helen-louise's journal

Last Saturday (16th) I went to the Joan Miró exhibition at the Tate Modern with Tim & Peter and my mum. He is one of my favourite artists, but I didn't realise until I saw the publicity for this exhibition that he was male - I thought it was the woman's name Joan, not a Catalan spelling of the man's name Juan. That's made me slightly sad because it means there are even fewer famous female surrealists.

The exhibition was awesome anyway. Lots of great paintings, plus a series of 50 pencil drawings called the Barcelona Series, which were incredibly inspiring, because I can draw boggle-eyed toothy monsters like that! (Some of them remind me of the Prince and his cousins from Katamari Damacy!). I often feel that modern art "doesn't count" if it involves a level of skill which I'd be capable of, but apparently I disregard this opinion if I really like it?! Hmm. I also really liked the Head of a Catalan Peasant series, especially the one which is a portrait of Richard.

Afterwards we went to Pizza Express, which is a typical thing to do with Tim & Peter, and walked over the Millennium Bridge to St Paul's Cathedral, where I investigated new and exciting ramps in the ground. Oh, and missed the train that I'd booked assisted travel on, due to the lift in Waterloo Station being broken and no one knowing about it to tell me. Had to go ALL ROUND THE OUTSIDE to get in through the level entrance. Grrr!

On Friday (22nd) we went to Devizes to see Richard's mother's grave and also various alive members of his family, namely his father, stepmother, sister, her husband, and nephew. It was VERY VERY SUNNY and we spent several hours outside, walking round the Caen Hill Locks. Well, they walked, I wheeled. Except I got "hilariously" stuck over one of the narrow bridges while Richard temporarily forgot I existed due to taking photos. There were dozens of people around to help me though. Heh.

On Saturday (23rd) I collapsed in a heap and slept for 18 hours, and then we went to see Wolfsbane. More about that later.

On Sunday (24th) Tim & Peter came round and we played Portal 2, and went to Pizza Express, where a waitress we'd never seen before "recognised us". This may be something to do with our tendency to take plushie animals with us to dinner. We get recognised everywhere we go even semi-regularly for this reason.

On Monday (25th) Marcus (hatter) came round and we went to look at "the trees" in Richmond Park, including my favourite tree. I had an altercation with a bus driver who refused to let me on because he already had "two buggies" occupying the wheelchair space - I pointed out that wheelchairs take priority over buggies and the guardians of the small children moved them out of the way for me to get on. If they hadn't been reasonable, I would have written down the registration number of the bus and got straight on the phone to Transdev (the bus company who runs that route), since it was totally ridiculous of the driver to assume that a wheelchair passenger should have to wait 15 minutes for the next bus when it blatantly says that the space is for wheelchairs! I probably should have done that anyway, but it would have required spoons which I don't have.

Photos of some of these activities to follow in next post.

I just got in from spending the day with my mum for her birthday. We went to the British Museum and saw a temporary exhibition there called Word into Art, which I highly recommend. It was all modern Middle Eastern art featuring words, poems and religious texts, such as the Qur'an, in a variety of scripts. Most of it was drawn or painted, but there were some photographs and manipulated photographs, and pottery with texts written or sculpted onto them. There was really amazing use of colour. I actually feel like I learned something about Middle Eastern culture from the exhibition that I wouldn't have been able to absorb in another medium.

We also saw an exhibition called Living and Dying which features objects and photographs of how people treat health and funerals in various parts of the world. It was mostly focused on minority cultures, including some indigenous peoples from countries I hadn't even heard of before. There were four wonderful Mexican papier mache constructions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and apparently the entire artwork they were from features 132 figures - you could buy a tiny postcard of the whole thing. In the centre of the exhibition was a long artwork called Cradle to Grave, which features "all the pills an average man and woman would take in their lives". I felt some artistic license had been taken with it - the woman is supposedly still alive now aged 82, but at one point in her lifechart aged around 32 she'd had post-natal depression, and this was depicted with Prozac pills - a drug that certainly wasn't available 50 years ago! Ah well.

We also saw The Royal Game of Ur - one of the oldest known board games in the world, and the Sculptures in the Great Court - which again are much bigger and more vibrant and interesting than the little pictures on the web site.

After the museum we went to Costa for a hot drink, then to a vegetarian cafe called Beetroot that I've been wanting to go to for ages but never made it to. It's one of these places like the old Beacon cafe in Kingston that closed a few years ago, and how Food for Friends in Brighton used to be - you buy a box of a certain size and they fill it with food for you from the 8 different hot and 8 different cold options. You tell them all the different things you want and they put it all together as a meal. I had tofu stir-fry, brown rice, broccolli, roasted vegetables and a couple of veggie sausage rolls in a £5.50 box, plus organic orange & mango crush. All their cakes are vegan!! so I had vegan chocolate fudge cake with vanilla soy custard plus a "Belgian chocolate" cornflake crunchie thing. Am now totally stuffed.