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London part 1: Friday
Trains
London came early this year. One of my dahn-sarf cousins is getting married in April, so the plan was always to book a few extra days off, head down early, and bimble around catching up with people and doing all kinds of London Things. The one slight hitch was that my cousin had inconsiderately arranged his wedding for the same weekend as Whitby (why don't non-goths check such things before getting married?) meaning half the people I wanted to see would be off partying... and doing so a mere hour away from Leeds. To add insult to injury, I kept coming across interesting exhibitions in London that I really wanted to see, all of which were closing just before I'd get down there. I don't think it's overly paranoid to suggest that somewhere, the Universe was pointing at me and sniggering.
However, the Universe should never be allowed to get things all its own way, and I had a secret weapon on my side: advance rail tickets. Suddenly, taking a trip to London on a whim was completely affordable, as long as that whim came a couple of months in advance. (I am aware there are coaches and buses and Megabuses and Supermegadabbydozybuses that would be cheaper still, but I have a phobia of those. Or more precisely, a phobia of getting stuck sat next to someone creepy without being able to escape to another carriage under the pretend of visiting the buffet car. I can't remember the latin name for this offhand, but I assume it's pretty common.)
The other advantage of advance tickets is that they come with a pre-booked seat, which - if you ask nicely - includes a shiny plug socket and free wi-fi. This meant I could make the most of the journey to thoroughly research all the things I wanted to see and do over the weekend. I didn't of course, since I spent most of the trip chatting to people on messenger, but the point is that I could have. Luckily I'd made some rough plans at work, during my lunch hour, and trusted to luck and the magic of tube maps to see me through the rest. In less time than it would take to walk into town and back, I was at Kings cross, and ready to set off towards the first item on my list, a photography exhibition at the British Library.
Treasures
I'd never been to the British Library before, and I had no idea that it was so close to Kings Cross. Probably because on previous visits, I'd never dared stray more than 20 yards from the station. Years of TV detective dramas had taught me that Kings Cross was the haunt of Bad Men, ready to snatch up innocent travellers from the North and force them into a sordid litany of crime, drugs, prostitution and horrible grisly death. Admittedly I'd never seen any of these Bad Men while scurrying from rail station to underground, but that just meant that they were lurking round the corner. As Bad Men do.
They must have all been off on their tea break when I arrived, because I managed to walk the few hundred yards to the British Library completely unmolested. In fact, the whole area was rather lacking as far as sinks of iniquity go, displaying an innocent facade of shops, banks, Burger Kings, and a rather nice looking cafe plaza in front of the Library itself. Which was also not quite as I expected. I was aware that, being a library, it would have the odd book or two stashed away somewhere. But I wasn't prepared for it being quite so big. Or impressive. Or full of secret magical treasures.
In the heart of the Library is a darkened room, full of glass cases, in which lurk all sorts of paper-based delights. Illuminated manuscripts from every religion mankind has ever invented, maps dating from when the world was centred on Rome through to the first detailed plans made for the Ordinance Survey maps, notebooks full of landmark scientific discoveries and musical notation. For me the absolute highlight was the original drafts of all kinds of works of literature: from the handwritten tomes of Hardy to the Plath's neatly typed poems with hand-scrawled mends. There was even an early anglo-saxon transcript of Beowulf, alongside Seamus Heaney's notes for his modern translation. People who know how giddy I get around books will know that his is as close as I get to a religious experience. You could practically touch the pages that these authors had poured their imaginations onto, in some sort of papery fingertip communion. (Except of course you couldn't, because of the glass cases. They obviously saw me coming.) There was also the Magna Carta tucked away in it's own little room; compared to all the other items on display it looked small and dull, like a boring legal document. Which is what it is, so it was all strangely appropriate. (In fact, that should be ~a~ Magna Carta, as like all good legal documents it was created in triplicate, the other copies presumably having been lost down the back of a filing cabinet somewhere.)
