poliphilo

I've been visiting London all my life (literally- I was born in the Westminster Children's Hospital) but I'd never- that I remember- set foot in Somerset House. For much of my lifetime it's where government kept its records of births, deaths and marriages. Now it's a Wonder House.

The magic began with us sourcing a disabled parking space on the Victoria Embankment, right outside the entrance to the exhibition where Alice and Niki had their stall. We went down a random corridor and found a classy Indian restaurant off to one side. We ate vegetable Biryani and paid no more for it than we would have done in Eastbourne. There's a skating rink set up in the big courtyard- with an enormous Christmas tree alongside- and the sun was coating the upper strata of the building's imperial architecture with brandy butter. The Courtauld Institute keeps its offices and its Manets and Van Goghs on the north side facing the Strand- but there wasn't time even to peek.

(You have to watch the spell checker; it just rendered my Manets as magnets- which they are but it's not really the most important thing about them. The Bar at the Folies Bergere's is one of them. Ah me, another time, another time! The Bar at the Folies Begeres is arguably the greatest painting in England...)

We'd come to see the Horror Show. Its publicity- which lazily I'm going to quote instead of working up my own description- calls it "a landmark exhibition that invites visitors to journey to the underbelly of Britain’s cultural psyche and look beyond horror as a genre, instead taking it as a reaction to our most troubling times." It features films by Derek Jarman, memorabilia from movies like the Wicker Man, Mrs Thatcher's Spitting Image puppet, artwork from David Bowie's albums, Monster Chetwynd's life-size sculpture of a "Hybrid Creature Bat" and, most horrifying of all, a photograph behind bubble glass of Tony Blair with that grin on him. Alice and Niki had a table set up in front of the exhibition shop. Their zoomorphic Tarot people fitted right in- as the exhibition's curators knew they would. Coming out I felt I'd had a quick tour through the history of our times- from the seventies until now- and a demonstration of how what will survive of us is our imaginings. Spooky and grotesque as everything was, I've been left feeling all fired up, wonderfully cheerful- and looking forward to all the great things that are still to be accomplished on Albion's ancient, rocky, druid, shore...