Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

On the far outskirts of Eastern London, a weathered sign in front of a ramshackle warehouse reads "God's Own Junkyard" in flickering neon letters. Here Dick Bracy, known as 'Neon Man', more than 40 years ago began shaping - and collecting - neon signs in all forms and colors. Many of them for the sex shops and strip bars on the seedier side of London Soho.  He even got so famous, that some of his signs appeared in movies like 'Eyes wide shut' and 'Blade Runner'.  Today his son is running the warehouse, which occasionally is opened up to the public, and when you enter it, you become immersed inside an almost impenetrable jungle of humming tubes of light.  Vintage advertisements share space with avant-garde sculptures crafted from discarded neon pieces, and the fluorescent glow gives the impression of a futuristic wonderland, even though the signs themselves harken back to bygone eras. The neon relics in the ...

Last night we happened to find a new favorite hangout in East London. The Bohemia Night Market is a vibrant set of microbreweries, bars, DJ sets, and street food vendors, which has recently settled into some old, gloriously grungy, abandoned garages below the highline at Hackney Central train station.   In the coming weekends, this black-owned market will be filled with mostly young people spinning around to Afrobeats, Dancehall, Amapiano, Funk, Soul,  and more.  And - as was our main focus last night: Having some lovely street food and a few pints of brews. The party probably lasted way into the early morning hours. At that time, though, we were well into our beds.

While Michael is out roaming around Greater London, I spend a lot of time at the locks on Regents Canal, which runs just a block from the flat in Islington, where we are staying.  I often walk along the canal but mostly, I just sit, doing some reading or some knitting. There is always something to look at, ponder about, or be entertained by. Yesterday when I was sitting on my bench, a man set up his fishing gear, threw the line, and shortly after caught what turned out to be a perch.  It was a fight for him to get it ashore, but he put it immediately back into the canal.  When I asked him why, he told me he had been fishing at this bank since he was 12. In his younger days, he needed meals. Now he was just doing it for sport, and he showed me how and where to place oneself while fishing according to the stream, the noise, and the wind. The story of his life came after this information. He was a builder and told me he was quite relaxed. The only people he didn’t like...

Yesterday we embarked on a pilgrimage to London's White Cube Gallery to view the 'Finnegan's wake' - the new exhibition of work by German artist Anselm Kiefer.  Passing through the pristine antechamber of the White Cube, all glowing white plaster and polished concrete, felt like approaching some great cathedral.  Entering the first gallery space, we were plunged suddenly into an ashen underworld.  Kiefer's large-scale paintings hung on the walls like ancient tomb paintings, muted greys and blackened earth tones layered in his signature impasto style.  Moving through the exhibition, we wandered as if lost in a labyrinth made of fire and rubble. Images of scorched earth evoked the horrors of Europe's 20th-century history. Other canvases featured more vertiginous and vaulting imagery, but even these more aspirational paintings were rendered in ashen, elegiac tones as if any dream of transcendence was foreclosed.  Throughout, Kiefer's use...

  Un instant de rêve et de pause. This is the text on a signpost in the little village of Antraigues-Sur-Volane in the south of France, where we have a townhouse. Almost every spring, we start our season of travels with a shorter or longer stay, and this year our moments of dreaming and pausing have been plentiful, as we have had almost six weeks of blistering sunny days separated by sudden torrential rainstorms and thunder, which have boomed between the mountains. Yesterday our lazy days were over.  We raced up through France and across the channel with the TGV and Eurostar - and now we are back in one of our favorite megacities in the whole wide world:  Fabulous ever-swinging London! In our mountain village, we have about 300 neighbors and we're on greets with most when we pass them on our daily, leisurely walks Now we are surrounded by millions of anonymous Londoners. Many are hurrying past in the busy neighborhood of Islington, where we are staying for the next ...