Walking into London. Church Hats, Vegan Buses and Food Martyrs

Nice day today and I'm free (for a change lately) so decided to walk from our house into the centre of London. It's a nice route through St Johns Wood and across Regents Park, and since we haven't had a frost, there are still leaves on the trees, some of them even green (ish). And there were quite a few roses still to be seen on the bushes in the rose garden. Strange, since it's nearly December, but it will all go when we get a frost

National Portrait Gallery
Saw the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize show at the National Portrait Gallery, one of my all time favourite galleries. It's a comfortable, welcoming building full of colour and life. There are always new and fascinating portraits to admire in the permanent collections, and interesting lectures (many of them free). We try to go every year to the painting and photo portrait contests.

Church Hats

My favourite showed an elderly African woman sitting in her bedroom with some of the fantastic hats she keeps specially for attending Church on Sundays with her friends. I liked it because the visual image described her in a way that words cannot. It said so much about her - that Church is a social occasion, and she has a regular routine and takes care and trouble about how the world sees her, and also, I think, that she wants to be looking at her best to worship God.

Pigeons in Trafalgar Square

Sat in Trafalgar Square a while in the sunshine. It's now rather sadly short of pigeons, although the lady eating a sandwich next to us was mobbed by about 20, to her annoyance. When I was a child one of my favourite outings was to Trafalgar Square, where we'd buy a packet of grain from one of the vendors who used to hang out there. I still remember the weird and (to me) highly entertaining feeling of pigeon claws scrabbling all over my head and arms. It sounds a bit creepy now but then kids don't have the cultural baggage of Hitchcock's "The Birds" and other similar horror movies, do they?.

Routemaster Bus Cafe

On the way back decided to try out an unusual cafe - a Routemaster bus parked next to a multistorey carpark in Soho. It's very nicely done out with a kitchen downstairs and a cafe upstairs with moody Eastern music and some comfortable tables. All perfect except for the food. It is vegan - and I hasten to say that I think good vegan food is brilliant. But it's a while since I've been in a vegan cafe and I wonder if the ethos of eating vegan has changed.

The food was so plain and dull and tasteless that I thought it might be aiming at folks who aren't interested in taste but want to be sure there's no salt, sugar, gluten, oil, etc. to ruin their virtuous dining.

Vegan Food Martyrs

T and I each had soup, and were amazed to find no seasonings, no herbs, no actual cooking (apart from liquidising the ingredients I suppose). Very watery (not unlike the water that's left when you've boiled vegetables) and quite hard to force down. Not cheap either and definitely not something to set you up for the afternoon. Kindness forbids me from naming the cafe. They're so enthusiastic, they've done the bus out well and it's such a good idea, in theory. Perhaps they're aiming at the food martyrs of Soho.

And John Lewis

On to John lewis which was PACKED. No sign of recession and no sign that anyone's abandoning the high street. Perhaps even more people were sitting at home with their computers, though, and making the trip with Superhighstreet.com We got a duvet cover and then went home because we were already starving after our vegan non-lunch.

World Travel Market Highlights

Oh dear, this blog is slipping. Maybe I'll have more time to write a bit later, cause lots of things have been going on. Or maybe it will fade out. Just to say that I attended World Travel Market in London this week. It's the biggest travel trade fair in Britain, not open to the general public but a must-attend for many of those in the business.

Well Designed Greece

Every year I marvel at the ingenuity and attractiveness of some of the stands. I particularly liked the Greek stand for its clever simplicity. The large central section was had an illuminated floor, echoing both the blue and white Greek flag, and also the feeling of being by a gorgeous blue pool. High above, was a ring of extremely bright lights of the type you get at a football stadium. Although the exhibition hall is well lit, this extra illumination made the Greek stand even brighter. It reminded you of what it's like walking into the Greek sunshine. So simple, so ungimmicky. Not very eco-friendly perhaps, but guess you can't have everything.

Brasilia - an Architectural Inspiration

Brazil was celebrating the anniversary of Brasilia, its modernistic capital. Their stand accordingly consisted of a plain white modernist arc, Brasilia style, with white floor and white comfortable chairs, with a gorgeous wooden bar down one side, adorned with carvings. Soooo cool! And a real oasis amidst the noise and bustle.

Multi Media Switzerland

Most eyecatching was a construction on the Swiss stand. This art installation is complicated and very large. It consists of three dimensional and multi media
representations of every distinctively Swiss thing you can think of - a cog railway, a castle, mountains, a ship on a metal lake where the waves move, cowbells, a herd of cows, mobile phone, a fondue set, clocks of various types, an apple with an arrow through it and several screens showing film of Swiss life, plus sound effects ranging from yodelling to bird twittering to a carillion of little bells that plays a tune.

It operates on a sort of pinball construction. Every time a large steel ball sets out of its trap, it seems to spiral and race into a different bit of the structure and trigger off a different mechanism so that you are never quite sure what will be happening next.

Charles Morgan, Swiss? Artist

There was always a large fascinated crowd around this installation, which was constructed by a Swiss artist called Charles Morgan - his name sounds very English but his site is in French so I suppose he IS Swiss? This website which is full of wonderful stuff but I suspect the photos don't in any way do his work justice. He does have this installation out there in his picture gallery, but you would never guess how marvellous it is.

Should I go to Switzerland, I shall make a point of seeking Charles Morgan out.

With King Ludwig of Bavaria

Here's a treasured Royal souvenir - a mousemat showing me and the King of Bavaria.

