A selection of photos from my Open House 2013

Battersea Power Station

Due for redevelopment shortly (this has been said many times in the past, but it appears, it's finally happening), this year was the first year BPS was included in Open House and its last. 

I joined the queue an hour early, and then queued some more for a chance to explore the old coal-fired power station. 

Battersea A Power Station was built in the 30s, the B side (identical to form the structure we know) in the 50s. Decommissioned fully in 1983, the building achieved Grade II listing in 1980 and is also the largest brick building in Europe. 

They had a marquee up inside part of the station which was annoying, it obscured the view of the north side and I think took away from the grand size of it all. Perhaps it was for safety though. 

Queuing sights

Entering via the North side

Looking to the South 

Turbine Hall B (I think) 

Peeking through a keyhole

Looking up at the South side

Taken from the bus enroute to my next Open House

Lambeth Palace

This is the official London home of the Archbishops of Canterbury and has been since the 13th Century. 

Lambeth Palace has been rebuilt in parts several times due to the Civil War and WWII. The Great Hall is home to the Library - Lambeth Palace has almost 200,000 printed books, many unique and 30,00 from before 1700. 

We weren't allowed to take photos during the guided tour inside but I got a couple of outside. 

Visit Lambeth Palace. 

Entrance to Great Hall/Library  

The Library/Great Hall 

Morton's Tower - built in 1490

Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate

Finished in 1968, this estate was designed by Neave Brown - Camden Council had appointed Sydney Cook as Borough Architect and Director of Housing who challenged the government's tendency for high rises. 

I went on a guided tour of one of the houses in the estate. Bought 3 years ago, the architects had turned the 4 bed house into a spacious 2 bed house. They wanted to echo some of the original designs in their restructuring (the original features had been pulled out) so installed plywood in the kitchen (see pic below). The house & cupboards all feature sliding doors (the house had the original sliding doors) to maximise space. 

The top floor remained pretty much the same - acting as lounge with a nice balcony. 

All the flats have balconies and they look onto each other 

None of the flats have radiators, but heated walls - these are the cooling towers for the estate 

Brutalist Wizard of Oz

Only two flats would share entrances  

Horniman Museum 

Victorian tea trader Frederick John Horniman began collecting objects from his travels and in 1901 opened the Horniman Museum to share them with the public. 

We went on a Behind the Scenes tour of the museum which even took us inside the clock tower. 

Visit the Horniman. 

Conservatory 

From inside the clock tower

Clock Tower

All photos my own

New eats

After going to Italy and Sicily last year, it's been on my list to make my own arancini. 

Arancini are fried risotto balls, the exact specifics inside differ from region to region and whilst we were away, we had a lot with tomato sauce and peas in. 

I had a few friends due for dinner so decided this was the time to try them out. 

The night before I made pancetta risotto and left it to chill in the fridge overnight. Then before my guests arrived, I shaped the risotto into balls and coated with egg and breadcrumbs. 

I got the table ready - as arancini is essentially carbs fried in breadcrumbs, I served them with cured meats, pickles, olives and salad - and once my friends arrived, I fried the risotto balls in some oil. 

They're actually pretty simple and stress free to do - recommended - although I imagine the ragu ones would be harder! 

Also, in other food news, after a year of wanting to go, last week I finally went to Honey & Co. They recently won Best Newcomer at The Observer Food Awards. Since it had taken us so long to visit, we decided to go all out and have 3 courses. My friend and I shared the warm artichoke salad and chicken liver baklava (it was in a pistachio nest) for starters. For mains, we had the chicken in a flatbread thing (had a better name than that), and the hake fish cakes served with cous cous. The chicken was cooked in a sweet sauce and served with a pomegranate salad. And for dessert, we had the chestnut and pistachio cakes. 

It was all amazing - they also sell a vaiety of homemade jams, curds, biscuits, etc. Good for  Christmas presents!

