Who are these people trying to kid? Many of the pieces on display were utter rubbish. Like the single green fluorescant tube on an angle against a wall (the artists said that using a single tube was a "breakthrough" for their art). Mate I have the same light in my kitchen (though it is white - maybe that's the problem), can I call the gallery and a price check? We also had the pleasure of seeing a wall of very pink boobs from a confused female that tried to tell us that it was because the male is really very fragile. There was a stair banister on the wall to just in case we got tired from "interacting" with the floor tiles, another cutting edge work of art.
Another wonderful exhibit was a wire globe, with a painted female plaster torso inside, entitled (no kidding) "The Last Voyage of Captain Cook". There was an element of the erotic to Captain Cook's voyages, sayeth the plaque.
The prize I do believe should go to two idiots with multimedia "installations". The first thought having a nine minute looped tape play inside a room the size of a linen cupboard with farting sounds was a winner. The second was looped video of a clown dressed up as such, jumping up and down screaming no, no, no! In a masterstroke, it was playing on two televisions, one perched upside down on top of the other. I agree with him, No! No! No!
There was of course some saving graces in surrealism with an original Dali or two and Monet had an appearance which was nice also. The scupltures were good to if you didn't look too closely at the plaques describing them. There was a particularity good artist that had managed to sculp some sort of plasticene into those political looking cartoon charters and then took neat photos of them enlarged to about A2.
But after shaming the art world by having to leave the gallery, on account of laughing so hard, we did venture forth on a beautiful blue sky day in London. The following hours were spent wandering alongside the river where we came across the wonderful Borough Markets. My sort of markets, these. There was cheeses, breads, coffees and tea. Exciting new juices, fudge, chocolate of every kind and lets not forget the icecream. I think I found my stomachs heaven.
We also walked past the Globe but decided we were a bit short on time to stop for the tour. Also saw the millennium bridge, this of course was closed three days after it opened as it wobbled in a serious way when people walked on it, never good for a bridge. The designer when asked to comment on this stated that the people were walking the wrong way on it! Needless to say it took a few million pounds to fix the way people were walking on it and managed to reopen eventually.
Our last stop was the Tower Bridge upon which we toured the top and bottom levels. There are some great views to be had at such a height over London, as well as plenty of history. We went up in the elevator to the second level and then we had to hoof it the rest of the way to the top. We walked around, watched the film on it's construction and problems encountered with the beasty and went down the other side to check out the engine room, which was pretty cool.
Here there is huge machinery that used to open the bridge, with each section weighting in at 1,000 tons. It's still in good working order though they don't open it terribly often now of course. After this exciting tour we when thought to save our leggies and catch a boat back up the river to our bus stop. No matter how much time we leave to get back to the bus stop we are always running. The boat took a bit longer than we hoped.
The boat ride was not suposed to be a tourist thing but the driver asked everybody if they wanted some info on the history of stuff we were passing, I shouted no but was drowned out in the over keen visitors. Needless to say we had sat next to the speaker not knowing this could happen and I was deafened by the drone the whole way. (He was actually pretty interesting and entertaining -- Ben). But as luck would have it we did make the bus and I slept all the way back.
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