#EndAusterityNow

I see there's some ghastly gathering of unwashed fucknuggets making Westminster smell even worse than usual today. Owen Jones, Russell Brand, Charlotte Church and various other shroud waving shitgoblins and taking time out from their celebrity lifestyles to boost their street cred with the lower ranks.

Apparently, because the actual overall majority of voters didn't vote for the Tories, so the Tories don't have a mandate for their agenda.

76% didn't vote for this Govt - Osborne has no mandate for austerity.  He wants to shrink state not cut deficit #EndAusterityNow #JuneDemo - Caroline Mucus

That's lovely, Cazza, but as was immediately pointed out to her, 71% of the people in Brighton Pavilion didn't vote for her, so is she going to resign out of principle?

Furthermore, as I recall (and I may be wrong, but it's definitely that order of magnitude) something like 61% didn't vote for Blair in his "landslide" and I don't remember this concern for the unrepresented from unwashed lefties back then.

There have been dozens of variations of democracy implemented all over the world, and none of them ever meets with universal approval. But the British state has gradually been centralising control powers over decades, meaning that the blatant disparity between what people want and what they get is becoming more and more overt.

The same thing happened with the Scottish Independence referendum - despite a very clear win, there was a sufficiently large minority who lost out that feel that they haven't been heard.

Yet when I point out that this is always the case in a democracy, that there is always a large chunk of the populace who get fucked over, whatever the result, I always get told that I should join the system and change it from within. I'm told that my sniping from the sidelines does nothing useful.

So today my message to the earnest, the thuggish and the hypocritical who want someone else to pay for everything is this: go become a politician, go change the system from the inside. Your protest marches are no more effective than my blog posts.

Or alternatively, consider the possibility that I may be right: democracy is merely a fig leaf that allows evil Tories to fuck over the poor or kind-hearted Labour to fuck over the poor in a different way.

What is wrong with the curators at Saatchi?

The Saatchi Gallery is one of the best spaces for displaying art in London. A beautiful building, with large (but not too large) spaces, big enough to do justice to any artist or genre, but small enough to get through in a reasonable time. The Tate, for instance, can be overwhelming. The Saatchi, size-wise and location-wise is really just about perfect.

But they really seem to have no fucking taste when it comes to art.

I do realise that art is a very personal thing, and that modern art is more about the reaction that it provokes than about the quality of the work, but really, the Saatchi seems to give far too much preference to slap-dash, half-assed "craftsmanship".

After the creative brilliance of the Hayward's Chinese exhibition, I was really looking forward to the two Russian art exhibitions at the Saatchi: GAIETY IS THE MOST OUTSTANDING FEATURE OF THE SOVIET UNION and BREAKING THE ICE: MOSCOW ART, 1960-80s.

While the photos in the "Gaiety" part of the exhibition were technically accomplished and Mikhailov's horrifying and graphic pictures of Ukrainian poverty were thought-provoking, there was a depressing lack of effort displayed in the paintings and installations. I feel that if an artist leaves their art looking like it was thrown together without any effort or thought, I'm not particularly inspired think about what the artist might be trying to say. I find it hard to get past the slapdash nature of the work.

I always walk out of the Saatchi feeling a bit like the artists have said: "That Saatchi will show any old shit, so that's what I'm going to give them."

It's just as well they don't charge, or I'd be asking for my money back.

The Good Burgers of London

As a good burgher of London, I thought I'd share my thoughts on good burgers in London.

Meat Market, Covent Garden

The Dead Hippy is still my favourite burger. I keep going back for more. The rough and ready ambience of the Meat Market also just adds to the fun. Their Philly Cheese Steak is OK and the chilli fries aren't bad, but the burger is definitely superb.

The Diner, Camden

Not a bad burger, but their Philly Cheese Steak is outstanding. Unfortunately, it's only on the menu on special occasions, like Halloween. Also, their chilli cheese fries are superb - the chilli is made with lovely tender steak. Nice atmosphere.

Service was a bit iffy.

Haché, Camden

A bit posh, the kitchen is full of French people gabbling away at each other and you can hear the steak being chopped furiously. An excellent burger, but not quite up to the Meat Market. I suppose it's a different thing, really.

Ed's Diner, off Bond St

Good burger, busier than it deserved, I thought.

Byron, Greenwich

Good burger but despite the waiter's claim, not the best burger I've had. Definitely up there though, and not bad at all for a chain. Nice vibe.

