That London
483 wordsDebbie had to go to London on Saturday, for an examiners’ meeting at EdExcel, so I tagged along. We got there on Friday, and had dinner at Koto on the corner of High Holborn and Southampton Row. It’s a Japanese restaurant in a hotel, which I don’t hesitate to recommend. It’s not the greatest sushi I’ve ever tasted, but it’s half the price of Matsuri just down the road, and we left happy, full and satisfied.
While Debbie toiled on Saturday, I went exploring. I walked to the South Bank, because I wanted to see an exhibition in the Barbican. If you know London, you’ll know that was the wrong thing to do. Somehow the Royal Festival Hall and the Barbican had ended up in the wrong slot in my head. Never mind, the South Bank was lively with the Mayor’s Festival, so I walked along, then over Millennium Bridge, past St Paul’s to where the Barbican really is.
I was there to see an exhibition called “Future City Experiment and Utopia in Architecture 1956 - 2006“. Frankly, it was rather depressing. To get to the Barbican art gallery, you have to pass a mass of 60s medium-rise flats; shoeboxes piled high. This would be ASBO-ridden Tower Hamlets nastiness if it weren’t for the location and the concert hall driving the prices up so only yuppies can afford it.
A lot of the exhibition was devoted to megastructures and prefab stackable dwellings. Of course they look nice in the drawings, but all I could think of was the nightmarish shipping-container-like stacks of homes in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
It never really cheered up — even when I found myself in agreement with the artist/architect, it was because their work approved to be critical of what they were representing.
There was one large photo of Selfridges in Birmingham, which I do think it a magnificent building from the outside. I’ve decided though, that on the inside it’s not great: maybe it’s to do with the way it’s been laid out, but it’s cluttered, claustrophobic, and hard to navigate.
I had some time left before Debbie finished, so I trudged back to High Holborn, and on to the British Museum. The courtyard and reading room are truly spectacular, and although I could only spend half an hour there, I felt it was worth the visit. I spent my time in the Enlightenment room, which was full of treasures “captured” by the British army during the years of Empire.
Reunited with Debbie, we tried to think of something to do that wasn’t impeded too much by having to drag a suitcase around. We decided to go to the cinema. We thought we’d tried every cinema on Leicester Square, and found nowhere showing anything interesting in the next hour, but then we spotted yet another Odeon, and we saw a film there. Details to follow.
Home; tired; glass of wine; one episode of The Shield; bed.
September 18th, 2006 at 12:33
We were in London on Saturday, and so were Helen and Innes, in the general vicinity of the South Bank and St Paul’s - you probably walked within spitting distance of them at some point. I’ve always fancied that Koto. Probably won’t get time to go now. We went to Cantina Vinopolis, which is great but was too hot and a bit pricy.