Life Yesterday in London I spent a lot of time walking up stairs. There were the stairs in shops, in Muji and Foyles and tube stations. There were the steps around the National Gallery up to the Van Dyke room and back again at the end of the day. Then there were the some six hundred stairs to the top of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral and six hundred back down again.
Rather than spending my Christmas money this year on the usual mix of appliances and something to play on them, I've decided to pay the entry fee into places which I might not otherwise be able to justify the expense. St Paul's Cathedral's costs in and around twenty pounds to get in which seems like an awful lot when there's already an amazing cathedral or two in my own city.
It's worth every penny. Having visited Europe, the architect Chris Wren took the demolition of the Norman church which stood in its place previously in the great fire, to bring what amounts to a European-style edifice to our capital city, a massive dome topped structure which also oddly feels quite intimate and between the crypt and the tower offers far too much to see in one day.
After lunch (an only ok cheese role in the cafe) and with an hour to fill until a guided tour, I simply decided to look at the place and with the baroque paintings in the main dome and the golden mosaics across the walls, I realised the best way to do that was from the floor. So lay down in the middle of the dome and simply looked. Here's what I saw:
I was just keying up to take another photo which didn't chop off the side windows when I was told by a invigilator that photography was not allowed inside the cathedral. I asked if it was ok that I was on the floor and she said it was fine but that I might want to move when the lunchtime service was about to begin. I was a foot away from a lectern which she'd just put in place.
The tour was an incredibly dense history lesson not just of the cathedral but the various luminaries memorialised and buried there. The crypt is essentially where all of the local historical celebrities not in Westerminster Abbey are buried. In one corner, it's possible to find yourself standing on the graves of Turner, Leighton, Holman Hunt. Moore and Reynolds.
Then it was time to visit the top of the cathedral. There's a pain barrier when hunting up that many steps in a confined space. The tendency is to attack them quick at the beginning, with gasping and heartache pretty soon afterwards. Then there's the pain barrier, then there's the moment after the pain barrier and then there's simply getting it done.
But it was well worth it. Here's me and my big nose, at the top, on the Golden Gallery looking out across London:
And here are some of the things I was looking at:
St Pauls is 111m high or 365 feet. Wren purposefully built the cathedral so it would be the same height as all the days in the year. From up there it seemed like the highest I've ever stood out side of a plane, but the Eiffel Tower is just under three time taller, so that's still my personal record. Nevertheless, like the interior of the cathedral, there so much to see, not enough time to see them.
TV Ever since I heard Jon Pertwee say, “There’s nothing more alarming than coming home and finding a Yeti on your loo in Tooting Bec ..." I've been curious about what it was about the place that made it seem the epitome of the ordinary British location in which the sight of a giant fury robot trying to push through a control sphere would seem out of the ordinary, the jarring mix of the fantastical and parochial. No Yetis found, but I did buy a copy of Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World in a charity shop on Tooting High Street.
Tooting Bec itself is indeed deeply average with shopping streets leading off from an intersection where the tube station has been built, in the configuration just as described by Reyner Banham in his 1964 history of the commuter belt, A City Crowned With Green (which is on the iplayer here). One street which heads of towards "main" Tooting is populated with Asian shops, another is filled with hipster cafes and another leads to a giant Argos and Tesco Express. In other words, Jon knew exactly what he was doing when he chose this place for his oft repeated phrase.
In case you're wondering, I did indeed go to the toilet in Tooting Bec. I was bursting having held on since a preceding saunter around Clapham. Obviously Jon was referring to someone's own toilet, an escapade I couldn't simulate, but I did find a welcoming pub. Fortunately, the Great Intelligence was not hiding a minion in the stall. But I did feel somewhat attacked because there wasn't any toilet paper once I'd completed my mission. Fortunately I had some wet wipes with me, the real world equivalent of a sonic screwdriver, so I was OK. On the way out, I discretely mentioned the lack of the paper at the bar. What a hero.
