Culture vulture

 Monet and Shackleton

After just a couple of hours work in the morning that placed us well to take the rest of the day as a jolly, we had an excellent day in London yesterday. We parked in the nearest NCP to the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. It was a simple walk around the block to the entrance where we soon discovered my big mistake of the day.  I had seen a post somewhere on the internet for;   The Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse.  At the RA and also on at the same time was Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition that was on at the Royal Geographical Society. I had checked opening times and such but the error was that I was absolutely sure in my own mind that the Royal Geographical Society was on the left hand side of the courtyard on entering to go to the RA. No it was not. THAT was the Royal Geological Society. I went all around the courtyard a couple of times because I could not believe that I had mis-remembered so badly. Thankfully Steve is a very easy going man and did not get cross about it but instead just laughed at me which was bad enough. Where the other exhibition was on, was a couple of miles away and in London traffic that is far enough.

Since we were at the RA we thought it best to change the order of events and go in there first. This did however involve a long queue where we stood for getting on for two hours. 

We had both been to Monet's home in Giverney where many of the works displayed, were painted, so we were certainly up for this exhibition. I was glad when we finally got inside after standing in a long queue for nearly two hours. I was frozen...Didn't have a coat, just a gillet.

Once into the exhibition it was very crowded but still well worth braving the chilly queue for.  

 We crammed in the Royal Geographical Society's Photographic exhibition of Shackleton and Hurley's Antarctic exploits around 1914-.1917. We both found this display very moving indeed, the photographs were superb and the photos had caught the risky to downright dangerous situation with such feeling, and artistry, even though the working condition’s  were so difficult.  How remarkable that they almost missed a whole war, being so completely out of touch. There is an old film of the Endurance in its death throws that had me transfixed with my hands over my mouth watching a ship being so cruelly crushed by nature. It’s hard to believe that they all got home at all, every last one of them with few of them suffering varying degrees of frostbite.