Our trip to Vienna was great. We were travelling with S, our oldest grandson, and staying in a curious and slightly decrepit apartment in a posh street of mansions rather like these.
One day the owners of this apartment will probably spend a fortune modernising it and turning it into something sleek and conventional. But we liked the faded, almost romantic atmosphere of its big, high rooms, dusty staircase and warren of tiny offices on the other floors.
Young S. discovered that it had had once been the home of the Archduchess Elisabeth Maria Henrietta, daughter of Prince Rudolf, who was all set to inherit the throne of the Habsburg Empire.
Unfortunately Prince Rudolf died when the archduchess was young, in an apparent suicide pact with his mistress, so she never had the chance be the daughter of an Emperor. It seemed she didn't want to be one, anyway, and her subsequent life took some sensational twists and turns. But more of that later.....
Each day we'd descend the stone spiral back staircase, go through the arched entrance hall with its huge lantern hanging overhead, and out of the heavy double doors to explore Vienna.
We liked the Prater, Vienna's vintage amusement park, which over the years has accumulated acres of wooded grounds traversed by a miniature diesel-engined railroad, a running track, many 1970s-looking animatronic rides, a virtual reality parlour, terrifying looking chair swings, and a model railway layout of Vienna which shows the city both by night and by day. Plus, of course, all the usual fairground attractions like dodgems and a ferris wheel - the Prater's wheel featured in the 1949 film, The Third Man (click here for the scene). I guess this, below, is supposed to be the wild west - at present those galloping horses are about to run right into a gate.
Below, I was completely fooled by a mirror maze bathed in lurid multi coloured light, sometimes green, sometimes red and sometimes blue. Perhaps I've had a sheltered life but I hadn't been in one of these things before.
There was also an excellent display of award winning Austrian photographs, with each photo blown up large and displayed all around the park. The one below specially caught my eye. It is entitled "Old Franz's 85th birthday" and I love this loden-clad old man, complete with gun, exchanging a kiss with his wife.
The Prater couldn't be more different from the "Kunstkammer" where we went the following day. This suite of galleries occupies one floor of Vienna's main art museum, the vast Kunst Historisches Museum, and comprises 20 giant rooms packed with unimaginably valuable items collected by generations of Habsburg emperors and their families.
I don't want to disrespect Britain's Crown Jewels or anything, but if you really want to see the world's most skilled craftsmanship in porcelain, gold, silver and precious stones, in the shape of countless ornaments, decorations, salvers, plates, dishes, goblets, table settings, automata, devotional items and more, then this place should be at the top of your list.
It's impossible to convey the enormous scale of the display, but here are a few of the items which caught my eye. They include three of the many automata - ornaments that move or perform in some way. This ship, a gilded banqueting table centrepiece, will roll across the table firing cannons as the crew move to music.
Here is a company of gold and enamelled musicians promenading on an ebony balcony.
This large gold bell-tower automaton was based on the stage scenery of a play once attended by the emperor.
I was also impressed by a very large calculator, made in 1727 which is supposedly for land surveying, although I doubt it made many surveying trips outside.
This tiny object, known as a "prayer nut" (it's about the size of a walnut in its shell), is hang on a rosary. I have enlarged it considerably because the carving is too small to be seen properly, at least by me. I can't think how any one ever created it by hand.
And here is a tantalus, a vessel for alcoholic drink, dressed up as a seated man literally wearing a table of food.
I can't vouch for the number of galleries, because I only managed to get through six of them, and that's because we only saw them towards the end of the day. Most of the time we'd been looking at paintings, followed by a pit stop snack in the museum cafe served by waiters (below) It's not quite as pricey as it looks, which is good because I didn't spot anywhere else to eat.
For me, the Dutch and Flemish paintings were the main attraction, particularly several big canvases by Bruegel the Elder, (b. 1589). I visited them years ago and had been so frustrated because they're so intricate that printed reproductions don't fully resolve the fine detail, and yet the canvases are too large to examine closely on the wall. Last time I went without a camera, but this time I managed to capture sections which are easily missed even in large reproductions.
