A couple of weeks ago, I went to Mayfield Lavender Farm in Banstead. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this part of England was the centre of the world's lavender production, before urbanisation and cheap French imports did for it, so it's nice to have some back again in the same area. The farm has quite an interesting history. It's a lovely place, just on the edge of London; two fields of purple flowers, leased from Sutton council.

There were so many bees that the constant buzzzzzzing began to sound like noise pollution similar to planes. Strangely, it didn't smell very strong when I was there — must be one of those weird things where the smell is so distinct and potentially overpowering your brain switches it off so you can recognise other things over the top of it. Odd.

Inevitably, I took some photos. So here they are. If you click on them, you can see them at a bigger size.

little fat bees getting drunk on pollen

spot the baby

See the whole set here. They've started harvesting the lavender this week, but there's still a bit of time to go and see it before the end of August. It's worth a look.

The day after All Stitched Up, some friends and I went to the Nunhead Cemetery open day. Nunhead is one of London's Magnificent Seven, the huge graveyards that were built across the city in the middle of the 19th century. It's a sprawling green wilderness with ivy and nettles crawling all over the gravestones, although some parts of it have been cleaned up.

We spent a fun hour or so there trying to find stone angels, and interesting names on the gravestones. My favourite name was Abel Staite, which seemed like a heck of a name to live up to (it works better if you say it out loud). We only found one foreign name, though, for the Jabez family.

The other interesting thing we found was a monument to the Scottish Martyrs, who were transported to Australia for advocating parliamentary reform (you can read a bit about it here). It was quite interesting to see it so soon after the general election, given how much people were asking for parliementary reform that week.

"The experience of all ages should have taught our rulers that persecution can never efface principles."
"Individuals may perish but truth is eternal."

Nunhead has an open day once a year, and is worth a visit. More pics here.

The quote at the top is a lyric from a song that happened to turn up on shuffle when I took the picture, a song called Making Music by Mohawk Lodge. I don't even like the song that much, but I do like that particular lyric, and it seemed very apropos of the moment.

Above is how the Polaroid actually looks. But if I let the scanner auto-correct, this is how it looks — which is a lot more like the real view. Polaroid is funny like that.

See other photos from A Moment In Time in this Flickr group.

One of the items on my Uberlist this year is to take more Polaroids (at least one a month), so I've uploaded a few more Polaroids for Roid Week, which I've added to my Polaroids photoset. Here are a some reminders of a good day out a couple of weekends ago:

First we went on a replica of Stephenson's Rocket (the black specks are coal smuts from the chimney):

There are couple more pictures here. (For a more detailed report, Caroline D wrote about her ride here).

Then we went off to see Speed of Light at the Bargehouse (which Diamond Geezer reviewed here). It was one of those things that kind of looked better in real life than in photos, but I took one for my 365hipstamatic project, anyway. (And there are some much better photos here.)

Then it was off to The Fleece Station for a fiesta to welcome new studio-mates Lauren and Ellen. It was the second time I'd visited, but I really must go back and see what the place is like on a normal day when it's not crammed full of drunk people! (Sarah posted write-up of the party here)

I was rather impressed with this cameratastic display, although apparently too drunk not to put my finger in front of the lens:

I'm actually looking forward to finishing off this Polaroid film, so I can buy some from the Impossible Project. Lots of the results are really gorgeous. If you haven't yet read this article on the Impossible Project, go do that now.

The tunnels have a fascinating history, and were once a prime example of one of my favourite kinds of architecture: the folly. Originally intended for horse-drawn carriages, this proved too expensive and instead it found a new purpose as one of the greatest tourist attractions of Victorian London. There were all kinds of excitements on show in those days, from market stalls selling souvenirs, to circus performers and dancing monkeys. It was only much later that it returned to its original purpose of providing a means of transport underneath the Thames.

Walking through the tunnel was simultaneously interesting and disappointing. It couldn't help but be a fascinating place: the very first of its kind, with stories of all sorts of hi-jinks concerning its construction, and it was hard not to be impressed by the sheer elegance of its design. However, our tour guide was a bit of a grumpy bugger and not always forthcoming. As we were walking along between the different points where he'd stop and regale us with the next bit of his spiel, I commented that it must have been very smokey and smelly down in the tunnel when there were lots of Victorian tourists visiting, as there was no electric light or concrete on the floor. Instead of continuing this conversation, he cut me off, dismissively saying that he would be talking about that at the next stop. And yes, he did mention that it was smokey back then, but he didn't have to be rude about it. He also had a really annoying way of constantly moving around when we were taking photos; just as I'd lined up my camera to get a shot without him in it, he'd move again and cover half my photo with his arse. Grumble.

Curro and I both noted the elegance of the tunnels' curves, which provide a beautiful vaulted roof, and he commented to the tour guide that it looked much more aesthetically pleasing than the grimy brickwork on the small extension at the Rotherhithe end of the tunnel. Our guide didn't mention that the smooth surface was a relatively new addition, only dating back to the mid-90s — I didn't discover this fact until later, @langrabbie, but it seems as though other bloggers who took the tour did learn of it. Most of them seem to have managed to get better photos than me, too.

See more blog posts and photos from:
853blog | The Great Wen | Diamond Geezer | Caroline's Miscellany | IanVisits | Londonist | One Flame In The Fire

After that, we looped around the Isle of Dogs to the Blackwall Tunnel, or rather to the industrial silos next to the river there (thanks to Owen for the tip).