The overwhelming feeling was one of being smacked around the head by time, by history, and my own misconceptions. I mean, I do know that the printing press was invented a very long time back, that all kinds of things we think of as relatively modern industrial-era inventions have been with us for centuries, even millennia. And yet my brain persists in holding onto a picture in which all technology happened during Victorian times, and everything before that was stone clubs and dinosaurs and throwing chicken legs over your shoulder. (I blame Steampunk.) But you'd be looking at a perfectly printed page of text, and find it dated back to the 1400s. And then go over to the oriental exhibits, and do the same thing, but the date here was the 800s. And some of the older illuminated manuscripts looked like contemporary design work, with clean lines and colours and interesting use of space and typography. For some reason this made the sense of time more vivid and more real, rather than less. I walked out the room feeling like I'd been hurtled through the pages of a leather-bound time machine.
The photography exhibition could have been a bit of an anti-climax after all this, but it helped that it was in a similar vein and just reinforced that sense of time and timelessness. Again, while I'd realised how long photography had been around, I'd never grasped just how early it had become widespread, and while some images were so stereotypically old fashioned looking as to seem like a pastiche, others among the very early images looked like they could have been taken yesterday. For some reason it was very jarring seeing photographs of Charles Dickens - in my mind he comes from a time of urchins and horses and portraiture. There were also examples of photo manipulation and enhancement dating back almost to the first print - so much for people who claim photoshop-enhanced or HDR photography is somehow inauthentic...
Towering infernos
At this point, I was feeling very pleased with myself for actually doing some cultural stuff instead of just heading straight to a pub. So to celebrate, I went to the pub. I've only been to Big Red a couple of times but already it feels like home (only with less piles of clothes and books heaped in odd corners.) I sent a couple of texts to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kittylyst to let him know I'd arrived, and settled in to wait with a pint and that all round bounder and cad Flashman for company. As it turns out, it would have been easier for Kitty to get my messages if I'd actually sent them to him instead of to someone with a similar phone number, but he managed to track me down in the end. (Besides, it's always good to add a little mystery and intrigue into the lives of complete strangers.) I was introduced to a couple of different complete strangers over a quick pint, then it was time to dump bag and get ready for the evening.
The original plan was for a quick change then head straight out to a couple of gothy clubs. However one of these vanished under mysterious circumstances, leading to less going out and more wine and youtube and talk of London and California and literature and browser wars (and shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings) while waiting for Inferno to open. I discovered the delights of literal lyrics music videos and pick-your-favourite-Amanda-Palmer.
I also discovered that you can in fact get from Holloway Road to Camden by means of a wonderful mechanical contrivance known a a bus, rather than trekking all the way back to the tube station and making a line-hopping journey via Kings Cross. (Hah - take that, lurking Bad Men - foiled again!) Apparently it is entirely possible to use these 'buses' to make all kinds of journeys across London, without once setting foot on the underground, but so far I remain unconvinced - unless I can trace a journey on a multi-coloured cats-cradle of lines, I don't trust it. On this occasion the bus did in fact behave and deposit us safely in Camden. Or somewhere that was probably Camden - the End of the World is still there, which was reassuring, but not much else that I remembered. It could be that the place has changed beyond recognition, or it could just be that it's 10 years since I was there last, and my memory is slightly shonky.
I'd never been to the Electric Ballroom before, although I've definitely heard of it. (I think. Is it one of those places that's been a music venue for ever and ever, or at least since the 60s? Or am I just making that up?) Although this first visit was very nearly foiled by the efforts of some over-zealous doormen. It was the kind of rambling place I love, with big rooms and small rooms and hidden stairs and balconies and booths. (Admittedly looking back it's probably far smaller and simpler in reality than in my head as new places always do seem 10 times as big and as complex as they actually turn out to be, but still.) Plus it's always exciting going out somewhere new - I do love Leeds, but I've been here so long that pretty much any club feels like going out in my front room at times. The only downside was that it was pretty empty, at least to begin with. But there was good music and good company, and overall it was a great night :-)
(Part 2,3 and 4 to follow!)
