Yesterday, Hiver and I visited London's National Portrait Gallery. Here is their website:
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp

There, amongst the The Schweppes Photographic Portrait Prize 2005, I found a photographer whose work I really like:
http://www.balconyjump.com/photographic/giles/giles.html

His dried-out colours remind me of most of the films that I love and photographs of my parents in their younger days, not that they are old yet, I could only ever describe them as old when I am referring to them in the past tense, which I trust will be far into the future. Before I happened, when they were united by mere friendship.

The gallery allows you to search their collection online. One painted portrait of the hundreds that we saw caught my eye for its unique presence; it pulled all the others down [besides a Lowry self-portrait, which stood out for its mathematic, graphic and horrific lack of mood] and laughed at me. Details are below, but the image is yet to be added to the virtual archive.

http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp08078&rNo=1&role=art

Links, are they pointless? They go out of date, rendering them obsolete and empty. In the event of an apocalypse or information holocaust, all of it would go. When I am dead, none of it will matter - does it now? Physical things, especially blue physical things, are more trustworthy. That is why I have bought an Oystercard, London's pay-as-you-go travel plastic rectangle with rounded edges. Sleek as a cashcard, with all the benefits of soft colours and an instamatic identity.

The official London gentlemen built an internet page which will tell you more facts than I would ever care to. The system is beautiful - swipe your card across a metal circle and a certain amount of money is debited from your unseen stack of coins or notes and coins. Fast and germless they say.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/fares-tickets/2006/oyster/general.asp

The Science Museum is less and less appealing to me. I don't care for most of it because I wasn't made for scientific thinking and my memory holds onto computer game melodies ahead of details of the planet's atmosphere. The sustainability and ecological issues interest me because I sincerely care about them but I hate art that shoots at you with an instructive tone or stance so I cannot pull the classic cite-as-main-influence-and-inspiration trick, coz it's lies. Ideals+Reality=Conflict+Compromise? Laziness+Arrogance=Apathy+Complacency? High-thinking...I'd rather be with music.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/