Why This Is Hell

I noticed the Muybridge exhibition had a warning about nudity - in photos the size of a matchbook. Some things are clearly sensitive.

Today I'd planned to see the Watercolours exhibition at t'Tate and may be the Bridget Riley, plus a visit to Oxfam and Hurlingham Books in search of copies of The Thirty-Nine Steps. I figure, what with watercolours being all chocolate box and all, an early arrival would get me ahead of the crowds, and an 8.00am train would see me arriving as they opened. A 7.30 train would see me have time for a coffee. But that would require me getting up at 6.30, unlikely on a weekend and double so since I got to bed at 2am.

Hollow laugh. After four hours' sleep I was awake in plenty of time and caught that train.

Even at 10.10 the exhibition was too crowded, or perhaps it attracted the wrong kind of punter. The punter who not only gets in your way, but pushes in front of you and looks at you as if you've been in theirs. Who come damn close to putting their damn dirty ape fingers on the work. About half of the art was what I'd feared - biscuit tins and clotted cream - with the early stuff and late stuff being the best. As with the Moore, the war stuff stood out - and that was what got the great reviews which made me want to see the show. There was an interesting room on developing technique and technology, which came a little late, and Turner kept recurring to give it a boost. The impressive stuff was the Dadd (every blade of grass!) and the familiar Ravilious and Nash, and of course the Tudor miniatures are amazing. Howard Hodgkin, I need to follow up.

But much more striking was the Susan Hiller exhibition - which I had no idea I'd see and which was packageable with the Watercolours. If I'm being honest, I'd say see this first, because you might need the Watercolours to calm you down, because this is a show that came with no warning. (But Watercolours will get busy. It's nice art. Mostly.) I confess I'd never heard of her, but I've seen her From the Freud Museum at Tate Modern (and note she is American, though long resident in Britain). She specialises in ready made and deconstructive art - hundreds of postcards of storms at seaside resorts, the evidence in the boxes, looped films of teen telekinesis, pictures of ships at sea, paintings burnt, sliced and diced, unravelled or deliberately faded in the light. There's a slide show about recording spirit voices, a surreal living room with a documentary about Nebuchadnezzar and faces in the tv signals after close down, dangling speakers recounting close encounters and - most terrifying of all - a film about Punch and Judy worthy of Grotowski and mind blowing. I've been moved, uplifted and transformed by exhibitions before, but never so terrified.

I had to do a bit more of the Tate's art to calm myself - a new hanging of twentieth century art, waving at artists whose styles I recognise now, the latest version of Blake on physiognomy and phrenology. Then a walk to Oxfam, where I score a Love's Labour's Lost (I hope a missing Arden) and thence to a rather good bakery, then the District Line to ...

Parson's Green, rather than Putney Bridge. Planned engineering buggering around - which I'd not thought to check on. And stupidly I turned left out of the station - which should follow the line of the railway south, rather than right, which would have been quicker. But I found a Starbucks, and had a second coffee, which had been the plan on the other route, and eventually I was back on track. And then, as I counted up to 91, I had this awful feeling that the place had closed down.

Fortunately, I looked around the corner, and found the shop. I also realise I've been there before, or at least past it, when visiting someone in Putney. I'm not sure I found it open. Another Thirty-Nine Steps, one novelisation of Flash Gordon.

I decided to walk along the Thames rather than tracing the route I should have taken from Parson's Green - I decided, but failed, as the Thames Path is somewhat inland. I soon gave up and found my way back to New King's Road, and a very slow district line.

A day trip to London - a painless trip to the Whitechapel Art Gallery; train to Victoria then District to Aldgate East rather than the five changes suggested on Travel Direct. (Why did I not remember that Aldgate East is adjacent to the gallery? I wonder if I've always used the wrong exit despite explicit signage?)

Less painless down to Blackheath - via a mistaken use of self-service checkout at Major Supermarket, whose own brand credit cards work everywhere in the world bar Major Supermarket, and whose divi scheme works neither when I want points but pay by cash nor want points but pay by the same card. There's nothing on the card to scan. I pressed the same button as instructed several times.

Walk from there to Whitechapel station and the Overground - which seems actually somewhat underground to me. Two observations, the announcement that a train will stop at all destinations to West Croydon is misleading if there's nothing on the platform to tell you which these are (and New Cross clearly is one of them, but I wouldn't necessarily know that; I cannot remember how New Cross and New Gate relate to each other) and simultaneous announcements on adjacent platforms make both inaudible. I got there.


Last time I went - I believe the day of the Clarkes - I failed to check for opening times on their website and so didn't know (by looking at the contact page on their website) they closed on Wednesday. This being a Thursday, they'd be open, right?

Wrong.

Closed for half term.

I've now checked their website, but there's nothing telling me that.

