I've wanted to mix it up and makes sure all bases are covered in terms of the kinds of places I recall, and so a museum or gallery seemed an obvious place, but I've found it oddly hard to know what to say. When I think of other major cities I've been to, whether it's New York, Paris, Chicago or Stockholm, it's the museums I think of. MoMa has been pretty much my No.1 spot in New York, the Musee D'Orsay in Paris.
It's not that I don't like, or haven't spent time in, London's many great museums, big or small. I just can't quite find an angle. I suppose I could have gone with the time I kept on being told off, wherever I went, the Wallace, or Knole House, or the Tate, wherever, for doing nothing, just looking a bit scruffy. That was pretty fun. Scruffy in London was very much my thing. Not artfully scruffy, I'm proud to say. Clumsily, hopelessly scruffy.
But anyway, I'm going to go with the two big siblings, The National Gallery and The National Portrait Gallery. They're pretty fabulous places. The fact they're free is an endless blessing.
Just the ability, as I used to do when I was regularly round there, to pop in for a quick quarter of an hour's browsing. Oh yeah, look, there's Sunflowers ...
Perhaps that's why I haven't got much to say. I've nearly always done them both in small chunks - half an hour, a bit, safe in the knowledge I could come back and have another look soon.
Portraits of the year, quick looks at Titians, odd little Bob Dylan art showings, all in passing, all on the way somewhere else, as if I'm embarrassed to be there.
I surveyed them both for disabled access, which was pretty arduous, as there are lots of escalators and mezzanines and bits which are hard to explain in writing. I did the Sainsbury Wing soon after it opened - that was easier. I remember a school trip to the Portrait Gallery when I was 8 and remember drawing a portrait of Francis Drake which, though you'd think any effort by an 8 year old to draw a portrait of Francis Drake is commendable, was not a commendable effort.
I've met various family members in the cafes and restaurants, complacent with the glorious London-ness of it. Genuinely, the most memorable visit was a family get-together at the cafe in the Portrait Gallery in 2011 or 2012 where we were told by one of the waiters that David Cameron and some foreign dignitaries would be joining us in the building, so we spent the whole meal thinking about what we'd do/say and my cousin saying "We really ought to shout something like, I don't know ... "A disgrace!" ... since when "A disgrace!" has been a catchphrase in this house ... but that disgrace Cameron never showed in that cafe. I think he could see we had a bit too much edge.
Anyway, there we have it the National Galleries and the Trafalgar Square, where we've all been an awful lot, for various reasons. I do remember another fun moment when I was walking down Duncannon St behind a group of Brummy lads, and Nelson's Column was under scaffolding at the time and one of them said (insert accent) "I dunno, you come to London to see Nelson's Column in all its glory and you see.... that!" and it was both very funny and entirely understandable at the same time.
Also, I remember a busker in the Charing Cross subway playing She's Got Spies by the Super Furry Animals. Now, that was a work of art I paid good money for.
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