Absent Friends

Monday being my day off, but with a theatre visit booked for the evening, I spent the afternoon at the British Museum.

I finally got round to going to the long-running Hajj exhibition. Now I have to say the quality of the British Museum's big exhibitions has been sliding. And this one is the nadir. Its extremely dull. The problem with an exhibition on a pilgrimage is there isn't very much to show, at least not in the way of exhibits, as opposed to text and photos. Many of the exhibits they did have had pretty tenuous connections to to the pilgrimage to Mecca eg a couple of early atlases opened at the page which had Mecca marked on them.

I can't help feeling that its main raison d'etre is a bit of political correctness combined with it being cheap to put on. The only thought I was left with was how similar all religions are in requiring mindless repetitive rituals, rather like square bashing in the army (or at Mecca tripping round the Kaaba 7 times), presumably for the same reasons, to instill discipline and blind obedience. And they all come with horrid tacky souvenir trades. Well, who could resist making a quick buck from the suckers?

Much more interesting, but obscure, was a little exhibition on the relative values of money in Roman and modern Britain. Not quite clear how they came up with this estimate, but they reckon a Roman soldier earned about £12,000 a year in today's money. And interesting the comparative values of things. Salt was cheap, while pepper imported from India was very expensive. Hence elaborate and expensive Roman silver pepper pots, while we think of salt and pepper pots as almost identical, reflecting the similar value of the contents. Clothes would have been far more expensive then, and of course would have been endlessly patched.

Anyway, to Absent Friends, an Alan Ayckbourn play set in the Seventies, my teenage years. A great set - my companion (of the same vintage as myself) and I started by just noting how well the set reminded us of seventies tastes.

The play is funny, but in an acutely embarrassing way. The premise is that three couples, advancing towards middle-age, have invited around an old friend whose partner had recently drowned in an accident. It transpires that none of them much like him actually and never did. There is a great part where absolutely everyone escapes to the kitchen to avoid him. Some wonderful embarrassed silences where one watches, through body language and facial expressions alone, the protagonists straining to find something to say, but just can't. But what Colin's presence does highlight is just how awful everyone else's relationships are, with his relationship with the sadly departed Carol being the only good one amongst the lot. Perhaps therefore the playwright's message was, if you want a happy marriage, one of you should drown early on.

A stag do around the Natural History Museum

At the grand old age of 49 I went to a stag do on Saturday. I had however to fit it around a long standing arrangement to visit the Wildlife photography exhibition at the Natural History Museum which is shortly to close. My original plan was to join the pub crawl for a quick one at the start before joining up with my friends early afternoon and then returning to the gang in the evening.

 But as I was on my way I got a text to say the start was delayed owing to one of the members being in court (On a professional basis I should add. No doubt trying to get some toe-rag off jail when he could have been getting pissed with the rest of us. A poor sense of priorities in my view)

So given I wouldn't get enough time to do both, I just headed to South Kensington, but being about 2 hours early, I had a quick look at the neighbouring Science Museum.

Then onto the Natural History Museum. No photos of the photos I am afraid, but was a great exhibition, albeit rather crowded (always an issue for our little group none of whom exceed 5 foot 6, although I suspect the 11 year old will be by next year). Its always pretty amazing to see the shots of wildlife and landscapes. Even the under 10s category looks brilliant. They tend to be a combination of the amazing snaps of something spontaneous, or tales of people bedding down in hides for 10 days in minus 20C to catch the perfect shot. It was great going round with a youngster because he is just at the age he can be articulately critical of things (although his mum felt the need to shush him as he criticised yet another photo for composition, or the judges for having got them in the wrong order. Personally, all for it if he can back up his reasoning. And he can. Smart kid, with a great sense of humour.)

The Natural History Museum is of course blighted by being a favourite place to bring small children, resulting in long queues to get in. And being run over by pushchairs once inside. But it is a very impressive building.

The one really quiet bit was this room, I think because no one realises there is an exhibit. Its on the ceiling. The tree isn't a painting. Its basically a slice of tree.

And at the top of the museum, there is a slice (the more traditional cut across rather than lengthwise) of a giant sequoia.

But my favourite bit is the mineral room, lots of "dull" display cabinets of rocks, but to me much more interesting than interactive eco stuff that they now try and carve out of the old halls.

We broke up the visit with afternoon tea at the neighbouring V & A. Very civilised compared to the cafeteria/school canteen feel to The Nat History Museum.

Sadly, their visit was curtailed by a need to get off to church, so I then went out in search of the stag do pub crawl. I joined at the point of a visit to the Black Friar, a pub pretty close to where I work actually. And a very fine establishment too, not just for the quality of its ales but the fact that it is a listed Art Nouveau building, once saved from demolition by Sir John Betjeman.

Then on to our eatery for the evening, Tayyabs out in the East End. Possibly the world's busiest curry house. It was absolutely packed. Even having booked we were asked to stand outside for a bit, all the inside space having already been taken by diners queueing for a table. From this you may deduce that either the food must be cheap, or delicious, or both. Yep, it was both. Luckily we didn't have to wait too long before were summoned - we were a fairly conspicuous group since all the rest apart from yours truly had decided to wear tartan trousers in a tribute either to Rupert Bear or Tobermoray from the Wombles. We gorged ourselves on miscellaneous curries and mixed grills, under the scrutiny of salivating potential diners still snaking around the tables in the hope of eventually getting a seat themselves.

