(no subject)
I stayed up rather late last night watching Spirited Away on BBC4, despite having two copies of my own on dvd, and woke up earlier than I have for weeks, completely confused by the clocks going forward (or was it back?). I always get this wrong, being innumerate (or whatever).
Today I went back to Tate Britain for another consumer focus group like the one I went to last year at the Wellcome Collection. Quite interesting, free biscuits and £30 in cash for coming. Since I was so confused over the time, I got there an hour early, and had time for another look around the British galleries, this time discovering a little room of what I think used to be called "English primitives", but now seem to be called "rural painting" - slightly wonky and rather endearing pictures of country houses, glossy conker-like racehorses and prize livestock
(I liked the pigs best, especially "Joseph Lawton's plum pudding pig" and "three fat pigs"). I couldn't put in links for these, as the Tate website doesn't have either picture and Google images turned up nothing either, apart for two images of Boris Johnson for some reason.
I got to and from the gallery by bus, so I was able to get a rather blurry picture of that pub with on Caledonian Road with the vertical planting, where the scaffolding has now been taken down. The plants don't seem to include anything especially fancy - Heuchera 'Palace Purple' was the only one I recognised for sure.
On the way along Millbank to the Tate, it was low tide, and I managed to get a rather poor picture of the two tunnels in the south bank that used to be used (only at low tide) by barges taking clay to a pottery in Lambeth. These puzzled me for ages until I found out what they were.
One of my favourite tourist attractions, the DUKW tour, has started up again. I've never tried this, but it looks fun - an amphibious landing vehicle from world war II tours around Westminster, then slips into the Thames at the beach by the MI5 building and goes for a little sail.
There seemed to be more than the usual numbers of old Routemaster buses about (apart from the 15 and 9 tourist routes), some of them very old and tatty indeed. This was the oldest and tattiest of the three I saw today.
When I got home, I did a batch of washing, planted some lily bulbs and did a little work, and now I am completely knackered, so despite it only being seven pm by my body clock, I'll probably go to bed in a few minutes.
Today I went back to Tate Britain for another consumer focus group like the one I went to last year at the Wellcome Collection. Quite interesting, free biscuits and £30 in cash for coming. Since I was so confused over the time, I got there an hour early, and had time for another look around the British galleries, this time discovering a little room of what I think used to be called "English primitives", but now seem to be called "rural painting" - slightly wonky and rather endearing pictures of country houses, glossy conker-like racehorses and prize livestock
(I liked the pigs best, especially "Joseph Lawton's plum pudding pig" and "three fat pigs"). I couldn't put in links for these, as the Tate website doesn't have either picture and Google images turned up nothing either, apart for two images of Boris Johnson for some reason.
I got to and from the gallery by bus, so I was able to get a rather blurry picture of that pub with on Caledonian Road with the vertical planting, where the scaffolding has now been taken down. The plants don't seem to include anything especially fancy - Heuchera 'Palace Purple' was the only one I recognised for sure.
On the way along Millbank to the Tate, it was low tide, and I managed to get a rather poor picture of the two tunnels in the south bank that used to be used (only at low tide) by barges taking clay to a pottery in Lambeth. These puzzled me for ages until I found out what they were.
One of my favourite tourist attractions, the DUKW tour, has started up again. I've never tried this, but it looks fun - an amphibious landing vehicle from world war II tours around Westminster, then slips into the Thames at the beach by the MI5 building and goes for a little sail.
There seemed to be more than the usual numbers of old Routemaster buses about (apart from the 15 and 9 tourist routes), some of them very old and tatty indeed. This was the oldest and tattiest of the three I saw today.
When I got home, I did a batch of washing, planted some lily bulbs and did a little work, and now I am completely knackered, so despite it only being seven pm by my body clock, I'll probably go to bed in a few minutes.