What makes them so interesting is that Bruegel was a painter of peasant life, which mostly went unrecorded simply because nobody in those days was very interested in what peasants did. It's such a window into the past. Here's a fraction of a canvas portraying peasant games, pastimes and other leisure activities. You can see how old ladies sit companionably together outside the church, drunks sprawl on the benches outside the inn. A couple of people are fighting, and something is happening that looks like a conga. Some folk play a game involving tossing balls into holes in the ground, while a boy in a chair tries to beat off his friends running around him and teasing him. There may be some sort of small religious procession in the foreground, and I think that boys in the distance are lining up to jump over a broom. Even further away, a bonfire is under construction.
You might have to search the whole painting (below) before you spot the location of all this activity, though.
I was sorry to miss the other 15 or so galleries of the Kunstkammer, (not to mention at least another whole floor of the museum), but actually the Kunst Historisches Museum is a bit overwhelming and I felt more at home in the Wien Museum, which is near the Charles Church, not far away.
Unusually for Vienna, the Wien Museum it is free to enter, so you can drop in when it suits you, and, in my view, better appreciate what it has to say. It is a modern museum which explains the city's story with the help of objects - paintings, posters, books, furniture and so on. I was struck by a painting celebrating Vienna's first ever municipal gas supply. It's reasonably competent art, but the interest lies in its story. It was commissioned by a deeply controversial man, Karl Lueger, who was mayor of Vienna between 1897 and 1910, and was in the habit of hiring artists to paint pictures that promoted himself.
This picture is large, and divided into three parts... It's big and hard to photograph but this is an overview, showing the period "before the arrival of town gas" to the left, "after town gas" to the right and, in the middle, two symbolic female figures.
In "Before," (below) Vienna is made ugly by its coal-gas factories and charcoal production. Both the rich and poor struggle in this dirty place to see their way through smog, crowds, animals and piles of goods. They are illuminated only by the inefficient, "fish tail" burners of the time, which were dim, and stank, and flickered so maddeningly that they made people ill.
The next detail (below) shows two female symbolic figures The top one represents Vienna, carrying a new gas lamp like a sceptre. Below her dainty feet crouches Britannia, representing the British company that previously supplied gas to the city. She is utterly wretched, crouching humiliated in the dirt with her primitive streetlamp smashed, and her dirty old gas pipe cracked.
To the right, rich men and clergy stroll along outside the cathedral, and beneath them, Vienna's magnificent, then-modern town hall (built 1872-83) looms over a well tended park, bright with modern gas lighting and packed with the rich bourgeois.
You will observe Karl Lueger, flatteringly portrayed as more handsome than he appears in photos, lifting his silk hat graciously. Those shown around him appear to have been painted from life, and may have been local dignitaries. But the ones I couldn't take my eyes off were the three women so prominently shown in front of him.
Leuger took care to be seen with women supporters. Although they couldn't vote, he calculated that women could influence their husbands and children to elect him, and like many populists of the time, he enjoyed an ardent female fanbase of women who needed somewhere to direct their emotions. They were known at the time as "Lueger's Amazons" (female warriors).
In those days, a celibate man was admired, and so Lueger remained unmarried and said he was devoting himself to his work. (After his death his mistress published a candid memoir which revealed a different side of him, however. How shocked those respectable Amazons might have been if they had known!)
Are these three ladies members of his tribe of "Amazons"? When I first saw them I certainly felt uncomfortable. The rich, well dressed one on the left has the cold stare of a wicked queen, the one in the middle is wearing a creature on her head resembling a cross between a bird of prey and a stealth missile, and the one on the right ....well.... I dunno. I just wouldn't like to meet any of them on a dark night, well-illuminated or not.
Leuger laid the foundations for Vienna's excellent infrastructure, which has stood the city in good stead. But antisemitism, misogyny and hate were the tools he used to gain support. He told the usual far right story of "we're in a mess because of .... [insert name of scapegoats]" which speaks to the most primitive human emotions, and usually works, however illogical the reasoning that is offered to support it.
