Tonight:
5°c
Ever since I decided to make the two-and-a-half hour journey to work on foot on a whim the other week, I have become rather taken with moving about London at a measured pace. I may yet ape the great flaneurs of 19th-century Paris, whose affectation it would often be to take a tortoise out for a walk, so they would be obliged to take in the metropolis at a sensible speed.
Having witnessed the distressing anguish of a small child separated from her father by the inhuman slam of a Piccadilly line door the other day, I am further set against public transport - at least for journeys of less than an hour's stroll. I have found it both pleasing and possible to walk from work in Kensington to the West End in time to take in a show, for example - and the route through Kensington Gardens, down to Hyde Park Corner, past Buckingham Palace conveniently coincides with the Diana Memorial Walk, allowing me to pay tribute to the late Princess of Wales as I go. Bargain!
But fleetness of foot has other advantages. Finding myself with time to spare in the West End recently (walking always seems to take less time than you allow for it), I have been able to take advantage of the National Gallery's Wednesday late openings and enjoy a semblance of what Brian Sewell calls "the scholar-gypsy moment". Popping in for a quick butcher's at two or three paintings is far more rewarding than any gruelling day trip.
Indeed I am indebted to Brian for pointing out the exquisiteness of Joseph Wright of Derby's Enlightenment masterpiece Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, a painting I now feel I have lived in a little. On my own wanderings, I have asked myself whether it's wrong to be a bit turned on by Michelangelo's picture of Leda copulating with a swan.
One night, on a whistle-stop tour with my friend Nick, we found ourselves chatting to an amusing girl, trying to find the advertised hare in a smudgy Turner. As an engaged man I have no eyes for such things but I could have sworn she was chatting us up. And why not? Where better to do so, with ready conversation and respectable erotica at hand?
In this context, it seems crazy to pay to go to one "blockbuster" exhibition here, or anywhere, when you can take in the permanent collection for free. As purse strings tighten over the coming months, there are ever more reasons to appreciate these gratis pleasures.
Reader views (1)
Quite. The Prado, the Louvre, the Hermitage - fantastic places but having paid the hefty admission, you feel you have to troop through all the galleries. Perhaps the Germans have a word for the ennui experienced when you realise it's nearly five, your feet are aching, and you've only got up to 1780.
But thanks to the NG being free and so welcoming, you can dip in regularly for quarter of an hour, just do a couple of pictures familiar or new. This lunchtime I devoted to a study of two Canalettos and left chuckling at how he's great at crowds but rubbish at waves.
And then you can nip across the road to the Chandos and enjoy a pint of Sam Smith's for well under two quid. In fact, five pints for under nine quid.
London, expensive? Rubbish! You just have to know where to go...
- Rob, London, UK, 26/03/2008 16:43
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