Riding House Cafe, off Mortimer St.

Good burger, but a bit pricey. Nice venue though.

Tinseltown, Great Portland St

Burger was OK, not great, fries were dire. Awful music videos playing. Clearly targeted at a young, R&B-loving demographic.

Ansel Adams vs Dayanita Singh

Last weekend, I headed over to the National Maritime Museum for their extensive Ansel Adams exhibition.

Ansel Adams was a sickly child who was given a Kodak Brownie camera as a young teenager and immediately displayed a remarkable talent for the relatively new technology of photography. Even his earliest photos reveal an "eye" for taking a superb composition, despite having only the most primitive of cameras.

The exhibition spans a number of different themes of Adams work, spanning static and dynamic views of the countryside, with a distinct emphasis on the grand vista. All of Adams's work is in black and white, and much like Chris Orr, he believes that half of the process of his art is in taking the photo, and half of it is in the printing process. He frequently reprinted prints over the years.

The photos are impressive and the NMM have made a real effort to make the exhibition comprehensive, with a movie of an excellent interview of Adams, books and also user-submitted content inspired by Adams.

You know there's a "but" coming, don't you?

But after all that, the photos themselves left me completely underwhelmed. As impressive and well-composed as they were, I left the exhibition feeling like I'd been looking at someone's holiday snaps. There was no emotion apparent, the photos were simply technically good photos.

Possibly one of the omissions from his photos is the absence of any human element to give scale or emotion to the pictures.

In contrast to this, Dayanita Singh's File Museum exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery is full of humour and humanity, despite the claustrophobic and monotonous subject matter.

Basically, just a collection of snapshots of people at work in a paper archive in India, and yet somehow there's a warmth and variety of texture and tone that was somehow was absent from Adams's work.

So if I had to choose which one to go to, I'd definitely advocate a free visit to the Frith Street Gallery rather than pay to go to the NMM.

Those who dream by night

This weekend I saw some art that truly astounded me. At the Haunch of Venison, I saw Patricia Piccinini's extraordinary exhibition Those who dream by night.

After the surreal weirdness of the Art of Change I wasn't expecting to see anything that blew me away quite so much for a while yet, but the Haunch of Venison certainly pulled one out of the hat.

Patricia Piccinini's speciality is to create incredibly complete, realistic models of creatures that don't exist; a sort of surreal taxidermy of creatures of her imagination. Most of these are organic creations and I was childishly amused by her apparent obsession with sphincters. The first couple of creations are relatively small, but remarkably detailed. However, when you venture further into the exhibition, the creatures get more complex and more astonishing.

Upstairs, the jewel in the exhibition's crown must be The Carrier, which was disturbing in the extreme after seeing "In The Blink Of An Eye" at the aforementioned Chinese exhibition. A vaguely humanoid primate carrying an old lady on his hands is done with such incredible attention to detail that it's hard to believe it's not real.

But even though the organic creatures are jaw-droppingly, mind-bogglingly impressive and accomplished, it was her piece called The Lovers that truly blew me away as an accomplishment. It is so flawlessly created that I could have sworn it was a cunning bit of massaging of real equipment.

It's not a massive exhibition, but by heaven it is some of the most extraordinary work I've every seen and even if you aren't taken by the whimsy or horror of the creations, you will be stunned by the craftsmanship and attention to detail.

Definitely one to see!

Art of Change - New Directions from China

Yesterday, I nipped out in my lunch hour to grab a viewing of the Art of Change exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.

And rather than start off by telling you why you should go, I'm going to start by saying: stop fucking reading this and get your arse off to the Hayward right away. DO NOT MISS THIS EXHIBITION which ends on Sunday the 9th December 2012.

Right, now that's out of the way, let me congratulate the Hayward for another outstanding, witty, amusing, intelligent, provocative, superlative exhibition. This show is everything that contemporary art should be.

First and foremost, don't be put off in any way because the works are Chinese - there are some cultural nuances that add flavour to the work if you consider them, but the exhibition works wonderfully well on all levels: just as some amazing things to look at or experience, as works that make you contemplate your own life and society in the light of others and then as works that make you reflect on a culture you might not know or understand.

Some of the works are a bit "right-on" (Revolution Castings), some are amusingly interactive (Xu Shen's Untitled featuring exercise machines), some are genuinely surreal (Actions of Consciousness made me piss myself laughing), some of them are clever (I didn't notice what I am doing), some of them are provocative (Sleeping, In Between and Patience) and I couldn't possibly do any of them justice by trying to describe them.

