high art & speed cameras

turned up early for my BBC job this morning - 4hrs early to be exact. there'd been a bit of a misunderstanding on my part. no disaster though. i wandered around central london boxing off a few chores. bit of banking and bought some manly fingerless gym gloves - more secure in my masculinity now. big weights. grrrr...

composing this sitting in the National Portrait Gallery in front of ' Ulysses deriding Polyphemus' by Turner - not too shabby. Downside of the location is that it is morning and the place is rife with kids. Specifically uniformed kids being herded around by tour guides. The Turner appears to be a prime target. Stayed and listened and actually learned quite a lot. There's certainly a load going on in amongst it's richly coloured fogginess.

Click here to see the the Odyssey inllustrated in the National Galleries paintings.

Bloody noisy place at this time of day. Not a fan of kids but kinda get the need to educate them - if only to get them to shut the f*ck up. I also have and older, overweight bunter child stuffing his fat face to my left and an arrogance of german tourists holding a reunion to my right - ain't life peachy?

The following also caught my eye:


'Salsbury Cathedral form the Meadows' by Constable


'The Haywain' by Constable.

Now, they both exemplify a long-lost English idyll. They are both scenic. And yes, they are both masterful examples of the painters art.

But what jumps out at me is they are both obvious examples of early joy-riding.

In both cases the driver of the cart has clearly lost control and ended up in the river. In both cases they should have been breathalised and i wouldn't be at all surprised if those carts were stolen - you can clealry see that the licence plates have been obscured by straw.

It is of course common knowledged that 'Constable' was a tag adopted by the artist in his youth as he supplemented his meager artist's income by working for the Salsbury police force as a police artist, Traffic camera division.