Today was the day I thought would never come – my final day in the office at Roehampton University, where I’ve worked for 5 years. With the prospect of our trip looming so close (only 13 days til we take off for Romania!) I thought I’d take a little walk around the surrounding area, as I’d never really been that far from the office.
I wandered down to a place called East Sheen, which is nice enough but nothing to go out of your way for.
In my wanderings I happened upon the East Sheen library, which had a lovely handmade mosaic on the side. Coming closer, I realised that the mosaic had a famous quote from Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web and the plaque next to it stated that Berners-Lee was actually born and raised in the area!
Sadly I only had my little phone to take pictures with so the pics are a little grainy. It’s a great piece, and up close the details are fabulous, with little tiles for twitter and RSS and QR codes and other little nerdy things. The materials are fun too.
I got chatting with a passing pensioner for that shot of me and the mosaic. The conversation was great and started with the lines
Me: Hi Madam, do you mind taking a photo of me with the mosaic? I’m a bit of an internet nerd you see
Her: I can see that
Me: Oh? You can? What gives me away?
Her : You are wearing a T-shirt that says “I’m huge on Twitter”
Me : Oh. I see.
It’s been a long while since I blogged regularly and I set this blog up to get myself back into a habit I loved. Elena thinks it’s important to write things down and I could type all day, but when travelling I want to make sure that I spend less time in front of a computer and more out there where the action is.
This blog was set up to get us out there discovering and interacting with our world, with the view to interpreting the world through postcards, so I decided to try and source a local postcard of the mosaic for you dear people.
I wandered in and out of shops talking to people about the mosaic but couldn’t find one. The mosaic was made by local mosaic artist Sue Edkins and her website can be found at http://www.mostlymosaics.co.uk/ – I’ll drop her a line and see if she does have any postcards of it for sale and will update this post when I find out.


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Hi Andy,
What a bit of serendipity that this got you back in touch, here is a link to the first 15 minutes of Tim Berners-Lee talking to a rapt crowd of children from the very primary school he went to and in front of his parents. It really was special. http://www.grafform.com/1/post/2013/06/sir-tim-berners-lee-unveils-commemorative-mosaic-in-east-sheen-24062013.html
Feel free to embed the video or take any images from the page (or I can send them to you?) But there is a good picture of TBL and the artist Sue Edkins in front of the mosaic. There are even secret messages written in code…
Safe travels,
Daniel