psmv6: Sistine

Following the advertisement for the Sistine Chapel flavoured exhibition at America Square of reference 2 and noticed at reference 1, we actually made it there earlier in the month, before the heat kicked in. I might also say that there has not been much of the vivid dreaming - and subsequent detachment from - since that reported at reference 1. Maybe heat induced change to my sleep pattern is to blame.

The idea being to exhibit large reproductions of Michelangelo's frescos on and around the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, introduced at reference 3. Or in my case, by an elderly black and white version from Phaidon.

It being a Thursday, proceeding started with fish cakes, make with fish, potato and other bits and bobs left over from the day before. Plus an egg. My share is snapped above and very good it was too.

Down to the station to catch a train to London Bridge. But before that, catching a new-to-me display panel erected at the ticket office end of the barriers, viewed from the inside on the snap above. Odd that I had not noticed it before, but the chap on the barrier did not have a clue. Maybe he had only started that mornng.

From London Bridge, where it was a bit wet, we hopped into a taxi, which gave us the Tower Bridge experience. I don't think BH had ever ridden across the bridge in a taxi before, and it must have been quite a few years since she had crossed it at all. Whereas I had been across on a Bullingdon quite recently. Dating this crossing is left as an exercise for the reader.

We had plenty of time, so we took refreshment in a nearby house, the Chamberlain of reference 4, recently made over as a pub-hotel by Fullers, a version the 'Wellington' in which we once stayed at Waterloo. London Pride for him, coffee for her, plus, for once in a while a packet of crisps from Pipers. Enhanced by sea salt from Anglesey. Clever how the marketing people have conned us into thinking that sea salt is better for us than sort which is dug out of the ground, this despite most of us consuming far more salt than is good for us. In which connection, I don't suppose it makes much difference where the salt comes from. And anyway, why should salt from our heavily polluted sea be better for us than the stuff fro our heavily polluted land? I associate to similar attempts to put image distance between cane sugar and beet sugar.

All that aside, the crisps were fine. They were also trying to drum up business for the world cup, since kicked off. All this nonsense about booking a table in a public house to watch football on the television. Bring back the terraces! Bring back proper football, seen in the raw!

We were kept at a safe distance by BH not having her telephone with here and neither of our telephones being enabled to deal with squarials. Some readers may remember what they used to be, before the thing snapped above, bottom right, was invented.

The exhibition turned out not to be in some repurposed office building, as I had previously thought, rather underneath the arches leading to Fenchurch Street Station. Much smaller arches, I might say, than those housing the graffiti tunnels at Waterloo, noticed, for example, at reference 5.

The good news was that the exhibition was not busy and I had taken my folding chair so I could take my time. While BH tucked into the videos on offer. There was also a small bar, although we did not tuck into that.

The images had been printed onto something white and mounted onto large panels, of the order of the 8 by 4 of a sheet of plywood. Some on the ceilings, some on the walls. I learned that Michelangelo, along with many other painters of his time, was fascinated by hands, feet, faces and the folds of expensively dyed cloth. There was also quite a lot of what my father would have called posteriority. And quite a lot of trompe d-oeil masonry, a technicolour version of that to be seen in the grand stairways of Hampton Court Palace.

I had not realised before how many of the people portrayed are holding books or scrolls. Things had clearly moved on from the oral tradition.

I associate this morning to the Anglo Saxon custom of writing important legal stuff into the margins of Bibles, thereby giving said stuff a bit of biblical authority.

Quite a lot of crazing visible - with some of the panels being a good bit larger than full size - although the stonework left might have been painted rather than crazed.

We got a Last Judgement, complete with talking screen (US accented) left. It could have done with more space and we could have done with some details, perhaps at the expense of all the stuff from around the walls which we did get.

Overall, an interesting exhibition, but a rather disappointing one. It was a good idea, but it would have worked much better in a bigger space. Perhaps the Hayward Gallery or the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. The space we got was not much like that suggested at reference 2.

Maybe POTUS will attach a full size replica of the chapel to his Presidential Library, serving, inter alia, as the last resting place for his mortal remains. Perhaps an elaborate stone sarcophagus, the sort of thing that Wellington and Napoléon Ier got, in the middle of a round pond full of enormous carp, sunk into the middle of the floor of the chapel. Tastefully illuminated at night.

The souvenir programme was not a very good example of the genre. Not up to National Trust or National Gallery standards at all. But it served.

Back home, I turned the pages of our 1947 Phaidon, snapped above. Rather impressive, both it and the publishing house being the work of a chap who left Austria around the time it was taken into Nazi Germany.

But all said and done, having now read myself in a bit, I dare say I will be back for a second helping - with the chances of my ever getting to see the real thing being close to nil. In which connection, a correspondent tells me that to avoid the considerable crowds, for €200, you can book yourself onto a party of no more than fifty, for an hour, starting at 08:00 in the morning. One might not be happy at pouring all that dosh into Peter's Purse, but given all the bother and expense of getting to Rome, it might well be worth it.

Another taxi to get us to the Wolseley to take lunch there. Busy when we arrived at around 14:30, but starting to wind down from the lunch-time rush.

Kicking off with a bottle of their Riesling. The bottle looked familiar so maybe we have had it before. Plus a couple of portions of their fine bread sticks.

I have had their crab before, but we both took it on this occasion. Very much up to scratch.

Followed, for me, by a choucroute, again something that I have had before. Again, very much up to scratch, rather better, in fact, than I remembered. Perhaps it was the mixed-meat contrast to my effort noticed at reference 6: the smoked pork belly was very good.

BH took a soufflé, just visible behind. Something she has cooked herself, but not very often, and not for a long while.

Out to walk the Shard. It struck, eyeing the Belfast to the left, that once upon a time, with 200 such ships, one could have ruled the world. Once upon a time, we had and did.

A change which the naval uncle and his good lady did not adjust too, being old enough to have known our Navy when it was still flush with being on the winning side in the Second World War - and young enough to know it in its shrunken state of the 1990s. While this morning, I associate to the lines of small warships lined up at the back of Portsmouth Harbour, in the 1960a, waiting for their turn at the breakers. And our last battleship, HMS Vanguard, tied up at HMS Vernon, also waiting for her trip to the breakers.

A battleship from which we have at least one veteran living here in Epsom, a one-time patron of TB.

While over in the US, they kept some of their battleships until the start of the new millennium. Some of them saw service as floating gun platforms during the Vietnam War, shelling the interior. See reference 7.