Sunday August 31, 2014
It is 9:20 and we are off to
Manchester for five days, then Edinburgh for five more, then Dublin for two
nights and then back to London. So I’m
using the train ride to catch up on where we’ve been since Oxford.
On Wednesday we visited three
museums in three different cities. This
was actually pretty easy since each museum was about a 10 minute walk from a
train station. Our first stop was in
Leamington Spa about an hour north of London.
We had made an appointment to see two paintings on the list, because of
course they were in storage. The museum
was in a park so the walk was very nice, the sun was actually out for change. The very young lady curator met us and showed
us the paintings in the store room. It
seems like many of the curators we meet are very young ladies; probably very
low on the totem pole and therefore they get stuck with the job of showing us
the paintings. After seeing these two we
looked around the small gallery and then it was back to the train station on
onward to Birmingham.
The Birmingham train station and
museum are located in an area that has many Victorian era buildings and some
outdoor art. The museum has some
spectacular galleries, and a lot of art.
There was a very helpful lady at the information desk that knew quite a
bit about the artists and the paintings we were interested in. We couldn’t tell if she was a member of the
staff or a volunteer, in either case she knew her stuff. The museum has four paintings, and only one
was in storage. We found the three on
display with her help. We had to wait a
bit to meet the young lady curator because I had screwed up the train
times. I made the appointment for 13:00,
and we actually got to the museum shortly after noon. So we had to wait a bit to see our
painting. Then we were off to our third
stop in Leicester. Leicester is where in
2013 the unearthed the grave of King Richard III under a parking lot. He was the hunchbacked king in Shakespeare’s
play of the same name. Now Leicester and
York are fighting where to finally bury him.
They may have settled it, but since I don’t have an internet connection
you’ll have to look it up if you are interested. And he did actually have a curved spine.
We just missed one train, so we
were going to be a bit late for our third appointment. I was a little worried because the curator
had been very brief in his correspondence and had only allowed about 15 minutes
in his schedule to meet us. So I emailed
to tell him that we would be late, and of course I didn’t hear back. But he turned out to be really nice. Again another guy who really knows his
stuff. He gave us a lot of information
about the painting and the artist. He
recommended that we visit his gallery to see the exhibition of German
Expressionist art that was on display.
It was very interesting, and for a small museum they have an important
collection. In fact the next day another
curator remarked that Leicester’s collection was remarkable for such a small museum
when we told her where we had been the day before. Then it was back to the train station for the
trip back to London. We had time to get
something to eat at the pub next to the station. Another great experience. The bartender was a young guy from South
Africa who took the time to describe some of the micro-brews on tap and to let
us sample several of them. We even tried
a hard cider. Ciders are big here, every
pub has several different ones on tap.
We thought they would be like apple cider with a kick, but the one we
tried wasn’t too bad. I still wouldn’t
take it over a beer though. We had a
meat and cheese plate for lunch with beer.
The beer delivery guy sat down for a beer at the end of his day and it
turned out he was an American. He had
been in the Air Force (ours) and married and English girl. He was originally from Connecticut. His mother was living in Florida and he was
going to move back to live there. At
least two of his kids wanted to live in the US.
It made for an interesting lunch.
Then it was back onto a train for the ride home.
Thursday we were off early to
Bristol to see two paintings at two museums in town and then to use a Zipcar to
drive to a “Country Home” about 20 miles away.
This time the museums were about a 20 minute bus ride from the train
station. The first museum had our
painting in a special exhibit and to get to that we walked through an exhibit
about the war in Iraq. The first thing
you see is a large sculpture of the famous photo from Abu Ghraib of one of the
prisoners that WE tortured. It is about
twice life size and it really made an impression, and it wasn’t a good
impression. Part of this exhibition were
drawings made by British veterans made while they were in jail. I didn’t read all the information, but most
of these guys were apparently in jail because of PTSD and they had trouble re-adapting
and were in jail because of drugs, alcohol, etc. I’ll refrain from any editorial
comments. Anyway we found our painting
and we were off to our appointment at the Bristol City Museum. Another youngish (a bit older than twenties)
lady showed us a really interesting painting “The Vivian Girls with China” by
Paula Rego. Seeing the painting in
person (the one at the top of the page today) enables you to see much more
detail. It also helps to have a curator
explain the background of the artist and the story the painting is
telling. The Bristol City Museum is in
another gorgeous Victorian building.
Then it was a short walk to pick
up the Zipcar and off to Dyrham (pronounced Deerham) Park. Dyrham Park has country home that was
originally owned by a Royal family for centuries until it was turned over to
the National Trust because of what are called “Death Taxes”. We used Google Maps for directions and almost
got there without having to turn around.
I missed the turn on a roundabout and headed back towards Bristol. It wasn’t a proper roundabout that allows you
to circle around a couple of times until you figure out the correct exit. Eventually I got back to the same roundabout
and made the correct turn. Sue had quite
a thrill ride as I would drive onto the rumble strips on the side of the road,
and even up on a curve once. My excuse
is that the GPS is on the windshield to my left, and I have impaired vision in
my left eye, so I’m turning my head to the left to see the GPS and as a result
I’m steering to the left. It may not be
true but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The “house” is big as you can see from the
photos. I still don’t have an internet
connection so you are spared my retyping the Wikipedia information. We had to ask where our painting was located. It is what is called tromp l’oeil, French for
deceive the eye. The painting is the
actual size of a door and it makes you think you are looking through a doorway
down a corridor. The painting is about
8.5 ft x 4.5 ft. The painting is located
behind a barrier so we couldn’t get too close.
It really appears as if you are looking down a corridor. We walked
around the grounds and visited the church that is on the grounds. The church is still used a couple of Sundays
a month. The house is located in a park
that has to be several hundred acres at least.
There were about 75 cars in the parking lot which amazed me. I was expecting that we would almost be alone
at the house. But there were a lot of
people there. Our ride home was another
experience. The phone would not connect
to a network when we started home. That
wasn’t a problem since we were on a motorway heading back to Bristol. The GPS connected once we got back to
Bristol. I made a few wrong turns but we
did get back without .any problems. We
dropped off the car at about 16:00 and our train didn’t leave until 17:00. We got back on a bus headed to the train
station for what we thought would be a 20 minute ride. On the way we saw another painting by Banksy
and Sue posted it on her Facebook page.
So I’ve added it to this album.
Well it was rush hour in Bristol and our bus wasn’t making much
progress. So with about 20 minutes
before our train was to leave we got off the bus and walked back to the
station. We made it with about 5 minutes
to spare; and we never did see our bus.
Friday Sue packed up our “big”
suitcase with the clothes we don’t need for our trip. We then took the suitcase to a self-storage
place to keep it there for two weeks. We
went out to dinner and Jude will be amazed to learn that we didn’t have a
totally wonderful time. The food was
great, but the service was very slow. We
actually left without having dessert, and that maybe a first. But we might still be waiting if we had
ordered one.
Saturday we returned one of our
keys to the management company and then got the rest of our stuff ready for our
trip. We tried to find a place to eat in
Camden Town, but everything was full and the waits were longer than we were
willing to endure. So we went back to a
local pub where the food has always been good, and it was again. I should add that we have now seen 43
paintings on our trip to date for a total of 437. We should see over thirty in the next 12 days
if all goes well. That’s it for now. I’m already another day behind!
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