You would have to have unplugged yourself from all national and social media over the past few months to be unaware of the poppy installation at the Tower of London.
Since the 5th of August, volunteers have been "planting" ceramic poppies in the moat. By the 11th of November there will be 888,246; one for each British fatality in World War 1. Officially called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, it's the wonderful idea of ceramic artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper, and it is … with no exception … the most emotionally gripping piece of installation art I have ever seen.
It's effective in photos and on television, but nothing compared to the impact of seeing it in person. If you have the chance, go.
The poppies flow out from strategic points atop the Tower's battlements, cascading down like a stream into the moat below. Piper has worked magic, with placement that leaves subtle lines of green and undulates the flowers. The naturalistic curves mean that you can can look closely and pick out individual blooms, or allow your eyes to go slightly out of focus and take in the vast ocean of red. It's stunningly beautiful, drifting between the greys and whites of the stonework and the emerald green of the grass. Until you remember what it actually means. Every stem, a death. All those names, on all those war memorials, accumulated here in horrific, terrible beauty. It is very hard to hold the tears back.
It's also a fine reminder that this is fundraising season for the six major charities that support our armed forces. This year, you can buy one of those ceramic poppies in addition to your usual label-decorating support. More information here.
The rest of our day out in London couldn't really stand up to that.
We'd planned to wander through Borough Market and graze across gourmet food carts for lunch. While I get this way fairly often for work, Piers hasn't been here for years. I wanted to show him how London can hold its own against similar food markets in Paris and Barcelona. But I hadn't counted on the weekend crowds. It was shoulder-to-shoulder madness, with queues 20-deep at every dining and drinking option. There may be more vendors here on a Saturday, but I'd advise the relative sanity of a weekday visit.
So we started walking up the south bank of the Thames, thinking we'd find someplace before too long. Through Hays Wharf, past numerous riverside pubs and restaurants, all were packed. Leading us, finally, tired and starving, to the first empty table we saw at Gaucho Tower Bridge.
My plans misfired on the British Museum, as well. With a quick lunch before the poppies, we should have been into the Ming exhibit by 3:30. Instead, waving our membership cards for last-minute admission, we arrived just before 5. With less than half an hour to skip through before closing, I can tell you that the show offers a beautiful range of objects and paints a wonderfully comprehensive picture of life during one of China's most culturally sophisticated eras. It's also exciting to see how versatile the new exhibit space is, being used in a very different way than for the previous Viking show. Clearly, I need to get back.
After recovering from all that rushing around with a pint in the Museum Tavern across the street (an old favourite), we trekked across town for the last planned event of the night. Meeting our friends Tracy and Beric usually calls for sushi, since we're all big fans, and a good friend tipped Clapham's Tsunami as "good as Nobu, but much cheaper." Had to be tried.
Maybe it was the fault of our late lunch. We weren't particularly hungry, and we were still in a bad mood from the sticker shock of the bill. We found the menu overcomplicated and trying too hard. Foie gras sushi? Please. Fusion can go too far. They accidentally served us a yellowfin tartare we didn't order. In a little mason jar, with fancy toasts and odd dressings. All too fussy. Meanwhile, we spotted no Japanese faces in the open kitchen, and there wasn't any option for combination sushi platters.
We ordered a satisfying variety a la carte. A shared double order of their soft shell crab tempura was the standout, by far. Otherwise, it was tasty and nicely presented, but nothing special. Had I only had the light lunch we'd planned, I'd probably have left hungry. Our portion of the meal cost about the same as our lunch, and that was with double the wine. Good value in comparison to Gaucho, but I know I would have been much happier pulling sushi off the conveyor belt at my enduring favourite, Hiroba on Kingsway.
Fortunately, the company outweighed any disgruntlement with the food, and the poppies made the trip into town … and all the expense … worth while. I just wish more of that cash could have gone to services charities rather than to the restaurant bills.
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