An awesome Birthday Treat

I know its a few days early, but today I got my awesome birthday trip to London.

It started early, with an 8am train. Sat in first class, it was very posh! Lol. We made sure to get our moneys worth of free tea, juice, biscuits and water. And there was a very nice conductor who didnt even ask for our rail cards which was handy as Jonis is expired (something he negelected to tell me when I booked the tickets).

First thing we did was head over the British Design Museum to see the Design Awards 2012 exhibition. Some of it was very cool, some of it was super practical, and some of it was really rubbish. There were a couple of chairs in particular which were just uncomfortable, which is like the last thing you want from a chair. I was particularly impressed with the re-design of the back of an ambulance and the wind-powered land mine clearing device. Both brilliant pieces of design. I really want to know if any of them will ever actually get used, to save lives and change the world. Seems like a good idea to me.

From there we headed back towards the tube, on the hunt for lunch before heading to the Royal Academy. The weather we beautiful for March, and we stumbled across these sort of pop-up BBQ stalls down an alley, next to a cathedral. The locals clearly knew where to find them because each stall had long queues but we managed to get food within 10 mins or so. I had a huge burger with all the trimmings for £5, a price not to be sniff at on the south bank!

Next we headed to the Royal Academy to see the new David Hockney exhibition. A I have to say I did feel fairly smug after walking through the gates and seeing the huge queue of people snakeing around the whole courtyard, and realising we could march to the front because I bought our tickets online months ago. We picked up the tickets with half an hour before we could go in so we popped back to a patisserie on the main road where I had a massive ice cream sunday. And it was soooo good!

Shame I can't say the same about the art. For all the hype, I found it rather boring actually. The first few galleries we quite good, and I did like his paintings. We were greeted by 4 huge canvases each with the same view of 3 trees and a field, each in a different season. I liked them a lot actually, the colours were bright, the subject was simple but distinctive. The problem was he went on to repeat this same-view-different-seasons idea through another 9 gallery spaces, a total of around (and this is not an exaggeration) 60 paintings and prints. What started off fun and dramatic just got boring.

And there was more to it than just the plain repatition. There was a distinct lack of any message or drive to the work. There was no story being told, the work didn't make you see the world in a different way, it didn't make you revaluate your opinions or even teach you something new. They were just pretty pictures for the sake of being pretty, and that's not my kind of art.

Despite this we left the gallery feeling fairly happy. I was glad to have seen such a high profile show (although I won't be heading for any with quite so many people any time soon!). We walked back to Piccadilly and bought 2 fairly expensive tickets to see a play we knew practically nothing about called The Ladykillers. A comedy apparently.

After dinner at Pizza Express (complete with free bottle of Proseco as its ny birthday) we headed to the theater, bought a program, sat down to read it and quickly discovered why it was so expensive....

The lead was played by actual Peter Capaldi. An actual famous person. Even more. There were only 6 actors in it, and i recognised at least 5 of them from tv. Most of them from Doctor Who. The only one I didn't was the woman. Beyond this it was also an amazing play. Genuinely laugh out loud from start to finish, a very intelligent plot and a really amazing set which was all revolve-y and stuff.

So all in all a fantastic day out. Back on the train and heading home super late. Won't be back in bed till about 3am, but I'm not feeling too bad. I think I will feel it tomorrow however! We shall just have to wait and see if I'm getting too old for days that busy!