Trains
London came early this year. One of my dahn-sarf cousins is getting married in April, so the plan was always to book a few extra days off, head down early, and bimble around catching up with people and doing all kinds of London Things. The one slight hitch was that my cousin had inconsiderately arranged his wedding for the same weekend as Whitby (why don't non-goths check such things before getting married?) meaning half the people I wanted to see would be off partying... and doing so a mere hour away from Leeds. To add insult to injury, I kept coming across interesting exhibitions in London that I really wanted to see, all of which were closing just before I'd get down there. I don't think it's overly paranoid to suggest that somewhere, the Universe was pointing at me and sniggering.
However, the Universe should never be allowed to get things all its own way, and I had a secret weapon on my side: advance rail tickets. Suddenly, taking a trip to London on a whim was completely affordable, as long as that whim came a couple of months in advance. (I am aware there are coaches and buses and Megabuses and Supermegadabbydozybuses that would be cheaper still, but I have a phobia of those. Or more precisely, a phobia of getting stuck sat next to someone creepy without being able to escape to another carriage under the pretend of visiting the buffet car. I can't remember the latin name for this offhand, but I assume it's pretty common.)
The other advantage of advance tickets is that they come with a pre-booked seat, which - if you ask nicely - includes a shiny plug socket and free wi-fi. This meant I could make the most of the journey to thoroughly research all the things I wanted to see and do over the weekend. I didn't of course, since I spent most of the trip chatting to people on messenger, but the point is that I could have. Luckily I'd made some rough plans at work, during my lunch hour, and trusted to luck and the magic of tube maps to see me through the rest. In less time than it would take to walk into town and back, I was at Kings cross, and ready to set off towards the first item on my list, a photography exhibition at the British Library.
Treasures
I'd never been to the British Library before, and I had no idea that it was so close to Kings Cross. Probably because on previous visits, I'd never dared stray more than 20 yards from the station. Years of TV detective dramas had taught me that Kings Cross was the haunt of Bad Men, ready to snatch up innocent travellers from the North and force them into a sordid litany of crime, drugs, prostitution and horrible grisly death. Admittedly I'd never seen any of these Bad Men while scurrying from rail station to underground, but that just meant that they were lurking round the corner. As Bad Men do.
They must have all been off on their tea break when I arrived, because I managed to walk the few hundred yards to the British Library completely unmolested. In fact, the whole area was rather lacking as far as sinks of iniquity go, displaying an innocent facade of shops, banks, Burger Kings, and a rather nice looking cafe plaza in front of the Library itself. Which was also not quite as I expected. I was aware that, being a library, it would have the odd book or two stashed away somewhere. But I wasn't prepared for it being quite so big. Or impressive. Or full of secret magical treasures.
In the heart of the Library is a darkened room, full of glass cases, in which lurk all sorts of paper-based delights. Illuminated manuscripts from every religion mankind has ever invented, maps dating from when the world was centred on Rome through to the first detailed plans made for the Ordinance Survey maps, notebooks full of landmark scientific discoveries and musical notation. For me the absolute highlight was the original drafts of all kinds of works of literature: from the handwritten tomes of Hardy to the Plath's neatly typed poems with hand-scrawled mends. There was even an early anglo-saxon transcript of Beowulf, alongside Seamus Heaney's notes for his modern translation. People who know how giddy I get around books will know that his is as close as I get to a religious experience. You could practically touch the pages that these authors had poured their imaginations onto, in some sort of papery fingertip communion. (Except of course you couldn't, because of the glass cases. They obviously saw me coming.) There was also the Magna Carta tucked away in it's own little room; compared to all the other items on display it looked small and dull, like a boring legal document. Which is what it is, so it was all strangely appropriate. (In fact, that should be ~a~ Magna Carta, as like all good legal documents it was created in triplicate, the other copies presumably having been lost down the back of a filing cabinet somewhere.)