Oddly enough, the place just appeared on House Gift, with one of the designers spotting something in their window. It wasn't clear that this was filmed on a Wednesday, but the place was shut. Is the Bookshop on the Heath ever open?

I realised I could get back via Gillingham rather than going back into Victoria, but it was an epic journey and I suspect it shaves off only a couple of minutes.

Today... slept in, bad encounter with door to door electricity rep, and seem to have been answering emails. Have I time to read drafts? I suspect not. Not today, anyway.

I've been to some odd secondhand bookshops in my time, but this might be a new favourite. There's a pile of Nortons - some of which I have - and some Bradleys - I have not - so a return visit may be engaged upon. Though too late for them to be of use. I settled for Sea of Sargasso in hope I have not although it turns out not to be 1970s, so I was misled, Troilus and Cressida, ditto, appears not to be one I have I have already, All The Devils Are Dead to thrust at people and an edition of the Ingoldsby Legends. Because. More I could have. But I had dragon breath in there.

And I saw a Thanet Gannet.

I need at the very least a bus ride there for a nearby photo op, although the light was perfect on Saturday.

No, the bookshop wasn't in a quarry, actually. It nearly was.


You'd just never know.

I clearly blew the mind of the woman at Oxfam books:

• Alison Assiter, Pornography, Feminism and the Individual
  
• Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising
  
• Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst (eds), The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History c.1880-1900
  

It's not that odd a mix is it?


Is it?


Meanwhile drunk enough coffee at Cafe Nerd to get a free one next time, managed to get a ticket for Paul Merton for tomorrow despite clearly trying to avoid doing so, and even remembered (at the last moment) to go into Curry's to look at DVD recorders. Then bought onion seeds, fuses and tea strainer in Wilkos (but not precision screwdrivers for now).

Finally, I am sorely tempted by these:



But £35 tempted?

Let it be recorded: Today has been a good day.

I've been feeling a bit trapped, and the endless coypu-editing, camp or otherwise, is getting to me (do experts not know the titles of the books they are discussing? can no one follow Routledge NuStyle?). A jolly, an expotition was in order.

There are various exhibitions in London I am failing to see. My therapist recommended an exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion, and there's a bookshop in Bexhill-on-Sea which requires more exploration. Various days turned out to be free, and Saturday was a wash out, and the shop would be shut on a Sunday, and I was working on Monday. So Wednesday was the day I finally was free - and note this is the day the dvd shop shuts. I renewed the railcard, caught the train and was in a bookshop was 11.30. I found a pile of seventies books which in some cases stretched the two pound rule, and a Leigh Brackett crime novel, and the shop keeper said he'd call it two quid a book plus a quid for the cheap one. Eight books for £15. Result.

Then a trudge around the various charity shops - with nothing leaping off the shelves that I could justify buying - I think the quality of the books is improving, but that means fewer battered paperback sf books. No waistcoats (vests), no jackets, no interesting bric-a-brac - although I paused on a purse disguised as a glitterball (or a glitterball disguised as a purse) with the notion of it being a birthday present. I found something that will do, but not, yet, what I wanted. I proofraed the dvd shop and went to find some Fried Chicken for lunch, which I ate near the Pavilion, kicking the gulls out the way (gulls like chicken. Who knew?)

I sort of resented having to pay for the exhibition - but I will say more about mid-period Ben Nicholson later, as it was rather interesting to see landscape and geometric abstraction mesh so closely together. There were some nice photos in the overflow of the Brighton Photo Biennial (it's over now, and it wasn't in Brighton). A wander around the building, a coffee, a reader of the Grauniad and then to Sainsbury's* via a rather worrying cakeshop.

I popped into Sainsbury's, to picked up some pitta bread (had it been a bit later then I would have bought sustenance for the journey home), but as it was I bought a blue cherry yoghurt and two six packs of pittas for the price of one at 70p. Naturally, they come up at 75p each. I query it. Someone is despatched to the shelf - and the sign was in the wrong place (it does not cover organic ones, which these were, and neither of the two signs were that close to any pittas. But - get this - i could have them for 70p. That's better than Tescos would behave.

I lost the card from the bookshop on the way to the pub - but found it on my way back.


* I remember it as a Waitrose. I remember green signage. Has it become Ramsgate in my head?

So I'm convinced the bus to Ashford went passed a bookshop in Wye, but I'm not clear what flavour and when it opens. It being somewhat off the beaten (ok, a train an hour and on the Stour Valley Walk, and a potential staging post, and a bus every ninety minutes), I want to do more research.

Google is my friend.

Wye. Books.

H'mm. Several thousand hits. The search strategy needs a rethink.

"Wye, Kent" books doesn't help but has rather fewer entries.

It points me to the farmer's market and Saturday, of course, is the first Saturday of the month. Give it a go.

"Local produce for local people" though. It doesn't necessarily sell it.

No sign in the Yellow Pages either.