Photos from Elton and David, and a Pumpkin

I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington yesterday for a dose of culture. They've mounted a show of photography collected by Elton John and his husband David Furnish, with photos from fashion to portraits to journalism taken by many well-known photographers. It's a HUGE show, and it took me a couple of hours to get through, but it was fascinating and I bought the catalog afterwards.

Before I even got in, though, I had some challenges. I hadn't pre-booked a ticket because the V&A specifically says on its web site that pre-booking isn't necessary. Maybe they just meant for the museum in general, but anyway, when I got there I was unable to buy a ticket with my debit card because their "systems were down." They suggested I do it online, but that didn't work either. I made my way to an ATM a few blocks away and withdrew cash, which I used to pay for my ticket -- and I had to round up with a small donation because the museum couldn't give me change. The whole thing was a kerfuffle, and of course I realized later that it was part of yesterday's worldwide collapse of computer systems related to that CrowdStrike update.

I had to laugh because wasn't I just saying how much I love our cashless society? Like any technology, it's all great as long as it works!

I made my way through the show and had lunch in one of the museum's cafes, a very mod structure in their entrance courtyard. Then I went to a second (and much smaller) show on tropical modernism, a look at mid-century modern architecture in Ghana and India and other places overseas. I remembered seeing some of those structures when I traveled in Ghana 30 years ago. Lots of clean lines and breeze blocks (or "brise soleil," a term I did not know).

I was stunned to see the Bolgatanga Library included in the show. I traveled through Bolgatanga, which I remember as a dusty, hot way station on the road from Burkina Faso to Kumasi. As I recall there was a whole lot of nothing. I had no idea it had an architecturally significant library. Guess I missed my chance to check that out!

After I left the museum I walked across Kensington Gardens to see this year's Serpentine Pavilion, by Minsuk Cho. It's an interesting structure -- a collection of structures, really -- that includes a soundscape, a play area, a cafe and a library clustered around a circular patio. The light and shadow effects were very cool. When we lived in Notting Hill I used to check out each summer's Serpentine Pavilion with Olga but some years I miss it now, so I was glad to catch this one.

Finally, I visited Yayoi Kusama's gigantic "Pumpkin" on the grass near the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Surreal and kind of like a spaceship or big alien pod, but also beautiful, colorful and shiny.

I grabbed a coffee at a cafe near Kensington Palace and sat on the grass watching other overheated pedestrians and runners. (Yesterday was the UK's warmest day so far this year, with temperatures of almost 90º F -- 31.9º C, to be exact.) Then I made my way to the bus stop at Notting Hill Gate and began a long, tedious bus ride home. It wasn't helped by the fact that the bus was packed, stuffy and SLOW. When we got to West Hampstead some guy got so frustrated by the motionless traffic that he hit the emergency button to open the doors, and a bunch of us seized the opportunity to get off between stops. I didn't even know that button existed.

Oh, another peculiar public transport experience yesterday -- I saw a man on the tube carrying a pet carrier, a soft-sided shoulder bag with a dog's head protruding. Only, this was a toy dog, a stuffed animal. I thought perhaps he'd just bought it, but then it would have been in a shop bag, not a pet carrier. Does he take it with him everywhere? Is he mourning the loss of a real dog, or is he trying to figure out whether he wants a dog -- kind of like school kids tasked with carrying around bags of sugar to see what it's like to have a baby? So many questions.