Day 44: London

Highlights:

• World Press Photo 2012 at Royal Festival Hall
• Sir Paul Nurse and the Last Supper at the National Portrait Gallery
• Go Mammoth Dodgeball in Clapham

After a solid morning job search session, I signed up for my next blood doning session. This isn't a good-deed name drop but they're really short of blood at the moment, so if I ever try to convert you to anything, let me just persuade you to pop along to a centre and let some nice/brutal (it's pot luck really) nurses take some blood...they only take a pint, and that replenishes in no time at all. And the smug feeling you get from your good samaritanism is un-quantifiably high. I normally hear a lot of bullshit 'I'm scared of needles'. I'm sure it's a genuine fear, but I think it's probably a good experience for you to face your fear in the name of helping humanity. I'm just saying, you pansies. Plus sides are that you save lives blah blah blah, get free walkers crisps and biscuits, find out your blood type and about all sorts of exotic, if a little niche, sex partnerships that you're probably not even considered (have you had sex with a man who has paid for gay sex in Africa etc.), and get to go on the powerfully-named website www.blood.co.uk.

In the afternoon, I grabbed the tube to Waterloo and then wandered down to the Southbank. After a disappointing stop in the National Theatre (I'd read that they had an interesting exhibition on but the only thing I could see was about jewellery. Yawn), I struck lucky in the Royal Festival Hall where the World Press Photo 2012 winning photos were on show. It's displayed over both sides of the foyer on the bridge level with quite a few prize categories (nature, reporting of world event, individual shots, landscape shots etc.), but I only got around one side before I became a bit too tearful to continue. It's fair while ago now and so in case you've forgotten, 2011 was a bit of a rough year. The Arab spring, the Japanese Tsunami and nuclear disaster, continued economic downtown (leading to 4million US citizens losing their homes according to this display) and all sorts of bad shit for sex workers in Ukraine (HIV hotspot). I'm not sure how long the photos stay up, but you should check it out. It's free and afterwards you can check out the Christmas market tat stands. The stand-out photos in the display include (and if I accidentally sound flippant, I really don't mean to - the photos were really powerful and sobering) the shots of devastated now-rubbled Japanese towns, the Ukrainian interrogation photos, the drug cartel shot of Acapulco* complete with the dawn off arms and head of a man just lying in the street and then somehow the most moving were the photos of the recently evicted families in the US just sitting outside their old properties, surrounded by all their stuff, looking completely desolate. 4million is a lot of people to relocate. Abbie looked at the photos on the other side as well, and her favourite (if not her favourite, at least one she thought was a strong photo) was this:

I headed out across Waterloo Bridge. A man had just bought a Big Issue in front of me and the guy asked me to buy his last one. It was sunny, and I was in a good mood, and the last issue I bought was actually really good. So I bought it, earning a little banter in return that went a little like this:

Man who looked a little like a younger, toothier Hulk Hogan: Where you from?
Me: England, from Essex.
HH: No! You look much more exotic. Like you're from the place with all the Ferraris....(mumbles something that sounds like 'Goodbye')
Me: (affronted slightly by quick end to conversation) Oh, ok, goodbye.
HH: No, goodbye!
Me: Huh?
HH: The place with all the beaches and people in ferraris (acts driving a car). Hoobye!
Me: ...Dubai? I look like I'm from Dubai?
HH: Yes! From Dubai.
Me: Right....ok, that's a compliment I suppose? Thanks

Apparently I also pass as a Middle-Eastern. I walked up past Charing Cross to Trafalgar Square to go to the National Gallery. After a scene in James Bond (it's not a spoiler if I tell you that at one point he's sitting in the room with the Turner and Constable paintings), I had an urge to revisit. It's been about 10 years of no noticeable changes in the layout of the gallery but suddenly they've had a nifty reshuffle of the art in the main rooms, in part to include this cool photo/painting comparison where they put a painting of a naked figure next to a Degas, and a little explanation of the differences and similarities. I charged through the gallery, dominoeing tourists into the walls either side of me, to see my favourites. Cezanne, Claude, Canaletto and that. I was going to add to the 'suggested donation' pot but saw that they'd upped their price. Since then, I've noticed everywhere has done it. The suggestion amount had doubled in the Portrait Gallery. 

