Chaos on the Northern Line (Week 3)

When I checked the Citymapper app on Monday morning to see how long it would take me to get to Tate Modern (I would normally take the Northern Line from Tufnell Park to Waterloo), I noticed the wee yellow "i" on the Northern Line icon. Hmmmm... Seems there were some delays due to a signal failure at Stockwell. I sez to meself, "No worries. Leave 10 minutes earlier." Little did I know the chaos that would ensue, lasting until Thursday. 

I rocked up at the Tufnell Park station a bit before 10 am, well after the morning rush should have been over. After waiting on the platform for at least 10 minutes (trains normally come along every 3-4 minutes), one pulled in. The doors opened and no one got off. Every carriage was heaving with people. I saw a tiny space inside the door, and was grateful that a women moved in just enough to let me squeeze on. Luckily I'm small and I was only going one stop. Crikey!

Citymapper had told me to change for the Thameslink at Kentish Town. I'd totally forgotten that this was an option! After a wait of about 8 minutes on the platform at Kentish Town, the train pulled in and it was virtually empty. A fast, smooth journey and I was spit out at Blackfriars for a very short walk to Tate Modern. Did I mention the rain in the forecast? There was none as I walked to the station in Tufnell Park (though the skies looked ominous), but by the time I reached Blackfriars it was absolutely chucking down. Storm Benjamin had arrived. Even with my raincoat and brollie, I was pretty well soaked by the time I entered the Turbine Hall. But I was 10 minutes early to meet Janie, so I had time to dry off a bit with the help of the hand driers in the loo.

I also had time to walk through the new installation in the Turbine Hall. Faithful readers of this blog will know how much I normally enjoy these installations. This one, however, was underwhelming. By Sámi (indigenous Northern European) artist Máret Ánne Sara, the installation is made of sticks, bones, pelts and skulls. I think it's about the relationship between land, water, reindeer, etc. It doesn't begin to occupy the immense space in any sort of effective way. Meh. 

Janie took me as her +1 to two exhibitions: Emily Kam Kngwarray and Theatre Picasso, both of which I'd been debating seeing but was a bit put off by the heafty price tag, even with my Art Pass. I'm always happy and grateful to be a member's +1.

The Australian Aboriginal artist Emily Kam Kngwarry is here shown for the first time in Europe. Her paintings and batiks are definitely unique, like nothing I'd ever seen before. The works involve depictions of "country", the land and the lore of the people who inhabit it. I don't think the wall text or the video adequately explained the meaning of Dreamtime and how that is translated to two-dimensional art. Therefore, the works felt mysterious and inaccessible to me, and ultimately looked very samey with all the dots. I could see the emu tracks and little lizard creatures, but not much else. But on an abstract level, the works are moving and strong, with beautiful colours and textures. Maybe that's what western white people are allowed to see.

And maybe I'm dumb as a post, but the Theatre Picasso exhibition made no sense to me. I think they just pulled a bunch of paintings and drawings out of storage -- Picasso wearing a bull's head or (in a video) acting as Carmen with a veil over his head and a fag in his hand -- then built a fake proscenium, and called it theatre. Ho, hum. 

We stopped in to the nearby Bankside Gallery to see a nice show by the Royal Watercolour Society and then had lunch at a new place in Southwark Street called All That Falafel & More. Good food, friendly staff, excellent prices. Yum. The rain was intermittently soft and torrential as we made our way to and across Waterloo Bridge. Janie then headed to Embankment Station and I pushed on to the Courtauld.

Yes, this was my second visit to the Courtauld Gallery. Unbeknownst to me on my initial visit, there are some Wayne Thiebaud etchings and prints in a display called Delights. This display is included with general admission (free in my case with my Art Pass), so I felt I need to go back and have a butchers. 

I also took a look at The Barber in London: Highlights from a Remarkable Collection, also free to me with my Art Pass. Lady Martha Constance Hattie Barber (1869–1933), who was predeceased by her wealthy husband and who had no children, left her entire fortune for the establishment of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham. Her vision was that the institute would develop an art collection of a similar quality to that of the National Gallery or the Wallace Collection. The collection is normally housed in a Grade I listed Art Deco building on the campus of the University of Birmingham. The building is currently undergoing extensive refurbishment and so parts of the collection have gone out on loan to other art museums. The Courtauld is fortunate to have a small assortment of paintings, and they are all stunning, including works by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Turner, Degas, and Monet. 

