On the train entertained by a waking, visual hallucination, perhaps the third time such a thing had happened in as many days. Neither black and white nor gray scale, but in rather muted colours. Stationary images rather than images involving movement. One, for example, of a mathematically flavoured text from a book, complete with interesting mathematical symbols like '∑'. Another was the interior of a railway carriage, loosely based on those offered by Southwestern Trains.
Just under 8 minutes from Waterloo to what TFL calls Bankside Mix but which I call the Blue Fin building. First stop the Kirkaldy Testing Museum across the road to check its opening times.
Next, called in one of those Italian restaurants in and around Blue Fin which double as delicatessens to ask about 'Greco di Tufo', to find a very tall and very civil Italian chap who explained that it was made from one of the many grapes used in Italy, probably more popular outside Italy than in. Also a speciality of Campania/Naples, so maybe I would do better in a shop which specialised in that area. Which explains why we first came across the stuff in the Neapolitan Kitchen in Ewell. See, for example, reference 2. All that said, he usually had some in, but not on this day.
On into the turbine hall at Tate Modern to search out the girders made by the Kirkcaldy Steel Company, to find a carpet down the ramp, intended for children to roll down, and the floor filled up with not very big swings, mostly three seaters. Quite a lot of young people - say 15-20 rather than 0-5 - swinging on them. I decided against taking a roll myself. Perhaps if BH had been there to cheer me on? All good fun, but it also struck me as rather silly. Is that the best that the biggest and most important modern art gallery in the UK can offer?
The search failed. Most of the vertical girders appeared to have been made by the Lanarkshire Steel Company, with these words being embossed in very low relief (presumably during the last pass of the girder through the rollers), not the high relief that I remembered at all. While up in the roof, visible from the new bridge, there were some much lighter roof trusses made by the Colville Steel Company. With the name in this case being even fainter than those of the people from Lanarkshire, perhaps stamped in the steel after the event, rather than rolled in the steel in low relief. Which all goes to show how dodgy memories can be, with these very distinct memories of the Kirkcaldy Steel Company being embossed in high relief being completely wrong, albeit a patchwork of things that were completely right.
And so into a quick tour down the new extension, known to some as the Blatnavik Building. A lot of plain oak to be seen on the floors, some of it already stained by water ingress from somewhere or other. I wondered how well it was going to wear. Handsome galleries, but full of what for me was mostly rubbish. So a bit like the big art museum in Ottawa: fine art gallery, pity about the art. One piece, three identical sheets of lovingly mounted plain white cardboard, might have been a generous gift from the gallery in Albemarle Street, noticed at reference 7.
Among the rubbish though there was one bit of clever fun. A sort of shiny metallic cube with portholes. You peered through the portholes to see your image reflected all over the place. I managed to get ticked off for standing too close.
I had assumed that Mr. Blatnavik was a very rich man of Russian extraction, with his money coming from the carving up which took place after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the oligarchs, more or less mixed up with various kinds of criminality. But a glance at reference 5 suggests that this is not altogether fair. He might have started out in the carving up, but rapidly diversified into the US and into all kinds of other assets. A common or garden tycoon of the ordinary sort. See reference 6. A big donor in this country, and I dare say others, to the extent of being made a knight. See reference 4 for one of his other efforts.
Out to lunch in what turned out to be a Turkish restaurant in New Globe Walk opposite the Globe Theatre.
Mixed starters, including humus, a parsley dominated dab of salad and some kind of sausage. Bread good. Main course a sort of vegetarian pizza, rather good. A speciality of the house (which sported a full on, brick built pizza oven, with wooden shovels) called a pide. A truly splendid dessert made of semi-dry apricots stuffed with an almond and some kind of white cream, chopped green stuff on top, probably pistachios. A glass of decent white wine and some Turkish coffee. Good ambience, not busy, which was just as well as I could see service being slow if it were. All in all, an excellent lunch, clearly a place to be visited again. To think how many times we must have passed the place by, without taking a proper look, around visits to the Globe. A small chain, see reference 8.
On the way back to Waterloo, spotted a big crane in the big building site at the Blackfriars end of Stamford Street. A yellow crane from Ainscough, one of those lorry mounted telescopics, with a stayed jib on the end of the telescopic portion. The sort of thing noticed by a correspondent at reference 9.
PS: later: it now occurs to me that 'pide' is probably the same word as our 'pizza'. So did the Italians give pizza to the Turks or did the Turks give pide to the Italians? They were certainly up close and personal for a good part of the 15th and 16th centuries.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/fake-23.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/dinner.html.
Reference 3: http://testingmuseum.org.uk/.
Reference 4: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/.
Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Blavatnik.
Reference 6: https://www.accessindustries.com/.
Reference 7: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/albemarle-1.html.
Reference 8: https://www.tasrestaurants.co.uk/.
Reference 9: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/up-north-1_4.html.
Group search key: smc.
No comments:
Post a Comment