Art How long do you usually spend visiting art galleries? The pace with which I'm able to feel like I've confidently seen a collection has reduced as I've aged to the point that it's become impossible for me to see a venue without multiple visits. If I'm in the right mood I can confidently spend days returning to the same collection and even then I never quite feel like I've given the work justice. For that project, it took at least two days for me to see the Walker Art Gallery and even then I felt like I rushed around. The best paintings demand that you spend time over them, teasing out their mimetic qualities over the long term.
Which is why when in deciding to revisit the National Gallery after what must be a couple of decades, the notion that I might be able to see the place in a couple of days was fanciful at best. This is one of the most important art collections in the world, every painting of either national or international importance. There isn't any filler, and although there are leaflets available highlighting the eighty or some most sought after works, from what I've seen so far, that's like selecting some choice phrases from Shakespeare's canon. Even at some of the my favourite other galleries, the quality just isn't this high.
And so, after talking an hour tottering about the first room of the Sainsbury Wing, I surrendered to the fact that I might well be spending the rest of the year not visiting London once a month, but rather the National Gallery. If you'd told the younger version of me that his mid-life crisis incarnation would spend two hours just looking at various interpretations of the Madonna and Child and crucifixion, he'd probably wonder if Joey and Pacey would really spend the rest of their lives together finally having told Dawson to go away. Even fifteen years ago I probably would have found the notion entirely tedious. Not now.
Judging by the floorplan, I managed to see rooms 51, 58, 59, 60 and 66, although the wing is in flux with room closures, some of which don't seem to have been corrected on the online map. Perhaps I did only see five rooms, but it feels like more. One of the reasons I took my time, it took so long, was because I decided to listen to all of the audio explanations were available and nearly every item has a description or explanation read by a voice which sounds almost but not exactly like someone notable. One of them may be Michael Sheen. I think another could have been in Doctor Who. There's apparently about fifty hours of this material.
Other than re-invigorating my interest in the history of art, what specifically did I draw from the visit? That my new favourite artist is Carlo Crivelli, the Venetian painter from the 1450s. His subject matter tends to be biblical, as was the mode of the time, but his style feels entirely like that of a high end comic book artist, bold lines with detailed colouring, with exquisitely graphic rather than attempted photo-realistic representations of the people (note he was a contemporary of Leonardo). This Pridella is typical, Zoom in and notice the detailing of the landscape, the walls and grass, like a book illustration. But this all happened on egg tempera.
Meanwhile that what we venerate now as masterpieces of world art amounted to nothing more than expensive furniture, literally in the case of Botticelli's Venus and Mars which was either a headboard or the back board of day chest. That it survived this long, this intact is a miracle, and probably had a lot to do with the habit in later centuries of hacking furniture apart and selling off the good bits. Apparently there'll be more Botticelli on display when some of the galleries re-open in April after the refit. I suspect I won't be leaving the Sainsbury wing any time soon. On the days I'm in London at least.
Life Here's a cautionary tale about planning ahead and checking destination details. Yesterday was my monthly visit to London. The day in summary: Abbey Road (see below), 221b Baker Street, Notting Hill for Portobello Road and the book shop from the film Notting Hill, what remains of BBC Television Centre, Westfield shopping centre and Brick Lane. Find above my evening meal, the most expensive burger they have on the menu at Ed's Easy Diner back at Euston Station. The NUS extra alumni card allows you to get 50% off food. I shall not be eating properly again for a week.
To Abbey Road and the chance to visit a Beatles landmark that isn't in Liverpool and experience what it must be like for tourists to take the bus out to Penny Lane and discover with some disappointment that it's just a suburban street (and that the lyrics of the song are really describing the bottom end of Church Road and the junction with Smithdown Road). As expected Abbey Road is just a suburban street. Nevertheless it's still exciting to see an iconic cultural landmark. I'll get to the Tower of London eventually.
