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'Longplayer is a one thousand year long musical composition. It began playing at midnight on the 31st of December 1999, and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again. Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it was originally produced as an Artangel commission, and is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust' 
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What’s new in Russian Mayfair and Soho?
"The last chance to see an extraordinary exhibition of work by the Soviet artist Erik Bulatov provides a great excuse to wander between Green Park and Oxford Street and see what else is going on…" TEXT AND PHOTOS BY PHOEBE TAPLIN
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
The exhibition above might be long gone but Phoebe Taplin's well -researched walks are a must for those interested in the Russian influence in London, going back a lot longer than the recent rich influx. I have been on this, the final guided walk around Mayfair and found it insightful. So good to be with a passionate guide who knows her stuff. I intend to do some of the other self- guided walks soon.
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I know this says No preview available- not sure why- but if you click on the Headline it will take you to the ebook pdf its worth it if you are a London walker!
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
This is great! if you are into self-guided walks around London, try these! with thanks to London Hiker who does such a good job persuading us to get our boots on and get out there! She also writes about great hikes within easy reach of London. perfect when you want to get some fresh air. one thing our amazing city does not provide. go check out her website.
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In darkest South London can be found a remarkable time capsule sitting in an otherwise ordinary industrial building, for to step past the ordinary doors is to enter a Victorian parlour of industrial delights.
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
With thanks once again, to Ian Visits. A London blogger always worth reading.
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Things to see and do at Eltham Palace and Gardens, London.
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
certainly worth visiting.
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"While lodging at 36 Craven Street, Franklin's main occupation was mediating unrest between Britain and America, but he also served as Deputy Postmaster for the Colonies; pursued his love of science (exploring bifocal spectacles, the energy-saving Franklin stove); explored health (inoculation, air baths, cures for the common cold); music (inventing the delightful glass armonica for which Mozart, Bach and Beethoven composed) and letters (articles, epitaphs, and his witty Craven Street Gazette), all while forging a hearty social life and close friendships with leading figures of the day."
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
another one on the go to to go to list for London Life
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Made as a distraction from the aftermath of that most intimate, science-fictional, parasexual & suburban of experiences: root canal treatment.
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
Delightful film from Balham-based filmmaker David Mudford.
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Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
Well worth checking out!
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"The Royal Courts of Justice often referred to simply as the "Law Courts" are housed in the 514 foot Gothic structure found along the Strand ."
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
This is near Somerset House and is open to the public. I peeped in to the Central Hall yesterday.It's very impressive. I felt a bit like an interloper, but I will return to have a proper look another day. You are free to enter any court except those that say" court in camera" or "court in chambers".
RCoJ is open 9am to 4.30 pm . Monday to Friday. if you are visiting the nearby Somerset House, why not try free tea at Twinings Tea Museum on The Strand and then pop across the road to visit these impressive courts. The entrance hall alone is worth a look.
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"The Brunel Museum in historic Rotherhithe is directly above the Thames Tunnel. This is Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s first project, aged nineteen years, and working with his father Sir Marc Brunel and it is the first tunnel under a river anywhere in the world.
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Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
There's so much happening at the Brunel Museum and all of it sounds like delicious fun! What to choose? for more info , go to http://www.brunel-museum.org.uk/
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The house is open to the public for daytime and evening tours, and private group visits.
'Its creator was Dennis Severs, an artist who used his visitors’ imaginations as his canvas and who lived in the house in much the same way as its original occupants might have done in the early 18th Century. This he did for his own personal enjoyment as well as for the harvest of an atmosphere, which he then employed to provide the visitor with an extraordinary experience. To enter its door is to pass through a frame into a painting, one with a time and life of its own.
The game is that you interrupt a family of Huguenot silk weavers named Jervis who, though they can still sometimes be heard, seem always to be just out of sight. As you journey off into a silent search through the ten rooms, each lit by fire and candlelight, you receive a number of stimulations to your senses.
It is the smell of food that first aligns your imagination with the faces around you in portraits. Then… Mr. Jervis’ wig, is it not the very same one that hangs over the back of his chair? His meal is only half eaten; did he abandon it when he heard us arrive? Visitors begin to do what they might if indeed they had travelled through a frame into a painting: use what they sense to piece together the scene they had missed. Thus, and this was Mr Severs’ intention, what you imagine… is his art.
