A week of rain ...

but it ended with dahlias!

Judging from the comments here on the blog and on Facebook, my readers seem to prefer a day-by-day chronology, complete with details on what I ate for lunch and where I was sat to eat it, so I will do my best to give you that going forward. Note that I did go back to the previous post to add my expenses and steps/miles, which I gather you also want to see. One loyal reader told me how much she appreciates the links, especially to the exhibitions, so she can find out more about what I'm banging on about. I'll aim to keep those up as well. 

Monday -- Always a little tricky to work out what to do on a Monday as most of the independent galleries and small museums are closed, by thank goodness the big name places -- both Tates, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, V&A and the British Museum -- are open on Mondays. My choice for this Monday was to start at the NPG to see the 2024 Portrait Award exhibition. This has long been a favourite exhibition of mine, back to the days when BT sponsored it. The pandemic and various renovations at the NPG meant that there has been no portrait award exhibition since 2019, but it's back, now sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehills (whoever they are). In terms of my own photography, I absolutely hate taking portrait photos, but I really enjoy this exhibition. I think it's fun to pick my own favourites and then see what the judges chose. 

Rain was beginning to come down just as I emerged from the NPG, so that scuppered my plan to eat my packed lunch on a nearby bench. Instead, I nipped into the crypt of St Martin in the Fields, where they have a lovely caff, bought something sweet and had that along with my pita and hummus while warm and dry inside. 

There's a new sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, so I made a brief stop to have a butcher's. It's Mil Veces un Instante (A thousand times an Instant) by Teresa Margolles, comprised of plaster casts of the faces of 726 trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people, which was just unveiled the previous week.

I then took the tube to South Kensington and was happy to find no rain when I emerged from underground, which gave me an opportunity to walk through the new Evolution Garden at the Natural History Museum. It seems pretty cool and is full of benches (and it's free), so I'm making a mental note of this for a future lunch spot.

The rain held off just long enough for me to walk to the V & A, where I bought a ticket (50% off with my Art Pass) to see Fragile Beauty: Photos from the collection of Elton John and his partner David Furnish. I has no idea just how extensive this exhibition would be -- over 300 images, grouped in categories including fashion, celebrities, the male body, photo journalism, civil unrest and civil rights, American landscapes, etc. Had I known, I probably would have moved more quickly through the first three in that list in order to spend more time with the later groups. It's rather amazing to think that these images were chosen from over 7,000 in their personal collection. 

Tuesday -- I awoke to find the rain that had been threatened looked like it was holding off for a bit. I made a plan on the fly that morning, after scoring the last ticket to the afternoon architecture of the Barbican. I've long had a love-hate relationship with the Bloody Barbican. I've seen some interesting things there in the art gallery, the library and the conservatory, and I don't hate Brutalist architecture (I'm rather fascinated by the idea of living in such a planned urban community), but I find the complex utterly confounding and confusing. I was hoping that the tour would ease some of my confusion and help me learn to read the architeture. It did just that, with a very skillful and knowledgeable guide taking us in a big loop around the complex (it's over 40 acres!), telling us about its history and pointing out significant patterns and details.

While I was at the Barbican, I stopped into the library to catch the last day of an exhibition of textile art called London Lives, put on by members of the Phoenix Contemporary Textile Group, which I totally enjoyed. Lunch was a Forgotten Ends sushi cup and a pastel de nata from Waitrose, which I ate on a bench on one of the Barbican highwalks. 

And since I was in the City and it was nearby, I walked over to Liverpool Street Station to take some photos of the new permanent public sculpture there, a huge piece by Yayoi Kusama called Infinite Accumulation. I think it's fab!

I ended the day with my second free Qi Gong class at the Primrose Hill Community Association, a 20-minute walk from my gaff. I can't say I feel any benefits from this activity yet, but I'm staying open-minded and might check out classes when I'm back home.

Wednesday -- Another grey and intermittently rainy day, which found me in south of the river. I took the tube to Southwark and headed straight to the Bankside Gallery to see Small but MIghty, a group show put on by the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers that was due to close in a few days. The show was excellent and I was really tempted by several of the prints ... but I didn't buy anything. 

