Ricky Gervais without Luka and Highgate with

Tickets came up for a Ricky Gervais gig at Alexandra Palace at short notice. I did ask young Luka as I thought he might be able to come at short notice when most friends wouldn't be able to do so, but he came back to me too late. And tickets sold out instantaneously. Ricky is, justifiably, extremely popular as a live stand up act.

So me on my own. And this was a perfect for me as it was up at Alexandra Palace on a lovely sunny evening so I could just stroll up there. It is a nice walk.

The theatre is interesting too, as it was gutted by fire and rather than restoring it to its former state they just patched it up, made it safe and slotted in completely new seating. The old damaged plaster-work is just left. Sort of shabby chic. No point really debating whether one would prefer the full restoration job - it would just be too expensive.

Anyway, Ricky's latest show -Armageddon - was every bit as good as one would expect. 

I did, however, shortly afterwards get Luka out on a walk to Highgate Cemetery which we had long planned. But now with A level results in he was more relaxed. Was actually a terrific day - lovely weather and we had a great laugh all day. (Ok odd thing to say about a trip to a cemetery, but we did have a laugh).

And it was a nice walk there too - going through Highgate Woods.

We did both East and West Cemeteries, starting with the older and more spectacular West side. 

The beauty of them is their overgrown state (like the Alexandra Palace Theatre - shabby chic!). They are thoroughly "Gothic". You could imagine filming a vampire story here, with old graves smothered in vegetation. 

Rather than do both cemeteries at once, we took a break for lunch at the Flask gastropub.

Then back for the East side - most famous for the huge memorial to Karl Marx. This has most of the more modern graves, such as here, Malcolm McLaren of Sex Pistols fame.

We also walked round Highgate, had afternoon tea in Waterlow Park and a pint at the Woodman pub. Anyway, all in all a very interesting day with great company, although not sure Luka had been expecting a 10 mile round walking trip!

 

Frameless

Frameless is an immersive art exhibition. And what is that you might well ask. It consists of four rooms with lighting displays of famous artworks beamed onto all four walls, as well as ceiling and floor. Needless to say just projecting a painting onto a wall would be a little tedious. But here paintings are dissected, appear in parts, flow onto walls from above and below, are deconstructed and rearranged, all to music. It is honestly very impressive and engrossing. A proper experience. And actually worth the quite exorbitant entrance fee - I did double check that I was buying one ticket, not two!

It also doubles as a mother and toddler unit. The place is packed with little ones who are quite entranced by the lights and shapes all around them. (Or in Juliet's case, a little scared by them!)

And yes I was indeed going with a friend of mine and her soon-to-be two year old. I had never heard of the place, but obviously there is a mum's network of places to take one's little one, especially on a wet summer's day.

The first room has mirrors around the edge of the floor and on the ceiling, which was a neat addition. Started with some Dali - surrealism seems apt for this.

Max Ernst, in mirror image

Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights - thankfully not one of his more hellish paintings was chosen for this purpose

My friend Elaine with little Juliet, enjoying the floor.

This is actually a detail from a Gustav Klimt painting

But Munch's The Scream was a little disturbing when enlarged

And back to the Dali

The second room was basically impressionist paintings. The quirk here is that the paintings started as just dots and shapes and built gradually into the works with which one is a familiar. And the other quirk is that the floor was always covered in what looked like leaves, and if you walked along it the "leaves" would whoosh away from your path. 

The third gallery covered a few paintings of places. It was rather restful.

The Canaletto was particularly effective as it surrounded you as if you were really in St Mark's Square, and it brought you gradually closer to one end .

But the restfulness of this gallery ended with the sounds of a storm. Very effective, but frightened the life out of little Juliet. I watched the end on my own!

The last gallery was devoted to abstract paintings, and unlike the others had panels throughout the room so you can be surrounded by the images. To be honest this made them much more interesting than the real things!