Dodging the rain, I got a bus to Bloomsbury for my second visit to the British Museum. This time I made a beeline through the crowds to the Prints and Drawing Room (room 90) to see Nordic noir: works on paper from Edvard Munch to Mamma Andersson. Other than Munch, I'd never heard of any of these artists. The pieces started with two prints by Munch and then carried on through the 1940s to the present. It was interesting that I'd just seen the installation at Tate Modern by a Sámi artist in the morning and then saw all this Nordic art in the afternoon. 

Not even attempting to get anywhere on the tube, I spent Tuesday riding buses and concentrating my activities in and around Trafalgar Square. I started with the National Gallery, where I saw the blockbuster exhibition Radical Harmony - Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists. This is another exhibition based on the collection of a remarkable woman. One of the significant art collectors of the 20th century, she assembled the most comprehensive ensemble of Neo-Impressionist paintings in the world. Collected with the aim of being publicly accessible, these works now form part of the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, which she founded in 1938. Even though I'm not a huge fan of Pointillism, I really enjoyed walking through room after room filled with colour. 

I then strolled around St James's Park and watched the pelicans before I meandered my way through a few nearby galleries. At the Mall Galleries, I saw several rooms full of works by the the Society of Wildlife Artists -- lots of paintings of birds and a few mammals, fish and slugs. Next, the Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) where I saw something having to do with oil that I didn't like much. Finally, on to the Whitecube Mason's Yard for large colour photographs by Andeas Gursky before walking up Shaftsbury Avenue to Covent Garden to catch a bus. 

On Wednesday, the Northern Line was even more of a mess. Tufnell Park station was closed entirely (it's a non-interchange station, so TfL must consider it insignificant). I needed to get to London Bridge to meet my friend Jane for our trip to the Metropolitan Police Museum in Sidcup. I scurried over to the Holloway Road and joined throngs of people at the bus stop. When the number 43 came along, I had to push my way in the front door to be the last passenger let on the bus. With each stop, as people emerged from the side door, I was able to inch my way down the aisle of the bus. Finally, somewhere around Islington Green, I got a seat. I rocked up at Waterloo with just enough time to spend a penny (i.e. use the loo) before Jane and I caught our train. 

The exhibition is actually a rare loan of items from the Crime Museum (a collection used by the Met for training purposes, not open to the public) to the Metropolitan Police Museum (a collection related to the history of the Met). It's a small exhibition -- housed in a single room -- and only 10 people at a time are allowed inside. Our guide took us around from display to display, telling us about the crimes and the police detection methods used to aprehend the criminals. We saw items related to Dr. Crippen, the Blackout Ripper, the Great Train Robbery, and John Christie, as well a bunch of other baddies I'd never heard of. Before I knew it, an hour and a half had passed. 

After lunch in a caff, Jane and I got back on the train into London, watching the skies as the grey moved out and sunshine returned. We made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Regent's Park to see the annual Frieze Sculpture on display in the park. This turned out to be a great plan -- the sculpture (fewer pieces than previous years) was much better quality than the past couple of years. Less is more. We had a fun time looking at each piece, making up our idea of what the sculpture was about, and then reading the word-salad (probably written by gallery staff) on the display boards. Jane is much more outgoing than I am -- she would ask anyone nearby what they thought of the sculptures and got into some funny interactions. The October sun, low in the sky at this latitude, cast golden highlights on the yellow leaves and long shadows on the ground. 

I then walked down Tottenham Court Road to Foyles, where I had a long sit-down with a beer and a book before my evening event. In the vestry house (lovely!) of St Giles in the Fields, I attended a talk about the Irish in the Rookery of St Giles by historian Breda Corish. The talk was interesting and I learned a fair bit about the Irish who came to the area in the 17th and 18th centuries, but would have liked to have heard more about the 19th century. 

