Which meant that, since it would be a shame to travel to London just for one single day, I obviously had to come a little earlier, and to make up for that, stay a bit longer. Bonus: the most patient of all husbands did tag along with me - so we did some exploring of the city.
On Friday, we went to join one of the Fridays-for-Future demonstrations. This was full, with a huge crowd with lots and lots of different signs. There were quite a lot of speeches (of which we didn't catch much), and rather a lot of fluctuation of people coming in and going away again. It was good to see a lot of people, with obviously different backgrounds and at many different stages in life stand there and support the movement for greater sustainability in our world, to make a future without an apocalypse possible. It was, however, also a bit sad to see the rubbish bins in the park where the event took place overflow with plastic and single-use disposable cups. When we arrived, we went to get a coffee, and in the line before us, a lady with two small children also got herself two hot beverages - in to-go cups. She then proceeded to join the demonstration.
Incongruencies like this did come up several times during our stay. Like in the V&A, which makes a lot of noise about how they use their coffee grounds to grow mushrooms that are then served in their restaurant, so that the coffee grounds are not going into a landfill. There's a whole exhibition about sustainable food... and yet, in their garden café, there's disposable cups only. That was sort of disappointing for me.
On a much more positive note: We happened to meet Ben Wilson, aka the "Chewing Gum Man", an artist who paints on chewing gum (which is not public property, and thus can be painted on without legal issues...). We had noticed the small, colourful bits on the Millenium Bridge before, so it was extra nice to meet the artist behind them.
Ben paints a lot of different things on the gums, depending on their size and shape - from turning them into little animals...
... to using roundish ones as a canvas for all sorts of pictures...
... to sort of steampunky things.
Ben has run a kickstarter to help fund a book about the chewing gum art; the campaign is over, but you can still have a look at what he does, including pictures that are much better than my snapshots on the Kickstarter page. It also includes links to interviews with him.