I was thrilled to bag a ticket at long last to visit the Cosmic House - you have to be quick off the mark when they're released - and it's now top of my list of 'Best Things To Do in London for a Fiver.' The house was the
home of Charles Jencks, the post-modernist architect who lived there until he was 80 (and I am lost in admiration if he still managed that spiral staircase, 52 steps one for every week of the year - and very impressed with myself, too, because I gulped when I saw it!). I'm not a fan of post-modernism but this eccentric house was fascinating to see - and even Jencks admitted that he had gone Too Far. It's so busy ... throbbing with ideas about life, the universe and everything, you feel exhausted looking at it. It did strike me as a very masculine home - his big, important ideas squashing any sign of the wife and young family who lived there too. (Tellingly, his daughter says that she didn't like bringing her friends home.) And I'm guessing that the person who designed the witty frieze of spoons in the kitchen wasn't the person who had to do the fiddly cleaning - though I suppose that if you can afford a Holland Park mansion, you can afford the staff to go with it. Frankly, I could live without my husband exercising his schoolboy 'wit' in the cloakroom ... the symmetrical double flush to the loo - one side works, the other doesn't - well, hilarious if you're 14, but the women visitors in my tour group all agreed that it verged on bullying and we wouldn't want to embarrass our guests for a larf. (Symmetrical soaps, too ... one tablet is soap, the other is stone.) Much use is made of MDF ... in fact, Jencks was really like a more high-minded Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen.
You can wander round at your own pace - sit on the (very uncomfortable) furniture - and be very grateful indeed that you don't live with a clever clogs with an insatiable urge for DIY. What I really did love was the beautiful garden designed by Jencks'wife Maggie Keswick; I remember reading her book about Chinese gardens before what for us seemed a very adventurous trip to China back in the 1980s.
And around the corner from the Cosmic House is the Best Horribly Unhealthy Lunch for a Fiver from
here. Oh, those buns ... no seating, but if you're determined you can grapple with bun/coffee/monsoonal downpour whilst lurking in a doorway.
Fuelled with 5000 calories (full disclosure: it was a cheesecake bun ... the whopping XXL Wimbledon bun filled with clotted cream seemed excessive even for me), I jumped on a bus to the National Portrait Gallery. Bad mistake - it was heaving. And it used to be such a calm, peaceful hideaway for discoursing with Brontes or Beatrix Potter. I hope it's just temporary enthusiasm and too much publicity for the revamp. Too hot - too crowded - too noisy ... I gave it just 10 minutes and went home.
I'm not a fan of Mr J because of the land form he organised in front of our Modern Art Gallery. It looks great from the gallery, but if you happened to live in the houses opposite (which I don't), you now have a view of the back of an artificial hill instead of the grounds of the gallery. His house looks interesting, though stone soap, hmm.
ReplyDeleteThat must be annoying for residents, Pam - I've only seen it from the gallery, which does look great! Have you ever visited his Garden of Cosmic Speculation, near Dumfries, which is fascinating? Only open once a year.
ReplyDeletePlease don’t disappear. I expect it’s hard to keep up enthusiasm for writing a blog after so many years but I never lose enthusiasm for reading it.
ReplyDeleteShame about NPG. I haven’t been to London for at least 3 years but back in the day I was down there as much as possible and a visit was always a joy. Once, years ago, lunch in the restaurant upstairs was a proper memorable treat. That view. I always used to buy a supply of postcards but the last time I was there they seemed to have halved their range and the quality was poor. in fact this seems to have happened in most galleries nowadays. The quality of cards in the Walker Art Gallery is so dismal that you can hardly make our the picture. Costs, I suppose.
I had never heard of Cosmic House. I should love to go.
Anna, Merseyside.
Thank you, Anna - it's so encouraging to be appreciated and I'm glad you enjoy reading. I went back to NPG yesterday - the Yevonde exhibition is a delight but I'm very disappointed by the revamp: there is now a huge entrance hall, but appalling signage, very small, slow lifts - on both visits I saw disabled people in difficulties - long queues for the unisex toilets which I loathe and would only use in desperation (or nip next door to the National Gallery) - lots of women in the queue complaining about they how much hate them. Very inadequate seating in the cafe so I drank my over-priced coffee and went home, though I'd have liked a browse if I'd had half an hour to recoup after the exhibition. Maybe it'll settle down when the publicity tails off but for the moment I wish they'd just left it alone, a nice little hideaway for those who loved the paintings rather than a day-out. Oh, and I passed through the shop and noticed the paltry range of postcards - they used to have a brilliant selection.
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