Books about town: Greenwich and Riverside Trails

Baskerville's Tea Room - Palmers Green

I used to live in Palmers Green and it's always nice to go visit - especially when I find plenty of books I want in the very excellent and plentiful charity shops there AND discover a large tea room has opened and it is very pretty and has a garden and a huge tea selection (I had a refreshing green tea with ginger and lemongrass) and banana cake with peanut butter frosting. Banana cake is my favourite and I love peanut butter. Yesssss.

Margate Shell Grotto

Mysterious underground grotto decorated with shells - no one knows why!

Spectra - Ryoji Ikeda - Victoria Tower Gardens

Just caught this on the last night and was well worth hanging about to experience. Bright jets of light straight up in the sky in the middle of London and hypnotic sounds as you move amongst the pillars of light in memory of the first world war. Dust sparkled as it passed through the beams. Beautiful.

V&A Late - Synthetic Aesthetics - Friday 25th April 2014

The V&A is open late every Friday (which is excellent) and every last Friday of the month they do a special late. Last Friday was themed 'Synthetic Aesthetics' and I popped along before meeting friends at Nandos.

V. interesting stuff. My highlight was 'Bacterial DNA Beats' which was music/imagined sounds of the inside of a DNA helix, apparantly inspired by 'bacteria's ability to transmit EMF signals' whatever that means (too tired to learn about this right now and no info provided). The sounds were played in the v. impressive Cast Court and was good and loud so felt very atmospheric and sparked my imagination.

Thames Walk/Albert Bridge

A beautiful evening walk along the Thames from Chelsea Harbour to Vauxhall. I'd never walked that bit of the Thames before. I liked Albert Bridge lots, all lit up and pink!

The Light Princess at the National Theatre (who are 50)

Oh! I loved The Light Princess! I laughed, I cried, I could watch it again tonight if I could afford it. It's beautiful.

The sets are stunning, the singing, the dancing...I'm still smiling.

It's a fairy tale musical involving a princess that floats and a prince that never smiles.

The floating is amazing, some of it is with wires and some is sort of dancing, with sneaky people dressed in black lifting her and supporting her while she sings.

I love fairy tales anyway and this didn't disappoint. Beautiful with darkness and humour.

Also, by chance, we happened to have attended on the night of the National Theatre's 50th anniversary so there were stunning fireworks afterwards.

I'm still gloriously happy!

Tori Amos

 I'm going to see The Light Princess tonight at the National Theatre! An early Xmas gift from Stu! Am very excited. I love Tori and am listening to her while I work today in readiness. Spark is one of my favourites.