Warming to a cold front

Nostalgia for the Future pt12:

To the V&A with S &R. I’m only a recent convert to the V&A, Tudor wall hangings and vases not really my thing and I’ve never seen the point at looking at clothes in glass cases. But their late night openings are nice and they have been putting on some interesting design expos lately oh and when it’s open the Casting rooms are just ace, I can’t wait for them to reopen next year they are just so wonderfully odd.

We were at the museum for the Cold War design show. It’s a varied and interesting event. Looking at how design developed in the east and west in the post war years, using lots of drawings and models and in the case of bubble cars and hifis examples of the real thing.
There are examples of commercial design but also avant garde cutting edge stuff from students and design teams with numbers instead of names (cool!).
We enjoyed the show but it was a little bitty at times and some of the themed rooms seemed a bit strained. One of the rooms that worked best for me was the space room which had a 1/3 model of a Vostock space capsule, original space suits, wacky chairs and several wonderful telecom towers (hurrah!). I would like to have seen more UK examples of cold war design to put local ideas in a global context.

I got caught taking a snap of the model of the Moscow Telecom tower at the top, I don’t really see why you can’t take pictures in galleries particularly of sculptures etc. I know the arguments about the flash effecting old paper and pigments, so no flash but aside from the odd copyright issue which is frankly nonsense in public galleries. Anyway I got one snap. Victor Keegan in the paper talks about this more.

So the show is worth a visit, the evening opening was pleasingly uncrowned, so give it a go.
The V&A gift shop did have this wonderful item of neckwear: I fear our campaign group may have to adopt them as our uniform.

On the subject of the POT is this the smuggest group on Flickr?

The only downside of the V&A is that it’s in west London and so there’s nowhere to get a drink or something to eat without a trek how does anyone live round here?

Song to the sirens

Our visit to the Cabinet War Rooms led to a strange coincidence I was listening to my mp3 Nokia on the tube when British Sea Powers new song Atom came on, it’s from their new album. It finishes with an air raid siren much as had been echoing a round the CWR. Then the next song that came on was “Indiana wants me” by R Dean Taylor that also starts with a siren hurrah!



R Dean Taylor : Indiana wants me.


Which puts me in mind of songs with sirens (and or police radio sound effects) on them.
We should be able to make a list.
There must be more than “the Frankies Two tribes” and “Summer in the city by the Loving spoonful” oh and we need a full list of versions of “Song to the Siren!”

I found this site for lots of noisy sirens.

This video is really great, this chap must win a “Danny Champion of world award” for exciting parenting

Lessons from History

In the winter gloom and bluster S and I headed to the Cabinet war rooms in Whitehall. The usual “lived in London for so long never been” excuse. I was a little put off when I got there and found it was £12 to get in. However I think it’s worth the cost as you get a 2 for 1 deal as you get to explore the tunnels and war rooms but also the interactive Churchill exhibition.

I am always wary of interactive displays (mainly because they are always broken) but this display has a good mix of hi-tec and unique objects, photos etc. One spooky system projection a very narrow band of sound down from the ceiling literally the width of your head, so you get to hear Winston’s speeches as if wearing head phones. Because the band is so narrow, you have to stand still and look at the illuminated pictures in front of you. One in particular struck me, it was of a young couple, a cheery looking soldier in a forage cap and uniform and his “girl” a young friendly lass in air raid wardens (ARP) overcoat and tin helmet. As usual you have to put aside the 1940’s hair etc to see faces like you’d see in London today, the girl looks happy but weary the lighting on her helmet with the rim catching the light makes her look as if she has a halo. Her “chap” is looking relaxed and jolly, UK battle dress always making Tommys look slightly scruffy, the short jacket looks ill fitting and draughty quite unlike the smarter or more casual German or American uniforms. The genius of this display is you have to look at the picture for the length of speech, taking time to think about these “unknown everyday heroes”.

The rest of the displays are just as good/fascinating and in the case of the voiceover free footage of Winston funeral quite moving. One last thing it’s not all hero worship there’s lots of negative stuff about Churchill to give balance and honesty to the whole affair.

The rest of the War rooms are quite evocative, the use of Foley sounds such as disappearing foot steps, air raid sirens and typewriter noises brings the place alive, the most evocative thing however is the smell of some of the rooms. They have that smell of my grandparents’ homes a mixture of dust, musty canvas and paper and as S point out old cleaning products.

I know that some people think places like the CWR glorify war, ironically I think they occasionally go too far the other way, on dwelling on “CND” side of things without reminding us of why they are important and that we live pleasant free lives today because people did brave, scary, selfless deeds in the past.

The personal nature of the world war is always brought home to me by the picture at the head of this post, a famous picture of a German bomber flying over East London in 1940.
Stan Boardman’s joke about “bombing our chippy” is sadly sometimes true, my chippy is under the “r” in “imperial”, flats like mine are here because the terraces in this picture were bombed out. Just up the road from my chippy is the Iceland in Newcross, which use to be a Woollies until one Saturday afternoon late in the war a V2 rockets hit it and killed over a 100 shoppers in a split second. Sadly there are 29,000 other stories like this in London to go with the untold sorry millions of others in Russia, Poland etc.

So if you haven’t been the Cabinet War Room is worth visiting, having said that as usual London’s history is all around us too...