Started off with in-train entertainment from a couple of chaps with regional/affordable accents discussing the tensions between the sales and installation teams, for, I think, ventilation equipment manufacturers. It seems that the sales chaps were always underspec'ing the jobs to get the work, leaving the installers without all the bits and bobs they needed to do it. I related to contracting to government, where the whole idea of the contractors is to make most of their profit out of modifications to the contract after it has been signed.
Continued at the stand at Grant Road East from where I made it to South Lambeth Road, a first in the sense that I had never used this last stand before, in about 15 minutes.
Being a little early I called in the Tate Library there where the staff were most helpful, all set to let aliens use their computers, had one been free. As it was I caught up on the news in the Guardian. On by 88 bus to Lower Regent Street, entertained on the way by a talkative lady, of about our own age, who was able to explain why the engine on the bus seemed to keep stopping - the answer being that the bus was a diesel electric, perhaps a scaled down version of a railway locomotive, with the noisy bit cutting out whenever the bus stops for more than a few seconds. Possibly, according to Wikipedia, a Wright Pulsar Gemini HEV, but I have to say that I found Wikipedia, for once, with room for improvement on the subject, despite their domination of the airwaves on the subject.
And so to the Royal Academy to be greeted by the submarines illustrated, a striking start tot he Kiefer. It had also been declared to be winter and the tent and café noticed on my last visit (http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/a-touch-of-geometry.html) had been put away for the duration. On into the exhibition, in what must have been the Academy's main exhibition space - a large suite of large, well lighted and handsome rooms. I dare say I have been in them before, but I cannot think when. The Academy had done Kiefer very well, with their large rooms fully up to displaying his mostly large work. I was very taken with the large multi-media paintings, maybe 8 feet by 16 feet and maybe up to a couple of centimetres thick what with all the stuff stuck onto to them. A German, very much our own age, of the immediate post-war generation and very into death and destruction. A sense of desolation pervaded most of the paintings, although some of the smaller water colours were a bit brighter. I associated both to our own John Martin and to the pre-war German expressionists. I shall be back to take another look.
I also associated to the Phyllida Barlow exhibition at the Tate Britain (see http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/an-older-trace.html) which seemed, in retrospect, very shallow compared with the, in some ways comparable, work of the German,
Afterwards to the Frego of Swallow Street, next to the fishmonger there, for their interesting yellow cheese cake, said I think to be of Brazilian flavour. Rather good, so I shall be back there too.
Closed the outing with a hop from Chapel Place, Marylebone to Concert Hall Approach 1.
Reference 1: for John Martin see http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Huge,+queer+and+tawdry
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