The heatwave dominated the evening news today. The temperature broke the all time May high with a maximum of 34.8c. We can expect higher tomorrow.
This sort of weather makes everything slow and difficult. As Islay stays with us throughout this week and Maggi thought it would interest her if we went to the new V&A East. We decided to take the air conditioned Metropolitan Line to Liverpool St and then 3 stops on the central line to Stratford.
A ten minute walk from the station and you arrive at the brand new building housing the V&A East. The museum only opened on April 18 and the first paid for special exhibition on Black British music was still on show.
We decided to just visit the free areas of the building. Initially we took the lift to the 3rd floor as recommended by the guide who greeted us on our entry.
From the top floor a bright sunny day revealed one side of the Olympic Stadium, the home of West Ham who experienced relegation after 14 years in the premiership on Sunday. Behind the stadium London and its city glowed and shimmered in the heatwave.
Inside a small Exhibion of photography reminded us of the arts and industry that used to inhabit the whole of the Stratford and Olympic Park complex . Because of the cheap land so close to the heart of London these industries flourished. I remember visiting printers and typesetters all around the area. An area that has no buildings now older than 15 years. It’s much cleaner now with the modern structures, but the heart and soul of this working class community disappeared with the old buildings.
We descended two flights to the next free area which had a mish mash of objects. The theme seemed to be sustainability. One display caught my attention it concerned an institution in the high mountain deserts of north India called The Himalayan Institute of Alternatives Ladakh (HIAL), This is a new university dedicated to local young people and mountain communities in northern India. Its founders, Sonam Wangchuk and Gitanjali J Angmo, created a vision to build the campus as a new, sustainable town. HIAL’s teaching is rooted in deep care for the natural environment, drawing on local traditions and spiritual practices.
I wanted to read lots of the different plaques associated with the various objects but obviously Islay didn’t. You could tell she almost desperately wanted to leave and saw nothing of interest there. I’m starving came the refrain. We had one more free area to visit but this became no more than a five minute browse. I did find one cabinet that I thought beautiful. I was disappointed that Islay didn’t see any benefit of visiting the V&A.
We headed back to the main shopping area, Westfield, where Maggi had identified a restaurant that had good reviews. However as we walked along Maggi spotted a Japanese Restaurant and asked Islay if she liked Japanese food. As she does most of the time she doesn’t say yes wholeheartedly, but indicates that it would be acceptable. Anyway we entered the place and had a pretty ordinary meal.
We didn’t want to have a dessert there so we I found a Starbucks under Maggi’s suggestion, because she liked the Frappuccino she had in Pinner. I had to wait quite a while for them to make up our 3 Frappuccinos because of the number of clients.
The whole of Westfield by now was packed with shoppers fighting their way around the mall. Some of them may have wandered around to benefit from the air conditioning.
We left to return home via the speedy Elizabeth Line in order to change at Bond St for the Jubilee. The speed advantage of the Elizabeth line rains became nullified when we had to walk all the way to the platform for the Jubilee. It probably took us at least 15 minutes.
A simple change at Finchley Road carried us home and a quiet evening in.
In the evening we watched a new series called Ponies which stands for People Of No Interest. Two women lose their CIA husbands in Moscow. They volunteer to join the service to find out how they died. we wait to see more tomorrow.