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Diary – 2019 August
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All my diary pages going back to 2009
DRAWING & PAINTING:
1 August
This is Baker Street Station, I like to see stations that still have all the original tiles and colours.
We went to Golders Hill Park in Hampstead. Firstly we had our sandwiches under the pergola. The wood pigeon came wandering up to us, so he got just a few crumbs.
Brown Teddy said this would be a wonderful climbing tree if it wasn't in the ornamental garden. Everything was in full bloom and we took loads of photos.
Purple is my favourite flower colour, at least for today! This is a Red Hot Poker, made up of hundreds of tiny tubular flowers.
These mop-head hydrangeas are as big as me. As usual, Brown Teddy is admiring the brown tree with its ornamental stripy bark.
The little pond had ducks, ducklings, geese and a couple of seagulls. This one is trying swallow a big piece of bread. The pigeons were walking round the sides and taking drinks from the low edges.
We all like the stumpery in the shade with lots of ferns and bracken. This stump is laid across the little stream.
4 August
The weather is quite hot and the fish are lazing around in the weed at the edges.
We have replaced the plants with grass on this strip by the side of the pond, so it can be trodden on safely when doing things with the pond. One last Oriental Poppy making an appearance.
My favourite Spartan apples are growing well. Brown Teddy's favourite apples are Russet.
7 August
We went to the Science Museum today in Kensington. This display has all the old household appliances. These are an apple peeler and apple corer. This is an old coin-operated electricity meter from the 1920's. It meant you never used more electricity than you could afford.
Old washboards, and an old washing machine with a separate mangle wringer on top.
This is one of the first vacuum cleaners, a huge cart that was parked outside the house and vacuum tubes put in through the window to clean the room. Here are the household vacuum cleaners that came later, so everyone could have their own.
This is a very old television that had to be vertical because of the long tube, so it had a mirror on top which displayed the reversed picture from the tube. As television screens were so small, you could get one of these, an acrylic gel-filled magnifying screen.
Old record players. The second photo is a type of burglar alarm, when triggered by a break-in, it would phone the police station and then automatically play the disk, which has a recorded message to report the crime and give the address.
Then we went into the Ciphers Exhibition.
There are an Enigma machine and Lorenz machine, for coding top secret messages.
The chaotic pendulum has two joined arms that swing round, producing endlessly random positions, from which to make up encryption keys for internet messages. This is the Queen's former emergency telephone.
This is an experimental cipher machine from 1908, and a trial piece for Babbage's Difference Engine No.1 from 1832.
This is the Greenwich Time Signal machine from 1970 that produced the six pips of sound before each hour.
9 August
Lots of heavy rain and downpours, and bright sunny intervals. This rainbow was over my garden at the back and over the houses at the front.
10 August
Today we visited friends in the Midlands. Where our friends live, all the fields were yellow with ripe wheat.
We went out to Harrold Wood and had a lovely meal at the picnic tables by the lake.
Our friends have a huge tank with two clown fish and a big shrimp, but mainly corals and anemones. We spent ages watching it all!
There were lots of roadworks on our journey home.
There was lots of heavy rain as well, so that slowed us down, but we followedg a huge bright rainbow for several miles.
The phone map app was very helpful, only 38 minutes to home! Here we go, over the Dartford Crossing bridge.
12 August
Today we went to the Museum of London. This is a long panorama of London, a gouache and pencil drawing produced in 1815 by Pierre Prevost. It is a study for a larger one to be displayed on the wall, in the round, in Paris at that time. A copy of it is above the original, with place names inserted.
Lots of small detail, all the people and their clothes, and things happening on the streets.
Then we went into the London Before London part. I just love little models, and here is a group of prehistoric people walking over the marsh on a walkway made of logs.
Here is what their hearth would have looked like, and the view from the roundhouse door. Very nice on a summer's day, but just imagine winter!
After the museum, we went to the Sky Garden. As it was rainy, the outside terrace was closed.
13 August
Today we went to the Tate Britain art gallery. It is very ornate inside.
I really like these patterns, fish scales on the floor, and a curving stairway down, with curved steps as well.
