I have been to three different exhibitions, and my brain is full. Normally I wouldn't try and fit that many into one day, but there are several things I want to see that finish in the autumn, and I don't get to London so often nowadays, what with everything else to do, and the ever-escalating cost of railway tickets. My off-peak day return this morning cost me £23.40, while from a used ticket I found in my coat pocket I see that the same journey on 11 November of last year cost me £21.20. It's things like rail tickets going up 10% in nine months that leave me spluttering with indignation and wondering what parallel universe they live in when economic pundits on the TV pronounce that there is plenty of spare capacity in the UK economy and no signs of inflation in the system. Apart from temporary things like oil, which don't count, obviously. Looking on the bright side, the train in to London was only ten minutes late, and it turned out that the restriction on when I could travel home had been lifted for the school holidays until the beginning of September. This concession is not advertised, and you would only know if you asked about it, which I did, twice. Once at arriving at Liverpool Street, and again on returning to Liverpool Street but before embarking on a train. From which you gather I have little faith in National Express East Anglia's ability to not give me duff travel information and then try and charge me a penalty fare.
It was raining. That was the main reason why I chose today to go to town, since it was going to be useless for gardening. I know I could have cleaned the kitchen and started preparing to repaint the hall, but would you rather have a sparkling kitchen or a sparkling mind? Partly because I wanted to remain flexible and weather driven on timing I didn't attempt to go with a friend. Visiting galleries and museums with somebody else is nice, as then you can talk about what you've seen, but solo travel has its attractions. No aiming to be 20 minutes early in case the train in to London is late, instead you can just get straight on when you reach town. And being able to walk in the rain without worrying that the other person would rather get a bus or a tube. And being able to eat and drink when you are hungry and thirsty, and not spend valuable potential gallery minutes as closing time ticks closer stuck in a cafe because the other person is hungry or thirsty. And not having to worry that your companion hates whatever you are both looking at, and it is all your fault for suggesting it. To judge from the number of solo visitors I saw today I don't think I'm alone in being happy with my own company on occassions when it comes to culture. They might all have been sad no-mates losers, but I doubt it.
I walked down to Tate Modern, over the bouncy bridge, which various children were managing to slide on by taking a run up, despite the no-slip surface. The tide was already low, and still ebbing. The Thames is a great river. We have taken a boat as far up as you can go with a fixed mast (unless they are going to open Tower Bridge for you and even then you can't go much further), and know that the currents run fast and trickily. It is a river that demands respect. Tate Modern is showing Miro, on until 11 September. He is an artist I have long admired, mainly from seeing reproductions, and I was keen to get to this one. You will be familiar with at least some of his paintings (in reproduction) if you are even vaguely interested in art. In his working lifetime, which lasted into his 80s, he moved between a sort of strange realism, surrealism, and pure abstraction, but all of the pictures are oddly alive, and most of them vaguely disturbing, not surprising given that he was a Catalonian living against the backdrop of the Spanish civil war, WWII, and dictatorship that lasted until 1975. I found it riveting, but was relieved not to have dragged one friend there whom I'd thought of asking (his office is just round the corner) but didn't. If you don't like the idea of the subconscious, or believe that colours should be attractive, you really aren't going to warm to some of the pictures in this exhibition, though some of the little creatures from his middle period are vaguely like minor characters out of the Moomins.
Then along the South Bank path to the Garden Museum. This is housed in an old church by Lambeth Palace. It contains a vegetarian cafe, and as I walked through the doors to the murmer of voices, chink of crockery and smell of vaguely old-fashioned cooking, it felt very cosy. My vegetable soup could have been hotter, but tasted nicely of mint, and vegetables. The museum has a newish mezzanine floor with a small but perfectly interesting display on garden history, and a couple of temporary exhibitions which again I wanted to catch. The main attraction was a display about the gardens of Tom Stuart-Smith, about whom I have enthused before. He designs in the modernist idiom but underpinned by good and enthusiastic use of plants. This show covered six of his designs. One of them I'd seen a lot of pictures of before, on the phone of the gardener at work, him being good friends with the head gardener there. Big photos and plans on the walls were supplemented by books and videos, the space being limited. I was left with my admiration for his work bolstered. My only slight query was that most of the photos were taken in late summer, when the prairie style perennials and grasses were flowering. I did wonder what they would look like in the spring, and also whether there was much in them with any scent. There is also a collection of photos by well-known garden photographer Jerry Harpur (an Essex boy. Working in his picture library was a staple part-time job for Writtle students when I was there).
Then I went to catch the Watercolour exhibition at Tate Britain, but that will have to wait until tomorrow, as now I need to go and talk nicely to the Systems Administrator. Dashing in through the door and instantly glueing oneself to the computer is OK, but only up to a point.
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