The Tate

 

At 09.30 we went in to Praed street and jumped onto the number 23 bus . It takes you all the way down Edgware road then onto Oxford street ,Regents street then through Trafalgar Square and then dropping us off at St Pauls before carrying onto Liverpool Street. As always if we can we go upstairs and sit in the front for the best view. It would be a lot quicker to catch the tube , but we prefer the Buses' as you can see what's going on around you.

One of our favourite TV programmes is First Dates on Channel 4 .The show is filmed at the Paternoster Chop House restaurant in Central London, St Pauls, showing many people on dates, all of whom have not met each other before. At the end of the date, the couples are interviewed together and asked whether they would like to see each other again. Unfortunately Carolyn’s favourite maitre d' Fred Sirieix wasn’t in the restaurant so we didn’t go in. Mind you it’s nearly 40 years since we had our first date.

From St Pauls we walked over the Millennium Bridge which is a 330m steel bridge linking the City of London at St. Paul's Cathedral with the Tate Modern Gallery at Bankside.

It was then in to the Tate which holds the national collection of British art from 1900 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art. Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world. As with the UK's other national galleries and museums, there is no admission charge for access which is music to my ears to the collection displays, which take up the majority of the gallery space, while tickets must be purchased for the major temporary exhibitions.

As you can see Curly is not that impressed with this Warhol picture ,although she liked it a bit more when I told her how much it was worth.It depicts  Marilyn Monroe who died in August 1962, having overdosed on barbiturates. In the following four months, Warhol made more than twenty silkscreen paintings of her, all based on the same publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagara. Warhol found in Monroe a fusion of two of his consistent themes: death and the cult of celebrity. By repeating the image, he evokes her ubiquitous presence in the media. The contrast of vivid colour with black and white, and the effect of fading in the right panel are suggestive of the star’s mortality.

We were really impressed with this vast tower of radios, each tuned to a different channel and adjusted to the minimum volume at which it is audible, relates to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel: a tower tall enough to reach the heavens. Affronted by this structure, God caused the builders to speak in different languages and, ceasing to understand one another, become divided and scattered across the earth. According to myth, this inability to communicate became the cause of all mankind’s conflicts.

Not so impressed with this. I think even me and Curly could have done something better.

It was then upto the viewing gallery on the top of the Tate. As you can see Curly has no fear of heights as she looks out over The Thames towards St Pauls.

I actually managed to walk all the way around hugging the inner wall as I went.The biggest problem I encountered was when I met someone else coming in the opposite direction with the same fear of heights as me and also hugging the inner wall.

These apartments are next to the Tate and are even higher. How people can live up in the clouds like this I will never understand. There is a sign which says give them some privacy ,but that’s not exactly possible when you have thousands of people a day walking around the gallery.

Yet again we had a brilliant day and Curly loved every minute of her visit to the Tate. With Hamish back on Inca we had to cut our visit a bit short, but we will certainly be back for another visit when we are next in London.

                                                                                                                     Happy Days