I got to see the Queen's Dutch paintings in the end. I nipped down from Piccadilly to the gallery and bought a ticket for the afternoon first thing yesterday when I got to London, before meeting a friend for a post-lunch snack. Or at least, a meal that was after she'd had (a business) lunch, and substituted for mine. The Dutch landscapes were jolly nice, and the staff let me in at 4.00pm as it was quietening down by then, although I'd got a 4.30pm entry ticket. On the way out I remembered to get my ticket stamped, and tucked it away safely, so I can have free entry to the gallery for the next twelve months. Coming up this winter is a show of photographs of Antarctic expeditions, which might be interesting, if I happen to be in London with a couple of hours to spare. This process of converting your exhibition ticket into an annual pass only works for tickets bought from the ticket desk at the gallery, not those got through travel agents or complimentary tickets. With time to spare before the cheap trains resumed, I walked back from Buckingham Palace to Liverpool Street. It really isn't very far, since walk up the Mall and you are in Trafalgar Square, which I always regard as eminently walkable. London looked rather beautiful in the sunlight.
I'm not surprised the Metropolitan Police have trouble with crowd control, though. My quick nip across Green Park to get my ticket for later co-incided with the tail end of trooping the colour. One police constable and a police community support officer were controlling the crowds of people waiting to cross the road in front of the Palace. Virtually no traffic passed, and we stood there as the little pedestrian light turned from red to green and back again, and the community support officer stood there with arms outstretched, indicating for us to stay on the pavement. Finally a middle aged woman spoke up and said that she wanted to get to Trafalgar Sqare. He indicated the direction, and she asked when she could cross the road. He said that we couldn't while trooping the colour was going on. Until she spoke he made no eye contact, never smiled, never spoke and didn't explain what the hold-up was and when we would be allowed to cross. I'm middle aged, middle class, white, with a strong RP accent, an air of confident bourgeois entitlement, and no history of police hasslement, and I don't much like the Metropolitan Police. If I were young, working class, black or Asian, with no house, degree or previous illustrious career to fall back on, and a definite history of being stopped by the police, I would probably like them a lot less. A cheery 'Sorry, folks, we're just waiting for the parade to finish, you'll all be on the move in five minutes' accompanied by a smile would have worked wonders.
Today, as it was such beautiful warm weather, and I was supposed to clean out the pond in September, and had bought the waders to do so, I put on the waders and stepped into the pond. Carefully. Happily it isn't deeper than my legs. I thought it wasn't, but the Systems Administrator had made some alarming mutterings. I pulled out all of the sedge or whatever the grassy thing is that was seeding everywhere, and scooped out as much of the duckweed as I could, using a plank as a boom. The sedge had formed great floating lumps, some of which I had to ask the S.A. to haul on from above while I pushed from below, they were so heavy. I scooped out some surplus oxygenating weed while I was in there, and some brown gloop, and left it all around the edge of the pond so that in theory any creatures in it could make their way back into the water. I feat that in practice any caught in the middle of the clumps of sedge will be well and truly stuck. I wore a short sleeved T shirt for this operation, as I hate dripping sleeves, and so discovered empirically that the leaves of the sedge or whatever it is have sharp edges.
Next year I'll get some nice iris, and maybe pickerel weed. We aren't overly well-endowed with aquatics suppliers around here, and it isn't an aspect of gardening I know much about, so it will probably be whatever B&Q are doing, if they do packs of pond plants next year like they did this year. No more sedge. That really does fall into the boss's bioplant category.
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