Pulled my first Bullingdon of the day at Grant Road East, to find it usable but with gears that need adjusting, so, for I think the second time ever, press the red button on arrival at Vauxhall Cross. A guessing game for the mechanics to work out why the button had been pressed; presumably a game which they fail a proportion of the time. Passing, at the Vauxhall end of the Wandsworth Road, the crane of the previous post.
Another guessing game arose from the Chinook (see 28th March) which appeared to be circling Westminster. Was it stuffed to the gunnels with SAS troopers, tooled up to respond to anything? Ready to abseil down from 100 metres up if there was nowhere convenient to park? With the troopers able to be on the ground and ready to go anywhere in the central area within 10 minutes of getting the call?
Pick up the next Bullingdon at the Albert Embankment, better but not great, and off over Lambeth Bridge and round Parliament Square, with the rounding being enlivened by a underdressed young lady riding her own bicycle. Perfectly decent looking young lady, but her turnout on this occasion did her no favours. Probably a civil servant as she turned into King Charles Street - I think a special advisor would have had more dress sense, more sense of her own importance & dignity. Parked up at Pall Mall East and so into the exhibition, pleasantly uncrowded. I really liked it, a well mounted educational exhibition with a nice balance between paintings, things, captions and other educational materials. I thought the idea of arranging the exhibition by colour, with one room for blue, another for red and so on, worked well. I was reminded, for example, that good quality blue paint came, until relatively recently, from a particular mine in the wilds of Afghanistan, via Bagdad & Damascus, was very expensive and was thus suitable for the decoration of the Virgin, despite its infidelity. I was also struck by how important luxury cloth was in the conspicuous consumption of the time of the Renaissance, which might be one factor accounting for the amount of cunningly painted cloth you get in the paintings of that time, the painting illustrated being just one among a number in the exhibition. Not the sort of picture I usually respond to, but I did respond to this one, finding it, in the flesh at least, oddly impressive.
I shall be back, but in the meantime it was time for a Duncannon Street tea and bacon sandwich. From there I picked up the next Bullingdon from the west end of St. Martin's Street and on through the arch into the Mall. On the way, a bright yellow taxi sporting the registration mark 'A1 CAB' caught my eye in Trafalgar Square, causing me to wonder what such a thing might cost, but also to think that it was a pity that it was not on a proper, traditional black cab. Across the front of the Victoria Memorial, as gross as ever in the bright sunlight, and into Constitution Hill, through the next arch into Hyde Park where there was lots of other Bullingdons and the rose gardens were looking very well. They also smelt very well, unlike the ornamental trees planted along the south side of the Serpentine which smelt rather badly. Dismounted at Palace Gate, Kensington Gardens, to continue on foot into the wilds of Kensington, to get slightly lost as I had fallen off the western edge of my CLBM (central London Bullingdon map) but with the upside that I came across some very handsome dull yellow hollyhocks, flowers which I like almost as much as foxgloves (see, for example, the first post assigned to 18th June). Found an English speaking builder who was able to send me back onto the map, to Gloucester Road (Central), where I picked up my fourth and last Bullingdon of the day, on which I managed to get back to Falcon Road without getting lost, although I did have to dismount at the Latchmere theatre pub, to avoid the pull up Latchmere Road. Slightly disconcerted on Battersea Bridge by a van which would not overtake me, despite my hugging the kerb, to be warned by the passenger when it did eventually pass me not to wobble under their trailer, rather wider than the van and the sort of trailer it would be quite easy to get tangled into. Another considerate driver.
Attempted to reprise the Turkish Delight at one of the convenience stores on Falcon Road (see 4th June), to find that while they had 20 or more different sorts they did not have the one I had last time. Nor, among the four people working there, was there much English. So I had to settle for something else, which turned out to be soft fruit sweets dusted with coconut, quite acceptable, and some more than acceptable figs. I shall be back there too.
PS: home to find a very gushing review of the very same exhibition in the Guardian. So while it may continue to be a cheap exhibition, it may not continue to be so pleasantly uncrowded. I think an empty exhibition would seem a bit odd, a bit sterile, one wants to be part of a collective experience, but one can easily have too much of a good thing in that department.
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