In fact, the Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph, personally loathed Leuger, disapproving so strongly of his divisive approach that he refused three times to confirm him as Vienna's mayor. Still,
when the Emperor was finally persuaded to give way, Leuger was elected with a huge majority, so cultivating the ladies obviously paid off. Perhaps they didn't believe they themselves were included in the women whose fault things were.
The museum also displays a beautiful ceremonial chair (above) that Lueger designed for himself. The craftsmen who made it hid a note inside the chair's structure which was only discovered a hundred years later, when it needed to be conserved. The note said how much they hated him. These days in the city's Lueger Square, his statue is regularly defaced, and nobody is quite sure what to do with it.
Lueger died in 1910, and then there was the First World War. After that, Vienna became extremely left wing: the period is called "Red Vienna" and all kinds of social innovations were made which further improved the infrastructure. You can sometimes spot artwork around the city that comes from this period, like this Communist style mural of happy healthy children on a block of flats.
Vienna is famous for its coffee and cream cakes, and many of the traditional coffee shops attract long queues of tourists. They have prices to match and rude or indifferent service. We didn't eat out much, but did visit the Cafe Central, because that is not only historic but also has a good reputation, which we found it lived up to.
On one cold and blustery day we lunched in its glassed-over courtyard,several stories high with a slightly Palm Court atmosphere. Here, a kind and friendly waiter helped to make our meal really cosy and congenial - and the cakes were great!
We also loved The Third Man Museum. You have to plan carefully to be able to visit, as it is only open for a few hours once a week, but it's run by real hardcore fans of The Third Man film, who have funded the whole thing themselves. They have spared no time and expense in putting together one of the very best private collections of film memorabilia and Viennese wartime history that I have ever seen. Throughout the museum you can find videos of relevant interviews they have conducted, and visits they have taken to pursue aspects of "Third Man" lore. (Who knew that Osaka Central railway station played the "Third Man" theme to announce the departure of the day's last train?)
He was likeable, genial and full of amusing anecdotes, and pointed out that the half-ruined Vienna tof the film was just a playground to him in those days.
The museum has a section full of memorabilia of this curious post war period when the bomb-shattered city was divided into "zones" run by Britain, the US and Russia. Everything from care packages to military memos and American soldiers' letters home showed the human side of this curious historical interlude.
We visited many other things in Vienna, including the personal railway station built for the last emperor. It was built by Otto Wagner, a groundbreaking architect of the late 19th and early 20th century who deserved to be world famous but unluckily made little impact outside Vienna. Even here, not much of his work has survived, and this is one of very few buildings that still exists relatively unaltered.
He had the difficult task of building something incredibly imperial on a budget, so the decoration on the waiting room (for instance) is only woven into fabric instead of inlaid in wood as one might expect. This octagonal room features a magnificent painting showing an eagle's eye view of the city, but because of poor old Otto Wagner's bad luck, even this little gem narrowly escaped permanent disfigurement, and was restored only in this century.
Oh, I'll just tell you a little more about the Archduchess who had once lived in our accommodation. Poor woman, her family was about as dysfunctional as a family could be, and she was not an easy person herself. During her tempestuous life, she shot a love rival, who later died, employed armed guards to ensure she had custody of her children, and became such an ardent socialist that she took her son out of school and set him to work in a factory. Her biography on Wikipedia reads like part of the synopsis of a family saga about the Habsburgs. It is interesting, but we were glad that she didn't live in the house any more!
Yes, my goodness I really need to work on this blogging. I've forgotten how many posts I've started then scrapped because they're out of date. Well, this time, I won't scrap what I wrote in early August, I'll just update it...
And sooo, we went to Shrewsbury in Shropshire a few weeks ago, a nice old city full of half timbered buildings of all sizes and with plenty of interesting things to see. We liked the huge medieval church of St. Mary in the centre of town, open to all to explore, and busy with exhibitions and special events. It has a big shady churchyard excellent cafe, and all its fixtures and fittings are being preserved. Of all those fine fittings, it was this huge yellow clock from 1747 that appealed to me most. It was probably intended for use in the service quarters of the church, (now the cafe), but I think it is so elegant and simple. I think I might like to decorate one of my rooms in this appealing colour scheme of yellow and gold.