After a glance at the tube map, it seemed logical that Abbey Road, home of the zebra crossing on The Beatles album cover and the recording studio would be next to the DLR station called Abbey Road. I was even quite proud that I managed to work out a route from Euston which meant I didn't need to repeat my DLR journey from last month and mostly utilise the Northern Line instead. On the way there I began listen to album itself and was full of excitement as I skipped up the steps from the platform the station only to be confronted with this:
Stop giggling Londoners. No actually don't. It was my own fault. On the upside TfL are kind enough to provide this punning sign knowing full well that there are enough stupid people in the world who (a) have looked at the actual album cover thought this suburban area would be anywhere near dockland and indeed that all of the musicians would actually travel out to the Dockland to work and so (b) made this journey.
After adding an extra hour's travel time there and back again, I did eventually make it to Abbey Road turning the corner just as the final track of the album, The End reached its conclusion a coincidence you could just plan. This was my first listen right the way through and although it's enjoyable for the most part, it mirrors most pop records in that its obvious to see why those songs were chosen for singles.
The Studios own website have a CCTV camera set up so its possible to see yourself cross the road and so here's the back of me dodging traffic:
There's a lot of traffic dodging, a constant stream of tourists to the spot and most of them, at some point, walk into the middle of the zebra crossing to create the pose made famous in the publicity campaign for the last series of Doctor Who. After watching the mess of honking horns and near death photography for a while, a tourist couple asked me to take their photograph, which I obliged, standing in the middle of the road just long enough for them to get into the position. Then they offered to do the same:
No, I have no idea either. Or who she is. But that's rather the problem. Everyone wants to have their picture taken alone but there are too many people so you end up with shots like these. But enjoy my normcore and scruffy hair nonetheless.
The crossing works in reverse to how its supposed to. The traffic doesn't stop until someone is actually walking across it. Presumably if the cards actually stopped and waited for people to cross or get their picture taken as per every other zebra crossing, they'd be there a very long time.
Life For the past six months or so I've been travelling to London for one day per month and visiting all the places which I've read about in books, seen in films, simply known about but never seen. As I said in the V&A post about one of these such days, it's because at the age of forty-two I'm not getting any younger and if anything were to happen to me, or lets face it at this point potentially all of us, I don't want it to be without having had these adventures. Plus for years I've complained about how so much of our cultural heritage is concentrated in London and realised that if it wasn't going to visit Liverpool any time soon, I'd best drag myself down there instead. "Down there." Such a Northerner.
One of the elements of these visits has been to purposefully not write them up as blog posts, a rule which I've already broken on a couple of occasions. Much of this had to do with not wanting to make the visit about what I'd subsequently scribble here, wanting to experience everything like someone who doesn't have a blog. But the problem is, this blog does exist and if when I look back at this time in a few years there isn't anything here, that negates the whole point of writing it in the first place. I'm grouping everything under how I'd describe them on a bucket list, which doesn't really exist other than as a set of random ideas for "things I haven't done yet". Oh and purposefully just a paragraph or so each. I still don't want to overthink things.
The Docklands Light Railway.
The idea of the DLR has fascinated me since seeing a report about its initial construction on, I think, Tomorrow's World. On reflection and after having travelled on it, I can see that it's really just a glorified tram, but the idea of a near driverless train seemed entirely space age back in the 1980s. The real novelty is being able to sit at the front where the cab would be and seeing the railway and oncoming stations from what would be a train driver's point of view. A guard told me that he'd watched the area build up around the track during his years on the service. My favourite moment was pulling in to Limehouse which has lost all of the character which would have inspired the Doctor Who story The Talons of Weng Chiang.
On part of the journey, an actual driver was sitting on the passenger seat across the way, controlling the train from a panel, although his entire job seemed to be to press one button on reaching a station to open the doors then another to let the train know that it could leave. His eyes were permanently fixed to the front, deep in concentration, no sign of boredom or apathy. Even with my sense of occasion, there's no denying that there's only so much of the same track you can watch. Thank goodness for the moments when the carriage lurched upwards and sideways rather like a roller coaster to provide some extra excitement as it sped through the landscape between the locations its contrived to visit.
