Tuesday, April 12/2011

Cooler, but despite threats from the weatherpeople it stays pretty fine. Go up to Haverstock Hill where a man is trimming a tree. Very brave of him too, as the tree is a good 50 feet high, taller than the surrounding houses. He's tied to the trunk, but the distance from the man to the knot is greater than that from the knot to the ground, so....Then down to the Embankment, and we walk along the Thames as far as the Temple, grounds of the legal profession. Lovely gardens and some of the buildings are very nice too. Then along Fleet Street and up past St. Paul's.

Then across the Millenium Bridge to the Tate Modern. The exhibition in the Great Hall is Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds - hundreds of thousands of them, all made out of ceramic, individually crafted and hand-painted. A little uninspiring initially, if impressive in sheer quantity. But interesting metaphorical implications in terms of the concept of the individual and the effect en masse. Worryingly, Weiwei was stopped at Beijing Airport on April 3 by authorities and has not been seen or heard from since. Authorities have referred to suspected economic crimes - probably read tax disputes - but his family believe that pro-democracy activism is the problem.