I was waiting for a friend outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square – clouds were scudding across the sky – the weather was fitful, fretful, undependable. A gust of wind flung a spit of rain across my cheek and pulled at my hair. The exhibition we were about to visit was about the man who would have become Henry IXth. He was much loved and deeply mourned by the English people, dying of typhoid at the age of eighteen. His younger brother became Charles I.
It’s quite a small exhibition and worth a visit, especially if you are the sort of person who thinks about what might have been, should nature have taken a different course – as happened here.
The lost prince was about to be revealed to us inside the gallery. Outside, meanwhile, Nelson was choreographing the cloudscape while I watched both him and also the aeroplane passing overhead.
A dramatic backdrop – Nelson in charge – Trafalgar Square …
Nelson and company + aeroplane…
Our lunch at Browns in St Martin’s Lane amongst the potted palms and gleaming brass was very satisfying, the equivalent of a good French brasserie. The bar is long, impressive and inviting, with a pianoforte of sparkling glass. This Grade II building was formerly the location of the Westminster County Court. Upstairs are the judges’ rooms, now used for various private functions. It’s worth exploring – both upstairs and downstairs, before you leave.
I’m aware now at my age that there is so much that I will never know. Probably for the best, in some cases. But I feel the need not to lose what I do know and to keep expanding it – not in a linear way but instead, like three dimensional printing.
I seem to remember reading that the weight of ‘dark matter’ in the universe could be partly made up of thoughts. Are deeper thoughts weightier than shallower ones? How do we measure what we know and don’t know when we are not sure how much there is to know in the first place … ah well, Trafalgar Square and The National Galleries are a good place to expand what I already know. And Nelson keeps busy, with his head in the clouds.
END