However, I would be remiss if I didn't highlight Yingmei Duan's haunting and beautiful Happy Yingmei, which required me to crawl through a little hole in the wall into a dark cavern with a nightmarish landscape and wonderful aethereal singing by the artist. I stood at the end of the room, delighting in her voice and she haltingly and eerily came over to me singing all the time, folding and unfolding and reading a piece of paper and handed me the piece of paper with a handwritten message on it:

It seems that everyone gets a different message, so you actually walk away with a memento artwork as part of seeing the work!

So, if you want to spend an hour or two being challenged, amused, entertained, baffled and enthralled: GO!

DO NOT MISS THIS INCREDIBLE EXHIBITION!

Wunderkabinett

I don't even remember where I saw the link that led me to 11 Mare St in Hackney, but I thought it would make an interesting diversion for an idle Saturday.

A gentle stroll along Regents Canal left me peckish, so I tried the Hackney Bureau for a fryup sarnie and a generous supply of eye-candy. Then I wandered over to the Last Tuesday Society.

There is a nominal £2 charge to wander around the cluttered collection of weirdness, but it is more than worth it. There is also a £5 fee to allow you to take photos, which, oddly, I'm glad I didn't spend. There is no way my humble photography skills would have done this place any justice at all.

The shop is a curious reflection on birth, life, death, sex and the tangled mess it all is: crammed with books, trinkets, mementos, mounted insects, pictures and taxidermy in an unstructured omnishambles, empty old medicine bottles are side by side with large bottles containing fish fairies and other eerie creatures. Winged cats, mounted butterflies and bird skeletons vie for place with vintage erotica and gothic tat. A curious metaphor for life: messy, beautiful, scary, ugly and weird.

There are a number of pieces of what is clearly intended to be art, but because they're just rammed in with everything else, it's possible to say that they elevate everything in the shop into a form of art, or perhaps they become expensive and improbably useless fripperies like all the other objects in the shop.

I was fortunate enough to be inside the shop on my own, which made the visit downstairs particularly eerie. It was a peculiar combination of the Hunterian Museum and the Natural History Museum, curated by someone off their tits on mind-altering drugs.

I cannot commend this place highly enough, I will be dragging everyone I know off to see it.

And truly, you haven't lived until you've seen a stuffed lion sitting at a table, as though waiting for a cup of tea!

The Long View - reflected

On Tuesday night I was lucky enough to attend a lecture at the Geological Society by Chris Orr, called "The Long View - reflected"

Chris is an artist who specialises in creating turbulent visions of cities, with drawingy / paintingy pictures brimful of details that expose themselves as fascinating tales.

As a Londoner, Chris has very strong views about the importance of the River Thames and, indeed, any river, in the definition of the character and nature of a city.

The work that gives the name to his talk is based on the ancient and famous painting above, The Long View of London from Bankside by Wenceslaus Hollar. Purely by chance, Chris found himself in a venue where the view was very similar to that of Hollar's painting. He attempted to create a modern overlay of today's London on top of Hollar's picture, but it simply didn't work, too much had changed and it was impossible to work out what was going on, so he revisited the work purely as a current representation of the view from that point.

Chris's work spans many styles, from the sleekly natural through bold monochrome "graphic" through Giles-like cartoons to chaotic, almost cubist representations. One of the key aspects of his work is that he prefers to make prints of his paintings and generally sells to people who he either knows or comes to know. His passion for making prints was particularly striking and his description of the difference between making the original painting and making the prints was a bit of a revelation for this uncultured lout, who had always assumed that the business of print-making was about maximising profit.

His talk, focusing on the importance of and history of the Thames in defining London's very existence and nature was unusual in that it didn't focus on individual pictures, but rather tumbled, very much like a river, over an ever changing backdrop of pictures both by himself and by others, of London and of the Thames in London.

His thoughts on how London almost used to be ashamed of the Thames, how it used to be hidden from almost everyone unless you were crossing a bridge; how pollution and smog conspired to make it unattractive; and how, since it had been cleaned up, it has opened up and become an attraction was thought-provoking.

Chris is convinced (and makes a pretty compelling case for his conviction!) that cities with rivers through them tend to be better at making the connections that make cities such important and interesting places and providing a better definition of the city, a more engaging environment for people to live.

