The local campaigners are out in force.

I feel a completely childish sense of pleasure that at long last The Elizabeth Line is about to open, just in time for the Platinum Jubilee (TfL Press Release – Elizabeth line to open on 24 May 2022 (prgloo.com)). New lines have only opened twice in my lifetime: the Victoria Line, which opened up parts of London which were previously off the map, from Brixton to Walthamstow, and it seemed at the time so sleek and fast; and then the Jubilee Line with its stations which still give a frisson of pleasure, particularly the incredibly futuristic grandiosity of Canary Wharf and the more complex geometry of Westminster (at least those are the two which I think of as the best). Now it will be possible to get from Whitechapel to Liverpool Street in three minutes; to Farringdon in five minutes, to Bond Street when it opens in eleven; and it’s disabled accessible. We can go for walks in Abbey Wood.

I have just thought of something about our journey through parts of rural Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire yesterday. We saw quite a number of Liberal Democrat stickers and a healthy number of Green. There were some unexpected Labour ones in Winchester. But we did not see a single Conservative one in what used to be their heartland. Not one. It crosses my mind that ordinary voters in the Shires do not want to be known by their neighbours to be supporting a known liar as Prime Minister. They can’t defend him or his behaviour. This may not prevent them from putting a cross by the Conservative candidate in the local elections, but it may well be a deterrent. Of course, I hope so.

We stopped in Winchester on the way back from Bruton, mainly to see the excellent, but small Ravilious exhibition in the building which used to house the Public Library, now with an exhibition space at the back. It gave us an opportunity to walk through the Close and admire how astonishingly well preserved the centre of Winchester is – so little 1960s developments, no big, new, out-of-scale buildings and still a lot of surviving late medieval buildings round the Cathedral: I presume the result of prosperity and big conservative landowners in the Church and the College. But how has it escaped, I wonder ?

If you go to Bruton, I recommend eating at The Old Pharmacy. It’s not cheap. £50 a head for a tasting menu (with wine); but stupendously delicious in a totally unpretentious, but brilliant way. I’ve now read about it. I didn’t feel it to be quite as local as it claims to be, but people in Bruton certainly take their meat seriously, starting out with fresh bread cut thin with slices of saucisson and a main course of pork with roast potatoes and turnip, with burrata and broad beans in between. As much Spanish, I thought, as local, but maybe that was the focus on flavour. Coffee ice cream to finish on a bed of mascarpone, crumble and salted caramel. It’s like a lot of Bruton: a form of heightened reality, like the Hudson Valley.

We travelled down to Bruton to see the exhibition, Five Seasons, at Make Hauser and Wirth Gallery in the High Street with Romilly’s work prominently and beautifully on display in a mixed show of work loosely inspired by the gardening philosophy of Piet Oudolf. It’s hard to photograph – much better on their website. I liked the trio of objects – not a set – not in a glass case but just set out on a metal plinth:-

I have just been listening to the latest episode of the Londown (https://open-city.org.uk/the-londown), an excellent weekly programme about what is happening in architecture. This week is concerned with Michael Gove’s decision to call in the plans to demolish Marks and Spencer’s building in Oxford Street. It does feel as if there could be a mood swing in attitudes towards new building: this decision to protect a perfectly good if not especially distinguished 1920s commercial building instead of replacing it with a deeply undistinguished new building; the decision to appoint the most conservation-minded of the entries to the competition to re-do the Barbican; the apparent success of a scheme to convert Hammonds of Hull, a department store, into a food market; these suggest efforts to look for imaginative new uses for existing buildings instead of just demolishing them. Now, it just needs Gove to call in the planned monstrous development by Make next door to the National Theatre to demonstrate his support for this new policy direction. It would be condemned for its conservatism; but it is about the future as much as the past. The ITV scheme by Make is a 1950s dream of the future by a 70-year old architect. Younger architects have a much more imaginative attitude towards re-use, refurbishment and protection of the planet, as well as of old buildings. It feels as if Gove sees this and supports it.