Dust

Lot to pack in on the one full day of our child-free break, so to Tate Modern it was to check out all those sunflower seeds. And, although I knew you couldn't actually walk amongst them anymore because of health and safty precautions, it didn't stop me really wanting to get right in there, lie on them, and generally roll around a bit in all those millions and millions of tiny bits of hand-painted porcelain. The various signs asking politely that you "Please do not touch the sunflower seeds. Please do not cross the barrier" made it pretty clear that this was not really possible. Pity, I would happily have taken the H&S risk, as I reckon most people there would have too. As a work, the scale and the real substance to it really came about when watching the accompanying film, a pretty remarkable project.

"Fascinating but hard work" is how I'd describe the Egyptian Book Of The Dead exhibition at the British Museum. The material on display was utterly magnificent but Christ - actually trying to see it and read all the info was exhausting due to the sheer numbers of people in there. I had a wee sit down at one point and contemplated whether I could actually do it, until I remembered that I'd paid £12 to get in there and I was willing to persevere for that amount of money.

"Fascinating and far more pleasant" sums up our next port of call, a camera-less photography exhibition, Shadow Catchers at the V&A. And , whilst some of the work was a little gimmicky for my tastes, other works were incredibly beautiful and wonderfully-toned, just gorgeous, the kind of stuff you'd (almost) give your right arm for. Can't wait to get down the canal now with my photographic paper and get my flowing water images exposed by moonlight. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Oh, to have the budget and the free time !

Note to self: London is a busy place, a lot of people live there, a lot of tourists go there. Museums get very full on a weekend. So do the cinemas as we found out to our cost on a relatively lengthy yet fruitless trip to Brixton and back in the evening. Hmm.


Quick bit of music, inspired in part by one of just sitting's links t'other day and in part by some of the camera-less photography I witnessed. From their album 'It'll End In Tears', this Roy Harper cover verion by This Mortal Coil is just plain dreamy.