This scene has been seen a few times in Manchester city centre recently. All the bollards you see here are decorated with little golden bees, the bee having been adopted (I think fairly recently) as the symbol of the city. And it’s some bloke’s responsibility to go round and repaint them now and again. Actually I think they’re doing a pretty good job, but it must be hard on the knees.
Another person’s art — and this time, with the artist. Sophia is depicted at the Friends of St Helena annual meeting, telling us about her inspirations, as a person born in Britain of St Helenian descent, and never having visited the island until earlier this year (in fact she was there in January and February when I was, but I don’t remember meeting her). The guy pictured is her grandfather, born on the island but left 78 years ago. Her art is really good, I don’t do it justice here, but I like the picture anyway.
Someone else’s art. It was nice, too — when I walked back past this on the way home (it is by the Chinese Arch in Manchester) it was finished and looked good, perhaps it will feature on here at some point in the future.
I thought as I walked past this guy, at first, that his facial mask was somewhat excessive even for the present. Then I saw what he was doing. It’s a way of stopping people painting ‘JOHNSON OUT’ on this wall, at least.
The weekend in London continues. Visited the Victoria and Albert museum partly to see an exhibition and partly because I had never previously been there in my 46 years. The museum was opened in 1857 and has the largest collection of art and design objects in the world, the scale of which — 6.5 million objects — becomes apparent when you wander around the fairly large building and realise that even then only a tiny proportion of the collection is on display. This artist was one of a group sketching a sculpture which had made it out to public view.
Being 42 