The Prime Meridian.
One of the three key reasons for this London visit was to finally see the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory. Navigating to the line is part of an audio tour; you can't simply see it for free, it's part of an extended narrative about how we measure time and space across the globe. It's smaller than I expected, at least the visual representation, a short strip of metal about fifty metres long in the courtyard outside one of the observatories. Along the edge various cities are listed with their relative longitudes and distance from the equator. For the most part it seems to exist to allow tourists to have a photograph taken with their feet straddling the east-west divide. The real measurement, check and balance, is a laser projected from the rafters about forty kilometres across London.
Harrison's Longitude Clocks.
These clocks are smaller than I expected. After having read Sobel's book about their creation and the various documentaries and dramas, these mechanisms had writ large in my imagination, but they're proportionally similar to a small microwave. Which isn't diminish their beauty, these great technical achievements also translate into kinetic sculptures as the balances and wheels bounce back and forth. They're presented within a larger display which rather emphasises the astronomical method as well it might and to an extent their total achievement is underplayed as are the reasons why John Harrison wasn't rewarded when he should (of Sobel's version of the narrative is to be believed) because of the sneariness of astronomers. There also isn't any mention I could see of Rupert Gould's contribution in restoring the clocks to the condition in which they are now. Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity.
Ever since seeing That Hamilton Woman and Vigee Le Brun's portraits, I've been fascinated by Emma, a figure who began life in poverty, managed to build her reputation to the point of becoming Nelson's mistress then returning once again to penury in her final years, dying at 49. She was a remarkable woman, constantly re-inventing herself as a performer and somewhat politician turning men's frequently callousness to her advantage, packing so much into her short life. This exhibition at the National Maritime Museum collects dozens of portraits by Romney as well as some incredible artifacts including the love letters, the antiquities she would have studies and Nelson's own uniform. There's also a stunning ten minute presentation in which her "attitudes" are recreated by an actress in video on a stage.
The Cutty Sark.
Briefly. As the posters advertising the friends programme for Greenwich Park explain, it's impossible to see it all in one day. So I missed most of the National Maratime Museum (apart from Turner's painting of the Battle of Trafalgar), the planetarium and the Queen's Gallery and the interior tour of the ship. But as I've learnt from previous visits, it's best to make a point of seeing the things I've travelled down to see first and then make everything else secondary. The Cutty Sark probably does indeed deserves a whole day, but I was happy to walk past its exterior for now. It's larger than I expected, having only otherwise seen it in helicopter shots during coverage of the London Marathon. Perhaps once I've completed my personal A-List of London attractions I'll return.
Canary Wharf.
With the Museums closing at five o'clock and a few hours to fill before catching the train home, I decided to visit Torchwood One or as close as possible. As a receptionist at One Canada Square cautioned, apart from shops and restaurants there isn't much to do but after a visit to Pizza Express, I was quite happy to stroll about the place, looking into the windows across vast brightly lit foyers, usually populated by a solitary security guard behind a giant desk. Although I've visited La Defance in Paris with its Grand Arch, this is the first time I've stood in front of a skyscraper or any building and not been able to see the top floors. It's dizzying and claustrophobic. How must it be to live or work in Manhattan with these edifices permanently obscuring the sky?
Most notably, Canary Wharf doesn't seem to have any litter bins. After impulse buying a coffee from a cafe bar situated in the base of one of the buildings I eventually found myself with an empty paper cup and nowhere for it to go. After not seeing anything on my route, I eventually decided enter one of the foyers and ask of they had a bin. The next building was some kind of medical company. I tried pushing the door but it was locked so rang the intercom, which was on a post nearby. The guard walked slowly across the foyer and opened the door. I asked him if he had a bin. "No" he said. "No bin at all?" I ask again. "No." He repeated then shut the door in the my face. Fortunately the bank headquarters next door were more accommodating ...