Although this appeared to be a one-off talk at this venue, I'm fairly sure the talk, or parts of it, will be repeated and it's well worth the chance to hear Chris speak.

There is a much better discussion of the talk here.

Dies Irae

On Monday night, I entered the London Guildhall for the first time to watch the awesome EC4 Music perform Verdi's Requiem.

It's now the third EC4 Requiem I've heard, and I have to say, it was a stunning accomplishment. It must be murder on the choir and the soloists, because it's such a demanding and complex piece of music. I was exhausted when it finished, God only knows how the musicians must have felt!

However, they soared through the work with so much passion, enthusiasm and enjoyment that it was truly a pleasure to behold.

The show started off with us all singing Psalm 100 to the old tune - the irony of a dirge-like tune accompanying a "joyful noise" was not lost on me!

The Requiem proper is an awe-inspiring piece of work, with the Dies Irae "catchphrase" repeated several times - which is good, because it's such a lovely bit of music.

Unusually, this Requiem has a lot of "solo" i.e., non-choir, singing. The four soloists were incredible and they delivered their parts wonderfully.

Although the Guildhall is a beautiful venue with surprisingly good acoustics, I did find that not being able to see the choir properly was less than ideal. I also felt that the orchestra slightly overpowered the vocals, possibly as a consequence of the shape of the venue, apparently it was a lot more demanding to project voices in there.

As ever it was an amazing experience to see this extraordinarily talented amateur musical force. I can't commend them highly enough!

Strangely Contrary Hungers and Kitsch Tat

Contrary

Yesterday I went off with @almostsenseless to see the Sadie Hennessy exhibition, Strange Hungers at the WW Gallery.

I was inspired to do so (as I so very often am!) by the lovely @clareangela.

I'd seen some of Sadie's work previously at the WW Gallery, during the Diamond Geezer exhibition. Her "Olympic Wanker" cards are both witty and subversive, not just flicking V's at LOCOG, but flipping them the bird and mooning them with spread arsecheeks as well.

So it was with some anticipation I headed off to the gallery, especially after @clareangela's rave review.

At first, my reaction to the art was a bit muted and I was slightly disappointed. The Diamond Geezer exhibition had set a very high standard and was, to my tastes, more overtly amusing.

There were, to be fair, some items which raised a wry smile, such as the "top-shelf" pictures, The Elephant In The Room and MILF Magazine, which combines the most homely of housewifely articles with free hardcore porno DVDs.

Being a more simple-minded soul than some of my art critic friends, and given the brochure quote "... and the (unanswered) mating call, or at least the rallying cry, of the aging woman as she grows old disgracefully", I wondered whether Sadie's collection of penises in the totem and elsewhere were not just someone expressing the desire to see a bit of erect cock, rather than some high-falutin' war of the sexes bollocks? (As it were!)

I also wondered at the implication of "dickheadedness" in the piece called Pornology - a sideways swipe at the old nonsense of phrenology. Looking at the piece, I wondered if she was saying that men who had an interest in pornography (all of us?) were dickheads.

One thing that I did find odd was that the images were collaged from pornography and vintage women's magazines, which it would be very easy to assume were things that Sadie disapproves of, but who knows, really?

The "Lost Art of Keeping a Secret (Porn Eyes)" collages showed demure ladies with their eyes overlaid with the eyes of ladies in porn pictures, an interesting touch as the eyes did not convey anything in their new context. I'm not sure what this says, but it did make me think: what would happen if the eyes were replaced by the eyes of women who were doing something that Sadie approved of? (Assuming she disapproves of porn and women's magazines, of course!)

A Big Night Out was VERY thought-provoking, especially as I get older but don't want to change how I have fun.

And one of the pictures hit me like a punch to the heart (but I'm not going to say which one!) I thought it was largely out of context in the exhibition, but it stopped me dead in my tracks.

When I started writing this review, it was a rather contrary piece, quite negative and damning with faint praise. But as I wrote this, I knew I'd be coming back to it, because it didn't feel finished.

I did find that I had to dwell on Strange Hungers before I fully appreciated it, but it is, I suppose, the mark of something special that you can dwell on it, it is not something that you can just enjoy in the moment and then walk away from.

@clareangela and @almostsenseless think that you should go and see it before it closes on Saturday - and I agree. It provoked some laughs, some thoughts and some genuine emotional pain, which is really quite a good mix for one artist's work.

