To A City Paved With Gold and Lined With Pantomimes

Barbican Centre, London
Originally uploaded by Geraldine Curtis.

Graham went off to New York again on Saturday, so I took the opportunity to travel to London and meet up with Robert for the day. Unfortunately I don't have any funny/exciting/strange stories to relate, but we did have good day. I was hoping that Robert had done his homework and looked up some places to visit. Rule number one, 'never expect anyone else to be more organised than you'. I'd had a quick look on the internet the night before, but couldn't remember anything specific (sign of old age?...please feel free to protest) I did remember that The Barbican had a photographic gallery, so as Robert had never been there before, we jumped on the first Underground train to pass and soon found ourselves at that destination. It's a strange sort of place, like a rambling art gallery where people also live in high rise flats. Not exactly homely as everything is set in blocks, but interesting with an air of expectation. At first opportunity, out came the cameras. First trip to London for my new replacement Canon IXUS 800 (thank you , Amazon) Robert having to make do with one of Graham's 'cast offs' ( a very serviceable Minolta DiMAGE A2). We finally met up at the entrance to the centre about half an hour later, thankful that there was somewhere to go and thaw out. I'd had a very close encounter with a squirrel, but just missed 'photo of the week' as someone came past at the crucial moment. I have a record of its tail, but don't think you'd be impressed! Robert took lots of reflection images, so I'm looking forward to seeing them on Flickr. We round our way round the Barbican Centre, but decided against paying a rather hefty entrance fee to visit the Photographic Gallery, in favour of a posh lunch. (Wished we'd spent it on the gallery in hindsight) What we didn't realise until we nearly got trampled under foot ,was that there was a Pantomime being staged at The Barbican and there were lots of very eager children and lots of rather less than eager adults in a sort of stamped to get to the theatre. Beating a hasty retreat back to the Underground Station, we witnessed a trail of strangely attired big people and little people who resembled something akin to a trail of ants following a plentiful food source.