Leaving London

Well, my time in London is drawing to a close. This in all probability will be my last post from London, so it really should contain something profound, but I am afraid that nothing immediately springs to mind. There are plenty of things that I am going to miss about living in London, but I have to say that I am looking forward to getting home. I can say that one of the best ways to appreciate where your home is, is to live away for it for almost a year and a half.

The one thing I am really looking forward to is actually having everything packed and ready to go. At the moment, the room looks like a disaster zone (mostly Tim F's side of course) but I am slowly bringing it under control

Of course, there is still plenty to look forward to between leaving here and arriving home, like for example, a month in Morocco. Don't know if I will get many opportunities, but if I do will log on and post some news on my travels, and if possible upload some photos.

So, bye bye London and see you all soon...

The Tate Modern

I called into the Tate Modern the other weekend as I was strolling along the southern bank of the Thames (as you do). For those of you that have never been, the Tate Modern is London's relatively new modern art gallery. It is housed in a renovated power station and it really is an extraordinary place. You enter through the hall that used to house the turbines, and it is an absolutely massive space.

The Turbine Hall is home to the so-called Unilever Series, a series of commissions specifically for the Turbine Hall. At present it is occupied by a "labyrinth-like structure, entitled EMBANKMENT". The photos really don't do it justice. There was of course plenty of people shrugging their shoulders and muttering that they didn't "get it" and it is quite obvious that it doesn't correspond to what is normally viewed as a sculpture. The artist herself of course has plenty to say, that it "invoke[s] a sense of mystery surrounding the ideas of what a sealed box may contain". That is all very well and good, I just thought it was cool.