The overwhelming feeling was one of being smacked around the head by time, by history, and my own misconceptions. I mean, I do know that the printing press was invented a very long time back, that all kinds of things we think of as relatively modern industrial-era inventions have been with us for centuries, even millennia. And yet my brain persists in holding onto a picture in which all technology happened during Victorian times, and everything before that was stone clubs and dinosaurs and throwing chicken legs over your shoulder. (I blame Steampunk.) But you'd be looking at a perfectly printed page of text, and find it dated back to the 1400s. And then go over to the oriental exhibits, and do the same thing, but the date here was the 800s. And some of the older illuminated manuscripts looked like contemporary design work, with clean lines and colours and interesting use of space and typography. For some reason this made the sense of time more vivid and more real, rather than less. I walked out the room feeling like I'd been hurtled through the pages of a leather-bound time machine.
The photography exhibition could have been a bit of an anti-climax after all this, but it helped that it was in a similar vein and just reinforced that sense of time and timelessness. Again, while I'd realised how long photography had been around, I'd never grasped just how early it had become widespread, and while some images were so stereotypically old fashioned looking as to seem like a pastiche, others among the very early images looked like they could have been taken yesterday. For some reason it was very jarring seeing photographs of Charles Dickens - in my mind he comes from a time of urchins and horses and portraiture. There were also examples of photo manipulation and enhancement dating back almost to the first print - so much for people who claim photoshop-enhanced or HDR photography is somehow inauthentic...
Towering infernos
At this point, I was feeling very pleased with myself for actually doing some cultural stuff instead of just heading straight to a pub. So to celebrate, I went to the pub. I've only been to Big Red a couple of times but already it feels like home (only with less piles of clothes and books heaped in odd corners.) I sent a couple of texts to
kittylyst to let him know I'd arrived, and settled in to wait with a pint and that all round bounder and cad Flashman for company. As it turns out, it would have been easier for Kitty to get my messages if I'd actually sent them to him instead of to someone with a similar phone number, but he managed to track me down in the end. (Besides, it's always good to add a little mystery and intrigue into the lives of complete strangers.) I was introduced to a couple of different complete strangers over a quick pint, then it was time to dump bag and get ready for the evening.The original plan was for a quick change then head straight out to a couple of gothy clubs. However one of these vanished under mysterious circumstances, leading to less going out and more wine and youtube and talk of London and California and literature and browser wars (and shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings) while waiting for Inferno to open. I discovered the delights of literal lyrics music videos and pick-your-favourite-Amanda-Palmer.
I also discovered that you can in fact get from Holloway Road to Camden by means of a wonderful mechanical contrivance known a a bus, rather than trekking all the way back to the tube station and making a line-hopping journey via Kings Cross. (Hah - take that, lurking Bad Men - foiled again!) Apparently it is entirely possible to use these 'buses' to make all kinds of journeys across London, without once setting foot on the underground, but so far I remain unconvinced - unless I can trace a journey on a multi-coloured cats-cradle of lines, I don't trust it. On this occasion the bus did in fact behave and deposit us safely in Camden. Or somewhere that was probably Camden - the End of the World is still there, which was reassuring, but not much else that I remembered. It could be that the place has changed beyond recognition, or it could just be that it's 10 years since I was there last, and my memory is slightly shonky.
I'd never been to the Electric Ballroom before, although I've definitely heard of it. (I think. Is it one of those places that's been a music venue for ever and ever, or at least since the 60s? Or am I just making that up?) Although this first visit was very nearly foiled by the efforts of some over-zealous doormen. It was the kind of rambling place I love, with big rooms and small rooms and hidden stairs and balconies and booths. (Admittedly looking back it's probably far smaller and simpler in reality than in my head as new places always do seem 10 times as big and as complex as they actually turn out to be, but still.) Plus it's always exciting going out somewhere new - I do love Leeds, but I've been here so long that pretty much any club feels like going out in my front room at times. The only downside was that it was pretty empty, at least to begin with. But there was good music and good company, and overall it was a great night :-)
(Part 2,3 and 4 to follow!)
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Underground train:
Bus:
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And yes, the underground is a mystic portal. And don't believe all that stuff about it's *only* rational lines and engineering. There's demonic engineering involved too. And long-lost portals, like the legendary Down Street.
Looking forward to the next installment!
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