Tat

Less successful to my mind, was Mead Carney's exhibition of Tina Tsang's Psychopomp. Using three identical forms (a sea shell, a body and the Virgin Mary) repeatedly, but decorated differently, the work is very well-crafted but left me completely uninspired.

A lot of effort has gone into detail (both decorative and technical, like the rolling movies displayed behind the transparent face masks, or the different tales that come from the shells) - they are impressive accomplishments, but somehow dead, like some slightly weird and creepy thing you might buy at a gadget shop. Clever, and some of them even pretty (although they were mostly horrendously kitsch) - but art? I didn't think so.

Edvard Munch: Instagrammer prototype?

On Saturday, @almostsenseless and I trawled down to the Tate Modern for their reassessment of the works of Edvard Munch.

Munch is famous for his painting "The Scream", but possibly less well known is that he would do multiple iterations of the same painting. Nobody can be sure of the motivations, but it does seem likely that it was for financial reasons.

"I liked The Scream, could I have one of them?"

"OK mate, that'll be 50 Kroner to you."

The exhibition was, I think, quite cleverly arranged, alternating between his distinctive and striking paintings and his equally deep interest in the new art of photography.

There are distinct themes to the various groupings, one room contrasts some of his original pictures with newer copies or reworkings; another showed a series of sketches, paintings and even a sculpture of the "Weeping Woman". My appreciation of the "Weeping Woman" was somewhat spoiled by @almostsenseless pointing out that she was weeping because she was standing on scales!

There were some recurring themes to his work, clearly there is pain and anguish and hurt from a red-headed woman (Vampyr and Aske) but also death (some very incongruous dead bodies in some of his work from the pre-WW1 years) and physical violence (a street fight clearly left its mark on him.)

Looking at the paintings, it's quite interesting how long they took to paint, often spanning two years to complete. Initially, we thought that it was because he lost interest in the paintings, but I subsequently began to wonder if it wasn't simply because he was taking a break from creating new art to quickly knock up a copy of something he'd already done.

I have to say that in general, I preferred his older work, which seemed to be much deeper and darker as well as more technically accomplished. I can't really say how much of the change of technique was down to artistic development and experimentation and how much was down to his need to bang out copies.

The most affecting picture of the exhibition for me was the one right next to the exit: "Self Portait between the Clock and the Bed". It shows Munch, still upright and yet somehow forlorn and empty, waiting for the inevitability of his death, somehow an empty husk of a man.

His photos are also interesting - he was clearly enthralled by this new medium and the opportunities it offered for experimentation. And several of his photographic self-portraits are instantly recognisable as the "iPhone held at arm's length" type. Combined with his enthusiasm for special photographic effects, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Edvard Munch would have been all over Instagram and Photoshop if they'd been around in his day.

All in all, an amazing exhibition that doesn't pull any punches in showing a man who could paint, but wasn't precious about his painting. Well worth a visit!

Dr Dee

On Saturday, I went to see Damon Albarn's new opera, Dr Dee at the ENO.

Not having any idea of who Dr Dee was, I made the near-fatal error of not grabbing a program on the way in, but since the opera was in English, I'd have no problem following it, right?

Wrong! It was a mind-boggling, astonishing and sometimes confusing tale. I followed the beginning fairly easily, but as it went on, I found myself getting lost. When the interval came, I was glad of the chance to quaff some more Veuve Cliquot!

Having said that, I enjoyed it immensely, just as a spectacle and as music, it was a strange and magical experience that I felt like I was "getting" only every now and again.

The set changes were extraordinary, and actually, the production was amazing overall. The visual spectacle was as good as a movie, the singing was beautiful and the strange musical instruments chosen for the music lent the whole piece a strange sense of otherworldliness.

Glancing through the libretto and the ENO's website, it would be easy to dismiss this as a pretentious musician getting ideas above his station, but my humble words can't really do it justice.

It is, at times, baffling - both @clareangela and @almostsenseless have seen it twice and both told me that they "weren't really sure about it", but that somehow it was wonderful. And it was.

Unlike anything else I've ever seen, sometimes feeling more like a musical than an opera, sometimes feeling more like a Salvador Dali movie than a musical, sometimes feeling like a musical version of Pulp Fiction, it was quite extraordinary. It wasn't always "accessible", but somehow it enthralled and immersed you and the challenge to "get it" was worth the effort.

I'm only sorry that I went to the very last showing, so I will have to wait until it comes around again, but when it does, I'll certainly be in the queue pronto!

