A day out in London

Well, not quite a day. I had a meeting at Kings Cross in the morning but we decided to make a day of it after that. Susan booked tickets to see the Matisse Cut Outs exhibition at the Tate Modern in the afternoon but before that we had time to sit on the banks of the Thames by County Hall to have our lunch and were fortunate enough to see Tower Bridge raised to allow the passage of the replica paddle steamer "Dixie Queen".

I was torn between posting this shot or one of the poppies at the Tower of London which we went to see after lunch before going to the Tate. The installation was very impressive even though it was less than a quarter complete. In the end there will be over 800,000 poppies errected in the moat of the Tower, one for every British and Empire death in the Great War.

The Matisse exhibition was very good indeed, on a par with the great Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy a couple of years ago. It is a form of art I could appreciate and understand and recognise the skill of the artist. And acknowledge how he took art in an entirely new direction. Originally his cut outs were to help him compose objects as part of a painting but he developed the idea into a whole new art form. For me, his earlier work was more interesting being formed of cut outs and superimpositions of lots of different shapes and colours.

After Matisse we walked back towards the Tower of London, calling in at Zizzi's for a spot of supper before catching the train from London Bridge back to Mottingham where we'd parked the car.

A great day beside the Thames, great weather and a beautiful warm evening for strolling along the riverbank with many, many others enjoying the evening too.