Guns and Frocks

Loving Delta and the Bannermen since 1987

Mind the gap

Sunday 10 February 2008

  • A small girl is standing in a crack in a concrete floor, looking at us. A tiny toddler is holding a parent's hand and looking over at her.
  • A skylight in the high ceiling of an industrial building, crisscrossed with girders.
  • My friend Angela is standing in the foyer of the Tate Modern; she is holding onto a stroller. The foyer full of people going in different directions.
  • In the basement of the Tate Modern, a crack zigzags across the floor. A small boy looks at it amused. People are going in different directions.
  • There's a crack in the concrete floor. A small boy straddles it and some adults are touching it. There are other visitors walking around.
  • A closeup of a crack zigzagging along a concrete floor.
  • A crack is zigzagging across a concrete floor. A small girl in a pink top is standing in it looking down. It goes up to her knees.
  • A massive gallery, stories tall, with some people milling around in the distance. Angela are her kids are heading away from us, but Alex looks back at the camera.
  • A massive gallery, stories tall, with some people milling around in the distance. Angela and the kids continue to head away from us.

A quieter day yesterday.

Spent a little while in the morning uploading photos, blogging and chatting with people at home. Nice and relaxed. I felt quite good: less grumpy and dehydrated than my first day, and a lot less tired. And it was another beautifully sunny day.

I caught up with Ange and the kids on the south side of Westminster Bridge. We wandered down the south bank of the Thames, had lunch, and wandered into the Tate Modern.

I loved the Tate Modern the last time I was in London, and had a vivid memory of the Weather Project, a clever installation in the six-story Turbine Room. So I was a little disappointed to find that the Turbine Room seemed to be completely empty. Perhaps, for once, there was no installation there.

You can see the photo above. There was a huge crack in the concrete floor, more than a foot deep in places, forking and zigzagging like lightning. God knows how they did it! You can see from my (crap and numerous) photos how popular it was with the kiddies.

Ange drove me around through the London traffic for a while, dropping me off in Picadilly Circus. I caught the tube back to Earls Court. I had a couple of quiet pints in a local pub, and wandered back to my room to await a phone call from Calvin.

A nice day.