Musings from Puflet Palace

Musings from Puflet Palace



We've been to London to seek our fortune ...! Back at the Palace now, though.



I recall from Junior School, on Prize Day (it was one of those prize days like the caucus race in Alice in Wonderland where everyone got a prize) a local MP came to award the aforementioned booty. She was trying to tell us, in that patronising way that MP's adopt with school children, that she would be visiting Buckingham Palace once she'd seen to the likes of us. Rather than doing so in a direct way, though, she was talking about somewhere 'you might see a little mouse under her chair', whereupon someone in the audience muttered darkly to his mate: "She's goin' rattin'".



Quite right, too.



Anyway, I digress ... went to see the Rousseau exhibition at Tate Modern, which was wonderful. I never realised he had been imprisoned for fraud, though, but I don't think that this related to the way that paintings inspired by the Jardin des Plantes in Paris purported to be from real live jungles. Then on to the Samuel Palmer exhibition at the British Museum ... mouthwateringly beautiful drawings, and what made this exhibition really special was how the BM was able to pull together disparate work from its own permanent collection, which provided the context and sources for Palmer's work, e.g. Durer woodcuts. I was disappointed that they didn't include any of Tom Keating's 'Sexton Blakes', though!



Then back on the train ... Puflet was sitting next to a young male gentleman of the opposite sex, who was wired for sound. Some of this could be heard beyond his earphones - at least, the rhythm was audible. His legs were jigging along to a different time signature, and he was drumming on the table to a different rhythm again. Every now and then this Terpsichorean display was punctuated by the sound of his mobile phone going off. The prospect of standing next to the door, half an hour before the train was due in, seemed strangely inviting.



CAS