Good Friday

I've regained my sense of humour and love for this magnificent city. Yes, it's still grey and cold, as it always is, and yes, it's unbelievably, insanely, crowded. But it's also stuffed with treasure and beauty, history and tradition and style. And it's still not actually raining. Yet.

This morning was museum day - off to the National Gallery to be there as it opened, clever me. Arrived at five to ten, to find hundreds of people in a queue by the entrance. Curses, foiled again! I stood in line as the queue shuffled forward, one by one, and decided, no, this will take at least half an hour, I'll go to the Portrait Gallery instead and try again later. So I headed there, when, on the other side of the building, I saw another door with people walking in. Sure enough, it was another entrance, empty, no one. I just walked in and there I was in one of the greatest museums on earth, my own favourite. There were tears. For a minute, I had one of the central rooms all to myself. By the time I left, every room was jammed.

It's a gorgeous building full of gorgeous work, spanning hundreds of years. Just beautiful.

Van Gogh's chair

Vase of flowers by Bosschaert the Elder, 1609

The Magdelane reading, Rogier van der Weyden, 1438

One of my favourite paintings of all time - Botticelli, 1480. When I was at theatre school here in 1971, I was reading an art book when I was struck by this painting and saw it was at the National Gallery. I put on my coat, got on a double-decker, and in less than an hour was standing in front of the real thing. I love this young man, so grave with his calm, direct gaze looking right at us, hundreds of years in the future. Every time I come to London, I go to visit him. 

Had a coffee, saw more art till my feet hurt and the crowds - oh the school trips, giant packs of bored teenagers charging through - were too big. Outside, they were preparing for a Good Friday pageant featuring, they warned us over loudspeakers, a realistic re-enactment of the crucifixion, parental advisory in effect. Of all the things I do not want ever to see, that is top of the list.

That's a troupe of Roman soldiers, getting ready to round up Jesus, I guess. 

Off to the National Portrait Gallery, another huge favourite. An amazing coincidence - as I entered one room, I saw two familiar faces - my friend Penny and her friend Steve, spending a few hours in London before returning home after a family visit! Penny is almost the only person I know in England, and there she was - what are the chances of that encounter? She is researching an anti-slavery activist with roots in Sheffield, where she lives, and showed me a painting of the first huge anti-slavery meeting in England with her lady in attendance, plus Mrs. Byron and all sorts of British gentry. I told her I envy this culture, that not only produced extraordinary people but also great artists to memorialize them for eternity. Here are two famous faces:

 The virgin queen

Neither a virgin nor a queen. A portrait called "Mike's brother" - the painter was a friend of Macca's brother Mike. Be still my beating heart.

I ploughed through the massive crowds, got the tube home, had lunch and rested, went out again. I broke a glass vase here and have been trying to find a replacement, decided, bravely, to go to Selfridge's, which has everything. I guess Good Friday is shopping day in London, because that's what the entire city is doing today, including, it looks to me, the entire Saudi royal family swathed in head to toe black cloth. Here are some pix from my walk:

a park nearby

 The crammed sidewalk outside Selfridge's on Oxford Street

Just inside, the most lovely thing: a display of luminous photographs of birds by Luke Stephenson. People were charging by - I stopped to look and was nearly trampled. I don't know how he achieved such detail, but the pictures are stunning.

An orange-cheeked waxbill. As beautiful as anything at the National Gallery.

I managed to get something like the broken vase - what a shop, there's everything, I confess I did hang around the stationary section for a bit - and then walked home. Now more resting and a few glasses of wine before going out again to a local cinema to see my friend Harriet's just-released movie, The Sense of an Ending. I bought my ticket in advance, and was shocked: it cost 17 pounds 50. That's nearly $30. For a movie. This town is absurdly expensive anyway, and with the low Canadian dollar, it's crippling. There will be no more shopping.