Alexandra Palace Park and Lockdown - Day Four

Saturday morning I got a message from one of my junior colleagues Elaine asking if I would like to join her walking her dog around Alexandra Palace Park. I nearly bit her arm off, virtually speaking. (While biting off limbs is not part of official advice I am pretty sure it would be frowned upon in current conditions). As the park is only about 40 minutes walk from my place I duly set off.

 What the Park does offer from by the road up at the Palace is great views across the city.

While I don't often go here on a Saturday afternoon, the place did seem very busy. It is an odd site, preserved really as a green space as it is on a sufficiently steep slope to make it tricky to build on. The Palace sitting on top was obviously a great spot to put a mast on so no surprise really that it was where the first BBC TV pictures were distributed from. But its topography also makes it a good place to get some exercise.

Elaine was a little late for the simple reason that she had driven over and assumed parking would be easy because of the ample car parks. Ample, but closed!

Anyway, it felt just wonderful to get out and chat with Elaine (below) at a decent distance apart at all times. I am so missing just being with people. Already! (I might add that this was all before the official lockdown started. I took the social distancing recommendations to heart and describe that s lockdown. If people had taken it more seriously then maybe we wouldn't need to go to such stringent measures as have now been announced.)

And Elaine is utterly delightful company. Will definitely have her and her husband over for dinner sometime, assuming we survive the plague...

Elaine's Pomeranaian got admiring glances from other walkers (and several other dogs!)

Well I so enjoyed our couple of hours walking together and chatting about this and that. Made me feel so much happier.

On walk home I passed this granite trough filled with Spring flowers.

And got home to my own flowers.

Have set up my own "office" at home on the dining room table.

At least it has a view out into the garden and lets in light. 

I have also spent a couple of afternoons weeding. Never thought I would enjoy weeding, but I even stopped doing it so I would have some more to do the next day. Sad times indeed!

Lockdown - Day Two

Ok day two. This is awful. Sorry no photos. Not gone out and nothing to shoot.

We had a team meeting by conference call. Not easy. Problem is you can't get discussions working. The theory is that the chair deliberately invites more questions. But the problem with that is that no one says anything for a moment and then having waited for other people, everyone piles in. In a face to face meting you can see people looking like they are about to speak so you defer.

Lots of e-mails around on a jokey theme, which are great. I think we all know that we need to keep up morale amongst ourselves.The media can help with this. Of course we need to know latest medical advice and such. But we also don't need dire speculation. There is just no point in it. We need distractions. Badly!

Lockdown - Day one

So we are now in lockdown mode.

My best feel for the situation is that while gathering in public places, touching people, getting close to them, etc must be risky, surely getting out of the house for a walk can't be that high risk. So I went on a walk through a couple of local parks with my trusty camera to shoot a few early spring blooms.

A coot obviously heeding UK Govt advice to self-isolate

 It is amazing how a bit of careful cropping can make even an urban park look like wild woods.

Tutankhamun at the Saatchi Gallery

So, what looks like being my last expedition for a long time, was to the Tutankhamun exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery.

Now I had been put off this by the hefty price tag. But I shouldn't have been. It was truly wonderful. Not just the exhibits but the way it was exhibited - space, lighting the lot. Most of the exhibits had a little asterisk by them asserting this was the first time the items had left Egypt. Clearly there was a lot of effort spent bigging this all up, but I wasn't disappointed.

While one may be interested in the stories behind everything (the religious symbolism etc) , the exhibits are just astonishingly fine and beautiful. Just amazing craftsmanship.

These are food boxes, to keep Tut going in the afterlife. I love the chicken-shaped box

This is at the head of an ostrich fan - the plumes would have fanned out from the crescent shape. And this depicts an ostrich hunt

 All these statues are actually wooden carvings covered in gold leaf.

A ceremonial shield (well the holes would have made it pretty useless as armour) depicting Tutankhamun on a lion hunt

Royal bed

Head rests

This is a life-size statue of Tutankhamun

Beautiful woodcarving

 Also very impressive jewellery. So colourful with so many stones and glass and precious metals.

This is the top of a walking stick. The handle is in the form of a captive, so you would be symbolically squeezing him when in use. Nice.

The exhibition is on at the Saatchi Gallery which is a somewhat incongruous place - normally housing the most modern of modern art in a very attractive and stately Georgian edifice.

Just off Sloane Square