Thursday was Warhol in Woking. Thank goodness my train ticket from Waterloo was an open day return, as the chaos on the Northern Line was still ongoing. I tapped in at Tufnell Park just after 9:30 (off-peak in order to get my 1/3 senior railcard discount), but the train was late, heaving with people and I had to change platforms at Camden Town. Stressful as this was, I boarded a train at Waterloo with four minutes to spare and breathed a sigh of relief. (There's a frequent service to Woking, so I could have gotten the next train if necessary.) 

It was a cold and miserable day, so I headed straight to the Lightbox Gallery. I'd been meaning to visit this gallery for years, and now that I've seen how easy it is to get to and what a lovely space it is, I will be back. I was there to see a large Warhol exhibition and to attend a curator's talk on Warhol Unmasked: Art, Identity and Reinvention (1968-1987). Both the exhibition and the talk were excellent.

My visit to the Lightbox also included a nice sit-down in the caff, where I ate my packed lunch and purchased a cup of tea and a brownie. The Lightbox also houses a local history gallery telling Woking's Story, with displays about a Medieval manor, a local department store, Woking during WW2, Brookwood Cemetery, customs and clothing of mourning, and a local psychiatric institution. All of the displays were developed by local citizens who, with support of archivists, researched and assembled the artifacts. There's the usual interactive bits and dress-up corner for the kiddies, but there's plenty to interest adults as well. 

The weather was a bit better when I emerged from the Lighbox three hours later, so I wandered around the town center a bit. There really isn't a whole lot to see. The streets and a large shopping precinct are full of chain stores -- Nandos, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Pret, etc. I popped into the one charity shop I saw. Most of the independent shops seemed to be barber shops -- I'd venture to guess that Woking may have more barbers per capita than any other town in Britain. 

The author H. G. Wells lived in Woking for the year in which he wrote The War of the Worlds. There's a sculpture of Wells in the town center and one of a Martian from the book. 

Back at Waterloo, the skies were relatively clear so I walked around a bit and then caught a bus for King's Cross (deverted, it actually stopped at St Pancras), and then walked up York Way to the Pangolin Gallery. I saw two exhibitions, primarily of sculpture. The one by Geoffrey Clarke I really liked. 

The other by Almuth Tebbenhoff didn't move me much (but then, it had been a long day and I was knackered).

Although I continued to Tufnell Park by bus, I later learned that the signal failure in Stockwell had finally been fixed earlier that afternoon. Yay!

On Friday morning, I made it by tube in no time flat to Green Park, then walked the short distance to the Christea Roberts Gallery in Pall Mall where I met my mate Simon. He introduced me to the splendid watercolours of Emma Stibbon, whose exhibition Melting Ice | Rising Tides had just opened. Simon has been following her career and thinks she is a star. In this exhibition, she "explores and documents through drawings, prints and an immersive installation, how the warming environment of the polar regions directly causes rising sea levels and coastal erosion on UK coastlines, with a specific focus on Sussex and North Devon." She often mixes seawater and ground up rocks with her paints to interesting effects. 

After a cuppa, we walked to the Royal Academy where Simon escorted me into the Kerry James Marshall: The Histories exhibition as his +1. He'd already seen the exhibition, so he took a fast turn through to revisit a few things, while I happily spent well over an hour and a half looking at the monumental paintings. Once again, I'd come to London to learn about an African-American artist I hadn't previously heard of. This is a huge exhibition, filled with monumental paintings -- colourful, thought-provoking, challenging, enlightening, ironic, moving, etc. The exhibition will not be shown in the US, so I was glad to have had the opportunity to see it here in London. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon mooching around galleries, starting with ones in Cork Street behind the RA, including the Goodman Gallery where the second half of the El Anatsui exhibition was on view (I'd seen the first half at the October Gallery in Bloomsbury). 

The number 9 bus then took me to Exhibition Road where I hopped off and walked up to the Serpentine Gallery. First, I made my annual visit to the Serpentine Pavilion. I thought this year's (by Marina Tabassum) was better than some of the others we've seen lately. The proportions and scale are lovely, and it looks like it was a very nice space for coffee or an event when the weather was warmer. They'll be taking it down in a few days. 

