Started off with a failed tweet at Epsom Station where I saw a couple of gray birds, about the size of wood pigeons but not so fat, on what looked like a nuptial flight. One of them had a bluntly forked tail (not sharply in the way of a swallow), which I thought ought to make identification easy enough. But, I have to report that, in due course, the RSPB bird identification gadget failed again, not helped by it not allowing forked tail as a selection key, which I thought a bit feeble. There ought to be a special menu covering especially distinctive features. But I end up thinking that maybe I was mistaken; I couldn't find anything with a forked tail which fitted. Most forked tails seems to be seagulls of the right size or hawks of the wrong size.
Then onto the first leg, Grant Road East to Harriet Street, from where I walked up the end of Sloane Street and across to the stand at Albert Gate. On the way treated to the view of the back of what appeared to be a very expensively got up young lady. Expensive looking high heeled shoes, expensive looking blue print dress, topped with a short jacket and long hair down the waist which looked to have been the subject of a recent and expensive visit to a hairdresser. I caught a glimpse of her face as she turned into Harvey Nix and that had had comparable attention; clearly some sort of a professional, but one which left me curiously cold. More like a waxwork than a person.
From Albert Gate, second leg was a clock wise swing around Hyde Park, ending up at the Bayswater Road stand at Lancaster Gate. Taking in the Black Lion, famous for having had most drinks free all one evening in 1967 or so, and what is now the Thistle Hyde Park, famous for my having masqueraded there as a carpenter for a couple of weeks in December 1972 or so. Breather in the Italian Gardens, looking very well in the now bright sunlight. Paid my respects to Family Fame in the form of the statue of Edward Jenner, took in a rather spiffing view down the Serpentine, found one sitting swan and one sitting coot, this last being a touch fidgety.
Third leg from the same Bayswater Road stand to take the last slot at Pall Mall East, better known to me as Cockspur Street and so into 'Strange Beauty' at the National Gallery, where I managed to embarrass the attractive young black girl who sold me a ticket by commenting on her splendid hair do. Much more attractive than the clothes peg on Sloane Street mentioned above. And as it happened, there was another black beauty on the concourse of Waterloo Station later on in the afternoon.
I thought 'Strange Beauty' rather good, despite being mainly a heterogeneous mix of works from the walls and from the basement of the gallery itself, and not including much in the way of World Heritage Pictures from overseas, a consequence of which last being that the exhibition was pleasantly quiet. There was a lot to like - including the rather striking portrait illustrated: most lustrous and sensual cloth in the flesh (as it were). It was also an admirable complement to the book on 'The Northern Renassance' from Jeffrey Chipps Smith and Phaidon which I am slowly chugging through - good stuff with fascinating illustrations, if marred by a rather odd typeface, not up to the usual Phaidon standard of old at all. Yet another chuck out from Surrey Libraries, this one perhaps mistimed. The exhibition was also handy in its inclusion of 'The Ambassadors' from upstairs, handy that is against my upcoming solution of the jigsaw puzzle of same. But the exhibition was marred by a touch of the self consciousness which seems to have infected the museum world; not only are we invited to look at the pictures, but also to consider the way that viewer and curatorial taste with regard to Germans and their works have changed over the centuries.
Refuelled by a fine bacon sandwich in the slightly old-style café in Duncannon Street, onto the fourth leg from King William IV Street to the Hop Exchange, where I failed to find the small cheese stall where I buy my comté (see, for example 9th December last) and had to settle for something called Schlossberger, which according to Google ' is matured in a cave near the old ruin of Schlossberg castle, deep in the valley of Emmental. Its is carefully nurtured and turned by hand and develops it's full flavour after 6 months of maturation. The cheese is firm and creamy with a full buttery flavour and notes of hazelnut and tomato soup'. Despite which, I rather like it. Much the same price as the stuff from the other stall. Much better cheese wire and much better cheese wire action than they manage at the Waitrose at Epsom.
Also popped into Laithwaites, next to if not of Vinopolis, and bought a few bits and bobs, including a bottle of 2011 gewürztraminer from Bott Geyl. Rather good as it turned out, even if the purchase meant that the fifth leg from the Hop Exchange back to Concert Hall Approach 2 was made largely one handed. I would have avoided going round the Waterloo roundabout in this way if a younger man had not rammed his Bullingdon, with some gusto, into the last slot on the stand there. I think he had seen me approaching. Consoled myself with a couple of shots of some other gewürztraminer at the cabin at the station, the one above platform 1 and from where you cannot quite make out the departures board. A point for cabin management.
Just the one train spotter at Clapham Junction and just the one aeroplane for me. Harder to play from the train than I had thought; maybe the gewürztraminer had gone to my head by then.
PS: disappointed to read this morning that the National Gallery has failed to pay its uniformed staff the living wage of the capital of £8.50 an hour. Maybe it hires them through some not particularly reputable security company with whom they, the uniformed staff that is, have zero-hours contracts. No nice public sector pensions for them. I wonder: one would like to think that a national institution like the National Gallery treated its staff as well as it treated its paintings - but who knows these days.
No comments:
Post a Comment