Finally with sufficient ale and food inside us we went in search of a further public house with late opening hours. Unfortunately this meant traversing the length of Brick Lane, which conspicuously lacks pubs but is full of blokes trying to entice you into their restaurants for curries: not what you want when you had only just finished  eating as much as you could 10 minutes before. I left the youngters in their search and sneaked back from Shoreditch. Well I am getting on a bit. And there was the 7:45 edition of Match of the Day to be up for on Sunday morning.

Three days in May

This play was near the end of its run, so a case of getting in before its too late. And was well worth it.

The May in question is May 1940, and the entire play is set within meetings of the War cabinet. Britain is in what Halifax described as its greatest peril since 1066. British forces are surrounded at Dunkirk, the French are about to capitulate and Nazi forces are greater than ours. The heart of the play is the debate of how to proceed - fight on alone or, as the French want us to do, send out feelers through Mr Mussolini as to whether peace terms could be negotiated. And fascinating debate it was. Wishful thinking as to whether Hitler might accept terms which leave us alone and maybe lose some colonies, therefore avoiding a thorough beating, or risking having the fight and possibly losing. Interesting imponderables were things like the forces in Dunkirk. The assumption was that only a few thousand might be saved. As it turned out quarter of a million were recovered. But they had to make a decision before knowing that.

Churchill of course wanted to fight. Alarmingly, it seemed he wanted literally to fight to the end, with women and children if necessary, to the horror of Lord Halifax. Labour representatives wanted to fight - a parody of Clement Attlee in this play seemed greyer than any grey man, including John Major, felt  that the working man wanted to stand up against Hitler. But Churchill needed to get the approval of his Tory party members in the person of Halifax and Neville Chamberlain in order to carry Parliament. Eventually he talks Chamberlain around to the view that Hitler could not be trusted (reminding him of Munich) and so there was no point in trying.

Lots of interesting points to think about. How close we might have been to coming to an accommodation with Fascism. And if we had, at what cost? How much the biggest of events may come down to individual personalities. This is of course the opposite of the fashionable view of history - that its not all about the important people, the kings and queens etc. But without Churchill its quite easy to see this particular pivotal moment in history could have gone the other way.

And how being right or wrong can just be a matter of hindsight. Was Churchill brilliant and brave, or just foolhardy but through various lucky breaks - good weather for D-Day and Hitler's disastrous invasion of the Soviet Union - actually got the right answer?

Anyway, as a play it was never less than engrossing. Warren Clarke was excellent as Churchill. (How do you advertise for someone to play the great man? "Man with big jowls."). I do not know how much was based on any evidence and how much just supposition, but most of it seemed convincing enough. And its in the nature of theatre that one feels more involved than one does in a film or TV drama.

Tate Modern

I know its not fashionable to say so, but I don't think Tate Modern is very good. This does go against what the critics say, and against the figures which show that visitor numbers are way up on what was expected. But all this ignores certain fundamental points. First, its free. Second its in a brilliant position, with even a bridge seemingly built just to send people to its doorstep from that other top tourist attraction St Paul's (which is far more expensive to go to, as its far from free, but does have great artwork and architecture to see for your money).

And its sheer size is undoubtedly impressive. And its child friendly so families like it.

So why do I say its not very good? Well its not the art work (well it is, but I shall come to that later). Its the building as a gallery. The trouble is that there really isn't much gallery space for its enormous footprint. Ok, the main turbine room is huge and therefore can take the odd vast installation (which it doesn't have at the moment).

But at present it just has two floors of permanent galleries stuck up one side of this vast edifice, plus another floor of exhibition space. The rest of the floors are taken up with shops and restaurants. Basically, there is a huge waste of space. Having been to modern art galleries in Munich and Lisbon relatively recently, its not difficult to see the problem. They were purpose built. And surely if anything could do with a modern building its a modern art gallery. One can't grumble too much with the conversion, its just that it was never a suitable building in the first place for a gallery. I am not really sure what it was suitable for really. A source for a large number of recycled bricks perhaps? Not every building needs to be retained. This isn't decorative and was never meant to be.

As for the contents, well there are some bits of modern art I am very fond of. Pop art,

 impressionism, some cubism

 the Op art of Bridget Riley for example.

 But when it comes to conceptual art, I am afraid frankly the concepts are pretty lame. Its too easy to take the mick, but that's not to say there is anything wrong in doing so. So when you see a mirror on the wall with a description telling you that it challenges your perception of painting, I feel like shouting "No it bloody doesn't, its just a bloody mirror!" My perception of painting isn't challenged every morning when I shave. You know you are in for garbage when labels tell you the artist is "challenging your perception", or is "exploring" something or worse still, is "interested in exploring" something. In all cases its a combination of utterly banal thought with utterly banal subject product.

Rant over. But you do get some good views though.