Last week, for the first time in my life, we made an attempt on the entries for the Turner Prize at Tate Britain, a festival of what mostly seems to be junk, some of it pretentious, made possible by the generosity of Messrs. Tate & Lyle.
Started off badly with one of the Southern Trains ticket machines at Epsom Station rejecting my bank card twice. Fortunately, the second machine that I tried, the one that has had an irritatingly loose cover for as long as I can remember, accepted it and I was able to proceed with my journey.
Drew a Bullingdon, a nearly new one, from the tunnel at Vauxhall and pedaled off to the Tate via the headquarters of the Security Service, to find that the stand between there and the Tate had just one free post, a post which only worked to the extent of flashing red when I tried to insert my Bullingdon. So back to the north side of Vauxhall Bridge, not that far from my start point, and set off to walk back to the Tate.
At which point I was rewarded by the sight of an oriental girl in front of me, wearing a long black dress, made of some thin black material, perhaps cotton, and finished off with a draw string around the hem. Wondering what this might be for passed the walk away, with my settling on the dress doubling as a laundry bag when it was not being worn. Later, BH explained that it was probably something more fashionable than that, probably something to do with raising and lowering the hem according to need and circumstance.
Made it to the steps of the Tate where we were entertained by lots of young people rushing about, probably in connection with fresher week at the University of Creation (Embankment Campus), housed in what used to the depot of the Royal Army Medical Corps. No idea where the Corps live now; one supposes that we still have one, that it has not been outsourced to Serco or some other mob of that sort, along with helicopter maintenance.
Two ladies from Los Angeles told us that it was more the 100F there, far too hot for me to be comfortable. I remember being very hot at their airport once - which I knew about as I had been chased out of the air conditioned terminal building by what seemed like incessant announcements about it being forbidden to smoke inside. The two ladies had trouble both with the pronunciation of our places names and with our public transport system, but hopefully they managed to follow our directions to the bus stop for Piccadilly Circus. Which they thought was called Piccadilly Square.
At which point thoughts turned to lunch, so we retired to the Morpeth, once the public house of choice for those working in what was then CCTA, across the road in what was then Riverwalk House, where we had chicken pie and vegetables, enlivened in my case by a drop of Picpoul. A wine which I have come across in pubs before and liked. I had thought that I had noticed it, but I cannot find anything now. Second best, wikipedia knows all about it at reference 1. Served by an Italian girl whom we suspected of dyeing her hair, the genuine fairness of Lombards notwithstanding.
All thought of Turner lost in an alcoholic haze, I marched back across Vauxhall Bridge, to admire the various sights and sounds in the bright afternoon light. Including a Vauxhall Tower which seemed to be leaning to the left, away from the setting sun on its right. I think this was an optical illusion to do with the light reflecting off the right hand side of the tower, rather than the alcohol taken on.
Good viewing conditions at Clapham Junction, this despite the aeroplanes flying in and out of low cloud. Planes virtually overhead, very impressive. Scored a couple of twos. I wondered, not for the first time, about how hundreds of tons of aircraft manage to stay up there while making no visible fuss at all - there not being a single vapour trail in sight. Later, wikipedia told me that the maximum take off weight of a popular brand of jumbo jet was 333 metric tons, which struck me as a very suspicious number. Perhaps the contributor was into the devil's number, 666, but thought that using the number itself was too obvious.
PS: oddly, google declined to be much drawn on the subject of 'lombard girl blond'; only confirming my understanding of the matter to the extent of admitting that the Lombards did originally come from northern Europe. Turning up two blond film stars called something Lombard did not really bear on my point.
Reference 1: http://www.picpoul-de-pinet.com/en/the-wine.
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