The Weston Tower and The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries

 

The Sunday Times called it "A Soaring Success", and the Guardian  said "Nestled into an armpit of Westminster Abbey, hidden behind a flying buttress that leaps up to the chapterhouse, stands what appears to be a gothic space rocket. Sinuous bronze tracery loops its way up the faceted shaft, framing crystalline windows between bands of lead arrowheads, like go-faster stripes shooting towards the heavens."

In October 2019 Sky showed a series called "The Art of Architecture" and I included this on my blog.

Probably my favourite of the series, Episode 5 looked at Ptolemy Dean's Weston Tower at Westminster Abbey. His design for an access stair and lift up to the new Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries is quite remarkable, blending modern metal and glass alongside the existing building. It respects the vertical aspects of the cathedral and has used sixteen different types of stone cladding to the lift shaft in bands, sampled from the history of the building with the earliest stone at the bottom rising in age to the top. The shape is an intersecting rotated square that looks quite something, with bronze tracery wrapped around the exterior. The glazing is a multiplicity of leaded windows that are extraordinary. The whole effect is amazing. I must pick a nice day to go.

My first visit to London for a long time brought me to the "new" Weston Tower at Westminster Abbey. I say new because that what it was when I saved the article from The Sunday Times nearly four years ago.

It had been on my list of new architecture since before lockdown and yesterday I had brought the ticket on my phone that I had booked a few days ago. Arriving at Westminster Underground to almost misty cloud, I had to walk around the Abbey, almost to the deserted back of the abbey to spot the tower hidden in a corner behind a patch of grass. You have to really search to find it.

And then inside the abbey, I had to ask twice to find the entrance tucked away in a far corner. The Guardian has an excellent piece about tower if you search "Weston Tower".

Some people use the lift but it's far better to take your time going up the staircase and take in the architecture and the views. I didn't see another soul as I made my way to the top.

The Sunday Times article has words from the architect, Ptolemy Dean. The tower is 26.95 metres high and came in at £22.9 Million. There are leaded panes of glass with overlaid tracery instead of plate glass. The timber frame, stairs and landings are all in oak and it looks wonderful.

At the top are the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries, installed in the triforium ( as pace in a church above the central nave situated at high level) at the top of the abbey. 

Apparently John Betjeman called it "the best view in Europe". It is pretty good.

The collection is interesting, but not really what I came for. However this photo I found shows better than mine the wonderful structure of this space.

Here are a some of mine, starting with some stained glass panels from 1250/70.

A roundel of Sir Thomas Lovell attributed to Pietro Torrigiano about 1520.

I went back down in the lift and had time to wander around Westminster Abbey, although it all seemed extremely familiar having been there before. So I headed back to Westminster Underground for the short journey to Embankment, and the walk across the Golden Jubilee Bridge to the South Bank for my afternoon at National Theatre. There I found a Pret A Manger for a wrap and a very welcome cup of tea.

The BAFTAS 2022

 

 

Lets start with the good news. All five nominations for Best Costume Design at this years BAFTA Awards were on general release and I saw then all: Cyrano, Dune, The French Dispatch, Nightmare Alley and the winner in this category Cruella. Nomination for Best Make Up and Hair also featured three of the above plus The Eyes of Tammy Faye (the winner) and House of Gucci. I was also able to see all those films nominated for Best Production Design which included West Side Story.

But after that it made no sense. How can Power of the Dog win best picture and best director when it never had a general release? For Netflix to enjoy it's inclusion in the lists, it opened in just a very, very, very..... few selected cinemas. There was no release in the two big chains, Odeon and Cineworld. You would have to travel all the way into London or Oxford for a Curzon or Everyman cinema. Otherwise watch it on Netflix on a small screen. Until BAFTA revert back to films on general release, they are failing us cinema fans.

The same goes for other films having nominations. Drive My Car (winning Best Foreign Language film) when only the wonderful Parallel Mothers had a general release. Other winners with only selected cinemas included Coda (Apple tv) and After Love (Amazon?) I give up. At least, for me, the most important award being for Best Original Screenplay went to Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza. It also received nominations for Best Director and Best Film. Thank goodness for small mercies. 

Milton Keynes 10K - 10110

 

It was two years ago that I last ran the 10K in the Milton Keynes Festival of Running. The 15th March 2020 was days before the full lockdown. Two years on and my times are distinctly slower, a minute and a half longer than 2020. This year I ran the 10K in 1 Hour 1 Minute and 10 Seconds, hence the title above. However, there were only two of us over 75 running, the other man was last! And there were only five men over 70 of whom I was third. I was 331st overall of 575 men and women, so being in the top two thirds is fine. However, my Age Grade was down from two years ago at 64.44 as against 65.97.

There was no way I could run at that previous pace of 9.27 minutes per mile. But I was so pleased with this year's 9.49. I knew I had to gain pace in the first half which has some gradual downhill sections and at the 5K I was there at 9.25 pace. It was obviously over 10 minutes per mile for the second half and it was quite hard on the uphill bits. 

