On my way
I set off early to meet Nick at Kings Cross with the intention of walking to The Serpentine Gallery to see a David Hockney exhibition.
As I left the house without an umbrella I thought it might rain, but I preferred to go bare headed rather than leave a bag an umbrella behind during my trip.
The silent tube carriage contained the usual assortment of commuters and retirees going for a day out in the big city. No one spoke throughout the journey. A group of three young South Asians however chatted away. One of the three facing me had a wonderful friendly smile and kept making the others laugh. It made a pleasant diversion to the journey.
I arrived early for our meeting and sat down to watch the travellers with their luggage preparing for the train while listening to my favourite tracks on Spotify.
Nick arrives
Nick arrived a few minutes later and we soon set off only to find the rain pouring down so we decided to get the tube to Baker Street and hope the rain had eased by then. No such luck so we headed for a cafe for a drink. Eventually the rain quietened down and we set off to walk from Baker Street to the Serpentine Gallery. I guided the pair of us and took Nick past what was Seymour Baths, but has now become the Seymour Centre. I told Nick that I used to come here every week day morning when I was 11 and 12 for swimming training.
I then took Nick past Park West and pointed up to where I spent my childhood from 7 until 16. I didn’t go into much about the what I got up to while living there because Nick was in the middle of one of his stories at the time. We walked on down to Lancaster Gate and then into the Park.
Hockney
Both of us had pre-booked 2 tickets, 1 pm and 2 pm. We arrived at 12:30 and the young lady at the door didn’t care and let us in. She warned us about the mirrors, which didn’t mean anything to me at the time. The exhibition, entitled a A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting.
The exhibition has received mixed reviews. The images created on the iPad encourage bright almost gaudy colours and are rather flat missing the texture associated with paint on canvas. Others have praised his iPad work showing how innovative he still is at the age of 88. The images from his iPad spread around the outer wall of the gallery and joined together as if one long image moving from winter through the seasons to winter again.
I felt the pictures lacked a soul, were lonely without people, animals and movement. In addition to the Normandie views in the centre of the gallery several pictures of tables with different colour checked tablecloths with a person on an abstract image again very flat and no sense of movement or drama.
Lunch
We came out of the exhibition after about twenty minutes. I had planned to visit the cafe next door, but it had a private party on so we walked on through the park down to Bayswater Road and Queensway. In this busy thoroughfare many eateries line the pavement. We chose one with a Greek theme. I had a sandwich and a smoothie which was fine. We spent a good hour eating our food and chatting.
Return
Food over we retraced our steps back along the north side of Kensington Gardens and into Hyde Park to Marble Arch. On the way Nick found a £20 note lying on the path which he picked up and pocketed. We weaved through the south west of Marylebone until we came to Chiltern Street where we stopped for another drink. Eventually we parted ways at Baker Street Station. We had not stopped talking from 11 am until 3:30 pm about all sorts of stuff too much to mention and nothing really consequential. I had enjoyed the day out in London even though I felt the Hockney show a bit of a let down.