The exhibitions in the North and South galleries left me totally cold and so I exited quickly. Exhibitions here have been very hit or miss recently, with a few more misses than hits. 

The afternoon was sunny, so I strolled up to the Italian Gardens (now put to sleep for the winter, but the fountains looked lovely in the bright sunshine) and on to Paddington where I caught the tube back to Tufnell Park. 

Just before going to bed, I checked Citymapper for the best route to use on Saturday to get me to the Heath Robinson Museum in Pinnar, a place I'd never been. It would involve getting the Metropolitan line from Finchley Road (I'd never been past West Hampstead on this line). All looked fine and very doable. I would be able to walk (quickly) to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market, get my bread for the week, then get the Mildmay Line from Gospel Oak to Finchley & Frognal, walk (again briskly) down the Finchley Road to the other station where I'd catch the Metropolitan Line. Easy ... until it wasn't.

When I got to the platform at Finchley Road, I found that there were delays on the Metropolitan line, all the way out to and beyond Pinnar. Yeeeesh! Transport hell seemed to be following me around. I was to have met my friend Jane at the museum at 11:15, but it soon became clear that wasn't going to happen. Over the tannoy came an announcement that anyone waiting for the train for Amersham (that's the one I wanted) should take the next one for Uxbridge to Harrow on the Hill and change there. Jane and I texted each other as I was getting on the Uxbridge-bound train. She was already at Harrow on the Hill and reckoned she'd still be there when my train pulled in. There, we implemented Plan B and got a bus the rest of the way to Pinnar, arriving around noon. 

The museum is charming and the soon-to-close exhibition, Connections and Contraptions, full of marvelous automata and machines made by guest artists, was a delight. We had so much fun looking at the drawings, turning cranks, pushing floor pedals, and watching the gizmos do their thing. One automata picked its nose, while a fox with its body made of a guitar plucked the strings and played an eerie tune. I had never heard of Heath Robinson, but I now know that his name has become an idiom in the UK for a machine that is overly complicated, impractical, and amusing. A second room contained display boards detailing Heath Robinson's life and career as an illustrator. All well worth the schlep to Pinnar. 

After lunch in a local caff, we roamed around the town, going into several charity shops to check out the clothing and knickknacks. We each made a purchase of a book, one on 1930s design for Jane and one called Paved with Gold: A Scrapbook of London Life for me. 

We turned our clocks back on Saturday night, thus bringing an end to British Summer Time and plunging us into late-afternoon darkness and making everyone grumpy. Even the wasps are upset about the cold and dark, and they have decided that they prefer to be inside my loft studio rather than out in the cold. Throughout my stay, I've been trapping one or two a day with a glass and then releasing them out the shower room window (now that I've been to the World of Wasps exhibition, I'm much more respectful of them). Sometime in the early hours of Sunday, EIGHT of them decided to move in with me! I've evicted them.

With no real plan for Sunday, and not a whole lot of energy, I went down to the Marylebone Farmers' Market to buy two of my favourite savory pies for my final week. There was no sign of the sun and a cold wind was whipping between the buildings as I walked from Bond Street station up towards the market. I nipped into Waitrose to buy a pain aux raisins, which I ate on a bench in Paddington Street Gardens as is my custom when I go on the pie run. Then, pushing on into a driving wind, I walked to the 67 York Street Gallery to see an exhibition of abstraction and modern British art. 

Feeling drained from my busy week, I caught a bus and headed back to my gaff to do laundry, chill, write and begin to sketch out a plan for the coming week. I still have mates to see and things to do!

