More glowing orbs

First the Taylor Wessing Potographic Portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. 57 pictures from 4,303 submissions out of which a surprising number were of people in uniform. Four or five of the portraits made me smile but I found it hard to engage with the formality of most. Highlight for me: the spontaneity of ‘Seye, Miah, Elijah and Alexander, Regent’s Park, 2016’ by Sarah Lee.

Then to the British Museum for lunch with a group of friends I’ve met with twice a year for 30 years, ever since we finished studying together. It’s interesting to see how, in the doubling of the years, we’ve all grown into ourselves. In retrospect nothing that any of us has done is surprising, even if it wasn’t predictable back then.
 
At the parting of the ways till summer two of us spilled into a room of Maggi Hambling drawings. My phone rang. I told my daughter I couldn’t talk. Then registered that she’d just seen a car accident across the road from where she was cycling and that the top of the knocked-over traffic light had narrowly missed her. Some things trump art. I talked. Or rather listened. And sent her to a source of hugs in my absence.
 
Finally a meander through the appealing ghastliness at the heart of London’s Christmas shopping. My camera was gazing up at the sparkles when it started to snow. Snow? At 13°C? Very convincing but it’s actually tiny soap bubbles being pumped out from a shop roof, as I discovered when I had to wipe them from the lens.
 
It was only after I’d got home and seen her blip that I realised that PaulaJ had been in the British Museum at the same time as me, and only yards away. She got to see the South African art exhibition; I put it on my list for another time.