These silos are pretty much the last remaining connection with Greenwich's industrial heritage, and are being demolished this week. I think it's shame that they will probably be replaced with yet another boring boxy private housing scheme or office block, especially as they had a brutalist industrial elegance of their own.

It's also disappointing that the nearby Alcatel Jetty, which was planted with rare mosses and sedums to encourage insect and bird life, will probably be demolished in the regeneration as well. The plants are very attractive and, according to a conversation I had with member of the British Ecological Society, have been successful in encouraging insects and birds to visit the area.

But who cares about plants and heritage when you can maximise profits on your real estate, eh? More pics here.

A couple of weekends ago a group of us went to visit Chislehurst Caves for Jodi's birthday, and it was great! I found it sort of amazing that there's this huge network of mines (they're not really caves), just 15 minutes from London Bridge.

Tours cost £5 and I thoroughly recommend them. We were whizzed through the mine tunnels at what seemed a ridiculously fast pace, which I found frustrating because it meant I couldn't stop and take good photos (and it's hard enough trying to take photos in a poorly-lit, subterranean tunnel!), but when we came out again I realised we'd been down there for an hour, had been through many sections and told many stories. Many of the stories seemed completely spurious, but that was half the fun, and the tour group all enjoyed them.

The caves have seen some interesting things, though. During the second world war it was a huge shelter for many people who had been displaced by the bombing, and in the 1960s it was a music venue that played host to people like Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. These days a section of the caves is home to England's longest ongoing LARP game (which is explained why we saw people in bizarre face paint and anachronistic clothes eating sandwiches in the cafe).

During WW1, some of the caves were used as an armaments store, although I question the sanity of smoking near a cache of explosives.

There was a working hospital wing there during the second world war, and one baby girl was even born there. She was allegedly given the name Cavina as tribute, but changed it when she grew up.

I was especially interested to see this photo of mushrooms being grown inside the tunnels, as this is an endeavour which has fascinated me since I read Nicola Twilley's interesting article on the mushroom tunnel at Mittagong, Australia.

After exploring the caves, we ended up exploring the nearby hills and dales of Chislehurst trying to find a pub that could serve 12 hungry people on a Sunday afternoon. We ended up having to retrace our steps to the posh gastropub right next to the caves, but on the way we found a well-preserved cock-pit, which made the up-and-downhill trek worthwhile. Lunch was rather expensive but the wallpaper was lovely.

We finished the day off in the Rambler's Rest, a nice cosy villagey pub of the type that we here at Mondo Towers approve of, and would recommend to anyone planning to make the journey to visit Chislehurst for the caves.

There are few more pictures here.

If I look out of my kitchen window in the winter, I can see a funny little tower way off at the edge of the horizon (I can't see it in the summer because of that tree in front the window). It's the only remaining piece of what was once a significant market space, opened by Prince Albert in 1855.

Next to this piece of Victorian masonry are — or were — a few blocks of 1960s council housing called the Market Estate. Scheduled for demolition this week, it spent its last Saturday filled with art installations and people sharing their memories. I only found out about it on the day and there were long queues to see inside, but met a friend in the evening to have a look around and there were only queues for a couple of the installations. It was fascinating; a cross between Psycho Buildings and Simply Botiful.

I almost missed this guy hanging off the roof, and only noticed him because someone else saw him first. I thought it was just a mannequin until I saw him move his head. It was really cold that night, and quite windy, so he must have been some kind of insane masochist to do that.

One popular art method was to cover all available surfaces in one thing. There was one flat painted all over in the same shade of grey, with shrouded lightbulbs, giving it a liminality that was a little disconcerting. People wore grey sheets which added to the visual weirdness, as their heads and feet became disembodied, as Paul demonstrates here.

Another flat was swathed entirely in blue plastic, which felt a little bit like being inside one of those old Dreamspace inflatables, but with 3D objects to circumnavigate as well.

One room was painted all in yellow, which did very odd things to the white balance on my camera, as well as to my eyes. There were people discussing whether everything was really yellow, or just looked that way because of the yellow lampshade, but if you look closely you can see one of the sugarcubes doesn't have any paint on it.

One flat was covered in tin foil and dedicated to growing cabbages.

Elsewhere, there were graffiti and murals, people making tea and giving out biscuits, and scribbled messages that felt like the walls were talking in code.

There were also some flats that had been left in their original state of decor, which gave an opportunity to have a nose around and get nostalgic about the interior design of our pasts. Some seemed so over the top as to feel like an art installation itself, and maybe that was the point of showing those flats to us.

There didn't seem to be any obvious information about what would happen to the former residents of the estates, though, and I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to them, as hundreds of strangers wandered through their former homes. In some ways it felt like a burial of all their history, with only our photos of the art to remember them by, which isn't quite right, since the art was only on show for one day, and some of the people had lived there for more than 40 years. But I'm not going to get started on the state of social housing in this country at the moment. Instead, I'll just point you in the direction of more photos here and here.

Still, I got a few nice photos, and I knocked an item of this year's Uberlist (more on the Uberlist in another post, maybe, but for an idea of what it is, have a look at Danielle's).

Do meerkats like snow? Even Neighbourhood Watch meerkats? I'll bet not.

I've always wondered what this little house was for. My mum tells me that way back in the 1970s my dad made a film about it, though.

Kind of a "Hampstead Heath in the snow" cliche, but I still like it.

Someone built a snow fort. It was a bit too low for me to climb inside though.

Seeing the some of the fairground Winterovers at the Vale of Health, all covered in snow, was sort of amusing. This one is definitely not impressed!

Happy dog.

More snow pics here