Stats:

Monday:
£ gift for a mate
£9.95 lunch for two
£9.24 groceries

Tate Modern - free as +1 of member

Courtauld - free general admission with Art Pass

British Museum - free
19,661 steps
8.19 miles

Tuesday:
£12.50 National Gallery (50% off with Art Pass)
£3 Mall Galleries (50% off withArt Pass)
£2 cookie
£2.39 groceries
14,316 steps
5.87 miles

Wednesday:
£50 top up Oyster
£6 lunch at caff
£6.50 beer at Foyles
£5 talk about Irish in St Giles

16,174 steps
6.63 miles

Thursday:
£12.64 train to Woking
£12.25 Lightbox Gallery and talk
£5.90 tea and brownie
13,140 steps
5.39 miles

Friday:
£1.95 pastel de nata
£9.69 groceries and wine
Royal Academy - free as +1 of member
Serpentine Gallery - free
17,302 steps
7.21 miles

Saturday:
£5.70 farmers' market
£5.95 sandwich at caff
£1.70 groceries

£1 book at charity shop
Heath Robinson Museum - free with Art Pass
13,672 steps
5.91 miles

Sunday:
£8 pies at farmers' market
£1.30 pain aux raisins
12,053 steps
4.97 miles

All Culture, No Whinging (Week 2)

With my creature-comfort needs and wants now satisfied, I'm no longer flitting about from charity shop to car boot sale to Poundland and have settled into life in the loft in Tufnell Park. I'm getting better at using the minute kitchen and at buying groceries every other day given the size of the tiny fridge. But turn me loose in a Waitrose and I'm sure to come out with more than I can shove into that fridge or cook in the next few days. It's an ongoing learning curve. 

The sun didn't make much of an appearance in the past week, but the temps have been fine for the most part -- a bit chilly in the morning and evening, but I've been comfortable. The grey and gloomy days have driven me indoors for most of my activities, however, resulting in lots of cultural pursuits. So, make yourself a cuppa or pour a pint and read on.

On Monday (that difficult-to-plan day of the week, I went to the following places and had a bit of a late-afternoon crisis.

I started at the Courtauld Gallery to see Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life. I loved the paintings -- cakes, pies, deli counters -- but, as the Courtauld no longer gives Art Pass discounts (or even senior citizen discounts), I didn't think 22 paintings for £18 was good value for money. I found it amusing that the wall text provided explanations of American terms, for example the text for the painting Cold Cereal described it as being "in distinction from warm breakfast grains."

Next, over to Kensington to the Japan House for their current (free) exhibition Pictograms, about how all these universal icons were conceived, designed and accepted world-wide, particularly with the mass-appeal of emojis. 

I used their fabulous loos again. On my way out, I was speaking with the cleaner about how much I love these loos but am afraid to push any of the buttons. She took me back into one of the cubicles and showed me how they work, encouraging me to try them next time. 

I then walked to Leighton House, which is free with my Art Pass. The small exhibitions -- Contemporary Art from the Middle East and North Africa and Ghost Objects -- were so-so. I enjoyed Leighton House: A Journey through 100 Years, showing photos of the house as it was originally, through various uses and bomb damage, to its restoration as what it is today. Here's one of the ghosts objects (something that used to be in the house but is no longer there):

When I exited the house around 4 pm and pulled out my phone to ask the Citymapper app to get me home, I found I had no cell service. I couldn't get a signal no matter where I stood or pointed the phone. I tried restarting it a couple times to no avail. Fortunately, I've got the Google map of London downloaded to my phone -- with that and a paper tube map, I figured out that I could get the Mildmay line from nearby Kensington Olympia station and it was a quick there (I've never used this station before). As I sat on the train, I fiddled around with my phone, checked umpteen settings, etc., and was beginning to think I'd have to walk to the Vodafone store in the Holloway Road for help. So engrossed was I in the bloody phone that before I knew it I'd gone one stop past Gospel Oak, so got out at Kentish Town West, changed platforms and went back. Somewhere along the walk from Gospel Oak back to my gaff, phone service returned. Hooray! I later found out that it wasn't my phone that was the problem -- Vodafone had a huge outage that lasted many hours and impacted thousands of customers. I doubt I can apply for a credit or rebate due to lack of phone service.

On Tuesday, I took the train from Victoria station to Chichester. This was my first time using my new senior railcard to get 1/3 off on my tickets. When I got to Victoria, I soon found out that my train was delayed -- 45 minutes delayed due to some sort of train malfunction around Horsham. I later learned all about how to apply for "delay repay" online, which was easy peasy. 

