Going to the Tate Britain

View from Lambeth Bridge

I took a day off on Friday to go to visit a few last minute exhibitions at the Tate Britain - Holbein in England and the Turner Prize 2006.

The train journey up to London was peaceful and went without a hitch, unfortunately as soon as I got to Waterloo I started getting the visual disturbance that is the first symptom of a migraine. Luckily there was a pharmacy nearby which was able to dispense (usually prescription only) my migraine medication. So I carried on and decided to walk from Waterloo to the gallery to get a bit of fresh air. This was probably the best bit of my whole trip.... I walked out of the west entrance of Waterloo station towards the London eye and then past county hall and carried along the Jubilee walk and over Lambeth Bridge from where this photo was snapped using my dog-eared mobile phone.

I then got to the Tate Britain and then proceeded to have the most uncomfortable 3 hours of my recent life. Huge queue just to pick up tickets I had already ordered, the worst selfish & pretentious cross section of the population of London/England that made the TOBOWs of Hampshire seem like decent folk, and a lot of them. The only relief was the nice American lady next to me in the ticket collection queue (the only lady I met that day). Next time I have a choice of where to go I will avoid the Tate and make straight for the V&A. If I was in charge of Tate Britain for a day I would scrub the prentious tosh that serves as restaurant (if I wanted fine dining I would go to the Savoy or similar and not go to an art gallery), only allow those who have purchased food to sit at tables and ban mobile phones. The two gentlemen I met that day were the guard on the train home and the hero who served me camomile tea on the train (decent train journey, in the UK - now there's a surprise). Okay so I am a leeetle cranky when I have a migraine (as comfortable as having chilled knitting needles driven through my temples), but honestly, happy to avoid the Tate for another decade.

The art? Well fine enough if only I would have had an opportunity to see through the crowds and my eyes working properly. From the perspective of a stitcher I would have liked to have spent more time looking at the oil portraits detailing the costume of the times. If there had been more time and space I would have whipped out my sketch book. I was most fascinated by the portrait of Jane Seymour with her silver leaf "undersleeves". I also found some of the gold borders on red velvet(?) of some of the robes of Henry VIII potentially interesting for further study in goldwork.