All photos my own

A wild goose cycle

I often get hairbrained ideas into my head and become slightly obsessed with doing/seeing certain things. 

A couple of these short obsessions resulted in me planning a long bike ride around the Thamesmead area. I roped in my sister and an another friend, picked them up from Hackney Central to head to Greenwich where we would start our ride proper.

Somewhere after Mile End, we got confused as to where we were going so I suggested doing the route in reverse and heading to Poplar, so off we went for our first stop at Robin Hood Gardens. It's set for demolition but like a lot of council estate demolitions, these things take a long time so I'm not sure where they are at with it. It seemed to be full of residents unlike Heygate which has been sitting predominantly empty for years. 

It was designed by Alison and Peter Smithson with the 'streets in the sky' concept in mind and it was completed in 1972. We walked alongside the garages on the 'outside' before coming into the main grassy area.

To the left in the picture below you can see a big bin. As we walked past, a lady dropped her bin bag from the balcony (the gap in the wall) straight into the bin - they'd lined it up well for this purpose. Made me chuckle.  

Robin Hood Gardens

From there, we were headed to Beckton Gas Works - I know much of it isn't meant to remain but I wanted to see for myself. Closed in 1970, it has been used in lots of filming, most famously, in Kubrick's 'Full Metal Jacket'. Beckton = Vietnam apparently 

We cycled quite close to the river, going along Royal Victoria, the ExCel centre and under the new cable car. From there, we went through Beckton District Park and onto the Beckton Gas Works. There wasn't much to see, less than I anticipated and I realised perhaps I should have google mapped Beckton Alps (toxic spoil from the plant created a hill which people used to ski down!). It had started raining a bit, so we had a quick break eating scotch eggs next to a retail park before giving up on my Beckton dream and heading to the Woolwich Ferry. I'd never been to Beckton before so it was still worth it. 

Beckton Alps 

What I wanted to see

What we did see

I hadn't been on the Woolwich Ferry in about 10 years so it was nice to go on it again, especially with a bike. It's free and I got to see downstairs for the first time. 

These were locked but a nice reminder of the past. 

From the ferry, we cycled along the Thames Path to Thamesmead, we were heading for Southmere Lake. Binsey Walk is another place Kubrick has filmed, this time briefly for 'A Clockwork Orange' but you might recognise it more from the Channel 4 show 'Misfits' - most of the antics happen around the community centre. 

Again part of this estate is getting demolished and some of the houses had already been knocked down - next to residents going about their business of course. This is a nice piece about its history with photos from then and now. 

This sign about horse grazing made me laugh

I believe the towers are staying

Lots of lines 

Southmere Lake

It was time for us to have a quick break before heading home via Greenwich. The sun started been all glorious as we passed the Thames Barrier and Antony Gormley's Woolwich Arsenal statues. I think we were all quite knackered by the end, so had dinner in the Cutty Sark pub and then got the overground home.  

Gormley

Love a good factory

Cable car into the sky

Getting a little lost around Blackwall Tunnel

'urban'

All photos except Beckton Alps & old Beckton Gas Works my own

A tour of Camden Town Brewery

A few months, I took my friend on a tour of the Camden Town Brewery for her birthday present. I'd never been on a brewery tour before and learnt a fair few things. However, two months has passed and I've forgotten a lot of my new factoids. Damn.

We arrived at the Brewery Bar, explained to the barman we were there for the tour and he told us to have some free beer and take a seat, which we happily did. We were waiting for a few more people to arrive, and after a little while, we started the tour with another two people. We were given safety glasses and a quick intro outside the brewery. Oh and the guide had brought some jugs of beer (how kind), he explained there is usually more people so we had more to drink. 

It's quite amazing how the brewery has grown so quickly. The owner Jasper Cuppaidge started brewing in the basement of the Horseshoe pub in Hampstead and from there, started the brewery properly in the arches under Kentish Town West station in 2010. It's only 2013 people and they are everywhere! I guess this resonates with the general surge in craft beer appreciation. 