In Chichester, I went to the Pallant House Gallery. I had been there in April and really enjoyed the space and the exhibition I saw. This visit was for the exhibition Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists. Once again, Pallant House delivered. Starting around 1900 and going up to the present, there were paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs of artists by artists, many of whom were their friends and/or lovers. Again, the Bloomsbury Bunch were out in full force, painting and having sex with each other. I spent nearly two hours looking at everything. Not that we should judge art exhibitions on this basis, but I'd say this exhibition was very good value for money. 

Nina Hamnett by Roger Fry:

Gilbert and George Pink by Sue Dunkley:

My time in Chichester was rather short as I had gotten there late and I'd booked a 4 pm train back to London, so I had only a bit of time to wander around the charming town, walk along another part of the city wall (Roman and medieval), and wander down to the canal basin. Before getting on the train, I stopped into a caff and bought a huge piece of homemade carrot cake from a lovely lady. I didn't ask, but I suspect she baked it herself. I told her I was getting it for my train journey, so she carefully wrapped it in foil for me. Aw!

Wednesday was a bit lower key. I faffed around in the morning, did some online Pilates, and then met my friend Jen at the Tufnell Park station to accompany her on a walk around the area. Jen is another of my walking tour guide friends and she was working up a Tufnell Park walk that she would offer to punters on a date I wasn't available. She needed to check out a few things before the walk went live, and wanted some feedback on it, so I was happy to tag along as her guinea pig. I learned a lot about how the area developed from a manor house property into the suburb it is now and saw many details that I hadn't noticed in all my rushing around to grocery stores and charity shops. 

In the afternoon, I took the overground to Finchley Road and Frognal, then went back to the Camden Art Centre for the exhibition I'd tried to see last week before it had opened. If I had bothered to read about the current exhibition -- Karimah Ashadu: Tendered -- I would have known that this was going to be a stretch for me. The exhibition is comprised of three videos, about body builders, an abattoir, and a cowboy, all filmed in Nigeria. I'm generally not into video as art, but since I'd come here twice I thought I should stay for the show. I lasted less than a minute for the body builders and the abattoir, but I actually watched the entire video about the cowboy, a sensitive young man who has spent his entire life around horses. 

Although it's easier to get public transport to Tufnell Park from central London than it is to go between Belsize Park and Tufnell Park, that's what I did. I got the bus down to Swiss Cottage, then walked along Eton Avenue and England's Lane to the Belsize Community Library. My mission was to get a library card and check out a book. Unlike the other libraries in the borough of Camden, which require proof of address in the form of a utility bill or rent receipt, the Belsize library is independent. I'd sent them email asking if I could use an envelope from the National Art Fund as my proof of address, and they'd said yes, I could. But all I had to do was fill out a short form and didn't have to produce any proof. I now have a plastic library card!

The post box topper in England's Lane, made by a group of women from the library, now has a seasonal theme "Nightmare Before Christmas."

Thursday morning, I returned to the Barbican (this business of going twice to the same place will be a recurring theme during my autumn stay), this time to the art gallery for Giacometti and Mona Hatoum. This is the second of the Barbican's series of installations of works by Giacometti in "encounters" with a contemporary sculptor, this time the Lebanese artist Mona Hatoum, who now lives in London. I had seen a large exhibition of her work at the White Cube Bermondsey a few years ago and really liked it. Her sculpture deals with displacement, social repression and conflict. I was intrigued by how she encorporated Giacometti's work into her own and showed her pieces in dialogue with his. 

Upon leaving the Barbican, I remembered to stop in to the Barbican Laundrette to take a few photos. 

I then sat in Charterhouse Square to eat my packed lunch before getting on the train at Farringdon. The Elizabeth Line took me swiftly to Stratford (on the eastern side of the 2012 Olympic site), when I switched to the Mildmay Line to go one stop back westward to Hackney Wick. There I met my friend Lesley and we walked across a bridge over the Lee Navigation to the western side of the Olympic site. The building which had housed all the media during the Olympics has now been redeveloped into various offices, light industry, tech businesses, cafes, and now is home to the V&A East Storehouse, where we were headed. 