Politics At just the moment when it feels like politically the world is going to crap and I'm going to be spending my forties wondering exactly what went wrong, I decided to kick against the doors of democracy, metaphorically rather than actually and visit the Houses of Parliament. The initial plan for yesterday was to walk first through Tate Britain's hard chronological display of British art then have a wander around the local area. But after eating dinner at the Pizza Express in Millbank and realising what time it was, this quickly transmuted into dashing up to Parliament so I could stand outside Westminster Clock at six o'clock and listen live to Big Ben and his bongs, which I've heard over the radio so many times after PM on Radio 4.
By the time I'd reached Parliament this had turned into a question "I wonder if you can visit the public gallery in the Commons?" which after speaking to a policeman on the gate and then a steward who handed me a giant laminated green ticket found an answer in the positive. While the chamber is in session it's entirely possible to simply ask for entry and assuming they believe you to be of good character, carrying no knives or pepper spray, visit our key place of government and watch proceedings live. So after standing on the street and listening to the epic spectacle of the massive clock singing, which was just as a breathtaking as I'd always suspected, I joined the short queue snaking downwards to the reception were the security checks are carried out.
After my belongings had passed through the x-ray machine and I'd stepped through the metal detector, I took the short pathway up to the larger building and not predicting the geography stepped straight into Westminster Hall. You know the slight moment of disorientation you feel whenever you unexpectedly see a famous person in a context other than on a screen or in a photography or both? My gasp was loud enough to echo around its walls. "Westminster Hall!" I said out loud, arms outstretched. "Westminster Hall!" A steward approached and asked if I needed any help. I told her I was visiting the public gallery of the Commons and she gave me a green slip on which I would declare my intention to disrupt proceeding and directed me towards the large steps at the far end.
Anyone who's seen the innumerable documentaries filmed in this space and The Complete Walk's version of Richard II will know just how vast this space is, and unlike religious architecture, almost unbroken by furniture with the potential to diminish the spectacle. Even having seen the former at state events, it's impossible to imagine its stone walls ever being full. There were perhaps at least a hundred people in there last night milling around, waiting for various events and yet this looked like a small gathering. As the Parliament website explains, the hall has been rebuilt and restored numerously since opening in 1097 and the result is frankly awesome and impossible to describe as this paragraph has demonstrated.
The walk to those stairs towards the chamber appeared to take little time. Unfortunately, only as I reached the bottom step did I realise I needed to visit the toilet and found myself asking the two policemen with large rifles (only the second time I think I've seen guns in real life) where the bathroom was. At the other end of the hall near the gift shop which meant I'd be making that walk a couple more times. On the upside it also meant I visited the gift shop and bought a jar of jam and a Christmas present. It's worth pointing out that this shambling about always happens when I visit tourist spots. Usually when I reach a Tate or V&A it's at least half an hour before I even look at a painting.
Back across the hall, up the stairs and some more stairs and yet more stairs, more security checks and eventually I'm standing in the public gallery at the House of Commons. The seating is slightly disorientating. The front couple of rows aren't accessible from the back but it takes a little bit of mental somersaulting to notice and so you're stuck searching around the seating area trying to find a way through. Eventually I took a seat at one corner with an angle across the all too familiar commons chamber, which is protected by large sheets of what looks like bullet proof glass that also has a noise cancelling effect. Fortunately audio from the space is piped through speakers on the back of the benches, near invisible behind brass grills which seem otherwise decorative.
There are screens fixed to the wall above the public gallery relaying the feed which also is also broadcast on BBC Parliament, mainly concentrating on whoever's speaking. The chamber was pretty empty, the bill under discussion is Technical and Further Education Bill proposed by Justine Greening, the The Secretary of State for Education. When I arrived, David Rutley, Tory representative for Macclesfield was speaking although I was too busy simply enjoying being in the space and watching the routine of the chamber to listen. As you enter, you're handed a card which explains some of the traditions on one side and the geography of the space on the other, although we're sat too far back to see anything but about a quarter of the space, certainly not the bar of the house.
