Given a late start, the first stop on arrival at Vauxhall was lunch, so thought to try the Young's place, 'The Riverside', under the St. George's flat, one of three mid range eateries set amid carefully tended formal garden beds. Gardens looked well but the flats looked a bit forbidding on this not very bright day, snap left notwithstanding. They did not sport much life in the way of pot plants, washing or children's toys. Not much in the way of curtains to brighten things up a bit. Maybe they are not the sort of flats that people spend much time in. Maybe they would look better on a hot, bright day, with plenty of bustle below to take the eye of the lack of bustle above. On a more cheerful note. someone must have slipped up as we could actually get down to the pontoon of St. George's Wharf Pier without climbing over anything. The tide was running so one would not want to have fallen in.
From there, past the coarsely named & signed burger place (http://www.steax.co.uk/) and on into Young's apparently run by a middle aged couple from somewhere in southeast Asia, ably supported by junior staff from eastern Europe. All very efficient. BH went for fish and chips which was of unusual appearance but entirely satisfactory and I went for burger, also entirely satisfactory and a good deal better than that in the quite fancy hotel in Cambridge mentioned at reference 2. White wine from New Zealand also entirely satifactory. Designer decor, in the glass, brown and fabric which seems to be all the thing in mid range London eateries at the moment. Slightly better class of bibelot than Wetherspoon's. Interesting use of rebars to hold up the shelving which held said bibelots.
We admired two small strings of container carrying barges while we ate. I reckoned that the two strings must have been carrying around 200 middle sized containers - so replacing a fair bit of road traffic.
Outside, I tried counting the standard floors on the tall round tower block, the one involved in a helicopter accident. Counting from quite nearby, on two counts I made it about fifty, while two counts from further away, north of the river, made it about forty, which I think is much nearer the right answer. It remains a mystery how savants count pebbles on beaches, How on earth do they maintain the working memory entries and concentration? It would be bad enough counting things arranged in rows, but you don't have anything like that on a beach.
Onto Hepworth which I liked, if anything, better than the first time around, with my liking the larger pieces in the second half of the show, presumably from the second half of her working life. Even the rough cast ones in the last room. But at least one of the large wooden pieces in the penultimate room needed dusting.
Very struck with the middle size wooden pieces, the ones with blue insides and strings, by a sense of medical and intrusive cutting. Of cutting one's way into the inside of something which at least had been alive. From which I associated to Damien Hirst's obsession with dead bodies, knives and cutting, a gentlemen whose work I do not like at all, first rate showman that he might be. Rather an odd feeling, given that I liked the pieces and you were hardly going to make them out of wood without cutting. Perhaps Hepworth would have said that cutting was the whole point.
I was also reminded by a carving by Eric Gill in the first room of what a strange chap he must have been, albeit a first rate carver of lettering and bas-relief. It remains a mystery why the Catholic Church thought he was a fit person to do the stations of the cross in Westminster Cathedral; they might be very good but he was certainly not.
BH was a little cross that no touching was allowed, which she thought many of the pieces were crying out for. I know continual touching does damage stuff, and in this case would probably result in staining and discolouration, but surely that is something that a bit of annual maintenance could deal with? I wonder if Hepworth meant them to be touched?
Waiting in the new west foyer, reminded what a well designed space it is. A worthy addition to the newly reopened south foyer, the one with steps and pillars.
Outside to inspect the small garden said to have been inspired by the work inside. Satisfactory, but a bit too much like one of those show gardens at Chelsea they bang on so much about for my taste. The small boy, absolutely fascinated by a middle size snail was much more fun.
And so, back across the river, where we saw that another showman had been at work, with some white concrete bodies sticking out of the rising water. As it happened, the news-starved Guardian ran half a page on them the following day, from which we learned that this was a very important statement about climate change. It seems that the day job of the chap who foisted them on Vauxhall - one Jason deCaires Taylor if you please - is building underwater attractions at seaside resorts. The stuff that local councillors get taken for never ceases to amaze - and annoy - me. But at least this particular stuff is supposed to be temporary.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/armed-hepworth.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/trip-advisor.html.
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