It’s fun and now after almost thirty five years the experience ranks as one of the rarest in the world. David Hockney once rated its effect as standing amongst those of the world’s great opera experiences. Mr Severs spent a lifetime peering past sitters in paintings in search of the light and moods that lie in the air of Other Times. Sharing what he found and created here is what a visit to the house is all about. A rare thing to experience first hand: the warm, smoky light captured by the Old Masters; the creak of footsteps on wood; whispers and opening doors; arresting reflections, mixtures, textures and smells; the ticking and chiming of clocks; a cat and a canary. All this Mr Severs gave while at the same time encircling it with a picture he painted with recorded sound of a larger 18th Century world brooding outside its perimeter. Spellbinding… and at its core something very rare: soul, the bonding warmth of a generous family’s presence.
The experience is conducted in silence. Its level is poetic and unlike anything, so works best on those who are endowed, willing and able to meet it halfway. The house’s motto is “you either see it, or you don’t”. Post-materialist, it seeks to remind the visitor of a specific thing: what we cannot see is essential to what we do.
Be warned, it is a mistake to trivialise or pigeonhole the experience into any of the mothball camps: “heritage”, “local history”, “antiques”, “lifestyle” or “museum”. A visit requires the same style of concentration as does an exhibition of Old Masters.
Dennis Severs called his unique spectators sport “still-life drama”, and his goal was to provide his visitors with a rare moment in which to become as lost in another time as they appear to be in their own. He proved that the formula amounts to the same in any time, that getting caught up in it all is what we call “now”.'
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
At its best in Winter. But we'd say go anytime you are in the East End, as the experience is unique.
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's curator insight,
January 6, 2015 11:13 AM
I went back to the house yesterday. It is inspiring on several levels. The enforced silence is so important and allows the experience to be yours alone,; the hOuse becomes a character in its own right and the walk through feels like a meditation, a temporary removal from our everyday city lives, a detailed flash back to lives lived out in dark interiors, replete with sensory pleasures and contrasting loft rooms that tell of hardship. Wonderful.
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"After designing his iconic Floral Skull fashion design for Alexander McQueen, London-based artist Jacky Tsai was an instantly recognizable name. Since then,the artist has continued to create captivating work, explaining that his vision is to "create a unique marriage between traditional Eastern craftsmanship with contemporary Western pop art." In this now defining floral skull concept, Tsai investigates the juxtaposition between this symbol of death, covered with the new life of blossoming flowers. During his time working in pattern design for McQueen, Tsai developed an interest in printing his work, not just on paper but, on various materials and fabrics, in particular, silk. In Floral Skull Leather Sculpture, Tsai takes his work to a brand new level by building the flower petals directly out of pieces of leather. According to his website, the more than 5 foot tall project was organized by Miss Linda Tsai, design director at Jacky Tsai Ltd. It required 15 needlesmiths, 300 days and nights, and 1,000 leather pieces stitched together with one million stitches to create the countless blossoms that cover the surface of this giant skull. His other sculpture work, entitled Floral Skullptures, is a series of ten skulls, all covered in gorgeous hand stitched flowers, and each one featuring a unique color combination."
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
Artist Focus: Jacky Tsai Is this not weirdly wonderful? with thanks to My Modern Metropolis Click on the link to My Modern Metropolis, to view close ups of these beautifully varied leather petals: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/jacky-tsai-floral-skull-leather-sculpture
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's curator insight,
May 3, 2015 4:36 PM
click on the link to modern Metropolis, to view close ups of these beautifully varied leather petals: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/jacky-tsai-floral-skull-leather-sculpture
From London Life february 2013
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The uniquely British cab is being built in the UK again.
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
Interesting!
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… "The Paper Architect is a play combining paper-craft, animation, projection mapping and performance. It tells the story of an old model-maker who uses his paper creations as vessels for his imagination. The show features tiny, accurately mapped animations playing across intricate paper sets: sunrises and sunsets come and go; flocks of birds pass by; leaves flutter from a tree... When the actor places a cut-out dancing woman on a detailed paper model, she comes alive; he adds a paper man and watches their romance unfold. The projected would-be lovers’ story is presented with a gentle humour; the life character, meanwhile, veers from rapt, childlike delight in his created world to a weary melancholy as the rigours of real life impinge."
The Times The Sunday Times One Stop Arts ★★★★ “A quietly sad portrait of a man who has created a beautiful world that is too fragile to last.” Playstosee "The Paper Architect is as delicate as a poem by Keats, like someone pressing on a pressure point you didn’t know you had." The Londonist
Trailer edit: Sarah Matthews Music: Arvo Part, Spiegel im Spiegel
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
From the archives but always a joy ! Pure Magic! Enchanting!
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"A thirty-mile lap of central London in 24 hours, by foot, bike, swim, packraft and bivvy-bag. Who said you had to be in the countryside to have an outdoor adventure!"