Shropshire adjoins several different counties, and since we are not often in that part of the world it seemed like a good idea to explore the area a bit. In a drive that took us into neighbouring Worcestershire, we passed a sort of castle by the side of the road. It looked to be a gatehouse and lodge of some old mansion, likely built in the same castle-like style.
I couldn't find any castles on the satellite map, but since a little sign stood nearby indicating that a public right of way went through the gate, we parked and walked right in to explore.
After a couple of hundred feet it felt as if we'd entered another realm. It was wonderful. Acres of crops full of wild flowers stretched out on either side, and no sound but the distant lowing of cattle and hundreds of birds. It was like a nature reserve, with every hedge and field full of variety and different from the last one. We couldn't believe it.
But, as the cynics say, there is a worm in every bud, and as we got back to the car I noticed a house opposite had a big sign in its window proclaiming "NO QUARRY!" So when we returned to our Airbnb, I checked up and learned that the land'had once been the grounds of a stately home known as Lea Castle.. Here's a photograph of Lea Castle taken about 100 years ago.
It seems that so many of Britain's country houses, it fell on hard times and was demolished, and after a while a villagey little care centre for people with learning difficulties was built in one bit of the land . That has now gone, and there's also a small private housing estate on another bit of the land, though we didn't see it. All we saw was a riding stables and the farm - all that unspoiled and curiously old fashioned farmland full of heartsease and St. Johns Wort and poppies and broom, skylarks and a huge colony of rooks.
Anyway, the quarry. It seems the farm's owner (opposed by his environmentalist son, apparently) is determined to turn the whole place into a huge quarry which would tear up the whole lot up to extract sand and gravel for construction. That would mean noise, pollution and constant heavy traffic transporting the sand and gravel. Many local people think it will be far too near schools and residential buildings to be safe, and earlier this year they took the developers to court to stop the scheme. They won, but, predictably, the developer appealed. When you consider how much money is to be made, the cost of prolonging a court battle must be negligible to a big company, I guess. .
It isn't fair, but the local people have to muster again for another fight. Read about their campaign here, They're fundraising like crazy, seeking volunteer advisors with planning and legal expertise and organising public events. It's like David against Goliath, but I've contributed to their appeal. I wondered if they could try and get the place designated as a nature reserve, but I don't know if that would be possible. .
Another day I went from Shrewsbury into South Staffordshire to see the extraordinary rock houses at Kinver Edge, now in the care of the National Trust. With views over the surrounding wooded hills, these unusual cottages were created a long time ago (nobody knows exactly when) when people burrowed into a bluff of red sandstone called Holy Austen Rock, near the interesting village of Kinver. Some of the dwellings were inhabited until well into the 20th century, and it is said that they were considered rather desirable by many people - at least, tcompared with the draughty ramshackle old cottages where most poor people lived a century and more ago. But times change, and the houses had been abandoned for years when the Trust took them over.
Here's the path from the rock houses down to the village.
Below, the large tree conceals quite a lot of the site, which is bigger than it looks here. It is built on three levels, although only a few of the dwellings have been restored or re-purposed so far.
Something is known of the residents and a few were photographed going about their lives. I snapped one print that I specially liked. It reminded me of the Hobbits, and I love the tin chimney sticking out of the rock!
One of the cottages is now colonised by bats (it is a cave, after all). Not sure how they get in and out but obviously not through the front door...
A couple of rooms in the restored cottages have been furnished to look as they did in the early 1900s. Quite a snug home it must have been - well insulated by all the rock I think. And that coal range would have been delightful on a lonely winter night.
A teashop and a respectable Victorian villa are built into the rock face on the top level of the settlement so we bought some tea and sat in a delightful garden amidst the red rocks and looked at the view while we had it.
And at that point in August, I stopped writing the post, so there it is..... But I did go to other places and one that I look back on fondly was taking our second oldest grandson, A, to a Museum of Science Fiction in a lovely little town.
It's Bromyard, in Herefordshire, not so very far from Shrewsbury in fact. The museum's housed in an ancient house-turned-shop plus a network of underground cellars at one end of the High Street.
