Antwerp, port city

MAS, a museum in Antwerp, explores the idea that Antwerp, as a port city for several hundred years, has seen cultures meet mix and exchange in many different ways.

This idea was in my mind as I wandered around. One evening I passed somewhere with the words Seamen's Club above the door. Intrigued, I looked in and found a social club for people (though mainly men) who work on ships. 

Inside, I found a large room with a bar at the end. It had simple beige tiles on floor, the walls were painted an insipid yellow - except for one in a bright, gaudy orange. Tables and chairs were laid out, each with plastic roses in beer glasses filled with blue-coloured sand.

When I walked in, the room was in a disconcerting hush. Everyone was watching a man playing card and coin tricks.

Those that weren't watching the trickster were glued to their phones, iPads or laptops - seemingly taking a precious opportunity to contact home. The men often crowded around others to see... their latest family pics, the weather in their next destination, or Miley Cyrus's new video. It could be any or all of the above. 

A door led out to a chapel in an adjoining room. Nearby that door, a bookshelf had printed news digests from India, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Romania, Philippines, Poland, China and Burma. Novels by Jackie Collins, Barbara Vine, Cecilia Ahern and Sheila O' Flanagan were sitting on the bookshelves.

A guestbook in a little shop at the back of the bar showed that some guys had spent last New Year's Eve there, celebrating the start of 2013.

I didn't speak to anyone there, except to order two beers. It didn't seem right somehow.

After an hour or so everyone left, piling on to a free bus which took them back to the port.

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A few days later I decided to walk out to the port. While there was a running and cycling track along the way, this was not really an area in which to stroll. Truck drivers glared at me.

On the way, I passed through old industrial areas now regenerating (with museums, a nightclub and a bar called Stockholm). The port seemed distant - a constant hub of barely perceptible activity.

I never really made it to the port - it is a good few miles out. I certainly didn't see up-close any of the mega-liners on which the men at the Seamen's Club doubtless work.

But, along the way, I did see...

Unexpected connections - a boat called Mozart moored next to Siberia Bridge, Lithuania Street next to Lefebvre Bridge.

Buildings so big it's hard to imagine how they were filled

And an unexpected splash of pink among all the grey industrial concrete.

Essex Estuary Evaluation

Last week, I volunteered to test a walk for the Royal Geographical Society's Discovering Britain website.

It is a great website with lots of downloadable guided walks all over the country,

My walk was along the Essex Estuary where the Thames meets the North Sea, and land meets water.

It's only 40 minutes away from London but an interesting walk along a relatively ordinary landscape made even more interesting by the tour commentary.

Suburbscapes, Seascapes & Snowscapes

I recently saw three interesting exhibitions...

David Rayson - The Everyday Fantastic is at the Marlborough Gallery, showing pen & ink drawings of everyday scenes from suburbia. Many of the scenes are domestic and mundane, with few people. The pen styling gives a scratchy, uncertain feeling to some of the images, like what's real isn't quite there, and a sort of hollow, not fully-filled-in-ness.

I liked this image - Christmas Day - mainly for the little birds on the grass, which I presume are robins, and the foreboding sky above, a real disjuncture from picture-postcard images of Christmas.



My favourite, however, was this image of a lamp, called New Years Eve. It made me think of how our homes are largely hollow, and we make them our own with our things, our stuff... this image is brought beyond a simple line drawing with some simple colour. Although, that lamp has seen better days...




Secondly, I saw Garry Fabian Miller's Time Passage at the James Hyman Gallery. Predominantly featuring darkroom-created photography, I liked these seascape and landscape images. I always enjoy seascapes because they're both abstract and specific - they could be anywhere and everywhere but are always somewhere.







Finally, I saw Sara Haq's landscapes at Alexia Goethe Gallery. Sara travelled overland from London to Phuket, and this exhibition showed snowy, desolate landscapes. I prefered the more abstract images such as these two.

Upstairs, a small installation showed 100 images from Sara's trip which I thought were more interesting than the largescale photographs - you really felt the excitement and wonder and minutaie of such an interesting journey.

On Chesil Beach... there's rubbish

On Friday, I took the train to Weymouth to visit Dorset's Jurassic coast, Portland Bill and Chesil Beach.

Chesil Beach is an amazing geographical and geological wonder - a huge, 18 mile long bank of pebbles which start out large and become smaller the further you walk along the beach.

I was very lucky to see a beautiful sunset from the beach.

The beach has become more popular recently with the publication of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. Signs ask visitors not to take pebbles, but I noticed one family had commemorated their visit by writing on the pebbles.

I was less heartened to see, however, that rubbish is strewn all over the beach. This ranged from odd shoes, combs, plastic bottles, tin cans and drums to more natural detritus like wood and ropes.

It's a shame those signs that say 'don't take pebbles', don't also say 'but please take some rubbish away with you'.

That said, however this tin of pimento dulce (sweet paprika) intrigued me - had it floated all the way from Spain or Portugal?