My family have been over all reading week, so this is a little of what we got up to - starting with yesterday and working backwards.
First we went to the Rainforest Cafe, which was fun as always. I’ve never liked the food all that much, but the experience was fun and I had a terrific cocktail.
Next we hit the Victoria and Albert museum – which is my ideal for what a museum should be. They’re only ever sparingly informative. If you want to learn something, read a book or even watch a documentary – you’ll learn more. I regard museums as art galleries – an opportunity to look at interesting stuff. While the V&A pretends to be educational, it’s just a huge cabinet of curiosities we pinched from the empire and have yet to return. Its history, in fact, stems from the Victorian Great Exhibition – which was also, more or less, the world’s greatest bric-a-brac store. And so there’s a room on China, and one on radios, and one on sculpture, and one on fashion – and really, no logical coherence between them. They’re just all gorgeous. It’s like a trip through Picture of Dorian Gray’s epic Chapter 11 – some twenty pages of description, of jewels and clothes and images and smells and colours. “Even to read of the luxury of the dead was marvellous” he thinks, and that’s what the V&A is: a shrine to the luxury of the dead. I sat in a replica parlour from Henrietta Street. I tried on a hoop skirt. I saw carved tombstones, cups, wedding tiaras, a silver chatelaine (read: Swiss Army belt), ivory statues of gods, 1950s radios, and individually bound copies of every Booker prize winner.
We are going to go back. And spend longer there. For one thing, they’ve got a Bernini statue in their new exhibition, which I must go ogle.
First we went to the Rainforest Cafe, which was fun as always. I’ve never liked the food all that much, but the experience was fun and I had a terrific cocktail.
Next we hit the Victoria and Albert museum – which is my ideal for what a museum should be. They’re only ever sparingly informative. If you want to learn something, read a book or even watch a documentary – you’ll learn more. I regard museums as art galleries – an opportunity to look at interesting stuff. While the V&A pretends to be educational, it’s just a huge cabinet of curiosities we pinched from the empire and have yet to return. Its history, in fact, stems from the Victorian Great Exhibition – which was also, more or less, the world’s greatest bric-a-brac store. And so there’s a room on China, and one on radios, and one on sculpture, and one on fashion – and really, no logical coherence between them. They’re just all gorgeous. It’s like a trip through Picture of Dorian Gray’s epic Chapter 11 – some twenty pages of description, of jewels and clothes and images and smells and colours. “Even to read of the luxury of the dead was marvellous” he thinks, and that’s what the V&A is: a shrine to the luxury of the dead. I sat in a replica parlour from Henrietta Street. I tried on a hoop skirt. I saw carved tombstones, cups, wedding tiaras, a silver chatelaine (read: Swiss Army belt), ivory statues of gods, 1950s radios, and individually bound copies of every Booker prize winner.
We are going to go back. And spend longer there. For one thing, they’ve got a Bernini statue in their new exhibition, which I must go ogle.
After that, Alice and I hit the tube to go and see Spring Awakening. It’s her new favourite musical, which alarmed me from the start – as I’ve never liked Wicked or RENT 100%. It’s 1880-something, and eight young people are trying to cope with life, sex, love, sex, homework, sex, sex, parents and sex. You’d think that teenagers didn’t have anything else on their minds. I liked Melchior because he seemed to have outside interests, like bringing down Western civilisation. Also, he was rather easy on the eyes.
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