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
With thanks to London Hiker for pointing LL in this direction. Check out her Q&A with Tom Allen, the micro adventurer here
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"My passion is street photography. I take pictures mostly on my way to and from work. The idea for Tube Photography came about in the Winter when it started getting dark early, and I rediscovered my ‘street subjects’ down in the underground."
Zbigniew Osiowy
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Private rooms in the pile that inspired the first Gothic novel in 1764, and a whole style of architecture, have always been off-limits to the public – until now
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
Strawberry Hill Horace Walpole's spectacular Gothic castle is a marvellous magical place of escape from the city madness! For details of events and opening times visit http://strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/ if you are interested in the 2015 restoration:
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Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
one on the go to to go list ..soon!
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Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
A watery one to visit! while you are there check out the bookstore on a canal boat and have lunch in Granary Square. also take a peek inside Central St Martin's. There's always something going on.
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"Situated in the heart of London, Chelsea Physic Garden has a unique living collection of around 5,000 different edible, useful, medicinal and historical plants. Celebrating the beauty and importance of plants, this ‘hidden gem’ is also a peaceful green oasis in which to enjoy a relaxing stroll and lunch or afternoon tea at the Tangerine Dream Café.
The Garden’s warm microclimate means that many tender plants can flourish including a number of rare and endangered species. It has the largest outdoor fruiting olive tree in Britain and the world’s most northerly outdoor grapefruit tree. From pomegranates to gingkos, mulberries to eucalyptus, there are over 100 different types of tree in the Garden, many of which are rare in Britain.
The glasshouses hold a collection of tropical and sub-tropical species, complemented by a Victorian Cool Fernery.
The Physic Garden is the oldest botanic garden in London and was founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries for the purpose of training apprentices in identifying plants. It subsequently became one of the most important centres of botany and plant exchange in the world."
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
for opening times etc http://chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk/visit/opening-times/
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Nathalie is known as the ‘godmother of peregrines’ at Charing Cross.
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"The Southbank Centre’s plans for a new festival wing means that the famous skate spot, which has existed as a hub for skaters, BMXers and artists for some 40 years, will be re-located. We believe it should stay!"
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
June 2016 The Skate Park will be saved due to popular demand! July 2014 I must check up on what's happening with this.
I always stop by the Skate Park on my frequent visits to the Southbank. I find it curiously relaxing to watch the skateboarders strut their stuff. Maybe it's the repetitive nature ..although! you are never really sure how each "performance" will end! It's also reminiscent of the Beckett School of Thought:: Try Again. Fail again. Fail Better It's addictive!
It would be very sad to see this place lost to the planned development for the area around the QEH and The Hayward Gallery..As the guys argue, we're talking history here, as well as an important meeting place and practice space for both amateurs and professionals.
There's a petition gathering momentum. I'm going off to sign it now..before these dedicated and determined guys have to resort to chaining themselves to the graffitied pillars! On second thoughts, the word 'failure' is clearly not in their vocabulary.
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"When I first moved to London, I was struck by the number of people living in this great city and the speed at which they move from one place to another. I wanted to capture how I saw London when I first moved here."
Follow me on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lucas-V... For any queries: lucas.veuve@ymail.com
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
London-On-Speed! If you need convincing, go take a look!
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Ovalhouse Theatre sources and supports bright new theatre talent, develops excluded communities and links south London to key national and international networks.
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
I used to live round the corner from OvalHouse. I particularly remember a great night there in the company of poets.
Here's what's on http://www.ovalhouse.com/whatson
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Our Street Art, Graffiti tours and workshops are some of the top things to do in London. We have bike tours, walking tours, Brick Lane Market tours and even private workshops and school tours.
The Alternative London Tours takes you where no other London tour has gone before. Providing Bike Tours, Walking Tours, Workshops. Focusing on the Street art scene and the historical and cultural side of London's East End.
Ursula O'Reilly Traynor 's insight:
Gotta go on one of these. The walking tour is of special interest. Sure, I've seen some street art round Brick Lane, have taken photos etc. but I don't know much about the artists involved. And for those who don't know much about the East End, it's all put in context. This particular tour is "pay what you like". Nice one. don't forget to check out the new food tours while you're browsing the website. Or, get on your bike and pedal round the city?
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Thanks for this post, Sy!
Visit Sy's blog to read more about her visit to the lighthouse and other offbeat wanderings through the city.
More about Longplayer : http://longplayer.org/what/overview.php
Listen to the live stream : http://longplayer.org/listen/longplayer.m3u
Some history :
http://www.trinitybuoywharf.com/about/history