Tuesday 26 August 2008

Last Friday

I’d never travelled first class by train until last Friday. I liked the experience. Mustard City is at the end of the line. So a visit to London is great you get on at the start and get off at the end. Fantastic!



We were heading down to London to experience a Christmas present. It was a Thames lunch cruise. When we arrived at the pier where the boat was moored it seems that our worst fears were recognised a conservatory on top of a barge containing regimented tables. As it turned out it wasn’t too bad. We chugged down and then back up the Thames, eat a passable meal considering that it was mass catering and saw some interesting sites on the way. The only real naff thing was the classical music with a disco backbeat background music which was a bit too loud and rather nauseating.



After our lunchtime excursion we made our way to Borough, and the market there in particular. What an interesting and exciting place. A mass of wonderful food stalls all vying for you custom. It’s a shame that it was a hot day and we still had lots more to do as this prevented us making any purchases, but it was good to wander around drooling over the wonderful food. Edible erotica, you can’t beat it! As I’m no longer a vegetarian my world has been reopened to the delights of meat in all its forms. For me pork products, sausages hams etc are a joy to behold. That coupled with cheese and I’m in heaven. We plan to return to Borough market at a later date. If you’ve not been it is most definitely worth a visit. Being in Borough was a good excuse to visit a pub that I’d wanted to go to for a while. So we made for Tabard Street, home of a Harvey’s pub, the Royal Oak. I’ve blogged about it here.

Refreshed by ale we then headed to Tate Modern. I was keen to see the ‘Street Art’ adorning its walls before it is removed at the end of August. Great pictures, all quite different styles. My favourite, as I suspected it would be is this black and white one.



Even though it’s starting to peel it still looks good. At first you think that it is a man looking down the barrel of a gun until you see that it is really a video camera.

Here are some more pictures of the ‘graffiti’:

 




Unfortunate gonads!





Inside we went to one of the exhibitions. ‘Cy Twombly is regarded as one of the foremost painters in the world today,’ the introduction in the exhibition booklet tells us. Bollocks! I felt like the little boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes. The pictures are awful. Apart from some vaguely pleasing green efforts in Room 10 the rest is self-obsessed nonsense. Cy Twombly could well become a synonym for a mess. ‘It’s all gone Cy Twombly’, I can hear people crying in frustration as a culinary or diy creation goes tits up. My suggestion to you dear readers is avoid Cy Twombly like the plague!

We left the Tate feeling glad that we didn’t have to pay to enter the exhibition. As members we get in for ‘free’.

We had just enough time to pop into a Tiffinbites for a quick and jolly tasty bite to eat before catching the train home.

An exhausting but interesting day.