Kanlaon

This is self’s post for Debbie Smyth’s Six Word Saturday challenge.

Self started going to London regularly in 2015. She visited every year and stayed at The Penn Club on Bedford Place, in Bloomsbury. The Penn Club became her home away from home, a place where she formed fast friendships. In 2020, the pandemic killed it. Most of its patrons were elderly. She hopes they didn’t get covid, but she suspects many of them did. After a hundred years in Bloomsbury, The Penn Club closed its doors, permanently.

Now, self is back in London. She couldn’t imagine staying anywhere else but in Bloomsbury. Another of her favorites, a French restaurant on Hanway Place, had closed. She spent days walking up and down Great Russell Street, dropping by the British Museum, seeing their special exhibits (Right now the special exhibit’s about Stonehenge), dropping by the London Review Bookshop.

An architectural firm used to be next door to the bookshop, but the large windows through which self had peeked many and many a time to watch people industriously working at giant drafting boards were boarded up. She was so relieved to see the Contemporary Ceramics gallery on Great Russell Street was still there! She wandered in. Several other people were there — most young. Wonder of wonders, they were buying!

Self wanted to buy a piece, too. But she is traveling, and her bag is already quite heavy. In fact, the airline slapped a HEAVY BAG sticker on it, when she checked in at Belfast on her flight to Heathrow. But if people are buying fine ceramics, the gallery will make it.

The ceramic artist whose works are on exhibit is Ruth King. Her works stay up until May 21. Here’s a quote from the flyer the gallery gave out:

• Ruth’s sculptural forms and vessels are fashioned from soft sheets of clay cut and assembled to wrap and define a space. The surface is then enriched by the passage of salt vapours in the firing reacting to each twist and turn of the form adding colour, texture and articulation.