But first, we stopped into a complex called Here East in which the artist Conrad Shawcross has installed an enormous ropemaking machine. Umbilical, as the installation is called, incorporates 40 interlocking arms topped with bobbins of yarn. Through movements that have something to do with planetary orbits, the arms pull and enterlace yarn until it comes out as rope that's 2-3" in diameter. I don't really understand how it works, but it was really cool to watch. 

And then the V&A Storehouse blew my mind! This is the new facility in which the V&A stores everything that's not on display in one of its museums. Shelving going up three storeys through the vast space, with glass floors separating each level, is full of all kinds of fascinating pieces of material culture. The objects are not organized for display as they would be in the museum, but rather sitting on shelves for people to see or study. Anyone who is interested, for research purposes or just curiosity, can request a particular object to be brought to a study room where they can see it up close. Through the glass floors, you can look down into the conservation rooms where objects are being stabilized or restored. We saw some items of clothing being brought out in archival grey boxes for a student to examine. 

Two of the best things we saw were an entire wood-panelled office designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and a 1930s kitchen. This is the kind of place you could come to time and time again, never seeing the same things twice and always finding something new and fascinating. 

After cake and a catch-up in a nearby caff, I took the overground to Hampstead Heath, where I used the Victorian subterranean loo, bought a salad for later at M&S Simply Food, and then walked to my evening event. 

At the Isokon Gallery, I heard a talk by a German architect about the restoration of the Bauhaus building at Dessau. The talks at the Isokon are always interesting, but it's really tough sitting on those backless stools for an hour and a half. Thank goodness they provide a complimentary glass of wine. 

My friends David and Janie took me on another day trip on Friday, this one to Farleys House, the country home of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, in East Sussex a bit north of Eastbourne. Not a National Trust or English Heritage home, Farleys is owned and maintained by a private trust that benefits from the copyrights to Lee Miller's work. Lee and Roland's son Antony Penrose is head of the trust and is very hands-on in the running of the house, grounds and gallery. It's a bit more commercial than NT or EH properties, but all the merch is tasteful -- no tat at all. 

The house tour was led by an animated and witty guide who took us through the rooms on the ground floor, telling stories of all the artists who came to visit and whose works hang beside Miller's and Penrose's on the walls. The kitchen, where Lee Miller turned her attention to cooking after giving up her photography career, was so cool -- full of all sorts of mid-century objects and of works by Picasso, a frequent visitor. Likewise the dining room, where a combination of found art and modern art pieces could be seen everywhere we turned. Alas, because of the copyrights, no photography is allowed inside the house so you'll just have to take my word that it's fab. After the tour, we strolled around the garden with various bits of sculpture, ate our packed lunch on an outdoor table, then checked out the gallery and gift shops. 

Farleys House is located in the hamlet of Muddles Green near Chiddingly (you can't make this stuff up), which is basically nowhere. The nearest train station is miles away in Lewes, and bus service from there to Muddles Green is infrequent at best. So, I was very happy that Janie and David were keen to make the journey via hedge-lined, narrow country roads to get there and back. Once we were finally back to civilization in south London, we headed straight to Southey Brewing Co. in Penge, near to where David and Janie live. They brew on site and have a taproom that's very popular with the locals. David's group of mates who get together weekly to maintain the local Cator Park had recently picked bags of hops that grow wild in the park. They turned the hops over to Southey Brewing, who made a special brew of them called Cator Park Fresh Hop 2025. We all had pints and thought it was grand. 

Once home in my attic gaff, I made myself some soup and sat down for a bit of YouTube viewing. One of my favourite content producers is a bloke called John Tweedy, who lives nearby in Kentish Town and posts regular videos about pubs, real ale (especially bitter), wine, walking and wild camping, and occasionally something of local interest. His Friday video, on his Tweedy Misc. channel, was about the Goodison Fountain on Hampstead Heath. The fountain is the head of a chalybeate (iron rich) spring and isn't marked on Google maps. With a few cues from Tweedy, I took up the quest for the fountain as my Saturday challenge. With no rain in the forecast, I scurried over to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market for my usual bread purchases and then headed up the east side of the Heath, past the men's and women's bathing ponds, and around the ancient Caen Wood. I made one wrong turn, then doubled back downhill and suddenly there it was! I was surprised that the small number of people and dogs who I saw nearby took no notice of this spectacular and rare find. It might be the only existing chalybeate spring on the Heath, for goodness sake! And the fountain looks grand. 

