Pursuing the Cultural Programme

Blimey, but it's a long time since anyone posted anything here! To me, then, falls the, er, "honour" of catching everyone up with what we've been doing....

....except that I can't actually be arsed to trawl back through the past four months looking for the highlights. The rain fell, the sun arrived, the temperature went up, the sun went away again, it got colder, the volcano spewed more ash, und so weiter. Then, just as the gardening was about to swallow us up, Judith and I sat down with our diaries to map out a cultural programme for the next few months, to ensure that we at last get to visit the various places in and around London that we know we wish to see (and which have been on our lists of things to see for, like, totally forever, dude).

First up, a couple of weekends ago was a visit to the Linley Sambourne House and the Leighton House Museum, both in Kensington (follow the links for more information). The former is accessible only by guided tour, which had to be booked in advance and required an early start (on a Sunday); once inside, you realise immediately why only small numbers are allowed in at any one time, because it thoroughly exemplifies the Victorian fashion for filling one's home with unbelievable quantities of clutter. (The amount of dusting that would have been required to keep it all clean, in an age when open coal fires were standard, is perhaps best left to the most overactive of imaginations.) The Leighton House, by contrast, is much larger and airier -- purpose-built by and for the artist Frederic Leighton rather than a redecorated mid-terrace property, and emptier because his sisters (the philistines) sold off much of his art collection after his death. The date of our visit, however, was chosen to fit in with the recent re-opening of the house following its renovation and the lending back of pieces from his collection by the institutions which had bought them. (It must seem rather empty without these displays.)

Then, since we were in the area, we went to see the State Apartments at Kensington Palace, although much of the building is currently closed to the public while it (and its grounds) are refurbished as a full-on "visitor experience" (yeuch) in time for the 2012 Olympics (the quid pro quo presumably being that the tourist dollars hoovered up by the refurbished Palace will be a small recompense for the money squandered on the Games. Hem hum).

The Sunday just past we ventured further west, to see Kew Bridge Steam Museum and Kew Palace. The name of the former is potentially misleading: it has a short stretch of narrow-gauge railway on-site, but the building's origin was as a house for the beam engines which pumped water around Victorian London. The beam engines are still in situ, and have been joined by other steam pumping engines from around the country. On the day of our visit, there was a static display of old fire appliances in the museum forecourt, including (of course) a couple of Victorian-era horse-drawn steam pumps. None of this was of much interest to Judith, so she went off across the river to Kew Gardens ahead of me, leaving me to potter about taking photographs of all and sundry for another hour.

Kew Palace can't be visited independently of the Botanic Gardens, although they require separate tickets; it's a large house rather than a proper palace, and was first opened to the public in 1898. For much of the time we've lived in London, however, it seems to have been closed for one reason or another -- it was closed on my first visit to the Gardens, way back in 1990 -- and for the ten years 1996-2006 was shut entirely for a thoroughgoing restoration, which inter alia has put on display parts of the underlying fabric, showing brick and wood back to the seventeenth century: most interesting. (But the voice-overs from hidden speakers in several of the rooms, by actors pretending to be members of George III's family, are a bit annoying.)

Following the visit to the Palace, we spent a couple of hours meandering about the Gardens, which might have been more enjoyable if it hadn't kept trying to rain. By accident or design, we ended up in the Palm House shortly before the clouds were finally rent asunder, sending people scurrying into shelter in flurries of weatherproof anoraks and inappropriate summer footwear. I was up in the Palm House's gallery taking photographs as the rain started, and one could certainly hear it on the glass -- which, it turns out, has a few leaks here and there.

The journey home required a long wait for a bus, about which the less said the better. But below are some photographs of the Palm House, inside as well as out.