London Ice Sculpture Festival

Went to the London Ice Sculpting Festival today, in Canary Wharf. Catching the Tube from West Brompton, I again listened to the announcement warning us not to believe the indicator on Platform 2. Oh, why don't they just dismantle it and have done with it?!

Changed at Monument station for the DLR, which was well signposted, and soon found myself in Canary Wharf. And completely lost - the map supplied on the Ice Festival website was pretty useless, and there were no signposts from the station. Still, I figured out which way to go, and to be fair, despite the high buildings, it's not a large area and it wasn't more than about five minutes before I found a sign saying "Ice Sculpture Festival", with a big arrow on it. Which was all I needed.

First thing I saw was an ice "graffiti wall", where, under supervision of people who apparently knew what they were doing, you could chisel messages or whatever. After that, it was just a case of follow the crowd, down to the main display area. There were only about eight or nine competing teams - from different countries, each was working on a large sculpture. A PA informed us that, if they got finished early, they'd start on a small block, to "display their skills". Some seemed to have started earlier than others, or worked faster - while a couple were finished by the time I left, some seemed only half done! I do wonder whether they all got finished in time - I watched several people working on the sculptures, and there's an amount of work involved! Chainsaws first, for the large cuts, chisels for the finer work, smoothing and polishing, till it looks like clear glass..

After an initial pass through, the food market at the end looked inviting. I had an Argentinian beef empanada, followed by a crepe, followed by a (large) hot chocolate with all the trimmings. All of which were delicious. There was a bar, and had it been warmer I'd have had a white wine, but under the circumstances, heat was the priority. It was FREEZING! Mind you, what else can you expect at an ice sculpting festival? The ice was melting as they were working on it. But that breeze coming off the docks was cruel. The same breeze that hurried me on yesterday evening, as I browsed the bookstalls outside the National Theatre after the play. Really, you can't stay out long in it. I made another pass through, and was pleased to see they'd made quite a bit of progress - snapped off some shots (link below) and then scurried for the station to get home asap.

Photos are here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10203249823790684.1073741839.1361836980&type=1&l=23026a3ce1

Tomorrow is looking like a rather curious film, The Missing Picture, whose closest showing is in the Ciné Lumiere. From what I can gather, it uses clay figures to depict the Khmer Rouge's regime in Cambodia. Then on Tuesday, I'm going to see a Romanian film, Child's Pose, in the BFI.. at least I'll be indoors, eh?