You can have a picnic lunch at the Garden Museum, sandwiches made up by the café and consumed either outside or in the courtyard with its garden designed by Dan Pearson. What could be more therapeutic ?

We went to see the Derek Jarman exhibition today, which has been open since Saturday. It’s an amazing achievement to have got it designed and built during lockdown, open on the first day it could, and slightly spooky to be able to walk across the shingle into a replica of Prospect Cottage. It’s been designed by Jeremy Herbert – beautifully:-

On the way back we stopped to admire The Blind Beggar and his Dog, which we looked at recently, but hadn’t realised is an early Frink, commissioned by Bethnal Green Borough Council in 1957, originally placed on the Roman Road, and moved to its current location in 1964, which makes it hard to see, but has probably led to it surviving intact without vandalism:-

I was taken on a trip to see Walthamstow Town Hall, that fine example of 1930s Scandinavian classicism; but it turned out to be in restauro. More interesting was seeing the expanse of the local reservoir, with swifts diving:-

And its two bits of Victorian industrial architecture: the Coppermill which was turned into a pumping station in 1859 with the addition of its Italianate tower in 1864:-

And the Ferry Lane Pumping Station of 1894:-

I have been asked by Martin Jennings, himself a sculptor, for my response to Emma Lavender’s long and thoughtful critique of what I had thought of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square. Two things had impressed me about the statue: the first was how much the mood of the square was changed by the presence of a single woman; the second was an element of surprise that a statue produced, as I guessed, by the latest 3D reproductive technologies based on original photographs was so convincing. I still feel, even now that I have read more about how it was produced, that it is better and much more convincing than some of the weaker recent public statues, because the traditions of carving and modelling are no longer much taught.

I am happy to receive more information on where they are still taught and the best examples of contemporary figurative sculpture, as the issue as to how new figurative sculpture is commissioned and who is commissioned will become issues of public concern, if they are not already.

Meanwhile, I am reproducing my photograph of the statue again only so that readers don’t have to scroll back:-

Having said how grateful I was to the London Library during lockdown, I feel that I should add the services of our local bread shop Breid, which at a crucial moment when we were not going out at all, generously said that they would deliver bread to our front gate, if necessary by throwing the bread over it, only providing I paid them retrospectively which I now have. How to make friends and a long lasting sense of gratitude for another form of essential sustenance:-

Since I have been known to post not invariably complimentary posts about the current government’s policies, I feel that they do indeed deserve the plaudits they have received for providing a generous way forward out of the mire, suggesting that, most particularly, Rishi Sunak must have an intelligent regard for the ways in which the arts are now a potential engine of economic recovery, if one includes design, film, education and computer games, alongside theatres and museums; also, as I was told on the pavement outside the London Library, Oliver Dowden must have been a much more effective advocate than has previously been expected. It’s nice to be able to write something complimentary about the current lot.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/boris-johnson-uk-lifeline-arts-heritage-sector-afloat?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_WordPress

I had booked a slot on the first day of the London Library re-opening. I arrived at 11.25, expecting a queue round St. James’s Square, but I was allowed straight in where the books I had ordered online were waiting for me. The London Library gets my top marks for service during lockdown, sending things out by post without charge, including a rare book about the Neues Museum which is unaffordably expensive and which arrived boxed up pretty much by next day delivery. Everyone is exceptionally friendly: a consequence of not having seen human beings for months is that one greets them is if they are the only other people at the North Pole. I felt waves of nostalgia for the Entrance Hall, although one’s passage through it is much more disciplined, exit through Mason’s Yard:-

My new favourite shop since taking up cycling again is Paradise Cycles on the Roman Road: the staff are so helpful and knowledgeable, they kept open during lockdown for emergency workers, they are part of the hippy utopian elements of Globe Town alongside the buddhists, and are well named:-

Victoria Park has only been in the news recently in connection with bad behaviour, but my limited experience of it during lockdown, and especially today is the opposite: large numbers of well-behaved people – small children and families, a few sunbathers, people on roller skates, using the park as it was originally intended when it was first proposed in 1840 as the lungs of east London, providing light and air to alleviate the burden of urban deprivation:-