Leaving on a jet train...

At least I hope it's a jet train, that would be cool.

So how did I spend my last day in London, I hear you breathlessly choke out? I've hardly given you any detail so far about my time in London, you must be hard pressed to know how I have spent every single other day since I got here...

Firstly, I would like you to note that I just edited the previous post, which had too many typos even for me to bear - but I blame this keyboard - if you were trying to type using xylophone hammers on the keyboard it would approach the irritation of this fool instrument.

Which reminds me of something, the other day, when I was walking along the Thames, under the many bridges, I had the thought, 'Wow, the accordion is possibly the most irritating instrument ever to perform in a tunnel.' Only to walk into the next tunnel and retract that immediately upon the thought 'No, the xylophone being played to a mariachi casio-keyboard backing track, now THAT is the most annoying instrument to be played in a tunnel.'

Oh, and I while I'm shedding some mental detritus, I meant to share, I saw someone famous! And this time I knew who it was! The woman from Black Books was at the Kandinsky exhibition at the same time I was! Not as exciting as seeing Kandinsky, but still exciting. And I managed not to go up to her and blather on about how much I love her work and try and demonstrate it by naming particular episodes or revealing how many times I've seen them. Well done, me!

Yesterday was rather wet. To the point that it rained even when the sun was out, and there were only a few clouds in the sky, still it steadily rained. I went to the National Gallery, to have a look at a few things again, and confirm that my view of Renoir isn't too harsh, and nope, it's not. It's an odd building - even in the main galleries I can't get any sense of where I am, (not that that means anything, I could lose a sense of location in a supermarket) but there are some weird layout choices, particularly if you go downstairs to the subterranean cafe, and then walk through a doorway on the far side of that that looks like it should lead to an education room or something, you find yourself in further galleries that have The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, a Courbet, Gericault, Ingres, Delacoix etc. Odd. I think the vast majority of visitors would completely miss them.

Anyway, after that I mooched about for a bit, loitering in shops, London when it is raining is kind of lacking in public spaces you don't have to pay to be in - this is where bookshops come in as the capital's loungerooms - and then tottered off to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a film about Derrida. I know, my last afternoon in London and I thought I would spend it watching a film on Derrida. What the hell was I thinking? Especially as I haven't even read that much Derrida. Anyway, it was entertaining if only for the fact that someone made a biopic about the author of the 'Death of the Author'. The film was a little obvious in a lot of its techniques - the opening sequence cut between footage that demonstrated Derrida's public persona (Here's Derrida lecturing! Here's Derrida on TV! Here's someone on TV gushing about Derrida! Here's American college students gauchely introducing themselves to Derrida and apparently referring to his philosophical works as 'novels'!) and footage of the domestic Derrida (Here's Derrida losing his keys! Here's his wife calling him Jacky! Here's Derrida walking down a street!). They made the film by following Derrida around for weeks and talking to him, and it was very entertaining because he refused to comply and just pretend that they weren't there, he kept saying how their being there changed how things would normally be, and whenever they asked a question, kept telling them that he wouldn't give them the full answer, and referring to the process of editing etc. And giving incredibly long preambles - they ask about deconstruction, he spends ten minutes deconstructing the context in which they are asking about deconstruction. And he was funny, and they were very serious about their process of documenting. So he won. Even if only because he kept one eyebrow raised for about a month.

After that intense level of edumication, I needed to do something that required distinctly less brain time, and got me out of the rain, so I went to the movies, I saw The Devil Wears Prada. Funny, and Meryl Streep imbues a character into what would otherwise be a caricature, and I only wanted to slap Anne Hathaway's character a little. From some angles she looks like Audrey Hepburn, that's cool.

So that was my day, and now I'm about to head off and catch a train to Newcastle!