When I walked back down the Heath to my gaff to deposit my bread purchases, I had no plan for the afternoon. An hour or so later, the plan emerged: since I would be ending my day in Richmond, and as Vauxhall is sort of halfway there, it made perfect sense that I'd go to the Newport Street Gallery to see the recently-opened exhibition. The gallery is owned by Damien Hirst, whose art I don't really care for, but the gallery space is spectacular and it's fun to go there to see what's on. The current exhibition is Triple Trouble, a mash-up/collaboration between Hirst, Shepard Fairey and Invader. I love Shepard Fairey and Invader, so I put my dislike of Hirst aside. The exhibition was great, full of Shepard Fairey's iconic graphic images and Invader's mosaics. Hirst's contribution of cigarette butts and scalpel blades didn't add anything and could be overlooked. 

Finally, I was back on the tube, headed to Richmond to see a live performance of the podcast The Wittering Whitehalls. I'm a DODL (Day One Dear Listener) to this humorous podcast, featuring Hillary and Michael Whitehall (parents of Jack Whitehall) who answer requests for advice from listeners. I loved gawping at the ornate interior of the Richmond Theatre (Grade II* listed, architect Frank Matcham) from my seat in the front row of the dress circle (first balcony) and the show was just as amusing as I'd hoped.

Sunday started out with some bits of clear sky but it went pear shaped very quickly, bringing drizzle with intermittent downpours the entire day. But that didn't stop me from doing two guided walks. In the morning, I met Jane to explore Mr. Pooter's Holloway. He is the central character in the book Diary of a Nobody -- a man looking to climb the social ladder in 1880-90s Holloway, straight-laced and prudish, but ever trying to make a good joke or pun. Throughout the book, Mr. Pooter has somewhat fraught interactions with people who would have practiced various trades up and down the Holloway Road, including the ironmonger, tailor, etc. It was good fun to try to work out where he and his family lived and shopped during the glory days of Holloway, when you could get anything you wanted right here. 

I next scooted down to Red Lion Square for another event associated with the Bloomsbury Festival. Starting at Conway Hall, the walk explored the Humanist Bloomsbury: Doers, Dreamers and Place Makers. I learned about the various free-thinking individuals and groups that came under the Humanist umbrella -- non-conformists or non-religious, ethical societies, anti-war activists, feminists, artists, writers, labour organizers. Despite the miserable weather, our lovely guide Maddy Goodall held my attention throughout and I now want to learn more about these people. 

I then trudged on through the rain and caught a bus back to Tufnell Park, putting a soggy end to my very full second week. 

Stats:

Monday:

£18 Courtauld Gallery

£4.50 banana cake

£7.82 groceries

£50 top up Oyster card

Japan Foundation - free with Art Pass

Leighton House - free with Art Pass

16,770 steps

6.88 miles

Tuesday:

£12.34 train to Chichester (-£3.10 delay repay)

£7.50 Pallant House Gallery

£3 pain aux raisins

£3.75 carrot cake

16,095 steps

6.62 miles

Wednesday:

£15.20 groceries

£3.20 tea at caff

Camden Art Centre - free for all

18,687 steps

7.71 miles

Thursday:

£5.50 Barbican Gallery

£4.69 groceries

£12 talk at Isokon Gallery (with wine)

V&A Storehouse East - free for all

18,272 steps

7.49 miles

Friday:

Farleys House - a treat from my friends!

9,437 steps

3.89 miles

Saturday:

£7 farmers' market

£12 wine and groceries

£36.64 Richmond Theatre

Newport Street Gallery - free for all

24,571 steps

10.14 miles

Sunday:

£18 Holloway walk

£10 Bloomsbury walk (included donation to Conway Hall)

£1.20 pastel de nata

15,187 steps

6.23 miles