Footloose

What a hot day to be in London! Never mind – I love the heat and I love London. First stop was ‘Victorian Giants’ at the National Portrait Gallery. It was refreshing to see women, Julia Margaret Cameron and Lady Clementina Hawarden, included among the four giants; fascinating to see pictures of quite small children in focus, even though photography then meant standing still for several seconds; a relief to find that not all the pictures of women had them gazing demurely floorwards nor beatifically heavenwards; humbling to see the amount of work that went into just one image. We have it so easy now!

But it was too sunny to be inside so we went to play with the shadows in Trafalgar Square (extra) and get distressed by the glinting Lamassu on the fourth plinth – a reproduction made of empty Iraqi date syrup cans of the winged deity which guarded Nineveh from 700BC until 2015 when ISIS destroyed it.

The Mall was bedecked with flags (extra) in honour of the Commonwealth Heads of State meeting in London and in judgment on the UK government’s vile racism. When Prime Minister May was Home Secretary she deliberately and successfully set out to create an environment that was hostile (her word) to immigration. I daily see the consequences in my work with refugees as they are denied education, healthcare, housing and humanity but I never expected even her to turn on the people Britain invited to come to the UK in the 1950s to do the jobs that British people did not want. Those who came then as children are being denied the pensions they have paid into all their working lives, denied health care from the NHS they have worked in for decades and expected to go ‘back’ to countries they have never lived in. Very slowly it is dawning on her that this evil will lose her votes and we are seeing a grudging U-turn. She will couch it in terms of humanity but it isn't: it's self interest.

And into St James’s Park where I was watching footwear because I’m always amused by the sort of weather-cusp day when you see people in sandals walking in step with people in furry boots. I wasn’t expecting to see an old hippy going barefoot, though.

And to round off a fun day with a fun evening: coffee, conversation and a blipwalk with Chamaeleo – always good company.


I am organising a blipmeet in Oxford on Saturday 2 June. More here.