I [HEART] my new Orla Kiely bag!

My big Xmas present this year - my long, longed-for Orla Kiely bag.  Sometimes stuff does bring happiness.

Just in time...

Another cloud of volcanic ash hovering over northwestern Europe has closed Heathrow (again).  *So* grateful, I got out on Friday.  My life just can't afford anything unplanned right now. ;-)

Ha!  Is the universe laughing yet?  I'm well aware - more than ever, more than many, shall we say? - that everything in life is unexpected.  I just happened to escape this particular surprise.

Tate Modern (Cy Twombly - Take 2)

I had a few hours before my flight Friday morning  to go to the Tate Modern.  Simply fantastic.  A wonderful collection of modern and contemporary art, as well as quite the visitor experience in looking at, thinking about, questioning, and creating one's own art.  I loved that it did not take itself too seriously. In fact, at times, seemed to question its own curation of the collection in mentioning how time, space and perspective can help shape and define, and even change, art's (a period, a genre, an artist) appreciation and significance.  Somewhat in the way history is also viewed and reviewed in perspective over time, place, and context, and of course, how history can be re-visited and reinterpreted.

The Tate Modern is housed in the formidable and re-adapted former Bankside Power Plant in Southwark along the Thames.  There were several wings I wanted to explore, as well as the rooftop restaurant, but I was only able to check out one.  The others will have to wait for my next visit.  Material Gestures, the third floor wing, I visited, is described thusly:

At the heart of this wing is a room devoted to painting and sculpture from the 1940s and 1950s, showing how new forms of abstraction and expressive figuration emerged in post-war Europe and America. The surrounding displays suggest affinities between the radical innovations of this era and the work of earlier artists, but also show the legacy of those ideas among contemporary practitioners who have continued to develop the language of art in new and unexpected ways.

Indeed, I saw some of my favorite art and artists, including some presented in completely new ways.  As I rounded the corner to the room pictured above, I was in awe.  Four great canvases were displayed in this room - one on each wall.  The vivid red strokes had such motion.  Yet the red on white canvas also suggested some austerity, as well as intensity.  The paintings were described as representing - at once- violence and ecstasy.  Indeed they were passionately violent, and violently passionate.  They fill the canvas end-to-end-to-center with a certain balance, and the size of the loops, while not uniform, are certainly consistent like sound waves or shock waves.  These are Cy Twombly paintings - the artist I profess to hate, the one I'm convinced has no talent, and has bewitched the art world.  But my reaction was strong and mostly positive (or at least engaged and provoked in a good way) when I saw these, and only a few moments later did I realize, I had be digging on Cy Twombly.  A man, an artist, I clearly need to revisit and reinterpret myself.

The London Eye

Skate Park, Southbank (at Festival Hall)

Gastropub: The Anchor and Hope

In search of a gastropub - a dark, woody pub with good pints, and strict attention to menu -  I first inquired at the front desk of this stodgy member's club where I'm staying.   I said I wanted a good gastropub - not too fancy, but with very good food.  To make my point,  I said I sought a pub where I could wear jeans and motorcycle boots.  He recommended here - Um...not really my style.  The people at the Landsdowne Club just don't get me.

Off I went to the London Eye before dinner, and taking a wrong turn out of the Waterloo Underground, I found myself on The Cut  - a very funky street, with a funky vibe, funky people, alt theater, and some good restaurants, both dive-y and not.   It was 6-ish, and The Anchor and Hope caught my eye because of the crowd getting drinks - lots of jeans, black, boots, and some graying hair.  I knew this is where I would eat tonight.  And so I did - around 9:30 - and I was not disappointed.

Tonight's meal:

- Beetroot, horseradish and watercress - A fantastic combination of  nippy and creamy horseradish, gently bittersweet watercress greens; and sweet, cool, tender beets
- Beef Provencal with potato cake cooked in duckfat - A rather heavy dish (at that late hour, the busy microkitchen had run out of my first two choices) - but the beef was ultra tender, if not a little dark browny-beefy, and the potato cake ought to be first crowned by Le Cordin Bleu and then made illegal by the National Health Service
- Bombadier Ale (Bedford) - A bit sweet, but with a nice weight

La Nouvelle Observatrice jaunts to London

So here I am on a brief work trip to London, and partly because of the work nature of the trip, and partly because my thoughts haven't settled, I have no coherent and collective observations to make.  But here are a few random ones:

- There is a new 'coalition government" (the first since the 1940's) - Conservative and Liberal Democrats.  Strange bedfellows, but seems like what was needed to form a collective majority rule after a fractured, divided election.  Cameron and Clegg are apparently getting on like old chums, calling each other by first name, sharing jokes, and finishing each other's sentences.  I find it interesting (not good or bad per se) that 10 Downing Street changes hands in an immediate transition of power.   Maybe this new coalition will be the new meaning of "neo-con."  We'll see.

- I arrived in London early morning, and went immediately to the private members' club where I am staying.  Desperate for a coffee to begin my day (before the shower and the meetings), I joined my colleague M for a late breakfast (930am), and was promptly turned away for wearing jeans.   Well, I understand and  respect the rules; I appreciate formality and a nod to appropriate attire, and am scandalized myself these days by "grown-up"kids wearing flip-flops for nearly every occasion....but it did seem like a bit much. Not to split hairs, but my jeans were dark wash and boot cut, I had on black boots with heals, and a light linen blazer.  It wasn't the dinner  hour (with jacket and tie) for goodness sake.  And it was well past the prime breakfast hour (7:30-9:00), with perhaps 1-2 other tables finishing up, and the waitstaff was even breaking down the dining room settings between meals.  Welcome to Olde London.  Give me a stodgy break.  It's 2010...this is for dinosaurs!

- Following that experience, I had a fantastic meeting with Comic Relief.  Their offices were the opposite of stodgy - red  and modern with a very open flow.  Their philanthropy principles are rock solid, and I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation  - RG, director there, was pretty smashing.  At the end of the meeting, we ended warmly, and he said I was very "lively" which was clearly a compliment (and one that was well-recived and mutually felt).  But I do know that I have never ended a meeting with that sort of  immediate positive feedback, and "lively" no less.  I'll take it, and stash it away for future demoralized swings.

- I do not know London well at all.  For all my travel, including 5-8 trips to  London (but of 2 days at a time at most), I really can't connect the city, nor do I feel particularly "at home" and familiar, as I do in so many other places (even places I've never been, like landing in Rwanda or Guatemala for the first time).  Still, I enjoy the tube, and the taxis, and the international tone and energy of the city.  Would like to feel more grounded here.  There was a bit of a fantasy talk about me spending about a month here this summer, with Dear Daughter, to support our Trust work.  It was pie-in-the-sky - but I would be interested in making it happen....perhaps...perchance...