Lucien Freud at the National Portrait Gallery

[Beanz]

I am on my way to London to fulfill one of my new year's resolutions. The Mrs and me missed out on the Hockney show and will probably go and see it in Copenhagen in the autumn where the crowds will be smaller. Today I am off to see the Lucien Freud retrospective on me todd and am very much looking forward to it. I am not usually up so early and it is really nice to see the beautiful English countryside in the early light. The train from Plymouth passes so many idyllic scenes that it is almost as if one is travelling through a history of British landscape painting.

[Gandalf]

That sounds like a grand plan indeed. I hope you manage to enjoy yourself. And of course watch out for the paintings where the eyes follow you around the room.

[Beanz]

I have just passed through Dawlish where the track hugs the coast. Looming chalky terracotta red cliffs interspersed with grand three storie Victorian guest houses on the left and the glittering silver sea gently undulating under the low morning sun on my right.

[Beanz]

That sounds like a grand plan indeed. I hope you manage to enjoy yourself. And of course watch out for the paintings where the eyes follow you around the room.

Thank you Miles I shall endeavor to do so. I have never seen a Freud not on a page or screen and I could not turn down the chance to see what basically amounts to his life's work all in one place. Until his death last year he was widely recognised as Britain's greatest living portrait painter and is the last of the old school having even painted Francis Bacon himself. Like Bacon he was a sometimes dark and intense individual whose great gift was to reveal lines, flaws and fears that many of his sitters thought they had kept hidden. So acute was his talent and keen his eye that he regulary revealed a mastery of his medium capable of making lesser painters seem rather pointless.

[Gandalf]

That sounds like a grand plan indeed. I hope you manage to enjoy yourself. And of course watch out for the paintings where the eyes follow you around the room.

Thank you Miles I shall endeavor to do so. I have never seen a Freud not on a page or screen and I could not turn down the chance to see what basically amounts to his life's work all in one place. Until his death last year he was widely recognised as Britain's greatest living portrait painter and is the last of the old school having even painted Francis Bacon himself. Like Bacon he was a sometimes dark and intense individual whose great gift was to reveal lines, flaws and fears that many of his sitters thought they had kept hidden. So acute was his talent and keen his eye that he regulary revealed a mastery of his medium capable of making lesser painters seem rather pointless.

Sounds interesting. I know Freud's name, but don't know very much about his work at all. I am all for brooding dark people with an affinity for lines and flaws, though by the sounds of it I don't think I would have liked to have been a subject of his. It wouldn't be nice for the faltering ego to have all those macabre qualities exemplified before oneself. 'Lucien, is this how you get your kicks?' I would utter in an obstinate manner and maybe heave a camp sigh.

Going to a gallery is a good idea and I will keep it in mind. That would keep me occupied for a while this summer. Besides the daily newspaper and eating a lot I don't have much of an itinerary worked out. Maybe a day at the cricket too. With my papers. And food.

[Beanz]

That sounds like a grand plan indeed. I hope you manage to enjoy yourself. And of course watch out for the paintings where the eyes follow you around the room.

Thank you Miles I shall endeavor to do so. I have never seen a Freud not on a page or screen and I could not turn down the chance to see what basically amounts to his life's work all in one place. Until his death last year he was widely recognised as Britain's greatest living portrait painter and is the last of the old school having even painted Francis Bacon himself. Like Bacon he was a sometimes dark and intense individual whose great gift was to reveal lines, flaws and fears that many of his sitters thought they had kept hidden. So acute was his talent and keen his eye that he regulary revealed a mastery of his medium capable of making lesser painters seem rather pointless.

Sounds interesting. I know Freud's name, but don't know very much about his work at all. I am all for brooding dark people with an affinity for lines and flaws, though by the sounds of it I don't think I would have liked to have been a subject of his. It wouldn't be nice for the faltering ego to have all those macabre qualities exemplified before oneself. 'Lucien, is this how you get your kicks?' I would utter in an obstinate manner and maybe heave a camp sigh.

Going to a gallery is a good idea and I will keep it in mind. That would keep me occupied for a while this summer. Besides the daily newspaper and eating a lot I don't have much of an itinerary worked out. Maybe a day at the cricket too. With my papers. And food.

A day at the cricket, what could be more English. You shall be able to sup a decent cup of tea which is more than I can say for the thin hot stuff on the train. I never thought tea could be thin. It must be the milk substitute thing that comes in a little plastic shrew's potty.

[Beanz]

If you are back in this green and pleasant land whilst the European championships are happening, you could do worse than visiting the old Trent bridge to catch an England game. My friend (not Carl Froch but Carl something) lives in Nottingham and when I visited him I went to the old Trent bridge pub which backs onto the famous cricket ground to watch an England game, great atmosphere. In fact instead of tearing your hair out and gnashing your teeth if it's the off season you can probably catch a friendly football match at whatever team is local to your mum's, or even travel to see the reds at Anfield.

[Beanz]

A small group of cows, separate from the herd, grazing outside of the hard granite walls of what looks like a late 17th century chapel. A big bruiser of a mare, shire like and many hands, breathing out, it's warm breath billowing steam as the train cascades on through the rolling verdant green carpet of farmland and common fields. Squat Oak and stretching Elm punctuating the golden yellow sea of swaying rapeseed.

[Beanz]

Leaving Reading station now, 30minutes from the big smoke and already the carriage is full. The great white noise of commuters murmuring, their patient upright but weary bodies lining the isles, resigned to their fate, workers contributing to the drone but having tiny voices and little trace of honey. The sun is ready too now, no longer waxing it's rays bounce of the holdings, and as the fields fade away and man's geometry tries desperately to impose order on nature's random miasma, structures reproduce until a mad urban orgy of infrastructure groans and heaves announcing our arrival into London, her open thighs welcoming all and sundry, with the Thames and converging rail networks scarring her flesh like stretch marks.

[Beanz]

Had a full English breakfast and then went into the exhibition at 11. It is now 1:30 and I have just left. It was all I thought it would be and much more. Will bore you all with my thoughts later. Now ....lunch.

[Gandalf]

Haha, I like the continuous posting. It's a trait that I have a lot of time for. You seem to have set off early. Make sure you keep the energy levels up or you will be all buggered like and those eyes will do more than follow you.

[Gandalf]

I look forward to your write up. All sounds rather engrossing.

[Beanz]

I left before 6 am this morning and am well and truely guknackered. Also just when I thought all was going so well the frickin bank won't let me withdraw from a machine so no dinner for me until I arrive home at about 9:30. The phones battery has almost gone too, so I will have to charge up on the train after 6 if it dies. I now have an hour to waste in Paddington station.

[Beanz]

Just passed the sun going down over Newton Abbott racecourse. Bleddy ansome. I am glad to be a wescountry lad. I am also so snotty the constant drip of my nose on the bird on my tee shirt must be like water boarding. So consistent is the drip now it falls at enough velocity to. Trigger my phone's touch screen keyboard, and litter my posts with aberrant letters and bizarre punctuation.

[Beanz]

Totnes the organic bio eco friendly recycled yoghurt capital of the world. More hippies per square mile than Cartman's worst nightmare.