First time I went to the National Portrait Gallery it was full of loads of boring old portraits titled 'wealthy merchant's wife' and 'unknown man' and stuff like that. Really dull. I went back a while ago with my friend Tom Mayo to see a painting of Aleister Crowley (that's a Led Zeppelin story for another time), and discovered that the gallery now has a selection of modern portraits, probably making it my favourite gallery in London. There was a photographic/magazine exhibition of Marilyn Monroe and her British appeal, presumably because this year is the 50th anniversary of her death (she died in 1962 for the mathematically deficient). She really started out very sweet looking. Not all glamourous and pouty like the image most of us probably have of her, but just a pretty, happy and lively girl-next-door. The chronological magazine ordering was useful in seeing how she changed. 

Aside from this, there was a £2 exhibition I didn't have time to see (the 2012 Photographic Portrait Prize, featuring Mo Farah and a Pastry Chef) and then the collection of modern portraits. It's broken down into categories now as well, to give equal focus on all key figures in society, rather than just displaying artists' self portraits, so there's a section for politicians, scientists, artists, athletes and a few other categories. Alistair Morrison had taken a probably obvious, but well delivered photo of the last supper, featuring Colin Firth, Michael Gambon and Julie Walters (see here here). There was a bit of a weird head cast by Mark Quinn, which was made out of liquid silicone and the artist's own blood. Yeah, that was a bit gruesome. There was a portrait of Johnson Beharry, who I think probably deserves a particular mention, as he is the only living solider to have been awarded the Victoria Cross. On wikipedia it quotes him as saying 'sometimes you're the bug, sometimes you're the windshield', which I quite like. Nice to see him getting a place in the gallery, rather than focussing solely on David Beckham (a video of him sleeping by Sam Taylor-Wood) and the Beatles. My favourite painting by far is by Jason Brooks, of the doctor and nobel prize winner Sir Paul Nurse. You'd swear it was a photo until you get close and see it's a painting. Incredible. (here). I'm putting a few links on here rather than the actual photos, as I'd really recommend you go see it for yourself.

I walked home from the National Gallery along the river (the below is taken behind the ITV studio part) and whilst on the phone to my Grandma (usually no shorter than a one hour call), missed three calls from Abbie about dodgeball that evening. It was earlier than I realised, so after a super-quick turn around at home, and then a sprint from Clapham North station to the sports centre, I only just made it. 

Abbie and Tony started playing dodgeball last year, and then set up their own team this year. The company that runs it is called Go Mammoth, and after making excuses for months about why I couldn't play, I finally gave in and went along for a match. I bloody loved it. It's surprisingly fun and a really good workout (you ache for days after), and after the first ball flies past you, you lose all fear. Go Mammoth do loads of other sports as well and put together teams of individual players if you're looking to try something new and can't make up a team, or even if you're just looking to make friends. We were three players short, so Abbie called one of the put-together teams for reinforcements. The other team only had two players, so we won by default but we lent them some players and after some feet-dragging by the ref, we got started. On a weeknight you play three sets of three games, which lasts about 40minutes (apparently you play longer on the weekend league). I have what you might call a losing record at dodgeball. We lost each game I played before going away, but then the team started winning. We're not drawing a correlation between those two things. This match was really close. We won a set, they won the next, and then the last set we were tying one game each. In the dying moments of the last game, I was the only person left in against two others. A chance to prove myself at last. So I gathered a ball, flexed my muscles and lobbed it at the weaker one's (the girl's) calves. Only, I'm a bit of an inaccurate thrower, and it just went straight into her arms and so she caught it, meaning I was automatically out. Lose. And it turns out, we hadn't registered with the ref that they hadn't enough players and so it went down as a loss on our record as well. Shit.

We went to the pub after (The Loft near Clapham North), which offered discounts to Go Mammoth players. Two bottles of Becks for £4. It was like uni prices. Almost. I bloody hate Clapham and everything and everyone that is associated with it (only a few, very special exceptions) but this bar took you up a level from the highstreet and had lots of nice sofas and space, and wasn't particularly busy apart from dodgeball players. We hung out with our reinforcement team and some others for a while (see below photo), and then Abbie and I caught the bus to Elephant and Castle where we decided to have a Top Gear style race; her on a Boris Bike, me on the bus. I've been out of London a while, and everything all looks the same in the dark (…) so I sort of forgot where to get off and ended up in the middle of nowhere on a road name I half recognised. I had to wait for another bus for 15minutes, and then that took 20minutes to get back. So Abbie arrived home around 11pm, and I got in just before midnight. My phone battery had died, and Abbie was waiting up like a worried parent. Whoopsy.

* Acapulco like the song. Former holiday resort, now caught up in a drug war so perhaps head to the Copa Cabana or somewhere instead on your holidays if there's a choice