought a small plastic notebook with the image of "Regal Lady" on it, as we really couldn´t stomach food or drink on such a short trip (a little more than an hour). But there was much eating and drinkning going on around us - the Brits have excellent appetites, that´s for sure!

Luckily, for me, a trip at sea seemed to clear up my hay fever pretty well, and I hardly felt it after that. Must remember for next time. (Also, must remember to take a photo of the entire boat! You can see a little film about here here, though.)

Scarborough from the south.

Scarborough from the north. (The sky a bit more dramatic in noir...)