The Shard: 21st Century Britain in a nutshell?

On Thursday night, I was in London with Miss Mills. We went to see a private viewing of some art and then ambled off to the legendary High Timber for dinner and to grab a view of the light and laser show that announced the opening of the The Shard.

The dinner was epic, Miss Mills had smoked salmon to start, I had the crab. Both were awesome, but the salmon was definitely more to my taste. Miss Mills had the salt beef for mains, I broke with tradition and had the lamb. Now, the lamb was delicious, perfectly pink and utterly scrumptious, but the the salt beef blew it away completely. I must go back before that goes off the menu. All of this was washed down agreeably with Billecart-Salmon. For dessert, we had something called a "Don Pedro", which is apparently ice cream mixed with Kahlua. It was delicious and I can highly recommend it.

As dinner wrapped up, we could see the banks of the Thames and the Millenium Bridge lined with thousands of people waiting to see the promised "spectacular light and laser show". Anticipation was pretty high, considering we were in Britain's most cynical city.

Given that many millions had been spent on the Shard and given that the Shard has become a defining feature of the London skyline, we were all expecting something pretty impressive.

I think it's fair to say it wasn't.

After five minutes of watching the building change colour between blue, red, purple, yellow and white over and over, a couple of lasers came on and flickered listlessly. And that was that. It carried on forever, but people soon lost interest.

Miss Mills stole the words from my mouth when she described it as "a magnificent display of British mediocrity".

A total waste of a chance to stun people, to make something of an opportunity that had been pre-announced to death, that they knew was going to be watched by many thousands of people, totally and utterly wasted.

I've no idea of whether display was still going when we went to catch the Tube to our respective destinations and neither could anyone else, as they had all given up and fucked off as well.

On Friday, I tried to buy tickets for the Shard's new viewing platform...

I can't wait for the Olympics.

Sun, Moon and Earth

On a previous visit to Cork Street in London, I found the Alpha Gallery, which has a number of Rodin sculptures on display, but it was busy setting up a new display of more contemporary art.

Despite my rather tatty and impoverished appearance, they invited me to the private showing of the new art: Sun, Moon and Earth by the Angolan-born artist Daniela Ribeiro.

As ever, I'm not sure photos can convey entirely these works, which are created using a unique painting technique from high-resolution photographs from various telescopes.

What is particularly impressive in her very accurate representation of astronomical bodies, is that they are created without brushes - Daniela uses a hairdryer to blow the wet materials across the fibreglass.

An interesting diversion - not necessarily everyone's cup of tea, but worth a quick nose if you're in the area.

Oh, and the Rodin stuff isn't bad, either!

Art tidbits

Yesterday, I went trolling around London on a long-overdue cultural exploration. I decided to explore Cork Street a little more. First, I stopped at Ordovas for a quick look at the Calder in India exhibition. It's intriguing to me for historical and personal reasons (I was once married to an artist whose work was similar). However, I found it a bit "samey" and didn't dwell too long.

Then, I popped into the Hay Hill Gallery to sneak another peek at the Liminal State exhibition. If you haven't been, I can't encourage you strongly enough - it's truly amazing stuff.

Then I popped across the road to the Haldane Fine Art gallery, where I discovered something called the annual Master Paintings Week, which is on in London from 29 June till 6 July this year. This is evidently a week every year when all the participating fine art galleries put their old masters out on display. The Haldane exhibition was a delight, with witty epigrammatical quotes above most of the paintings, many of them left me chuckling appreciatively.

Another witty touch was the recreation of old-master-like paintings with photography. I will certainly be exploring the rest of the Master Painting week if time permits.

A few doors down at the Alpha Gallery was a fabulous contrast of famous Rodin statues and very modern work, representations of the solar system created in a unique painting style. They were still setting up the gallery, but I'm hoping to make it to the private viewing next week.

But the find of the day for me was at Flowers: an exhibition of the surreal art of Glen Baxter. For me, this was beyond witty and clever, I roared with laughter at most of the pictures. Clever, full of snide pokes at the art establishment and life in general and very clever indeed, this is a great, great way to put a smile into your day.

Just a few yards off Regent Street, but a million miles from the hustle and bustle of tourists and tat, Cork Street is a great way to spend half an hour or half a day.

The world's most expensive coin (for @AboutLondon)

On Sunday I had the pleasure of attending The London Mint Office's exhibition of one of the world's rarest coins: a 1933 gold "Double Eagle".

