Some lessons are learned by hard, expensive experience. Such lessons should be respected, and more importantly, should become a practical guide to future behaviour.
I blame the Pauls!
After a hard day travelling to Barcelona and entering the collection of regional architecture which is the basis of the Poble España on Montjuic. Each region of Spain is represented by buildings which form a small village with restaurants, hotels, exhibition spaces and churches. They are not like St Fagan’s because the buildings are not authentic in the same way with only the façade or a particular feature being from the original site. They form an interesting collection, however and, even with many of the restaurants and coffee shops closed there was enough there to exhaust us.
A particular point of interest was an exhibition of contemporary art. Most of the exhibits were depressingly bad with hardly an original thought to motivate the viewer’s involvement with the art. Many of the exhibits were sloppily executed with what looked like casual application of paint masquerading as vitality! The high point of low imagination was a repainted version of Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ presented as ‘Guys d’Avignon’ with a very prominent example of masculinity in the bottom right corner!
The collection was saved for me by the upper floor where there were one or two works which were actually worth stealing! One collage in particular interested me. It represented a few pieces of fruit and a cloth in a Cezanne-like arrangement, but with a very muted palette. I could imagine living with that, unlike the works in the basement which were startling examples of photorealism together with deeply unsettling sculptures. The most threatening sculpture was a bronze of a helmeted naked man crouching balanced on a metal plinth with arms outstretched. I have rarely seen a piece of sculpture which was more immanent!
Our obligatory walk down the Ramblas was the finishing touch to our desire to walk any further and we eventually succumbed to a taxi to the station for our train back!
Toni was still coughing and gruff and didn’t want to go out for dinner and settled for a burger from the café on the corner to eat in the flat while we went to the restaurant on the other corner.
Everything was going well when one of the Pauls suggested that we visit a bar. The Elvis bar was open and, in homage to Paul Squared’s Aunt who has an Elvis fixation we went in. The place was virtually deserted and didn’t sell wine. This precipitated the first mistake: I began to drink gin and tonic. There was a pool table and, in spite of my protestations, we played a game. Other people arrived; the games proliferated as did the drinks.
And here is the lesson to be learned: pay for your drinks as they arrive. Do not, under any circumstances, allow the bar man to ‘keep a tab for you.’ I am too ashamed to mention the total sum that we finally paid at the end of the evening in the early morning. But it was substantial. We prefer to think that we paid over the odds rather than actually drank that amount of money.
Learn the lesson!
I blame the Pauls!
After a hard day travelling to Barcelona and entering the collection of regional architecture which is the basis of the Poble España on Montjuic. Each region of Spain is represented by buildings which form a small village with restaurants, hotels, exhibition spaces and churches. They are not like St Fagan’s because the buildings are not authentic in the same way with only the façade or a particular feature being from the original site. They form an interesting collection, however and, even with many of the restaurants and coffee shops closed there was enough there to exhaust us.
A particular point of interest was an exhibition of contemporary art. Most of the exhibits were depressingly bad with hardly an original thought to motivate the viewer’s involvement with the art. Many of the exhibits were sloppily executed with what looked like casual application of paint masquerading as vitality! The high point of low imagination was a repainted version of Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ presented as ‘Guys d’Avignon’ with a very prominent example of masculinity in the bottom right corner!
The collection was saved for me by the upper floor where there were one or two works which were actually worth stealing! One collage in particular interested me. It represented a few pieces of fruit and a cloth in a Cezanne-like arrangement, but with a very muted palette. I could imagine living with that, unlike the works in the basement which were startling examples of photorealism together with deeply unsettling sculptures. The most threatening sculpture was a bronze of a helmeted naked man crouching balanced on a metal plinth with arms outstretched. I have rarely seen a piece of sculpture which was more immanent!
Our obligatory walk down the Ramblas was the finishing touch to our desire to walk any further and we eventually succumbed to a taxi to the station for our train back!
Toni was still coughing and gruff and didn’t want to go out for dinner and settled for a burger from the café on the corner to eat in the flat while we went to the restaurant on the other corner.
Everything was going well when one of the Pauls suggested that we visit a bar. The Elvis bar was open and, in homage to Paul Squared’s Aunt who has an Elvis fixation we went in. The place was virtually deserted and didn’t sell wine. This precipitated the first mistake: I began to drink gin and tonic. There was a pool table and, in spite of my protestations, we played a game. Other people arrived; the games proliferated as did the drinks.
And here is the lesson to be learned: pay for your drinks as they arrive. Do not, under any circumstances, allow the bar man to ‘keep a tab for you.’ I am too ashamed to mention the total sum that we finally paid at the end of the evening in the early morning. But it was substantial. We prefer to think that we paid over the odds rather than actually drank that amount of money.
Learn the lesson!
No comments:
Post a Comment