Bromyard is the sort of large village or small town where cosy British murder mysteries tend to be set . It is peaceful and well kept, and with baskets of flowers everywhere including the porch of this old pub I snapped in the evening.
Young A. really likes the long running British TV series "Dr. Who. " So do his brother and his parents. In fact, if you're British, you have likely grown up with this iconic programme - I certainly did.
It revolves around a traveller in space and time called "Dr. Who" and his companion who is generally the opposite sex to the Doctor, though they don't have a romantic relationship. Both Doctor and companion regenerate into completely different people from time to time and every new Doctor and companion have very distinct styles and personalities. Their vehicle through time and space is a vintage police phone box called the Tardis, whose main characteristic is being infinitely larger inside than it appears outside.
As you've probably guessed, the programme ranges very widely through different adventure scenarios. Various Doctors have, for instance, been captured by stone age people trying to rediscover the secret of fire, and hung out with Vincent Van Gogh in 19th century France. They have been embroiled in a future war created by a sinister algorithm, met thriller-writer Agatha Christie at a murderous 1926 dinner party, and got mixed up in a war between the Rutans and Sontaran clone species. Or hundreds of other things. They encounter other time-and-space travellers regularly (few of them pleasant) and many ohers highly inventive and often creepy monsters and aliens.
Of all the aliens in the show, by far the best known are the Daleks which appeared at the beginning of the first ever series. You will spot a couple of Daleks in the 18th century bow windows of the museum, and here are some more.
The Daleks are a bit worrying if you're four years old but after being around for about sixty years they've now acquired a place in British society like the Doctor's familiar old friends who just happen to enjoy acting tough. Their gravelly monotone voices and catchword "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" are even more distinctive than their appendages made out of sink plungers. In fact, they've become so familiar they sometimes make welcome appearances at village fetes, and are sometimes even seen participating in morris dances. (And if you can find more unthreatening things than morris dancing, I'd like to know). But that's good. At least it is as far as I am concerned.
The museum has a wonderful collection of props and memorabilia, relying heavier on the earlier episodes than the later ones. And there's a full sized Tardis in the front office which was used for filming.
And was pleased see that K-9, the lovable robot dog, was there in the flesh, so to speak. Here is a poster of K-9 at school.
For me the museum was all about the atmosphere: very immersive with lighting and sound effects, and a rambling layout thats' almost entirely underground. It is so wonderfully idiosyncratic because it all belongs to just one family, I was told.
We all loved it and also liked Bromyard, which has a nice bakery, some old pubs, and lots of individually run, interesting shops. Original paintings were displayed in the windows of many of the shops as part of an town art trail and when I wandered into Bromyard art studios and gallery I could see why. It is a lively place which runs low cost professionally taught art classes which were clearly very popular and some people were producing some amazing work. Some was on commission, some was for sale. This picture particularly caught my eye. It is a large canvas of "Leda and the Swan" and I really liked its feeling of movement and mystery.
So those were my two most recent trips away from home. Unfortunately I've now done something to my right leg and now staying at home resting it and hoping that I'll be okay to go to Austria in a couple of weeks time. Fingers crossed!
After months of poring over legal contracts, dealing with bureaucrats, and various other little trials, I feel we're out of the woods for now and can get on with some normal life. Which has included seeing the spring and early summer unfold in some real woods. It's been a real pleasure and I'm sure the bluebell season lasted longer than usual this year too.
Mid April there were hundreds of thousands of bluebells in the ancient Abbey Wood in Southeast London. No, make that millions, I'm sure the numbers must have reached that - I've never seen so many! They just went on and on. The large and wonderful wood is hardly mentioned in most guides to London, and is actually a little known treasure even to Londoners, too. It is in the far southeast of the city and I learned that William Morris used to walk through it to the station when he needed to catch a train to London from his home in nearby Bexleyheath (now in the care of the National Trust)
My pictures probably give an idea of the blueness of the flowers, but doesn't capture the effect of all the other, less obvious spring flowers that were also covering the ground. Areas of glimmering anemones, starry yellow celandines, fragile stitchworts and deep purple violets made it look in parts like a huge embroidered carpet.
