Posts Tagged ‘design’
November
The first truly blustery and rainy day of Autumn. I am snuggled here on the sofa and have no plans to move. I’m catching up on things I’ve recorded this week: a documentary about Alfred Hitchcock, Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain and now something from the Age of Glamour series about Al Bowlly.
The Marr programme is the first of six and was brilliant: this episode covered the period from the death of Victoria to the illness of Joseph Chamberlain in 1906. Along the way, he explored the horror of the Boer War, nepotism in Parliament, music hall and Votes for Women. An extraordinary era which is of great interest to me (1900s, Edwardian Britain, inter-war Britain). I look forward to the remaining series. Next week, we move inevitably to WWI.
The Age of Glamour strand on BBC4 is also fantastic and has covered people of the age (the Bright Young People), golden liners of the era and Art Deco icons (loads of brilliant stuff about the Tube, particularly at St James’s Park station). These programmes also cover interests of mine (Art Deco, design, luxury design, social history). Al Bowlly was a very popular crooner of the era. I love documentaries like this, even about people I have only vaguely heard of because of the social history that is inevitably on display. In fact, I was surprised at how many of his songs and recordings I knew from hearing them round and about on many programmes. Dennis Potter was inspired by him to write Pennies From Heaven. I haven’t watched any Dennis Potter stuff for ages; I must see if they’ve got DVDs in the library. After surviving the bombing of the Cafe de Paris previously, Al Bowlly, poor man, was killed when a Luftwaffe bomb hit his house during the Blitz in 1941.
After a brief glimpse of sunshine, it is clouding over again. It’s very, very quiet today. No noise from the other flats downstairs, barely a car to be heard on the road. Last night, I could see the BT Tower flashing lights and today I discovered it now has a screen counting down to the Olympics.
Foodwise, I have some nice salmon and dill tartlets that I made last night, as well as tomatoes and spinach, some crusty bread, halloumi and biscuits. I need not step out of the door if I don’t want to. I’m aware that this is a very lazy-sounding post, but that is what this particular London life is doing today.
