London Break
12 December

It's not often that Ross makes a definite statement about seeing or doing something. However, as soon as Tate announced their Gaugin exhibition over a year ago, he made positive noises about attending.

In the circumstances, it would have been churlish to have knocked the idea on the head. However, we waited until we felt that we could afford the trip before booking it. And it turned out to be the right decision for us both as we really enjoyed the time away together. These little cultural jaunts provide quite a boost to our spirits and morale.

Travelling by Virgin, we saw a lot of snow through the Midlands belt but London was completely clear. Straight into the Travel Inn opposite Euston and they had installed a new computerised check in system which was so simple that it needed a member of staff to explain how to use it.

While Ross rested up, I went down to the National Gallery to see one of their Sainsbury Wing exhibitions - Canaletto and his Rivals. In essence, this show was about Venetian verdute or "view paintings". They were a part of the 18th Century tourism industry - visit Venice, pleasure ground of the Mediterranean, and take back a painting to the UK to confirm your social status.

Of the Canaletto's on display, though I much admired the grand middle period works, it was the earlier stuff which is rougher (like the Stonemason's Yard to the right) which most caught my attention. It was also interesting to see comparable works by Vanvitelli, Carlevarijs, Marieschi, Bellotto and Guardi from the same period and get some sense of the Venetian verdute industry of which Canaletto was one of the best exponents.

I liked the audio guide but I decided not to buy the catalogue. I couldn't ever see me (and certainly not Ross) ever looking at it again. So, good but not exceptional.

Back to the hotel and a freshen up before a meal at the Pizza Express by the British Museum and then on to the Nöel Coward Theatre on St Martin's Lane for Deathtrap, Ira Levin's comedy thriller from the late 1970s.

I wanted to see the play partly because of its reputation as being good fun but mainly because the lead was played by Simon Russell Beale and the director was Matthew Warchus. It just felt like it ought to be Rolls Royce entertainment.

And it was pretty good. It's just that I felt I was always one jump ahead of the plot so I never gasped. And I can imagine that the gay element was a big shock in 1978 whereas now it's all a bit passé.

But the real hole for me was that I never believed in the married relationship at the beginning of the play and, if you aren't convinced of that, then nothing that follows is a real shock.

The surprise member of the cast was Jonathan Groff, who I had never heard of but, it turns out, was a cast member of Glee on television and had appeared in a number of Broadway shows. He had a sort of cuddly charm and sported clothes which were tight enough to show off a pleasing physique.

I found out later that he is out and proud. Which may explain some of the lingering tussling that he and Simon Russell Beale went in for. I suspect that Mr Beale was copping a crafty grope. And quite right too.

After a good night's rest, we headed off to Tate Modern for the Gaugin exhibition.

It doesn't seem possible these days to have just an exhibition of works by an artist - there has to be some sort of thesis behind the presentation. In this case, the thesis was that Gaugin made up myths about himself and about Tahiti.

I don't see that there was anything helpful in this. Most artists seem to re-write their biographies in order to improve their standing. Gaugin was certainly not alone in that and, actually, the more that the exhibition revealed about the artist, the more I disliked the person intensely.

It was interesting to see that the Tahitian paradise that Gaugin was depicting in his paintings was a tourist view, already long gone in the late Victorian era, but which sold well at home. So, the myth was that he made it all up to make money. Which didn't sound like much of a myth to me.

I became less and less inclined to like the paintings. A word that came into my head early on was that of "collage". And the word stuck so that I didn't find the lack of perspective and the unrelated nature of objects within the frame to be at all innovative.

I guess that this was one of those occasions when I liked the artist's work less after having attended the exhibition than I did before.

We met up with Robert for lunch and had a pleasant time with him. I spent the afternoon with him after Ross went back to the hotel. I found out a little more about his health problems. It seems that he may require an operation on his back and that this could mean the end of his career as a performing artist. Gulp. And we also talked about us and grandchildren and all sorts of stuff.

As this photograph, taken at a Clark family wedding, shows Robert now wears glasses on occasion. He is also thirty next year. Oh, good God, this sort of thing makes me feel so old.

Ross and I ate well at an Italian restaurant near to the hotel and then I dived off to the Royal Opera House whilst Ross went back to the hotel to get some more sleep.

I was there for Adriana Lecouvreur which was very good indeed. I saw this work at Opera Holland Park back in 2002 and liked it then. Here at Covent Garden, I felt much less of a sense of discovery but I also experienced the work presented with grace, elegance and big, big frocks. I loved it and so did the rest of the audience.

Although I went for the work, I was also there to hear Jonas Kaufmann, bright new tenor star of our times. And yes, he looks good and sounds good. However, I was expecting a slightly larger voice and I didn't think that he moved around the stage with much confidence. But I'll be happy to hear him again another time. Andrea Chenier perhaps?

Of the other leads, Olga Borodina was warmly acclaimed for her Princesse de Bouillon and Angeles Blancas Gulin got a good hand in the title rôle. But the best performance of the evening came from Alessandro Corbelli. I've only heard him in Donizetti before (Don Pasquale, La Fille du Régiment and Linda di Chamounix) but this performance confirmed what a great and versatile artist he is.

More sleep and then, in the morning, check out and breakfast in the café in Russell Square. Nice treat.

For the final tranche of culture this trip, we took ourselves down to the Royal Academy for the Glasgow Boys exhibition. We first caught up with these artists when we visited the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum last year. That was an occasion for great acclaim as the work was all totally new to us. Now there's less of a WOW!! factor but I would still say that it was all very good and we enjoyed it.

Then back to the hotel to collect the bags and, because we had bought first class tickets for the return, we got to wait out the time before the train in the First Class Lounge. The journey home was easy.

One bit of further reflection before I go.

The Gaugin exhibition was about myth-making but as I saw it the myth was that he was creating a fantasy about Tahiti which he knew he could make money out of.

In their way, this is exactly what Canaletto and his contemporaries were doing with their Venetian verdute. Venice in the eighteenth century had lost its mercantile pre-eminence and was no longer a political power. It relied on rich tourists with a taste for the flamboyant and the naughty to keep the coffers full and Canaletto et al pandered to this taste. They certainly didn't paint the real Venice of the artisan classes.

Similarly, the Glasgow Boys, whilst they may have been in revolt against one sort of biscuit tin sentimentality, were pandering to the artistic tastes of the affluent middle classes of Glasgow and Edinburgh by showing them a tasteful Highland lifestyle which was sanitised to make for better sales.

With art, you have to find a myth that sells.