In early May, we had a few days in the countryside, and on our first day took a modest footpath that led into a rather grand private estate. After passing the immaculate tennis courts and vineyard, we found ourselves on a most beautiful grass-fringed stream winding through woodland and meadows . What with the birdsong and butterflies and the sun shining through, it felt like the Garden of Eden, and there were still sheets of bluebells !
We were in East Sussex, not far from London, but our location was so remote that Google couldn't direct us the house where we stayed. When we found it, access was via a steep, winding, very narrow lane, a bit terrifying at first, but worth it. Below is the view from the window seat in our cottage., framing the view of an an old weatherboarded water mill where the owner of the land lives.
This mill was, surprisingly, built in the 17th century to power a furnace. The area where we stayed was near the Ashdown Forest, where for 100 years the local celebrities have been Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin. But the real people living in the area spent centuries smelting iron in tiny hamlets and farmsteads with names like "Hugget's Furnace" - many of the names still surviving on local maps today refer to ironworking.
I found it very interesting, because I am a fan of the "Mantelmass Chronicles" by veteran writer Barbara Willard, which are set in Ashdown Forest too. "Mantlemass" is a multi -novel family saga about generations of an ironworking family from the 15th century onwards. Here's the cover of my copy of "The Iron Lily" a pivotal book in the series, which tells how Lilias, orphaned in 1557 by the plague, is forced out of her home but eventually makes a good life as a master in a man's world.
The books were published in the 1970s, which was just before the kind of books offered to young people started to change drastically. Willard was born in 1909, so would have missed what we now call "YA" fiction, which rarely aims to convey an authentic sense of living in England of the past, family continuity or being present in the natural world. Those type of books are generally marketed for adults now. I am sure teens can find them if they want, and I hope some do.
So re-reading "The Iron Lily" recently, I thought that some enterprising publisher might re-package these books for adults. I don't know if Netflix is into making family sagas, but these stories are too good to sit forgotten on a shelf. I found a book review blog called Semicolon here, which has reviewed the series recently. I wonder if you think they'd appeal to you?
We have also been to Suffolk again since my last post, where I mentioned my friend's pond which is shaped like an eye. (it looks crazy when you view it from above on Google). On our more recent trip to Suffolk the sun came out occasionally so we managed to snatch this shot of the eye looking a bit less tearful. It hadn't been quite so wet, and flooding had receded, so you can start to see the shape with the little island forming the iris in the middle and the spoil heap from the digging creating an "eyebrow".
Whenever it has seemed summery, we've tried to get out on our bikes. We went recently to South Kensington to see the final days of the "Secret Life of the Home" at the Science Museum.
It's an imaginatively displayed collection of vintage household objects, designed nearly 30 years ago by Tim Hunkin, whose offbeat interest in how machines work made his Secret Life of Machines ITV series so watchable in the 1980s. He brought the same quirkiness to the gallery, with entertaining films, recordings and ads to cast light upon things on display.
My favourite objects included a fiendishly complicated 1950s burglar alarm involving a 78 rpm record automatically calling the local police station via a rotary dial phone in a voice considerably posher than King Charles' voice today. But best of all for me was the Hoover "Keymatic" washing machine (below).
I found the launch ad on Youtube, which explains that it is fully automatic, as though this is a great novelty. Was it really the first fully automatic washing machine in Britain? I wonder.
Anyway I like the Keymatic because it reminds me of the house my grandmother, her two sisters and their friend shared in South West London. Almost nothing ever changed in that house, and I loved it. My auntie told me the family had bought the very best when they moved in during the 1920s, so there was rarely any reason for getting anything new. Made sense to me.
So imagine my surprise when one day in 1963 I skipped into the scullery to find a gleaming new Hoover Keymatic installed under the wooden draining rack. Their 1930s washing machine had given up so they'd bought the very latest and best model available to carry on the good work. Easy to use, with an intriguing beaky appearance and attractive peacock blue top, it worked like a dream and really did end the trials of washday for them. It immediately became a well-liked member of the household, and sloshed away reliably for the rest of their lives. I can't look at it without thinking of them. So I liked seeing that long-ago familiar shape in the gallery.
