Candid Capital: London Routemaster
Classic London Routemaster
A classic London Routemaster bus waiting at Trafalgar Square, September 2015. According to its registration number- RM909– this particular vehicle first hit the capital in November 1961, running the 141 route between Palmers Green and London Bridge Station. It later saw service in Glasgow, Sheffield and Ireland and is now used for afternoon tea tours.
Glimpse of the past… John Lennon on Broadwick Street, 1966
John Lennon, Broadwick Street, November 1966
36 years ago today, on the 8th December 1980, John Lennon was shot dead in New York. He was just 40 years old. The image above was taken on the 27th November 1966 outside a public lavatory on Soho’s Broadwick Street, and shows John playing London’s swankiest toilet attendant in a sketch for the BBC comedy show, ‘Not Only But Also‘.
Monument to the Unknown Artist
Just around the corner from the new Tate Modern extension, you’ll find a rather uncanny statue plonked upon a 6ft. plinth bearing the Latin inscription, “Non plaudite modo pecuniam jacite”- which translates as ‘Do not applaud, just throw money’ (an improvement on its original caption- “Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur”- ‘Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound’!)
Monument to the Unkown Artist (image: copyright Andrew Shoben)
Known as the ‘Monument to the Unknown Artist’, the piece was installed by an art collective called Greyworld; a group of artists who’ve been creating intriguing urban art since the mid-1990s. Other projects of theirs include the Lake District’s ‘Clockwork Forest’ (2011) and Trafalgar Sun (2012).
To the uninitiated, the Monument to the Unknown Artist can often cause considerable alarm- due to the fact that it’s capable of movement.
When it was first unveiled in 2007 a camera was linked to the artwork, the idea being that the statue could observe and mimic the actions of passersby. I’m not quite sure if this feature still functions- I certainly wasn’t attempting to dance like John Travolta in ‘Saturday Night Fever‘ when the above clip was filmed. Perhaps this mysterious figure is beginning to take on a mind of his own…
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View from the Mirror 