Tower Bridge and the Shard at night

Country boy hits the Big Smoke.... After a rather sleepless night, wind howling in the rooftops, I was up early and parking at Cromer station in the dawn light. Local train chugging through woodland in the early morning mists and fifteen minutes on Norwich station to get a cappucino before boarding the 8.30 for Liverpool St. Fog thickening as we sped on through Suffolk fields, reading my book.
Finally got to see the Bill Viola video exhibit at St Pauls. I have been banging on about Bill Viola ever since the year 2000, or near offer, when I bumped into his wonderful "Angels for the Millenium" videos at Tate Modern. If you have never seen him and you have a "spiritual" bone in your body, look for an opportunity to see his work. There are some low grade copies on the internet but it is far more impressive in situ.
The St Paul's work is four panels on the theme of The Martyrs and I understood it as being about redemption through bearing suffering. Shouldn't have attempted to analyse it really because that reduces it; I found it beautiful and uplifting. This from an agnostic who believes there is a mystery we don't understand, that everything is somehow connected; but no religious belief - that's me, not Bill V.
Later on I was at the Tate for a meeting - they are working on a book of my father's photos of the East End in the early fifties - and had a quick look at the Frank Auerbach exhibition.
On the way back I went into a guitar shop in Denmark Street to look at some remarkable and exquisite luthier made guitars. I think I was a bit too exhausted by then to fully appreciate their tone or do justice to the opportunity to play a couple of instruments made of master grade tonewoods. The search for a new guitar continues...
As I had a couple of hours before my train I went for a night wander, crossing the Thames by the Millenium Bridge. I took a few shots with my camera but in the end the iPad coped better with the darkness - I didn't have a tripod.
It was a long day. After a chicken curry at the station, I dozed half the way home...

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