Looking at my results for all the MK 10K's over the years, I found these:

2014 56.05

2016 58.45

2018 56.48

2020 58.46

2022 1.01.10

This year the number of runners was well down at 575. Two years ago it was 919 and even then quite a few did not run with the advent of Covid. There were 1321 in 2018!

It made all the difference with Alison coming with me. The day was fine and 10 degrees, but quite windy Afterwards we had tea and cake in John Lewis. It was great to see Nicky and Michael from parkrun at the finish. 

Forsythia Spectabilis Variegata

 

I have previously posted pictures of my Forsythia in the April of 2017 and 2020. This is how it looks this year. Despite the hard pruning of last year (as below), the branches still flop over, as they do every year.

So this year, after flowering,  I will hard prune all the floppy branches and try and tie those that are left to see if they can be trained upright like all the other Forsythias you see. Watch this space.

Unsettled Ground, Saint Maybe and The Appeal

 

It starts off at a cracking pace and doesn't let up. Although the story revolves around the fifty one year old twins Julius and Jeanie, it is the latter who is the central character as their meagre existence falls apart. Jeanie is strong, resilient, and far too independent for her own good, especially as they face losing even that poor livelihood at the bottom rung of society. Julius is portrayed as a boring, selfish brother seeking odd jobs where he can find them. I found all this quite depressing and only the momentum and prose kept me going. It felt so sad, disturbing and bleak. However there are heroes to be found as well as villains. The story turns on a revenge which I still cannot help but feel was highly improbable. I may be in the minority.

Here we are again.....in Baltimore of course. Well, close by anyway. The family are the Bedloes and the story concentrates on Ian, the second son of Doug and Bree. It's what happens to the first and his new wife that changes Ian's life for ever. It's Danny and Lucy whose early married life Ian watches at close hand. And there are Lucy's children from an earlier marriage.

The back cover is far too explicit in what happens next, and even mentions Ian's life twenty years on. But the book is not halfway through when Ian has to decide whether to cut college for a life he never imagined. It involves the Church of the Second Chance which eventually is all consuming. It was the religious aspects of the remainder of the book that I found disappointing. The family coping with Ian's new life is still fine and Tyler's trademark brilliant passages and dialogue are still there. There is a road trip Ian takes two thirds through that is one of the author's best ever. But overall, perhaps the least successful of all sixteen novels I have read so far.

I have never known a book like it. A collection of emails, reports, texts, articles and even phone messages, all needed to be reviewed by law students Femi and Charlotte for their boss, Roderick Tanner QC. Who is the murderer? I must have made nearly as many notes as they did. So a highly original format that had my head swimming at times. There is so much information to digest, too many facts and too many awful people. Top of that list is Isabel Beck, a needy, lonely, devious nurse whose many long emails can drive you mad.

I have to admit that this is not my kind of book, one that relentlessly follows fact by fact. It was an interesting concept but one that eventually becomes a bore. The final revelations were either much too predictable or just plain daft. So a clever idea but in the end a tedious format I was glad to put down. Thank goodness it was discarded by book club.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Unchartered and Death on the Nile

 

I knew nothing about American evangelism, so for me, this was a completely new story. The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a compelling drama, especially the tension between the Baptists (Jerry Falwell) and the Pentecostals (The Bakkers) and Pat Robertson. Jessica Chastain is predictably excellent as Tammy Faye Bakker and deserves her Oscar nomination. The rest of the cast are so so, Andrew Garfield as her husband is never convincing. 

Unchartered is modern day update of  Indiana Jones. If only he had access to a mobile phone and GPS apps. I watched it on the huge IMAX screen which increased in size at the beginning and the end for those scenes including the CGI heavy conclusion. I preferred the discovering to the fight scenes, of which there were thankfully few. The dialogue and acting are clunky, but those are not what the film is about. It's fun. 

Beautiful cinematography of course, Death on the Nile comes with a mainly all star cast. Except I did not know Emma Mackey in one of the lead roles. Not sure why Gal Gadot appears on the poster instead. Kenneth Branagh reprises his role as Poirot but I still prefer David Suchet. We still watch repeats of his TV adaptations which I think are more successful. I was amazed to see Annette Benning and she out acted them all. For all the gloss and star quality of this feature film, the script is not as good. Especially for those new scenes. But it does look so good.

I forgot to mention the opening sequence from the first world war. Set in the trenches and fabulously filmed in black and white, a younger Poirot is the hero and the villain. Superb.

Tring Book Club: Mrs England by Stacey Halls

 

An interesting choice for our book club. The story of Ruby May, or Nurse May as everyone calls her, is well constructed and has a wonderful location as a children's nurse travels to Hardcastle House in West Yorkshire. This is the fictitious home of Mr and Mrs England and their children, close to the real Hardcastle Crags, now National Trust property.

There is a deep mystery surrounding Mrs England, a daughter of the wealthy Greatrex family. She stays in her room most of the time and it is her husband who is Ruby's main contact. There are all sorts of clues to Mrs England's state of mind, especially that Ruby has to lock the nursery door at night. The mystery builds to a dramatic conclusion, although the latter part of the book is all plot that has too much revelation at the end. But the author describes the right atmosphere for the location and the story moves at a good pace. No literary magic, but a solid tale of family secrets.