We went into the gallery with all the JMW Turner paintings. This is Moonlight at Millbank. We always look for the small details, here are a flock of sheep in the corner.
These realistic sea storm pictures are very real looking.
We got the bus back to Charing Cross Station. Trafalgar Square is always very crowded. This is the view from the top front bus seat.
14 August
We were surprised to see a walking dinosaur in our shopping centre. The children were very happy to talk to him, as he was so friendly and well behaved.
15 August
We went to Hampton Court. These blackberries and blueberries are in the Palace vegetable garden, covering a fence that hides some heaps of compost and equipment.
A huge squash in a cage. The vegetable garden also had a lot of flowers as well.
We had our sandwiches in a shady corner of the meadow garden. This robin came to see what was available in the way of crumbs.
Some rather smart metal dragons in the forecourt gardens.
We walked down the river towards the lock. As it was sunny, we could see lots of little tiddlers in the sandy shallows at the edge.
This is Molesey Lock and we watched the boats going in and out. The water is very turbulent when the sluices under the lock gates are opened.
18 August
Here is the lovely coleus plant that our friends gave us on our recent visit. I am sure it has got a bit bigger in the week. Our resident wood pigeon is trying to get a bigger than usual piece of bread down. Often we soak the bread so he can break it up easily if he wants. Sometimes he gets a few bird pellets, that we normally keep for the other sparrows.
20 August
We went to Southwark Park. We were surprised to find the big drinking fountain actually working. We went into the flower garden, this is a honesty plant with big papery seed pods.
We like the back part with the shady pergolas. I think a lot of the flowers have gone over now, as other years it has been full of colour.
Lots of big fat rose hips. These are tangled wisteria stems under the pergola, and I think they could stand up on their own without the brickwork.
The sundial says it is nearly lunch time, and it is an hour behind our watches, as we are now on British Summer Time.
The lake was covered in duckweed and this duck is making a trail through it.
We walked back along the Thames path. This big drinking fountain is in a green square between some houses, it must have been part of a park at some time. Down on the foreshore people were looking for interesting things amongst the mud and stones.
We had our sandwiches at Kings Stairs and watched the river traffic go by, which is much less at low tide.
24 August
We are putting a new pump into the pond, and it was hard work getting the clip off the tube, it had to be soaked in hot water to loosen it.
The fish are now very happy, having been without the water flow for a day. All the apples are now getting ripe, these are Cox apples.
Later on I noticed the frog in the pump corner. He is still deciding if he likes the new pump or not! I think he does, because it is very quiet.
25 August
This is Liverpool Street Station, very busy. I like to see the old Victorian ironwork roofs and painted columns.
It was a long and very hot walk from the train station to the River Lee Country Park Waterways event. This is a giant deckchair so people can take selfies. The canal art stall was very interesting.
Then we crossed the bridge to get down to the canal. In the near distance we could see the River Lee Whitewater Centre and all the canoes.
Canal boats double parked along the River Lee Navigation canal. We were glad to get onto the lower path into the shade under the trees. All the boats were covered in brilliantly coloured flags. There is another river very close called River Lea with a different spelling, but they are all part of the same water source that goes towards London.
Quite a few of the boats have Rosie and Jim dolls, and my favourites are these knitted ones. Rosie And Jim was a children's programme about two dolls and Duck, who lived on a canal boat, and the owners John and Pat would go somewhere interesting en route. At the end of the programme Pat did a drawing with Duck hidden somewhere in the picture, and Rosie and Jim also did their own drawings.
We walked along to Waltham Common Lock 10, then further along the canal path to get to the train station. It was very hot indeed, and we were looking forward to sitting down in the shade on our train.
Just outside Cheshunt Station, we waited at the level crossing while several trains passed. It is called Windmill Lane Level Crossing. We went on the train to Seven Sisters station, and then on the underground train to Victoria Station.
Here we are at Victoria Station on our last train to home. Time for a snack and a drink. The train was air conditioned and cool, such a relief after our very hot travels.
27 August
A very hot day, and today Woody had an extra long soak, well pressed down into the basin. I am sure he felt much better after that.
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