What I did in November 2019

[squirmelia]

I was in Leeds when the month started. I visited the Henry Moore Institute and the Leeds Art Gallery one lunchtime, went for a swim, and had dinner with friends at an Italian restaurant.

I visited Chesterfield and saw the twisted spire of the St Mary and All Saints Church, wandered past the town hall and the abandoned court house, the pink dog, the black and white buildings and the vegetable art. I also walked around the park.

I went to the Gormley exhibition at the Royal Academy and saw pictures made out of bread and wax, robotic like figures made out of blocks of wood, the Gormley figures upside down on the ceiling, lying horizontal, all around, and tangles of wire, the growth of an apple, and oh, a dark cave, dark enough that for a few moments you can't see anything. Then after that, I went into Fortnum & Mason looking for ice-cream, but ended up buying myself chocolates. Most importantly, a baked bean truffle!

My mum and I went to Margate one Saturday. It was a beautiful sunny day and the sky was blue. We wandered across the sand, peered into rock pools, walked through the caves, looked at pictures made of dust (a book of dust! figures made of dust!), went to the Turner Gallery and saw the Turner Prize exhibits and also watched people dance, and then my mum and I danced briefly in the lift. We went inside the old Primark, which was now a kind of art gallery, selling expensive bricks. I saw a bull huss (nursehound), washed up on the shore. I howled in the chalk caves. We peered inside an old bathing hut and thought we were looking at mannequins, but it turned out it was actually a sauna, and they were real people. We peered through a door at the Turner, at rows of people watching something, but later it turned out they were mannequins. We saw Alex Chinneck's Alphabetti Spaghetti, the knotted postbox. I ate faux salmon and cake at a vegan cafe. I gave my mum an advent calendar. We walked by the sea, listening to the waves. It was such a lovely day.

I went to 24/7 at Somerset House, and saw work by Douglas Coupland, etc. The gallery was quiet, which was great. I laid in a bed and tried not to fall asleep as I was told stories and watched the lights. I sat alone in a space with numbers counting down. I laid on a glass table and was wrapped up in fabric that prevents phone signal. I listened to birds singing at dawn. I watched lights coming on in buildings. I watched mechanical birds peck. I watched people come out of factories. I saw pictures and read about an experiment where people slept in a fairy circle and recorded their dreams. I miss seeing fairy circles! Oh, there was another item made from dust - dust bunny, made from dust collected from computers. Cassie McQuater’s Black Room was part of the exhibition, but not working at that point, so I played it later at home.

I found the fortune I got from a fortune cookie from the giant Maneki-Neko at Burning Man and it said “Keep in touch with some form of the arts.” It made me smile when I got it, and I will, I will.

I went to the Last Tuesday Society with a friend and drank an In Fairyland cocktail, while they drank absinthe.

I went on two tube walks - one from St. James's Park to Westminster and the other from St. John's Wood to Baker Street. We walked through parks and saw pelicans and I stared at the reflections of trees in the water.

I had some dentistry.

One Saturday, I wore silver trousers and a company branded t-shirt and worked at Silicon Milkroundabout, trying to convince people to become product designers and work with me.

I went to the Photographers' Gallery with doseybat and looked at photos of food and of Soho. We also ate dessert soup at a trendy Taiwanese dessert restaurant and I drank an icy fluffy sweet potato slush.

One Saturday, I went to the Transport Museum with my family and we climbed aboard old trains and buses and looked at pretend horse poo and old photos of London and children drove buses and wore high vis and pretended to be mechanics.

glyn and I went to the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Tate Modern and admired the numerous complicated models, stared at a rainy window, rainbows in falling water, a wall of lichen, walked through a colourful misty room and a giant kaleidoscope. There was an article on how the brain reacts similarly when looking at art and when falling in love.
We also looked at the fountain in the Turbine Hall.

We wandered into the Savoy and looked at the wonderful dragon shaped Christmas tree made of Lego and found the other models also, such as the princess rocket castle and cute carrots chasing rabbits. We ate lunch at by Chloe.

I ate strawberry pocky flavour ice-cream at Yolkin. We stared at the moving lights in the United Visual Artists exhibition at The Store X and saw fields appear above our heads, and then sat down and watched and I felt like I was moving while I was sitting there listening to animal noises. We also saw some patterns of light at the Pace Gallery and a mixture of art at Store X. “Art allows you to access worlds that aren’t your own,” it said. I mostly remember being at a Chinese nightclub in the 1990s, and also a red carpeted safe.

We also went to the Wellcome Collection and saw the exhibition on Play Well, and watched children’s Fortnite dance moves and listened to clapping songs and a person talking about LARPs. We also looked around some of the other exhibitions and I remember smelling extinct flowers there.

One evening, Leeky and I went to La Gelatiera and I ate Pear and something, and cinnamon bun roll ice-cream. We then saw the excellent sea life lights in Carnaby Street - jellyfish and whales and crabs and fish!

One evening I went with colleagues to eat apple strudel.

One lunchtime, I went to Ladies that UX coffee and caught up with an old classmate.

One Friday, I went to Maraoke and sung songs about video games. I remember there was a song about Stephen’s Sausage Roll but I hadn’t played that game, but now I have.

I went to the Curve at the Barbican one lunch time and looked at photos of apples and apple trees and lichen and many things, many photos.

One evening, I saw St Paul’s lit up with a painting by William Blake.

Ingress

I did the Leeds Beer Trail Ingress banner and walked past Leeds Minster and the pretty looking John Lewis.

I went to the Chesterfield Ingress First Saturday and did the First Saturday Mission banner, the Baked (Greggs) banner, the Bronygress banner and the Crooked Spire banner.

I did the London XM Research banner and wandered around Rotherhithe and took photos of the bridge and a gasholder.

I went to Angel and walked around there in the sunshine one Sunday, doing the London XF Angel banner, and then went to join friends playing boardgames. I played Endeavor: Age of Sail and Monty Python Fluxx.

I did the Thames Tentacle banner and walked by the Thames, the Believe in the Shapers exhibition and walked around Elephant & Castle and the Commons banner where I walked around Westminster, and The Legend of the Link Amp Tesseract, where I crossed many bridges.

I went to Enl drinks a few times in different pubs.

Photos

Here are 50 photos on Flickr I took during November:
November 2019 photos