Bit o' culture

I was in the V&A yesterday. It's full of so much stuff. But you get that in museums. It made me realise that the victorians were obsessed with death. The place is full of funeral statues and tombs and mourning clothes. I don't know why. They must have been miserable buggers. I did find out that the Courtaulds, who were one of the richest industrial families in the country, made all their money from making mourning crepe and flogging it to all the widows from a massive shop on Regent St. Now they flog Macs and Gap on Regent Street. The museum was also full of very bored looking kids who obviously really wanted to see the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum but their parents refused to stand in the queue. They would get to see lots of boobies though; the place is full of art you see. Every schoolboys dream, or maybe not in the age of online porn. The victorians also managed to combine some pretty broad interests, for example Henry Wellcome, founder of Wellcome Pharmaceuticals, who was a pharmacist, explorer, art collector and pioneer of aerial photography. Now that's a CV by any definition.

I did increase my celebrity quota yesterday too. Well if you can call Stelios Haji-Ioannu a celeb, he's the bloke that founded EasyJet and has the unhealthy obsession with all things orange. I was very gratified to see he still uses the tube though, even if it is the posh one at South Kensington. I also saw Stephen Jones wearing a really bad hat. That only makes sense if you know that he's a milliner I suppose. Again I am wearing the definition of celebrity pretty thin here.

I've just got in from the theatre, The 39 Steps, which was brilliant if you get a chance to see it (it's on in London and New York so you have a choice), and obviously it's Halloween and, boy, are the locals getting into the spirit. I've never seen so many adults with face paint outside a football stadium. It seems especially popular with the boys and girls (who like boys and girls, respectively) on Old Compton Street, most of them are out in nothing but tiny shorts and a coat of red paint. I would like to point out that it's October and about 4º so if anyone says those gay boys are soft I would beg to differ. Unless they just put partying above pain? Mind you it might be like this on Old Compton every Friday night for all I know.

As for me I'm off to bed to avoid the ghouls, ghosts and drunk Australians on the Tube.