Public art

It was when we were in Berlin that it occurred to me just how drab Britain has become; the 2010s are just like the 1970s. And I'm 100% putting this down to the ideological nonsense that is "austerity". 

Firstly, there were the tens of billions of pounds that Osborne released via 'quantative easing', all of which could have gone to the worst off or been ploughed into regeneration but instead ended up with people who were already doing very well, and then there were the ideological changes such as the unforgivable decision to close libraries. 

And one of the biggest casualties of this completely bogus solution to a poorly defined problem was the cutting of public art. There is, I realise, an argument that says it's pointless and a waste of public money. Buy me a couple of pints and I'll sit down and take the time to explain to you why that's bollocks. 

Last night, from our eleventh floor hotel room in Malmö I looked down on the docks and saw how beautiful they looked, all because of some totally unnecessary but creative lighting. Today, we walked over a bridge and the Minx pointed out how, along each side of the bridge, there were brass (I think) casts of shoes and boots. This creativity in the public space enhances day to day living and is, to me, what it essentially means to be human. 

And we actually went to a gallery, this morning, before our flight home. The main exhibition was work by Maria Lindberg, which was amusing but also not quite my thing. But there was also a smaller show about the Situationist, Jacqueline de Jong, which I enjoyed enormously. 

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Reading: On the way home from Manchester Airport, I finished my 25th book, this year: ‘Career of Evil’ by Robert Galbraith. Instalment three of my greedy romp through the Strike novels was is every bit as good as the first two although I didn’t enjoy it quite so much as I don’t really enjoy those parts where you’re seeing events from the killer’s perspective. I intend to refrain from starting the fourth book; I’m going to read something else first.