All the exhibits will now be housed in the museum's huge new storage facility out in Wroughton, Wiltshire. They promise public tours but I am sad to have closed the gallery at all. Hunkin's approach was engaging and unique, and I so hope it won't be replaced by something too earnest.
Last weekend we went to see another new gallery at another museum, So glad I live in a city with lots of free museums! This is in East London, at Bethnal Green, and it is part of the Victoria and Albert museum of applied and decorative arts. The building used to be known as the V&A Museum of Childhood and has now been extensively refurbished and re- branded to become the Young V&A .... supposedly ...
... well I guess they forgot to tell the person who did the mosaic sign on the front wall.....
The old Museum of Childhood was another one I'd always liked. It was very Victorian and barely changed for decades, full of huge mahogany and glass cases containing all kinds of truly gorgeous toys and curious objects. It was one of our own kids' favourite outings, too. But - you know what ? Despite all that, we were thrilled at the new museum. It is now an even better place to take your kids!
It occupies a building from the 1850s with two tall, very large aisles flanking a long central space and roofed with arches of glass and iron. It still has lots of splendid toys, but now they play their part in stimulating childrens' imaginations, and are carefully curated to help them consider design. It's also incredibly entertaining,
I tried the gallery on the left hand side first. It visitors with a series of questions which can be answered with reference to different toys and images. "Where do you want to go?" could include anywhere, but they give you some ideas: evening in the desert, a wintry haunted house, a mad planet where the stars are made out of soup - and Hokusai's famous "Wave" print, which was my choice of where to go. Not being tossed around on that fierce sea, but skimming somehow above it, directly headed to Mount Fuji in Japan.
This print is the first in Hokusai's set of "36 Views of Mount Fuji". But, incredibly, despite the title, I only recently noticed that Mount Fuji was right in the middle of the picture. Hokusai had a sense of humour, and I think he knew most people would be too busy looking at the big wave to notice the famous mountain in the distance looking rather like a white-capped wave itself.
"Who would you like to meet?" is the next question. I decided I'd like to meet this interesting couple (below) dating from the Middle Ages. They are wodewoses, mythical figures or spirits of nature, who were popular figures across Europe. They seem to be bringing mythical figures out of the woods - and I would like to meet those too. As you see, the wodewoses are covered with long shaggy hair, although Mrs. Woodwose has fashionable "ripped jeans" look about her knees, and her babies will not get a mouthful of fur when they feed. They really are a fine pair.
And how (in answer to the next question) would I choose to travel?
There's only one answer to this. The Pink Fantasy Flyer was in the old museum, and I loved it then and still do!
I cannot detail it all, but can only recommend this collection, whatever your age may be.
Currently the special exhibition is on Japanese folk tales and manga, aiming show how manga and the films of the Ghibli studios draw heavily on Japanese folk ideas and customs, particularly the Yokai who are wildly imaginative magic creatures. Many of the Japanese objects in the show are made with astounding skill. I loved this tiny 19th century netsuke carving, which seems to be loosely based on on the traditional story of the "Wonderful Tea Kettle. " in which a magical animal lives in a tea kettle and terrifies the priest and everyone at the temple. (I don't think the original story includes this bare footed lady). It's beautifully done - and yet it is barely more than an inch long.
There was also an equally skilled modern artwork in which a tree has been created out of a cardboard carrier bag.
You must peep inside and see that small things matter, says the artist
After the show, we had a cup of tea at the Gallery Cafe in Old Ford Road nearby, a place we generally go to when we're in Bethnal Green. We like the friendly unpretentious atmosphere, and there's a garden and outside seating too. It belongs to a charitable organisation called St. Margarets which does lots of good works locally , so you can feel that your meal is in a good cause, as well as being nice.
And, after a grey and overcast day, the sun actually came out in the early evening for our cycle back home! I keep thinking as we pedalled along that it would be nice to have a bit more sun, but on the other hand, looking at the 40+ degree temperatures in southern Europe, I'll settle for grey drizzle any day.
