View the Olympic Site from the View Tube
It’s been covered brilliantly months ago on other London blogs but it always takes your author a while to catch up, so today’s idea is the View Tube, overlooking the Olympic site.
In typical Olympics fashion, the largely-empty expensive-looking website can’t just say it’s a cafe with a nice view of the building site, it has to be ‘a social enterprise and community venue located on The Greenway adjacent to the Olympic Park’, but your author is pretty sure it was mainly a cafe with a nice view when he popped by on Sunday. Made from bright green recycled shipping containers, it’s a partnership project between Leaside Regeneration, London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, the Olympic Delivery Authority and Thames Water.
Whilst the website is plastered with words like ‘events’, ‘create’, ‘learn’ and other meaningless terms, there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount to do other than drink tea and look at the view, but it does seem that you might be able to hire a bike for about a fiver and from here you can ride for absolutely miles along the Greenway (to Beckton) or along the Lee Valley, which sounds like great fun, and it’s a sport. Oh, and also there is a cafe with a nice view of the Olympic site there.
The View is open daily from 9am until 5pm, for more, see http://www.theviewtube.co.uk/
Study magic at Davenports Magic Shop
Davenports Magic Shop was founded in 1898 by Lewis Davenport, a renowned magician and music hall performer. The business has remained in the same family ever since and today it is managed by Lewis’s great-grandson, Bill Davenport. Two of your author’s closest friends recently took lessons at Davenports and it is under their recommendation that it is included here.
The shop, hidden away in the Charing Cross underground arcade, adjacent to the tube station, has a studio where the various magical activities are held, from lectures by visiting magicians to magic courses.
Davenports shop sells a vast array of magic tricks, books, DVDs and accessories for magicians of all levels, and passionate staff who know their trade. The popular beginners Saturday magic course, which guides new starters through basic moves and tricks, and important background, runs regularly in groups of six to sixteen people. An intermediate course is also set to start soon. The next rounds of both courses begin in April.
Davenports is open Monday – Friday, 9.30am – 5.30pm and Saturdays 10.30am – 4.30pm. For more, see www.davenportsmagic.co.uk
^Picture courtesy of Davenports^
Mosque in the Sun
I remember the Regent’s Park Mosque being built in the seventies, the first in London. Fascinatingly, it was almost eighty years in the arriving. From wht it feels like, the sun has been away that long, too.
(isn’t it odd how the days when blogger screws up the posting coincide with those I am too busy to check up?)
Visit the Markfield Beam Engine
As mentioned last Sunday, it is time to have a look at the Markfield Beam Engine and Museum, which is open today as part of regular openings on the second Sunday of each month. The engine, in Markfield Park, Harringey was once used to move sewage from Tottenham into the London system for treatment at the Beckton sewage works. 
The 100 horsepower beam pumping engine, built in 1886 by Wood Brothers, is housed in an original Grade II listed Engine House in the former sewage treatment works for Tottenham which have now become part of Markfield Park. The Engine operated from 1886 until 1905 continuously, and carried on service on standby operation until 1964 when sewers were diverted to the extended East Middlesex Works at Deephams. The engine has recently been restored and can be seen operating under steam on designated days. Meanwhile, the museum is open on the second Sunday of each month from 11am until 4pm. For more information, see http://www.mbeam.org/
The Beat Generation
Brewer Street in Soho plays host to the Vintage Magazine Shop, a fantastic, eclectic collection of stuff that reminds you of another age not so long ago. Always worth remembering if you are looking for a hard-to-choose-present.
Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Scaffolding!
The Spitalfields complex has been sprouting bits of art lately, like this. No information around it, and while it does depend on the fascinating way straight lines can turn into curves, it seems to me to be sub-Quantum Cloud. Still, a bit of fun. My favourite of the Spitalfields crop tomorrow.
On holiday – back soon.
Refined Lions
The lions to the rear of the British Museum always struck me as being particularly refined, snooty almost, but I like them. Dignified.
Checkout Londonist’s Leonine London series if you want to find out more about London’s pride of lions.
More Goth than Gothic?
Gothic perpendicular, It’s a fantastic building, with gargoyles vying with cctv cameras for the high ground, the Prudential Building always seems as if it is newer than it is (late 19th century) while it is trying to be older than it is (14th Century) but I’d dare day everyone who knows it is fond of it. And, it has special relevance to London Daily Photo – more tomorrow.
Gee, it’s a big one…
From the sheer size of this drinking trough you could guess that it is in Smithfield. Very difficult to imagine what the city of London must have looked like at the time, to need a trough this big, and I’m sure they had to queue to get there. There’s another large one at Mornington Crescent, but I’m not aware of any other giant ones – anyone?
On holiday – back soon.
