Shakespeare bust outside Guildhall and Art Gallery.

 

Shakespeare bust. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

When is a shop more exciting than a museum or art gallery shop? Sherlock Holmes shop, Mary Rose pottery shop

Sherlock Holmes
In London, England I popped into the Sherlock Holmes shop. Queues (Americans say line-ups) had formed outside. My companions had not wanted to spend time in the museum. We were short of time and money. However, there was plenty to keep me amused and occupied. I later went back to the museum.

Pink Pottery
I came across a place selling unusual pottery by accident. looked at an elaborately painted unsaleable house for sale, featured in the Daily Mirror newspaper. The walls were pink with lips, the chairs a riot of colour, white dots on black, or elaborate flowers. The home was owned by an artist. Her name was Mary Rose. I followed the link back to the artist's pottery.   Just looking online was a delight. She makes Alice in Wonderland pottery.

Mary Rose, artist, with her pottery. Photo from Wikipedia.

Mary Rose, Artist, teapot.

Many museums around the world have online shops selling small inexpensive items, large ones to admire, glimpses of what is on display in the museum. From postcards of classic artworks, to offbeat tee-shirts, handy items for motorcyclists from motorcycle museums and presents for birthdays and anniversaries for others or yourself.

https://www.maryroseyoung.com/
https://www.facebook.com/angela.lansbury.121

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other Wednesdays are workshops on app learncool.sg
Or quicker to type and easier to remember:  tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

Useful Websites

Placenames in UK such as Mandela, and placenames in Russia such as St Petrograd

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2004/apr/18/property.homebuying

https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reduplicated_place_names

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reduplicated_Australian_place_names

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reduplicated_New_Zealand_place_names

https://photoscissors.com/
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/second-set-of-portuguese-words.html Please share links to your favourite posts
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
translate.google.com
duolingo.com

Manchester United: Manchester's Magic Museums, Memorials and Moments: Including What to see at the National Football Museum and Manchester

Problem
I have been a supporter of Manchester United ever since the air crash 60 years ago. I was only a tot at the time but I remember the shock of learning about it. Where can you go to support Manchester United?

Answer
The National Football Museum, Manchester, is a great place to go. A survivor of the air crash was Sir Bobby Charlton, who attended a 60-year commemoration in February 2018.

Mancunians are united in praising their city. I used to share a flat in London with a doctor from Manchester called Trudy and she claimed that people in the north of England were much warmer and friendlier than in London. Manchester is a great place for museums, whether or not you visit the football museum or are a football fan.

What are my top 10 Manchester sights?
1 The Lowry, Pier 8, The Quays, Salford M50 3AZ. Tel:0843 208 6000.
This complex named after Lowry contains two theatres and assorted eating spots as well as an exhibition of some of up to 100 Lowry paintings. Open Sunday to Friday 10-5 and Saturday 10-5. Free 30 minute tour of exhibition at noon and 2 pm.
The artist painted such evocative paintings with his crowds of matchstick people rushing to and fro, even little dogs. The people looked poor and painfully thin and anxious but full of energy.
Entrance is 'free', with a ticket and donation box. You also see a film on Lowry's life.

In Manchester Art Gallery I looked at a reproduction of his living room with the chair with the spring sticking out. For visitors. A typical artist, employed, but he didn't seem to care about looking after property, only devoted to his art. So good at painting people, but reputedly anti-social. He was given honours in his lifetime but turned them down.
The shop has loads of great items at all prices decorated with parts of his paintings, prints unframed and framed, bags, pill boxes, silk ties, and brooches.
https://shop.thelowry.com/collections/jewellery-and-accessories?page=2

2 A statue of Lowry seated on a bench, drawing, is in the village of Mottram in Longdendale in Greater Manchester.

Memorial to artist Lowry (1887-1976), statue seated on a bench in Mottram in Longdendale, Manchester. Picture author A Carty.

A bridge links The Lowry and the War Museum. Parking is expensive (unless you are staying at a nearby hotel such as the Holiday Inn Express) but you can see both The Lowry and the War Museum if you pick the nearby car park.

3 War Museum

4 National Football Museum
Free entry. Open daily.
Inside the modern museum, see banners, football, football shirts.

Outside the museum, dramatic statue of a footballer flying through the air diagonally to save a ball from the goal. Most statues show people posing upright. Apart from capturing a moment in history, it's an innovative piece of sculpture. Looking at the statue is like looking at a plane. You can't help marvelling at the miraculous design and how it defies gravity and keeps up.

National Football Museum, Manchester, England.

5 The City's Science Museum
So much to see and do here. I loved the history. So much to read and learn that if you go back a year or more later it's like visiting a different place. I recall on my first visit reading a grim story about the flooding of the cemetery sending coffins and bodies and skeletons through the streets, and how that is prevented in modern times. When I went back I seemed to miss this drama and looked at totally different things. My favourite part was the reproduced street with the pharmacy, sweetshop and toys.

6 Gaskell House
84 Plymouth Grove. Home of author Elizabeth Gaskell.

7 Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street.

Manchester Art Gallery. Photo by David Dixon.

8 Jewish Museum
Fascinating. I remember reading about immigrants with coins hidden in the lining of their clothes.

9 Chinatown
Chinese New year, this year starts Friday Feb 16, 2018. Expect lion dances and drums and festivity.

10 Getting About
It would be fun to take a modern tram. And an old-fashioned tram.

Modern Tram in Manchester. Photo by Dr Neil Clifton in Wikitravel.