A break in the weather gave me a chance to do a long walk along the river as I headed south to meet friends for lunch in Lambeth. It was lovely to catch up with old mates Kathy and Ronnie, along with new friend Allan, at a riverside caff. We then parted ways at the Garden Museum, where I saw an exhibition called Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors, about the gardens of four women -- Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Otteline Morrell and Vita Sackville-West -- who had ties to the Bloomsbury set and also had country homes in Sussex. The exhibition was smaller than I imagined it would be, and it was mostly about the art that they and various friends and lovers made in and about these gardens. The paintings were lovely (many not shown together before), but I was hoping for a bit more about the gardens themselves, what was planted, etc. Nevertheless, I ticked off another soon-to-close exhibition on my list and I spent some time looking at the permanent displays about gardens, gardeners and garden decor. 

Since it was nearby and I'd never been before, I dropped by the Lambeth Palace Library for a tiny exhibition called Her Booke: Early Modern Women and their Books. Lambeth Palace (a small Tudor structure next to the river) is the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the library is the archives of the Church of England, so it contains a lot of old stuff. The exhibition had books ranging from medieval prayer books owned by women to manuscripts by Mary Woolstonecraft and Mary Shelley. I now know that Elizabeth I was fluent in many languages and a skilled translator of manuscripts. 

Thursday -- Yup, more rain, though the skies were briefly clear in the early morning, giving me time to hustle down to the east side of Regent's Park to find the new (and only!) Charles III bollards that were installed this summer in Chester Terrace. There are no plans to replace any of the street furniture (bollards, post boxes, lamp posts) that carry the royal ciphers of previous monarchs, but where NEW things are needed they will install ones with King Chuck's cipher. Apparently there's a new CR III post box somewhere up north, but these two bollards are the only such items in London.

From there I headed down the Euston Road, back to the Wellcome Collection for a newly-opened exhibition called Hard Graft about work and how it impacts the body. The exhibition examines three work venues -- plantations (and the corollary to prisons), the streets and the home -- to mixed success. The part about the plantations, which included how enslaved people brought traditional medicines and cures with them from Africa, imparting these traditions through lore, song and even tattoos, was the most successful. I was particularly struck by the connections between plantation systems and prisons. The street work section focused on sanitary workers and sex workers, with bits about how they organized collectively to fight for better working conditions. The final bit about domestic work was really just tacked on at the end -- a little about cleaners and nothing about childcare workers.

I hurried back to Belsize Park, ate a tuna and sweet corn sandwich (purchased from the neighbourhood Tesco Express) at my gaff, and then dashed through the rain to the Hampstead Theatre for the matinee performance of The Lightest Element. I haven't read any of the reviews yet, but mine would be a mixed one. 

In the evening, I met up with a mate at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury for one of their salon nights. This one was two people (Matt Brown from Londonist and Pete Smith, a walking tour guide) presenting about London Labyrinths. Despite the dreadful weather, it was an entertaining night out. This was my first event at the Horse Hospital and now I'll know to be on the lookout for future events. 

Friday -- We're off to the chalk caves! I met my friends Jane and Jen, along with Jen's friend Jasmine, at London Bridge Station where we hopped on a Southeastern train to nearby Chislehurst, arriving at the caves minutes before a torrential downpour. We had snacks in the caff and mooched around looking at the photos on the walls before being gathered up with the other punters for an hour-long tour underground, seeing a small portion of the 22 miles of human-made tunnels and caves cut into the subterranean chalk. Over the past 100+ years, the caves have been used for munition storage, an extensive bomb shelter, a mushroom farm, venue for gigs including the young Rolling Stones, and now as a tourist attraction. We briefly saw places where over 15,000 people lived during the worst of the World War II bombing raids on London, with latrines, canteen, chapel, infirmary, post office, dormitories, etc. spread out in the warren of rooms and passages. Our guide left a lot to be desired (I was with two professional tour guides, so they know a dud when they see one) and parts of it were a bit naff, but it was a fun half day out of London.

Once back at London Bridge, Jane and I dodged raindrops along Bermondsey Street on our way to the White Cube Gallery to see an extensive exhibition of (mostly) large, new works by Tracey Emin. Her work is out of my usual comfort zone -- our Tracey really does put all her physical bits and emotional pain right out there for all to see. The paintings are disturbing, unsettling, beautiful, brave and thought-provoking. I'm glad I was with someone I could talk about the works with as we went around the gallery -- it really helped in processing the art and the angst. 

