Went on Open House today....Open House is a designated weekend when buildings all over London open themselves to the public.
The first place we went to was somewhere local and wasn't part of OpenHouse. God's Own Junkyard. I'd heard of it a couple of months ago because it was having to move because a developer had bought the land they rented.
God's Own Junkyard is this...a neon junkyard:
A truly wonderful and bizarre place. The main company makes neon signs, they've been in operation since the 1950's and have built up a collection in the meatime, of signs used in films, restaurants and Soho sex shows
. This weekend was the last that they were going to be open. We hope they find somewhere else; gradually eccentricity and disorder is being blanded out in London...viva Starbucks.
There's a BBC video here if anyone wants to know more
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24069881After that we tried to visit the Lloyds building but there was a huge queue so we decided we couldn't be bothered, so we went on to Lloyds Register (who provide independent assurance and advice to companies operating high-risk, capital-intensive assets in the energy and transportation sectors). This was a modern block cleverly integrated with a rather magnificant early twentieth century building.
But I'm simple.
This impressed me most.
A marble lion. There were two. Was this one original or not? I didn't know. One of them had been picked up, thrown and smashed by an enraged customer. That lion was heavy. The customer must have been very very cross.
After that we stumbled across a piece of the old Roman London Wall. We joined a talk talking place in front of it. Took about 10 minutes of listening before it dawned that it was a Jack the Ripper tour and nothing to do with the Wall. This made me sad. I'd been wondering how the story of a Victorian prostitute was linked with Roman London.
Anyhow, by then it was late and most of the Open House buildings would be closing so that was that!
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