The big tanks where the lager and ales ferment

We tried lots of the different hops, and our guide explained  that these are what really change the flavour of the lager or ale. He said both lager and ale start the same, but the fermentation process differs for each. Fermentation is the process which turns the fermentable sugars in the malt into alcohol and carbon dioxide. 

Lagers are made using bottom-fermenting yeast which sinks to the bottom of the fermenting vessel - this happens at a relatively low temperature. 

Ales are made using top fermenting yeast, the yeast forms a thick head on the top of the vessel - this takes less time than a lager, and happens at a higher temperature. 

Trying different hops - stored in the freezer

Time for more beer as we made our way to the bottling/canning/casking area. The brewery is now making as much beer as it can in the arches, which is a lot but nothing compared to the big dogs. 

Ready to go! 

Oh and I didn't know where the name IPA (Indian Pale Ale) came from so I asked, it comes from when we were over in India in the 19th Century, we still wanted beer to drink and the only way to get them beer was by ship which takes a long time. So the UK brewers made hoppier and stronger beers that would last the journey. 

Sidenote: We went to see Stewart Lee's 'Much A-Stew About Nothing' on Tuesday and his piece about all the weird names that craft ale seem to have - for example: Fursty Ferret, Old Hooky and Wizard's Foot (I might have made that last one up) - made me chuckle. 

You can book a tour here although we had to book ours a couple months in advance. 


All photos my own

My London Film Festival overdue round up

I saw three films in three consecutive days. 

First up was 'Ladder To Damascus', the film tells the story about a young Syrian actress who feels she has been inhabited by the soul of a woman who dies on the day she was born. I was hungover and had to get to the Cine Lumiere in Kensington so it wasn't a great start. I found it hard to concentrate initially but soon was enveloped by the busy house that most of the characters live in. Naturally a Syrian film getting made at this time will overlap with the conflict happening there. Some of the scenes I thought were a little odd directorially, and I thought overall the film was good, not  great. 

Next was 'Ilo Ilo' - which won the Camera d'Or Award at Cannes - and what transpired to be the UK premiere of the film hosted at Rich Mix (technical issues scuppered the original premiere). I thought this Singaporean film was superb, the actor's behaviours were so subtle and we were treated to a Q&A with the direcotr Anthony Chen afterwards. It's coming back next year, so look out for it. 

My third and final preview was for the much debated 'Blue is the Warmest Colour'. I didn't realise it's running time till settling down in the Chelsea Curzon. So much has been talked about the lesbian sex scenes, I thought shit could get awkward surrounded by men in the back row. Anyways, I thought it was a beautiful love story between two people who happen to be of the same sex. Yes, that seven minute sex scene is intense, but the film is 3 hours so proportionally not as a big a part many people would assume. And there have been a lot of commentators about the film, from a lot of people who haven't seen it. That sex scene is exactly what I said, intense. It's not sexy, it's two people almost devouring each other into personal exhaustion. Steven Spielberg - president of Cannes Jury, 'BITWC' received the Palme d'Or - said he wanted his kids to see the film. I'm not sure if I'd want my (hypothetical) kids seeing the sex scenes too young, but perhaps it doesn't deserve the 18 rating. 

There was also a Q&A afterwards with Adele - the main actress - and the director Abdellatif Kechiche, a lot of people left before this, which surprised me but I guess it was late. It was dominated by Kechiche and his translator so was a little staggered but enjoyable nonetheless. 

In other news, I watched 'Spring Breakers' for the first time recently. I was actually quite disappointed, apart from some choice Alien quotes and that Britney Spears piano moment, it was pretty dull. To me it seemed Korine had just discovered what a metaphor was and was crudely pointing out all the metaphors to us. Also, to any kids who watch it, they'll just lap up the behaviour of the protagonists. Bikinis and balaclavas do make for iconic outfits though.