Architecturally the public gallery is the same as the chamber. For some reason, I'd expected wooden benches ala many courtrooms, but the seating is just the same as in the chamber, which gives the space a sense of unity. Worth noting that the chairs aren't especially comfortable and like you often see with MPs who're there for a long session, I found myself sitting diagonally with my arm across the back. Which isn't to say there isn't plenty of legroom, but not enough to cross your legs and it's impossible to sit backwards which is philosophically important, I suppose. Would we want our MPs to forced to sit to attention or have the facility to recline. Not that the MPs did seem to be paying much attention anyway. Many of them were sat looking at their iProduct screens.
But don't ask me what this Bill was about other than something, something education. There was some "Order! Order!" when one of my favourite MPs, Lucy Powell, heckled her way into Hansard:
David Rutley
Progress in technical and further education and in apprenticeships is vital for the life chances of those seeking first-time employment. I therefore strongly support the Bill. I support it because it seeks to open clear, defined, aspirational paths to success, and it has the potential to help create much-needed parity of esteem between academic education and technical education, as has been talked about during the debate. That is further evidence that we on the Government Benches are the real workers party and that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills is at the vanguard of that movement.
Lucy Powell
There is nobody behind him, though!
David Rutley
Let us move on—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. We cannot have sedentary remarks and remarks from behind the Chair. That is simply impossible.
David Rutley
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Lucy Powell
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to put it on the record that it was I who was speaking from a sedentary position. The Minister is indeed at the vanguard, but the only other discernible member of the Government is the Minister for the Armed Forces, who is standing behind the Speaker’s Chair.
If only all of life had a Hansard and everything you say one day could be accessible on the internet the next. You'd never need to remember anything. Although wasn't there a Black Mirror once about just this? Ok forget it.
Once you've sat down, there isn't an awful lot to see that's new if you've spent much time watching BBC Parliament. People shuffle in and out of the space constantly, both in the chamber itself and the public galleries, guided tours and groups of college students on what must be Politics courses. Most don't stay very long and neither did I, about ten or fifteen minutes. But there's something about being in a space, smelling the air, creating a memory. I can't deny despite my slightly frosty attitude to the main parties that I wasn't a bit starstruck on seeing Greening herself, Powell and Tristram Hunt in the chamber, not to mention Robert Halfron who was so impressive in Michael Cockerell's BBC documentary, Inside the Commons.
The House of Lords wasn't in session last night so I didn't get the chance to also see the snoozers. After leaving the Chamber I wasn't sure where else was open and quickly discovered not much after I attempted to walk towards a door only to quickly be chased after by a security guard who directed by back up towards Westminster Hall just in time to hear the seven o'clock chimes from inside the building, which didn't vibrate in the way I'd expected it to. Nevertheless, whenever I watch those feeds now, I'll have an idea of how it feels, rather than having to imagine it. The closest I thought I'd ever get was visiting the set used for television's First Among Equals and other projects at the old Granada Studios Tour in Manchester, yet there I was in the real thing last night.
Museums Yesterday I visited the Victoria & Albert Museum for the first time in my forty-one years, a day trip from Liverpool. There are plenty of justifications for this, but partly it's because of the reasons outlined by the Cancer Doctor who appeared on the PM programme tonight. He told Eddie Mair that one of the key decisions people make after a diagnosis, especially after a terminal diagnosis, is that they fling themselves headlong into a bucket list and how he wished more people would take that attitude before a diagnosis so that they don't feel like they have any unfinished business should the worst happen. Recently I decided that since I am nearly forty-two, that we only have one life and we don't know what might happen tomorrow, I should do some of the things I've always wanted to do.
Yesterday I visited the Victoria & Albert Museum for the first time in my forty-one years, a day trip from Liverpool. Instead of offering a review, because it's pointless to review a hundred and fifty year old museum of this magnitude, here's a list of things I learned.
