Culture Fatigue

7 October - Did a bit of street wandering and errand running in the morning and a bit of window shopping in Jermayne (??) St at all the lovely shirt makers before wandering over to Baker St, 221B that is to see the recreated SHerlock Holmes residence. Had a very late introduction to the AC Doyle detective, never havingseen any of the movies and my literatary exerience has been limited to his latest adventure (the superb Final Solution by Michael Chabon (i think my review of it is at the beginning of the blog)) and the first, A Study In Scarlett, a very racist but rollocking adventure where the world was introduced to him) - however, both of them were very good so I thought the museum would be an interestingdiversion. The address had never been a proper residence but someone recreated the entire apartment based on Watson's descriptions from the books and it was very authentic in parts. The awful animatronic inhabitants that lived upstairs and the awful actor pretendingto be him who greeted me in the drawingroom took away from the experience as well as the 6 pound entry fee.
After that and a very average sammich from Pret A Manger I went to an exhibition at the Tate Britain (free entry thanks to the generous Kimberley's membership) of post-impression European artists in London during the 19th century such as Toulouse le Trec, Degas and Sickert. There were some beautiful paintings including the scandalous 'L'Absinthe' and 'The Rape' - the critics explosive commentary was also very amusing as well as the descriptions of complete overreactions of the people and the artworld to some of the paintings ("Britain was shocked by his use of pastels to reveal the human nature of his subject"). I really enjoyed the exhibition but Kimberley was disappointed that Cezanne wasn't represented at all (how can you have XX and not Cezanne!!!) so my ignorance of the art world probably assisted my enjoyment of the whole event.
Also had a brief look at a bikeshop confirming to me that bike shop attendants over here are just as bad as they ar in Sydney - they do everything in their power to make me hate them. Sherlock Holmes museum, shite
That night Kimberley and James hosted a beautiful dinner party. Two friends whose name escapes me who I took a short while to warm to, he was very into wines and could tell me all about the similarity between the clay conditions in England and those of Champagne, but later on I found them to be very interesting. He was a journalist of some note and she was a food designer for McDonalds (Kimberley had told me that the McFlurry was one of hers) - th journalist had a keen interest in technology and a good knowledge of wifi and the games that one can play with it. It became a very interesting niht. Food was very delicious but very unhealthy (everything had double cream in it and the praline semifreddo dessert was culinary equivalent of a heart attack). Will have to start running again soon if I keep this up (and that just depresses me).