Oh yes, lost.

Trying to find my way on the underground to The Barbican Centre was quite uncomfortable. Trying to find my way from Moorgate Tube Station was pretty difficult. Then actually finding where the exhbition of Jean Michel Basquait was showing, somewhere inside the Barbican was decidedly tricky. A labyrinth of concrete blocks and grey sad walk ways, heavy and oppressive. I arrived late, too late and was not allowed in.  I wasn’t in the right time slot anymore. So having queued to give an my coat and all my handbag and everything else precious it seemed, I had to queue to pick them all up. Swearing profusely under my breath. I remembered how lucky I am and waht a privileged life I lead in comparision to billions of people in this World.

I went for another long walk and another strange tube ride and another long walk to go and have lunch with new friends, old friends. A divine and funny lunch. One of the guests there remembered my father and was in one of his productions many years back called The Sleeping Prince by Terence Rattigan. Susan Hampshire was the then young star in it. I remember her telling me that she couldn’t learn her lines by reading as she was so dyslexic she had to have someone repeat them for her in order for her to remember them. I was young and she looked like a fairy princess on stage.

So after much laughter and a delicious lunch, I made my way back to the Barbican this time with good directions and a send off at the number 2 bus stop. I got there in time for my 4 pm slot. And then I realised almost two hour later that I should have had a five hour long slot just to begin to digest and understand the works and videos shown of Jean Michel Basquiat. Prodigy of Andy Warhol. I came away feeling I knew less about him than when I went it. More reading I think.

In the evening I went to my cousin Mick’s extra-ordinary new premises in Brixton, built in an amazing old building. More tomorrow.