(1) Pay attention to the tube map and don't panic on the underground.
After heading down to Euston Square tube station, for some reason although I'd already checked the route beforehand, I managed to confuse the Circle and Piccadilly line in my head and then rushed onto a train which meant I not only managed to get on a train on the wrong line but it was also going in the wrong direction. Fortunately, I was able to calculate that I could alight on Edgeware Road and swap to a Circle line train going in the opposite direction taking me back round to South Kensington station. Londoners can now feel free to call me the "fucking amateur" that I undoubtedly am. (2) Tyrone Guthrie invented the thrust stage.
The key reason for visiting the V&A other than so that I can actually have the memory of visiting the V&A now whenever anyone refers to it, was to see the theatre and performing arts display. This was somewhat of a return visit having previously seen much of it when originally housed that the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden nearly ten years ago. As expected this is a shadow, a mishmash of the highlights collected around themes which does the collection something of a disservice. It's a continued disgrace that we don't still have a national theatre museum, but I expect one of the reasons the original closed was due to visitor numbers -- it was deserted when I went -- so I'm not sure what the solution is.
For Shakespeare fans there are three key objects. They have a Shakespeare First Folio, which was an unexpected surprise, opened on the first page of The Merry Wives of Windsor rather than Shakespeare's portrait which makes a change. There's also the tunic Henry Irving wore for his Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing at the Lyceum in 1882. Then there's a large diorama which explains the history of thrust stages with miniature recreations of festival theatre in Ontario, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford and the recreation of the Globe which really explains the difference between a genuine thrust, a half thrust and a glorified proscenium arch with Tyrone Guthrie's original designs as the standard.
(3) Wherever you go, there you are.
The V&A has a vast fine art collection, much of which is strewn throughout the chronological and geographic displays more on which later, but two rooms are dedicated the Sheepshank collection, gifted to the museum by a cloth manufacturer from Leeds. Almost as soon as I walked into these rooms, I realised that I'd stumbled into just the sort of display I'd expect to find in a regional art gallery and that for the following half hour I was essentially on some lost version of one of my old Public Art Collection visits, more so considering, as was so often the case then when I'd turn up in a town only to discover the gallery was closed for renovations, that one of the rooms was closed for a rehang, the one which just happened to have my beloved pre-Raphaelites.
Many of the same artists feature, a Landseer, some Ettys. I imagined myself, notebook in hand, giddily jotting observations about their William Blakes or excited about what could the best painting on display, Danby's Disappointed Love. A young woman crouches in woodland next to a lake in total despair, miniature portrait and torn letter signalling something horrific has happened to her heart. The mystical detail of the brushstrokes isn't realistic but still draws you into the image, her white dress popping against the dark green of the trees. If this had been the result of travelling to a Macclesfield or Oldham I would not have been disappointed and here it is hidden away in a corner of the V&A.
(4) Gallery fatigue continues to be a threat.
As you'll have noticed from previous dispatches, if I'm even slightly interested in an exhibition, I like to take to time to see everything which generally means I'm wandering around for quite some time longer that most people. Shakespeare in Ten Acts at the British Library a few months ago took me three hours. The upshot is that gallery fatigue tends to set in after about two to two and a half hours, as the ability to absorb what I'm seeing disappears. After the theatre and painting rooms, which also includes a display of Turner and Constable and despite the intervention of lemon cake from the cafe, gallery fatigue really began to lay it groggy clutches on me by about half two in the afternoon which is a bit of a problem if you're there for a whole day on purpose, especially since ...
(5) The space is big. Really big.
The V&A, like most national galleries, is huge, the equivalent having the whole of National Museums Liverpool in one building five times. With my approach to museums, I'd could spend a day just working my way through a single room or section, so it would take me roughly three months to see the whole thing. With just a few opening hours remaining, I took the unsatisfactory decision to simply walk the place, map in hand, making sure I'd stepped through all the rooms attempting to make the gallery fatigue work for me as I only stopped to see the items which really caught my eye, mainly the paintings mixed with the furniture and decorative arts materials telling the story of a particular period in history.
