huffing and panting
The daddy-visit is in progress. The excel sheet that had been created to plan our every hour for the next two weeks has more or less been abandoned and we're dashing off where we please when we please, by any means necessary. In fact tomorrow, we feel the riverboat service is going to be necessary.
My impressions of the visit right now consist of aching feet and endless comparisons of London 'then' and 'now' (he was a frequent visitor in the 70s and 80s), as well as the fun of lugging a huge new Sony Digital Camera around. Oh and i'm getting a crash course in British Military History. We're that kind of geek.
Especially WWII, because I think that was one cool war, and London is even more special because it went through it, was at the centre of it. WWII threw up some very cool artwork in the form of recruitment and propaganda posters during (Hitler's ghost creepily suggesting to anxious mothers that they should bring their evacuated children back to the city - quite roundabout, but amusing nevertheless) as well as interpretative work afterwards (Virgin and Child wearing gas masks by a spanish artist whose name i've forgotten). The HMS Belfast, that we clambered all over this afternoon, was actually in the Normandy battle on D-Day, and this made even the chequerboard orange and black tile flooring seem quite grand to my faithful colonial eyes. My dad keeps asking me how new buildings came to be, often stuck to old ones. And my answer is always in differance - old building was deemed to have no historic value / old building became crater in WWII. War as Urban Regeneration, Bomb as Urban Designer. Those were interesting times.
My impressions of the visit right now consist of aching feet and endless comparisons of London 'then' and 'now' (he was a frequent visitor in the 70s and 80s), as well as the fun of lugging a huge new Sony Digital Camera around. Oh and i'm getting a crash course in British Military History. We're that kind of geek.
Especially WWII, because I think that was one cool war, and London is even more special because it went through it, was at the centre of it. WWII threw up some very cool artwork in the form of recruitment and propaganda posters during (Hitler's ghost creepily suggesting to anxious mothers that they should bring their evacuated children back to the city - quite roundabout, but amusing nevertheless) as well as interpretative work afterwards (Virgin and Child wearing gas masks by a spanish artist whose name i've forgotten). The HMS Belfast, that we clambered all over this afternoon, was actually in the Normandy battle on D-Day, and this made even the chequerboard orange and black tile flooring seem quite grand to my faithful colonial eyes. My dad keeps asking me how new buildings came to be, often stuck to old ones. And my answer is always in differance - old building was deemed to have no historic value / old building became crater in WWII. War as Urban Regeneration, Bomb as Urban Designer. Those were interesting times.
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