Cross cultural

Whatever made me think I could walk from the National Gallery through Soho to the Photographer's Gallery on Chinese New Year?! I had to do some serious backtracking to avoid the dragons.

The National Gallery was to see a small exhibition looking at Constable's Hay Wain through the eyes of contemporary people losing the right to use 'common' land as 'owners' claimed it, rather than from the more usual (now) romanticised nostalgia for 'lost' rural life.

The Photographer's Gallery was to see, finally, Letizia Battaglia's astounding news pictures of violence in Sicily - the violence of the Mafia and the violence of poverty. She had a quite extraordinary ability to be in the right place at the right time and then, in face of horror that would paralyse most of us, to take the right photograph. Again and again and again and again.  Humbling.

That was a lot to take in on one day but I then went on to see Kyoto, the RSC's dramatisation of the 1997 UN climate conference, staging the vested interests, nationalism, conflict, lobbying, power-play and brinkmanship that so often obstruct implementable international agreements. My brain wasn't sharp enough to follow all the diplomatic deviousnesses, but it was gripping. And humorous, with an extended argument about punctuation.

Edit: More of my route in extras. I missed bumping into SpotsOfTime by moments.