An outing in three parts

Started out on Tuesday to pay a return visit to the mosaics in the entrance hall of the National Gallery, but got diverted to the light show at the Hayward Gallery on the south bank. We had previously noticed an igloo like structure up on the podium, but on this day we were moved to go and inspect it. More than that, to proceed into the show at the Hayward Gallery, the last visit to which I am at a loss to place. We have been put off recently by a strong whiff of the Dame Trace and her ilk about it, but I don't think we have been since well before she erupted onto to the scene.

The light show was entertaining, and quite suitable for the various children who leavened the usual diet of pensioners at such places during the working week. Some of the exhibits were fun, some were clever, some were banal and some were null. Some of them were a bit bright for my eyes. If one was really taken, one could buy the book of the show, the sort of fat flexible paperback at around £24.99 which is more or less de rigueur at a show of this sort. I usually buy such books, but not on this occasion: the lights might have been fun but I did not fancy a lot of waffle about them, particularly as it was hard to see how a paperback of this size was going to be filled up without getting pretty pretentious.

But I was really taken with the gallery. A very handsome interior, very well suited to a show of this sort. The concrete wears its fifty or so years very well.

Over Waterloo Bridge, past the dragon tree made out of what looked like quilts shaped into tyres, making it look a bit like an arboreal Michelin Man, and onto the Strand Palace Hotel for their carvery lunch. Not in an ancient & grand dining room with chandeliers & flunkeys, but nevertheless a very decent dining room and a very decent lunch at reasonable prices. Good hors d'oeuvres. Only let down by the vegetables which came with the roast beef which did not include cabbage, crinkly or otherwise. But the carver did let me have a bone from the rib of beef - which had been very nicely cooked - by way of compensation.

After which we finally made it to the mosaics, which looked much better than they had the previous week, probably because it was a brighter day, possibly because we had taken a peek at the accompanying booklet. Visiting the various mosaics by the same mosaist - Boris Anrep - scattered around London will keep us busy for the rest of the year.

Closed the outing by a visit to Titian's 'Bacchus and Ariadne', a picture which, like the 'Ambassadors', is much improved by being seen full size in a better setting than our sitting room. Or a jigsaw.

PS: thinking of the Dame Emin, I am reminded that this week's NYRB contains an advertisement for a very fancy looking three volume catalogue raisonné for one Robert Motherwell. Sufficiently eminent to warrant such treatment, but not so eminent that I had ever previously heard of him. I think the shop at the Hayward had a rather less grand offering about the chap but I shall, nevertheless, make do with Google.