Why This Is Hell

There was a photography exhibition at Whitechapel I wanted to catch, and a possibility that the NPG would be selling a catalogue cheap for the last week of their exhibition, so I thought I'd head into London on Sunday. 8am train, but it's going to Charing Cross rather than Victoria, but that's perfect for the NPG... Only the East End is always cut off from central London on Sundays (Whitechapel is right next to Aldgate East - but that's no use if AE is shut). The train stops at London Bridge, not quite walkable, but there's a route via Moorgate.


But I need a coffee and I've got a spare hour, so Bux wifi leaching and download that late essay I need to mark. London Bridge Bux is not a sit down place, and I realise I don't have my loyalty card, so I tube it to Liverpool Street Station where there is a Bux and it's close to the one near Spitalfields if that's busy. Liverpool Street don't take the card anyway. The wifi is flaky, my iTouch won't register, but I get a slow signal on the Mac Book so I get the essay, set up a new FlickR account and discover my direct debit via my credit card didn't get transferred to the new card. Grr.


At this point I consider going home.

I start walking - it is raining, my trainers are leaking - and I find an Eat to use their wifi to sync the iTouch. I then take a short cut through Spitalfields faintly in search of food - but I've picked the non food route and it's full of people who don't know how to walk. I am also heading away from Whitechapel, but it takes a couple of minutes to realise. Having failed with the interesting I go for the supposedly cheering KFC next to the galery, having unexpectedly found exactly the right shortcut.

Paul Graham photos great, government art collection good, This is Whitechapel photos interesting, Frank Sandford sculptures barking. Worth the trip, but the bookshop is a bottle neck.

I don't have the energy for the NPG, but I need M&S socks so I foolishly elect to go to Oxford Street - alhtough maybe Marble Arch might have been quieter. It is also take a while to find since I have a street number, and the buildings don't. I just about headed off right. Socks bought, after a failure to do so in Westwood Chaos on Saturday.

Need more coffee and a recharge of the Mac by then, and find a Bux where I sync, then decide I might as well do a couple of hours work there as head back to Victoria and work there, or just head back. A productive time, and I cut it fine for the train - hitting the Wizard of Oz matinee crowd with their killer umbrellas and inability to walk.


Today, I have had a l-o-n-g meeting, and now can't decide to go home via the library to pick up a reserved volume or go to a coffee shop and Oxfam - the opposite direction. To avoid being a donkey, I've written this whine instead.

[Although Thursday may already be ruined by a pain in the butt. Never read emails last thing at night.]


A splendid trip into the Big Smoke - make time for a trip to the National for the Picasso exhibition, but buy the catalogue first. You need a good two hours. I paid half price but I'd say it's worth £12.

Then we snatched lunch and wandered via bead shop, Fopp (resisted temptation) to Aldgate East and the refurbished Whitechapel Gallery, which is $FREE$: interesting East End Jewish artist exhibition, a great British Council purchases selection - even if some of it is literally shit - the very moving selection of stuff based around the Guernica tapestry - which hangs in the UN unless Colin Powell is justifying the attack on Iraq - and the frankly silly work of Isa Genzken. I suspect we missed a couple of rooms, the bookshop is excellent, and the coffee bar promising.

Oh, and we ran into John Humphreys on the way back to Charlie Stoss. And didn't kill him for being constantly smug about his lack of knowledge of science.

[a quick shout to Jack Cardiff, cinematographer from A Matter of Life and Death to, er, Rambo: First Blood Part II. R.I.P.]

[Off to bed to fume about the pain some more]