The exhibition was at Goldsmiths Hall in Foster Street. You had to sign in to attend the display, which I found a bit odd, I suspect I will get spammed to death now, but anyway ...

The Goldsmiths Hall is a "venue" with lots of old gold- and silverware on display. You can rent it out, apparently, and the organisers had rented the Livery Hall, which is an incredible sight and well worth a look if you ever have an excuse to see it. Not only is it sumptuously decorated and lit with wonderful chandeliers, but the stained glass windows are a wonderful record of the wardens of the Goldsmiths' Guild.

The exhibition itself was surprisingly small, occupying the tiniest corner of the Livery Hall. It consisted of merely 23 golden coins of various ages and denominations, and the aforementioned Double Eagle.

I have to say, I was quite disappointed with the showpiece of the exhibition - it simply doesn't look like five million quid on the hoof. However, the attendant was very knowledgable and was able to impart a vast amount of numismatic knowledge to me in a very short time.

Out of the other parts of the exhibition, the real "stand-out" coin (ha! ha!) was the "high-relief" 1907 Double Eagle, which apparently had to be "struck" five times to get the high relief. This made the coin very difficult, expensive and time-consuming to produce. It really does make for a beautiful coin though.

Another remarkable moment and discovery in London!

BoJo: WTF?

I must admit that I was, briefly, a fan of Red Ken. Not because I had any affiliation with his rather barmy politics, but because he'd managed to stick it to Tony. Back then, I was so desperate to see Tony get fucked over, I took an "enemy of my enemy" position. But with the advent of Kengestion charging, the LEZ and all the right-on cocktrumpeting, I soon tired of the newt molester.

So when BoJo came storming in, I thought: good-oh, here's a decent egg, got a bit of worldly experience, he'll sort things out.

The first warning bells came with the banning of boozing on the Tube. This baffled me. People actually drinking on the Tube are incredibly rare and in no way a problem. Drunks on the Tube, that's a whole 'nother thing right there. They're a complete pain in the cunt. But of course, you can't ban that as easily, can you.

So we staggered out of that, and then he parked the increased congestion charge and sacked a bunch of Trots, had a bit of a black moment and then just seemed to be getting on with it. But now he's back in the press with something that made me weep: he has appointed Rosie Boycott, former editor of the Incontinent on Sunday, as a "food czar". I then read the rest of the article and started keening, excuse me while I compose myself.

Ok, I think I can face it again:

Young people with anti-social behaviour orders could be made to work in allotments, Boris Johnson's new food czar said today.

Oh, for the fucking sake of fucking fuck, woman. What is this cuntwaftery? This sounds like a fucking Gorgon relaunch initiative. Mind you, what would you expect from someone who ran the IoS? Sense?

Former newspaper editor Rosie Boycott said the move would benefit the environment and give young people a sense of pride.

Or it might lead to vandalised allotments and spate of spade thefts, you never know.

Ms Boycott has been appointed by the Mayor to chair the London Food Board, which aims to improve access to healthy, locally-produced and affordable food. She said she would also support local markets and encourage families to eat together.

Oh God, my brain is trying to escape through my ears and strangle me to stop me from reading this shit. Boris, please do us all a favour and fire this totalitarian cunt now. If we wanted some irritating fuckwit telling us all how to live our lives, we'd have voted for Ken. We voted for you because we wanted something different, not more of the cunting same!!

"I want to advocate the use of allotments and growing our own food," she said. "We can lean on councils to release more land and kids on Asbos could be put to work on them. If you've grown your own food you feel prouder of it and appreciate it more. We also want to limit food waste and eat more locally. If everybody grows more of their own food we have a greener city and help climate change."

Rosie, where the fucking fucking fuck do you think the councils are going to get more land from? Carve it from their cocks?

Ms Boycott, a former editor of the Independent on Sunday, has her own small organic farm and writes about the importance of food in improving health and in reducing the carbon emissions which cause climate change. She has also written a book about her experiences on her farm.

Oh great! Just what we need, another bossy, nannying, hectoring, clumsy-beekeeper-faced, chatterati dilettante telling us how we need to live our lives. And she's not exactly unbiased, with that pedigree, is she?

Boris, sack the bitch and stop fucking about with this trendy lefty shit. London has more important things that need sorting out.

Rosie Boycott: fuck off and die!



Update: Bishop Hill's take on it: journalists are idiots.

Update 2: Dave's Part shows a sexist side. Snigger.