To make liefe easy, you can also take a hop on hop off bus tour on a bus which is half open at the top, in case it rains or is cold. The cost is about £12 for adults, £6 for concessions and stops include the national football museum. 

For a Manchester United fan anywhere in the world, a great city to visit.

Getting There
Manchester has England's largest airport after Heathrow and it's an award-winning airport.

Useful Websites
http://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com

http://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com/explore-the-museum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_of_interest_in_Greater_Manchester

https://www.visitmanchester.com/things-to-see-and-do/tours-and-sightseeing/tours-and-tour-guides/sightseeing-manchester-p340511

visitengland.com

visitbritain.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Valentine's Day Service in St Lawrence Jewry Wed Feb 14 2018

Guildhall area. Photo taken from outside St Lawrence Jewry next to Guildhall. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Problem
Valentine's Day Is Too Commercial.

Answer
If you want a religious celebration of marriage in London, St Lawrence Jewry, beside Guildhall, has issued a leaflet saying "Come and join us in a celebration of marriage before heading out for a romantic date with your other half! All are welcome to join us for a service of renewal of your wedding vows.

They are creating a Then and Now wedding montage and sappeling for couples who married there to join them or send a Wedding Day pictures and a current picture with wedding details.

An ide other churches and temples could copy - and probably have.

For more information contact Katrina, tel:0207 600 9478
katrina@stlawrencejewry.corg.uk

While in the area, visit the free art gallery in Guildhall, the Roman ruins below, or the police museum. (See my previous posts.)

Useful Websites
visitbritain.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Rossetti's Redheads At Guildhall Gallery

Guildhall. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Problems
1 Where can you see London's traitional historic buildings and paintings for free?
2 After you've seen the national Gallery and the Tate, where next?

I had no idea that London's Guildhall contains an art gallery. A visit here offers several delights:

1 Even at night when everything is shut, enjoy the atmosphere in the pedetrian courtyard in front. The lights inside the church reveal the stained glass windows from outside. You can see busts of Shakespeare and wren on the front wall of Guildhall.

Rossetti's Redheads
If you have time, go inside. The shop on the right has a delightful cushion for sale at £30 showing Rossetti's Redhead, his redheaded girlfriend who he married when she was dying. She's the one who he buried with his poems; then he dug up the coffin to retrieve the poems.

Her long red hair had supposedly grown after her death (and filled the coffin according to one account I read). If you must know, I'll tell you what I found. I investigated. I am always keen on finding a practical and scientific explanation for any supersititions or supernatural nonsense. I assume that the people concerned are not entirely nuts and overcome by emotion. They must be observing a fact and attributing a bizarre cause. I recall reading the simple but slightly yukky explanation that after death your hair and nails appear to grow because the rest of the body is dehydrating and shrinking.

Let's end on a more cheerful note. Rossetti coined the word stunner to describe the redheaded subject of his paintings. He made redheads popular. (Natural in those days, no help from supermarket hair dyes.)

Reading the captions on the paintings in Guildhall is a wonderful revelation and insight, into the lives and fashions of Victorian England. The comments on the paintings inspired me to look up the painters' and models' lives in the internet.

That picture of his girlfiends as the dying or dead Ophelia floating in the river, was painted with the model lying in a bath of water. Rosetti, as his romantic name suggests, was of Italian origin on one side, but is now firmly part of the history of England and the whole world.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer, author and speaker.

NEVER TOO LATE TO SKATE In London, England or Singapore

PROBLEM
I'd like to skate elegantly like Torville and Dean, winners of the skating championships. I'd love to do ice dancing. But I'm not tall and thin, don't possess a skating outfit, or ice skates.

ANSWER
You can take lessons and skate all year.

TIPS
ENGLAND and SCOTLAND
You can go the art galleries  or look on line for paintings of people skating on the River Thames during the Great Frost.

Do not skate on frozen ponds. Not in England or Scotland. Very dangerous. Remember Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, inspired by James Barrie's older brother who fell through the ice and died. Barrie made his brother immortal in the popular pantomime and bequeathed the profits from the play to the Great Ormond Children's Hospital in London, England.

(I say London, England because I have many readers over in America and there's a London in Canada. I found that out when I moved from the USA to the UK and people forwarded my post to London and some of it reached me months later having first gone to Canada.)

Back to the subject of skating. All year you can skate, ice skate, in England at the Queens Ice Skating rink in London, England. They have a cafe. If you are just watching, you can sit under a nice warming blanket.

No experience? You can have individual or group lessons.

Not sure if ice skating is your thing? You can also try ice hockey and ice karting.

In winter ice skating rinks are set up in London outdoors. Not only fun for skaters. It's fun to watch.

You can visit the statue of Peter Pan and take a photo of it, or a selfie with it.

FINLAND
Brought up in England where parents and police warn people not to skate, I was alarmed when I went to Finland and found that companies hire out motor vehicles to take you on trips across the frozen ice. So if you want to go our on the ice, pick a country where the temperatures are really low and the activities are organised by adults who have experience and insurance.

SINGAPORE
Over in Singapore there's another kind of skating. People skate along the streets on the latest version of roller skates. Children have skating shoes. Adults invest in fold up versions of foot power scooters which I used as a toddler and small child to visit the shops in London in the 1900s.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. For pictures see my other posts on ice skating and indoor skiing. Please share links to posts.