Stony Track, Angie Lewin

For some light relief yesterday, as I was just around the corner, I popped in to the tiny St Jude's exhibition of work by Mark Hearld, Angie Lewin and Emily Sutton, all madly covetable ... and this is the one I'd have chosen if I could have afforded a £500 treat.
Of course, it would hang oddly if I could also afford a print from the Photographers' Gallery.
I'm going to have to address these problems when I win the lottery.
Or buy a house big enough for a floral parlour and an apocalyptic drawing room.

Highway#1, Intersection 105&110, Los Angeles, California, Edward Burtynsky

 

It turned out to be an apocalyptic afternoon, first a gripping dystopian movie shot in Glasgow...

And then this dazzling exhibition by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky in the newly-renovated Photographers' Gallery that offers pigeon's eye views over the grey, dystopian roofscape of Oxford Street.

His photographs are about oil, 'that flows like blood in our veins'; apocalyptic landscapes, highways hurtling towards celestial cities in the desert, a rainbow shimmering over an oil spillage.

They are more beautiful than you can imagine. They made me think of Richard Dadd's visions of hell, of Georgia O'Keeffe's bleached desert, of Turner sunsets, of Richard Serra, Mondrian, Dan Flavin and even Marcel Broodthaers. A 5* exhibition that's free to get in.

Couldn't resist Cornflower's book titles game in honour of Chelsea Flower Show, so here's my effort:

Early this morning, as I was waiting for The World's Wife, I stepped out of The Crowded Street and bent down to touch Terra Incognita. 
As dawn broke and I took in my surroundings, I noticed several things: Half of the Human Race was struggling due to Ghastly Business,  Bricks and Mortar had been dug up in The Paper Garden under the Oak, but with help from The Other Elizabeth Taylor and knowledge gleaned from The Language of Flowers, I was able to bury them with The Sense of an Ending.
Later The Expendable Man popped in to take a cutting or two. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, he told me but he pointed out The Odd Women. 
Taking a well-earned rest from the weeding and chatting over the wall with Mrs Bridge from next door, I mentioned A Card From Angela Carter and remarked on Freedom. But then Gillespie and I, we said, Down the Garden Path and I went back to do a little light pruning.
My garden was once The Best of Everything but tending it is a joy and part of A Bigger Message.

Anybody else like to join in?

There's a black taffeta ballgown hanging in my wardrobe as a tragic reminder that in some dim and distant past I had a 22in waist ...
So, of course, I couldn't wait to see the V&A's Ballgowns exhibition. And I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy it.
But I did think that the V&A haven't exactly pushed the boat out for the re-opening of their fashion galleries. Because this has none of the gasp-ooh-aah-sigh-isn't-it-gorgeous quality of their Golden Age of Couture exhibition a few years ago, or those two stunning exhibitions of hats and tiaras.
Maybe it's because this exhibition is subtitled British Glamour since 1950 ...
Well, I'm fine with the Fifties. But after that it's more like British Glamour: Its Last Gasp.
What came across loud and clear is that real glamour no longer exists, It's just showbizzy bling on the red carpet ... and on the stroke of midnight your borrowed frock goes back to the designer.
What's glamorous about a tinfoil dress that would make even the most beautiful woman look like a 20lb turkey trussed for the oven. Accessorised with what ... sage and onion?
I was also taken aback by the hideousness of the mannequins, with their distractingly dislocated hips and shoulders, like something out of C&A's window in 1972.
But how I've missed the fashion galleries which seem to have been closed forever. And if you leave the exhibition (which is £10 to get in) and walk around the permanent collection (which is free), there's all the  ooh-aah glamour you could desire. Mainbocher crêpe-de-Chine, cut on the bias? A Poiret evening coat from the 1920s? Or my favourite spotty Lanvin cocktail dress with a neat little bustle?
Although I also love a natty little 1920s tennis dress that might have been worn by a character from Angela Thirkell.

The Expendable Man, by Dorothy B Hughes, Persephone Books endpaper

I have been utterly gripped by this for the past two days and utterly amazed that with all the Persephone blog chat, more people aren't shouting about it - because, trust me, it's one of their best. 

From the outset, it is unsettling ... why is this respectable young doctor so jumpy and paranoid as he drives through the Arizona desert on his way to a family wedding? His anxiety is so unnerving - what guilty secret lies in his past? what can he have done?- that every page thrums with tension and every frame feels like a film noir  playing inside your head. I couldn't possibly say anything else without spoiling it, except that on page 71, Dorothy B Hughes casually shocks you to the core ...

And you realise the hints have been there all along. 

This was a 5* Persephone which made me wonder which of their other titles I'd choose for my top ten. 

So in no particular order, here goes:

Someone at a Distance ... Dorothy Whipple pulling the rug from under a happy marriage. 

Fidelity by Susan Glaspell, written in 1915, and also Brook Evans, impossible to choose one over the other as Glaspell is so shockingly ahead of her time. 

Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski ... one of the saddest stories I've ever read. 

Miss Pettigrew, of course ... she's irresistible. 

And so is The Fortnight in September, by RC Sherriff, one of the best feelgood stories I've ever read. 

Still Missing, by Beth Gutcheon. Another page-turner.

The World That Was Ours by Hilda Bernstein, a true story that's as good as a thriller. 

Round About A Pound A Week because it brings the history of poor London women - not so very long ago - so vividly alive. 

Oh dear, we'll have to call it a baker's dozen, because I couldn't possibly leave out Saplings (Noel Streatfeild) or The Village (another Marghanita Laski) and although it's a long time since I read it, Alas, Poor Lady (Rachel Ferguson) was powerful punch-in-the-gut spinster-lit. 

So that's my ten, although it's really 13. But as you can see, I'm all for feel-bad and a cracking good story over what they call 'hot water bottle' novels ... at least most of the time. 

Anybody want to argue for titles I've excluded? I haven't read them all, but I must have ticked off more than 60, plus a couple that have fallen under the bed and, I fear, will go forever unloved and unfinished.

I know what I was expecting from an exhibition called Age of Elegance ... and I came away feeling ever-so-slightly short-changed because it wasn't all about ladies in tea-gowns and ball dresses.

But there were a few, in among the portraits of City gentlemen by once fashionable artists that I'd never heard of. (The Hon John Collier anybody? Fred Roe? Albert Chevallier Tayler?)

These three young girls in a garden of roses and hollyhocks could be the heroines of a Persephone novel, don't you think? Their summer dresses reminded me of my mum's old family photos and all those great-aunts and cousins whose names none of us can remember. The painting is Amaryllis, by George Harcourt, 1924.


And this is definitely what I had in mind ... Lady Lavery in her grey chiffon negligée with that pink satin shoulder-strap simply crying out to be ripped off. No wonder Michael Collins was in love with her and a description of this painting was supposedly found on his body after he was killed.

Not the most coherent of exhibitions. But free to get in, so I'm not complaining.  And only a hop round the corner from a pot of Lapsang and scones and cream here.

Which is about as elegant as I can aspire to on a Sunday afternoon.

My book bargains on Charing Cross Road this afternoon, only £1 each:
A Girl of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton Porter (1912)
Mrs Bridge, Evan S Connell (1959)
At the Jerusalem, Paul Bailey (1967) ... the book that impelled Elizabeth Taylor to stalk Paul Bailey to his job on the shopfloor at Harrods and take him as her inspiration for Ludo in Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.

Has anybody read any of them?  I was quite pleased with my haul.