To lift our mood, we also popped into the Eames Fine Art Gallery to see stunning prints and watercolours by Norman Ackroyd, a prolific artist who recently died at the age of 86, and into a glass gallery with lots of colourful bits and bobs. 

Saturday -- Sunshine! Blue skies! No rain! My original intention was to go to Kew Gardens to see sculpture by Marc Quinn (ending the next day), but the tube and the overground weren't running to Kew this weekend and I didn't want to faff around with a replacement bus service that would have taken forever. So, I reworked my plan and headed to Ealing Broadway instead and made my way from there, after a bit of a mooch around the bustling streets (is Ealing Broadway always this busy on a Saturday or was everyone so pleased to see the sun that they came pouring out to the shops?), to Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery. The Manor, former home of Sir John Soane, is a pastiche of old and modern with very little in the way of furnishings. Interesting to imagine people living there in the early 19th century. Lunch of pita and hummus on a bench outside the Manor. I was really there to see tapestries by Grayson Perry. The show, called The Vanity of Small Differences, was fab! There are six tapestries that tell a story, inspired by Hogarth's A Rakes Progress and other classical art works, about the rise and ultimate demise of fictional Tim Rakewell, working in lots of satire and social commentary on class and materialism. 

Since I was in the area (and not likely to be out in these western suburbs again any time soon), and as it was such a lovely day, I thought a walk to Gunnersbury Park to walk through the gardens and visit the museum would be a nice pursuit. It was all of that except for visiting the museum -- closed all day for a private event, from the looks of things a very fancy wedding. 

Sunday -- Again no rain (yet). I hustled out early to go over to Leighton House in Holland Park, another one of my favourite places, to see a display of dahlias by Arthur Parkinson, a celebrated young florist and garden guru, in the Arab Hall. It was stunning. I also saw Out Shopping, a small exhibition of some of the clothing collection of Marion and Maud Sambourne, wife and daughter of photographer Linley Sanbourne (the Sambourne House nearby is another of RBKC's museums). The dresses -- some over 100 years old -- are amazingly well preserved (and conserved). Note to self and anyone else interested in seeing Leighton House: Sunday morning is the perfect time to visit as it's very quiet (and no annoying children). 

I made a quick stop at the Marylebone Farmers' Market to pick up some Sires Hill Bakery savory pies (I've loved their veg pies since buying them years ago at the Queen's Park Farmers' Market but rarely find them). More dahlias on display!

And then it was back to NW3 to go on the Belsize Park Society's annual autumn walk, this one focused on Victorian architecture. 

The coming week promises to be a bit warmer, though still cloudy, with less rain. I've now ticked off nearly all of the ending-soon exhibitions and am ready to move on to some of the autumn blockbusters. Next week's post will surely be an arty one. 

Monday:

£3.50 cake

National Portrait Gallery free

£11 Fragile Beauty at the V&A (50% off with Art Pass)

14,343 steps

5,87 miles

Tuesday:

£12 Barbican tour

£3.45 lunch from Waitrose

£11.47 gifts

£1.65 ginger nuts

21,479 steps

8.81miles

Wednesday:

£9.25 bread & veg

£7.50 Garden Museum (50% off with Art Pass)

Bankside Gallery free

Lambeth Palace Library free

19,601 steps

8.12 miles

Thursday:

£2.20 sandwich

£26 theatre ticket (OAP matinee)

£9.92 Salon at Horse Hospital

£5 glass of wine at Salon

Wellcome Collection free

16,536 steps

6.81 miles

Friday:

£15.19 train to Chislehurst

£6 Chislehurst Caves (concession)

£2 brownie

£12.93 groceries

£12.10 wine and bananas

White Cube Gallery free

16,310 steps

6.71 miles

Saturday:

£20 top up Oyster card

£1 flapjack

£6 Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery (50% off with Art Pass)

20,163 steps

8.34 miles

Sunday:

£10.50 farmers' market

£9.42 groceries

Leighton House free with Art Pass

Belsize Society walk free

20,644 steps

8.52 miles