I went to a very good Bavarian workshop in the West End a few days ago. They'd hired two huge rooms in a Georgian mansion just off Hyde Park. One contained a large breakfast with authentic German bread from Backhaus and lots of sausages. The other room was full of Bavarians eager to tell us about their region. And King Ludwig was waiting at the top of the stairs. He really was extraordinarily regal, not just in appearance but in manner. I hope he had fun. We did.

I was specially intrigued by the Saltzeitreise It's salty theme park ride no doubt with plenty of glitz since it's now owned by Swarovski Crystal. Salt has been considered good for the health for many centuries, and the region also has lots of spas. I had been considering taking a winter trip - the Bavarian alps aren't for serious skiiers, which suits me just fine. But events got in the way and now I'm already booked up with things to do this winter. Another time, I hope.

The salt mine also happens to be near the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's hangout. Needless to say the tourist board don't make a deal about this. Nothing to do with Hitler is treated as a tourist attraction in Germany, including the famous bunker in Berlin. I was told that it's the No.1 thing that visitors to Berlin are keen to see, but they can't. It would be good if certain other countries followed the German line in not making a tourist attraction out of icons of barbarity, but unfortunately that's not always so.

When one of my kids told some German friends that her mum had met King Ludwig of Bavaria, they were very dismayed, and told her that Bavaria no longer has a king. Little do they know. My King Ludwig mousemat will join other souvenirs such as the Maltese Virgin Mary musical box, the Angela Merkel lemon squeezer etc.

A Gourmet Tour From Hell

Blogging about travel writing is totally different from writing about your travels. When sharing your travels with the world, you can be frank and free. With professional travel writing, your best bits have to go into the article or book, not on your blog. Duh. Seems obvious when you think about it.

And you don't want to commit professional suicide by being too frank, however amusing the PR's screw-up was, or however hideously memorable that restaurant meal was.

Actually, though, let's write about the string of awful meals I had on one "gourmet tour" of a region which had better be nameless.

The worst meal was hot meat with gravy and raspberry sauce, served in a dizzyingly decorated restaurant to the sound of a PR woman yelling non stop about the chef, his ingredients, his philosophy, etc. No place to hide. Boy, that woman had some lungs, and she was mortally offended at anyone who left a scrap.

Next day of our gourmet tour, the highlight was plates of small spiky fish plus patented pink goop (tasting like kiddy toothpaste with a touch of vinegar.) No veggies, no bread, nothing but lots of spiky little fishes and pink goop.

The third day, we attended a cookery demonstration for - well who knows? Because everyone was riveted by the absolutely enormous cockroach making its way slowly up the demonstration podium, oblivious of the demonstrator clashing her pots and pans above. Nobody, but nobody wanted to eat the dish she had just so lovingly prepared for us.

The fourth day I pleaded illness. I ate nothing all day and went to bed in the evening with a bagel. How I loved that bagel's little dry-bread face! I still remember it with appreciation!

El Gouna Writer's Residency - and Germanwings

The Red Sea resort of El Gouna is launching a Writers Residency programme next year. Check it out here for the details. It's to celebrate their 20th anniversary. I'd be exploring rather than writing, probably, maybe tempted by those piles of sickly but delicous cakes they sell in the Middle East to spend my time in coffee shops rather than toiling at my computer
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Meanwhile, I'm sorting out a December trip to Cologne, in Germany, where I think I can confidently guarantee that things won't be so colourful. I've been looking at Germanwings which turns out to have flights not only to Germany but to many other places besides - and from regional airports too.

Online PR

Went to a British Guild of Travel Writers meeting about the future of professional travel writing a couple of nights ago.

Travel writing is suffering just like so many other mainly media-based or media-related businesses, from studio design to music sales to magazine writing. The internet is changing the way people think and we're in the middle of a new industrial revolution.

Technological change has been so enormous in the last two hundred years that we tend to forget that we need to adapt. I don't suppose it was immediately obvious to everyone in 1790 that they should be junking their handlooms pronto. Nor would Mr. Investor of 1835 have known whether to sink his life savings into the expanding canal network or into these new fangled railways. And many people who ran stables in 1900 thought that there would always be a demand for horses, even if motor cars DID take off. And those highly skilled printworkers in the 1980s....

Anyway one sign of the times is Surf PR, the UK's first PR agency to work entirely in online media, or so they say. Actually, the company Go Ape (not one of Surf's clients) contacted me a while ago offering me and 20 of my friends the chance to try their treeclimbing adventures and blog about it. So perhaps Surf PR isn't quite so much in the forefront as they say.

Indeed, in some parts of the world I'm told that social media manipulation is becoming so widespread that that attempts are being made to regulate product placement in blogs. Bloggers will have to reveal whether they have been paid, either in cash or in kind.

And no, I have not been paid anything by Surf PR to mention them. And I certainly don't think my friends are up for Go Ape. I suspect if someone is going to ask most people I know to swing around in trees, they'll need to provide a nice cup of tea at the end of it, or something even stronger, actually.

Travel Photo Competition - Coast

Coast Magazine is running a photo competition (click on the button on their main page). Last year's winner is unusual because it captures a feeling of light and sun and movement in a way that is hard to do - technically, I mean.

The V & A Museum in London is running a project about beach photography : click here for one of my favourites but people have found so many other ways of turning beaches into art.

As far as my own pictures are concerned, sometimes I look through them and think, wow, I like that one. I don't have any pretensions, though. The picture of the double rainbow near Avebury (below) pleases me but I am sure the purists would say that Silbury hill ought to be completely visible. In fact even I'd say that.

In self justification, I was perched on the verge, with the car rather dangerously parked in the road, though, desperate to catch the rainbow before it faded.

And it's miles from the coast.