The experience was a bit like that sequence in George Pal's film adaptation of The Time Machine as Rod Taylor watches history unfold before him, or Lucy in Luc Besson's film of the same name. So much to see, too much to take in. I dawdled most in the rooms which have been scooped up from their original establishments and recreated in the museum, panel by panel, like pocket universes (which also made it also somewhat like seeing a National Trust property or stepping through the mirrors in Doctor Who's The Girl In The Fireplace). But even then, I was conscious of the clock, the deadline of the museum closing time causing a need to push on. Seeing so many beautiful objects in one place is overwhelming especially when there's barely seconds for your mind to gather context, read notes.
(6) You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. The one room which must be visited is the Raphael chamber. Massive frescoes leant by her Majesty the Queen line the walls of a space which is the size of a church if not a cathedral, which given how much of the rest of the surrounding spaces have low ceilings is truly awe inspiring. The paintings themselves are actually pretty difficult to look at, light shining across their protective glaze, but the equally massive information labels offer a decent synopsis of what we're seeing. Oh to have a day to simply sit in that space and watch people's reactions on entering looking up and around the contours of the ceiling boggle eyed. But the V&A is rather like taking the Grand Tour in one place, probably because much of its collection is from the results of that Grand Tour. The cast galleries feature plaster recreations of some of Europe's great statuary including Michelangelo's David which is much taller than I expected.
(7) There aren't enough toilets.
As we've discussed before, I'm usually happy if there's some decent paintings and adequate toilets at a museum or art venue. The problem at the V&A is that because they gallery is so vast, it takes a good five minutes to walk to the nearest toilet which is a problem if you have the constitution of a child and need to go more than most especially if you're standing up a lot. Eventually I worked out some good routes back to the main toilets but please, the V&A, for the love of Daenerys Targaryen will you please add some more conveniences or failing that better signage in the middle of the exhibition spaces demonstrating their locations.
(8) I ain't nothing like a Dame.
In the performance section, alongside a recreation of Kylie Minogue's tour dressing room (add another day to unpack that visual feast) is a selection of costumes for dress up amongst which is Widow Twankey's dress. Once I'd worked out which way it was supposed to fit, and after another visitor offered to attach the velcro at the back, I took this selfie:
I'm sure having a hat would have made the difference. On the upside, having lost all of this weight over the past few years, most of the costumes were way too big for me. Yes, I tried them all on.
(9) You can't see everything.
Which feels like I'm repeating myself, but it's true. As closing time descended, I was just stepping into a gallery dedicated to the Americas. Having barely glanced at anything, the staff were pulling chords across doorways and closing the rooms down, a massive physical hint that they wanted to go home. Sorry, photography. As I wandered with urgency back to the cloakroom to pick up my backpack, I was impressed with the speed that the staff were able to coax visitors towards the exit. Having worked in similar situations, there are always straddlers and yet here we all were streaming towards the doors before the closing time of a quarter to six. (10) You can't walk back to Euston from the V&A in three hours.
Or at least not the way I was attempting it. Google Maps indicated it was possible to walk to Euston from the the V&A in just over an hour. Deciding it would be a good way to see new parts of London, or parts of London new to me, and with a three hour gap between closing time at the gallery and my train home, I photographed the route ahead of time. This took me into Knightsbridge which meant I could visit Harrods food hall (to buy a Christmas pudding) and the original Harvey Nicks and wander through Hyde Park at dusk, see the lake and then step under the actual Marble Arch. Which was all fine, except I then misread the map on my tiny iPod screen and walked way too far up Edgeware Road to the point that I was completely lost. After asking a street sweeper for directions, who spent the next three minutes telling me he didn't know, I walked up another wrong street and ended up taking the tube from Paddington station back to Euston following much the same route as before. Fucking amateur.
